Passionate particles of dust and sun
Run your brief race, nor question why ’tis run;
⁎ ⁎ ⁎ ⁎ ⁎
Perhaps they make and break us just for fun.
— R. le Gallienne
Nurse Evans was a little shocked at Mrs. Fabian’s attitude towards the baby. She said it was unnatural. Nurse Evans had never herself had a baby, but she had assisted at numerous arrivals, and it always brought her a simulated maternal thrill to be able to place the infant, scrupulously washed, powdered and dressed, into the expectant mother’s arms.
But Mrs. Fabian—first and only mother in Nurse Evans’s catalogue of experience—had refused to have the baby put there.
“Take it away,” she had said. “I don’t want to see it.”
“A perfectly sweet little girl,” Nurse Evans had snorted in relating the story afterwards. “And she alluding to her as ‘it.’ Unnatural, I call it!”
Mrs. Fabian did not seem to mind very much what anyone called it. She lay very still and quiet in the high white bed and kept her eyes most obstinately fixed on the scrap of blue sky and the outlines of chimney-pots which she could see through the window. If, by some unexpected flicker, her eyes chanced to rest on the cot which stood a little to the left of the window, out of the draught, she shut them quickly on a definite shiver of disgust. And yet the cot was really a very attractive-looking affair, its soft white muslin curtains ornamented with a large pink bow.
Perhaps, in some obscure way, it was that pink bow from which Mrs. Fabian’s mind instinctively withdrew. She had not wanted to have a baby at all, but as she had seemingly had to have one, she had hoped it would be a boy. Now nine months’ discomfort and a certain shrinking horror from her own appearance had culminated in a night of shrill agony and that pink bow to mock her.
“A little angel of a girl!” No wonder the sullenness of her dismissal shocked and surprised Nurse Evans.
The doctor, less maternal-minded than Nurse Evans and more interested in Mrs. Fabian as an extremely beautiful girl, waved aside the nurse’s persistence.
“Let her be for a little,” he advised. “And if she doesn’t like the baby, take it into another room. I want her to have absolute quiet for the next twenty-four hours.”
He, too, it may be noticed, alluded to the little newborn angel as “It.” Nurse Evans retired in a fluster of indignation, the baby, sweet scented by the best thing in baby powders and wrapped in a beautiful soft shawl, held to her ample bosom.
She who had never had a baby—would now never have one—overflowed with love towards them, tingled when their soft, useless fingers fumbled against her cheeks, or their little feet kicked against her tightly buttoned-in form.
Mrs. Fabian lay still, her eyes on the window. With the baby’s departure, a certain sense of peace came to her. She had been obsessed by it these last three months. Now the discomfort, the agony was over. She could pay someone else to look after It, she need not be bothered with It. It was a girl. Dick would be disappointed, but if it had been a boy he might have waxed tiresomely enthusiastic.
A girl! He would not, could not expect her to be very interested or excited over a girl.
Moving languidly, she was conscious of her body under the clothes. She was slim again, graceful. She would be able to run, play games, dance. New clothes! That green dress she had seen in a window a fortnight before this awful event had taken place. As soon as she could, she would buy it. She could see herself standing in front of the long glass in her bedroom at home, the green waves of the dress floating round her slim perfection. The edges of it, picked out in diamonds, would come to just above her delicate silk-clad ankles. She would look beautiful with her dark hair gathered back into that heavy knot at the back of her small head, her white skin, her languid eyes, her vivid, perfectly shaped mouth. Beautiful! For months she had been hideous, distorted, uncouth!
“Well!” said the doctor softly, standing watching her. “Glad it is all over, Mrs. Fabian?”
Felicity brought her mind back from the picture of her own beauty to glance at him. He was quite a good-looking man, the hair, greying slightly above his ears, brushed back very smoothly. His eyes, watching her, were full of a kindly tolerance, his thin, clean-cut lips smiled. Felicity smiled back.
“Oh, tremendously glad!” she said. “Did I make an awful fool of myself?”
He shook his head, his hand holding hers gave it a little friendly pressure.
“You were wonderful,” he answered. “If you ask me, all you women are wonderful. And so Felicity the Second enters the world.”
He saw the quick frown that for a moment marred the perfect whiteness of her brow, and then Felicity laughed, but her eyes detached themselves from his again, resumed their scrutiny of sky and chimney-pots.
“I shall not call It after me,” said Felicity.
“Disappointed it’s not a boy,” said the doctor good-naturedly. “Just before you went under the chloroform you said to me, ‘It’s got to be a boy and its name is to be Peter.’”
“Dick wanted a boy,” answered Felicity. “I didn’t really want anything.”
“I see,” laughed the doctor; his hand gave hers the little reassuring pressure again. “But beauty like yours, Mrs. Fabian, mustn’t be wasted. You’ll give it back again to the world in the person of your daughter.”
Mrs. Fabian closed her eyes to show she was tired. She heard the doctor turn and go softly out of the room, caught fragments of his whispered conversation to Nurse Evans outside the door.
Her beauty handed on! The thought shook her almost to a passion of revolt. That was what babies did. They stole from one—beauty, youth, power, joy!
“When I am forty, she’ll only be twenty!” Thought leapt forward, visioning herself as that. Jealousy stood rampant at the door of her heart.
Felicity Fabian, it may be noted, in all her short, hectic life had never loved anyone. Her father had died when she was still a child, her mother had brought her up, showering on her beauty a reckless devotion which took but slight account of the soul behind. From very early days, Felicity had been taught to worship her beauty. And then, when she had just turned nineteen, she had married Richard Fabian, rich, successful, clever. And he, too, had worshipped her body and asked from her nothing else. She had not, he surmised in his cleverness, got it to give. She was very perfect and utterly selfish—but he got immense satisfaction out of watching her perfection. It had roused him, for a short period at least, into a frenzy of the most ardent love-making.
Marriage had meant just that to Felicity until the coming of the baby. And only she herself knew how bitterly she had resented those months of enforced ugliness and what amounted to ill-health. Now she was adamant in her disregard of the baby. In this, the circumstances of her own life helped her. Mr, Fabian was not a domesticated man. He was temperamental and passionate and immensely clever. He had been quite pleased at the idea of a son and heir, but, as Felicity had hoped, he was not inclined to be over-interested in a baby. His work, too, took him abroad. He was in the Colonial Civil Service, and if Felicity went with him it entailed, or at least it could easily be brought about to entail, leaving the baby behind.
If Mr. Fabian himself was surprised at Felicity’s eager acceptance of this fact, he concealed it behind a certain good-natured sarcasm, which was characteristic of all his dealings with his wife.
“Don’t want to be bothered with the brat, eh?” he remarked. “Can’t say I blame you. Lucky these rooms are as capacious as they are, or I am bound to admit I should find her a blinking nuisance.”
Mr. Fabian, at least from the beginning—Nurse Evans chalked this up in his favour—never fell into the mistake of calling his daughter “It.”
“That is just it,” agreed Felicity; back in her own domain, restored to all the glory of her beauty, she radiated in those days a charm which all men, even her husband, found hard to resist. “You would find It a nuisance, Dick. And abroad, it wouldn’t keep well—I shouldn’t know how to look after It.” She laughed her infectious little trill of amusement. “Can you see me looking after a baby, dear?”
“Well, as my wife and Ann’s mother,” Mr. Fabian pointed out, “I ought to be able to see you doing it. But I confess I can’t.”
Ann! They had christened her that. They stayed at home just long enough to attend the christening. Ann. Felicity felt that to be a plain, unassuming name. Personally, though she came in contact with the baby as little as possible, she saw small prospects of the doctor’s prophecy being fulfilled. The baby was not, to her way of thinking, pretty. The nurse who had replaced Nurse Evans, who was a person gifted with far more common sense, if less maternal instinct, tried to reassure Mrs. Fabian on this point.
“Plain babies—though I am not saying as how she is plain, mam—make the most lovely girls.”
Perhaps they did; Felicity was not well enough versed in these matters to argue. But at least if this strange, squalling lump of humanity was going to develop into a lovely girl, she should do so under the plain, useful name of Ann.
Ann, in charge of her nurse, was boarded out with some distant cousins of Felicity’s, who were glad enough of a little extra money to add to their own small income, and stretchable enough, thanks to Mrs. Daimler’s mode of life, always to be able to include another one.
There were already four Daimlers, but they did not have a nurse in charge of them. They grew up as best they could, and at its very best it was a haphazard affair of indiscriminate slaps and an abundance of love, which slopped over at unexpected moments.
Felicity Fabian, accompanied by Nurse and Ann, spent a week in the house—settling in the baby, it was called—and came away with immense joy and a fixed resolve in her heart at the end of that period. She left Ann behind her, and never, never again would she indulge in this hideous adventure of giving life.
Mrs. Daimler’s personal appearance—as Felicity originally remembered her, she had been a pretty, soft girl of wide blue eyes and fluffy hair—had definitely clinched the matter for Felicity.
Beautiful, radiant Felicity sailed a fortnight later with her husband for South Africa. The horrors of the past year forgotten, her future unfolding out before her. With care and forethought her beauty would but grow more perfect as the years rolled past, all women would envy her, all men acclaim her—how many might not fall in love? Dick was very complaisant and not at all jealous.
At twenty years of age we are apt to set so false a value upon things. All history repeats itself, and yet we only learn our individual lesson through the agony of mistakes made and paid for with the tears of our heart.
It cannot be said that Ann was a pleasant baby. By no stretch of imagination, as Mrs. Daimler truthfully said, could she be alluded to as that. And Mrs. Daimler’s imagination, as far as babies were concerned, was very stretchable. She could rave about their little pink, curled-up toes, their loose, slobbery mouths, their eyes which would stare past and beyond her ravings with such vacant intensity. She was what is called a baby-lover. She always wanted to pick a baby out of its cot and jig it about and make it sick, and wipe its small mouth and kiss its little defenceless neck with great smacking kisses. She could not help it. Maternity—as some rather rude friend had once remarked—fairly oozed out of her. But Ann was what she called a difficult baby. She really meant that Ann was not her own baby, and therefore rather a nuisance in the already over-full house. For, like a good many women who fairly gush over with Mother love—it is most decidedly Mother love—other people’s babies, though she tried to do her best for them, were not quite the same.
Ann started life, it almost seemed, with some kind of hysterical grievance against it. She made so much noise over her real or fancied woes that life in her vicinity became almost unendurable. She was always crying—a shrill, fierce scream of protest it seemed to be.
“Indigestion,” said the doctor, looking wise and hoping that somebody would remove the baby out of his consulting-room as quickly as possible.
Nurse Blair could not be brought to agree with him.
“There is nothing wrong with the child’s digestion,” she said dourly—she was very Scotch and apt to be dour when her night’s sleep was too often disturbed. “She is just the most vicious tempered baby I have ever had to deal with.”
“But babies, nurse”—so Mrs. Daimler, thinking vaguely of a poem she was fond of quoting about her own brood which had in it something about “trailing clouds of glory do they come.” “Babies are never bad-tempered unless there is some health reason for it.”
“That may be, mam,” agreed Nurse Blair. “Miss Ann is like no baby I’ve ever seen before.”
She took to surreptitiously slapping Ann when she cried for no conceivable reason. She would pick her up and shake her furiously and bang her back in the cot. She devised a method of putting a wet towel across the baby’s face to make it stop crying, and strapping it down in the cot so that it couldn’t kick about in its little gusts of feverish passion. Mrs. Daimler, when she heard about these things afterwards—after Nurse Blair had had a nervous breakdown, that is to say, and had had to be dismissed—shivered with righteous horror to think that a woman could so treat a defenceless babe. But the truth of the matter was that Ann had succeeded in driving Nurse Blair mad, and it had for Nurse Blair its pathetic side.
The new nurse, young, nice-looking, amiable, engaged by Mrs. Daimler and warned as to the difficulties in front of her, said that she found Ann to be a sullen, unresponsive baby. Her shrieking days were over; at ten months old, if anything hurt her, she frowned black rage and said nothing, or crawled away into some dark corner and nursed her wound. You could not love her, Nurse Benson said, and she had some very objectionable habits, but apart from those she gave very little trouble, and Nurse Benson pursued her own life and read her novels, free from too much disturbance.
Mrs. Daimler wrote pathetic letters to Felicity:
We are doing the best we can with her, dear, but she really is a very difficult baby—I can’t think why. You were always so sweet-tempered and placid, and Dick seems perfectly normal, doesn’t he? Of course, we’ve loved her because she is yours, only when you come home, dear, unless you are going to take her with you, you must make other arrangements. It isn’t any use my pretending I can manage her—I can’t, and I never saw such a young child so incapable of affection of any sort.
Felicity Fabian discussed the matter with her husband. He was inclined to be amused. “Poor little devil,” he said. “She’s ours, I suppose; we’ve had something to do with making her bad temper; we ought to be the ones to cope with her.”
“Oh, darling, I couldn’t,” said Felicity. She perched on the arm of his chair and ruffled his hair. “I never have been able to stand bad-tempered people. They frighten me.”
“Haven’t you got any love for the wretched infant?” asked Fabian. He slipped his arm round her waist. Her presence close to him, the faint, sweet perfume that she used, the feel of her delicate perfection, still had the power to send the blood throbbing to his brain. She was the only woman in all his life that had ever moved him like that, but he was not in the least blind to her selfishness, her imperfections. “After all, she’s yours and mine.”
Sitting perched against him, Felicity frowned. The curve of her little mouth hardened. “I am afraid I haven’t,” she admitted. “I did not want to have a baby and I had a simply hateful time, Dick. And then——”
“Even animals love their young,” he argued, the sarcastic note deep in his voice. “And you’re a little animal, aren’t you, Felicity?”
She flushed and slipped out of his reach. She was so lovely at that moment that he almost caught his breath looking at her.
“I hate you when you talk like that,” she said. “I think it is because Ann does belong to that—the animal side of me that I don’t like her.”
It went deeper then than he had imagined. Women were curious things. Fabian shrugged his shoulders and dismissed the subject with a little laugh.
“My dear, settle the thing your own way,” he agreed. “I dare say we can find a school that will take her and break her in.”
“We are going to find a school for Ann when we come home,” Felicity wrote Mrs. Daimler. “Do be an angel and keep her till then. It is so difficult to arrange things from this distance.”
“A school—a boarding-school, you know, for a four-year-old infant.” Mrs. Daimler confided the fact to a friend who had looked in to tea the day Felicity’s letter arrived. “It seems almost unbelievably callous, doesn’t it?”
Mrs. Agnes Napier, the friend in question, caught her breath on a little sigh. “It seems so odd,” she said. “Those who want them can’t have them, and those who have them don’t want them.”
Nancy Daimler opened enthusiastic eyes. If there was one thing she did adore, it was heart-to-heart talks with her friends and neighbours about their matrimonial troubles and perplexities.
“Can’t you have any?” she asked. “Oh, my dear, how dreadful for you! Of course, they are a worry and an expense, but I don’t know what life would be like without babies.”
“Sometimes it seems a bleak affair.” Agnes Napier spoke softly. She was a tall, deep-bosomed woman; she looked as though she ought to have been the mother of many sons. She had a wide, calm face and radiant, shining eyes. “Alec and I have been married ten years. I think we have given up hope. Just lately, I’ve thought how silly we are not to adopt one.”
“Adopt?” said Nancy Daimler. “It is so terribly rash, isn’t it? You never know really what you are going to get. Come upstairs and look at mine, dear. I didn’t know you were so fond of babies. You see, nowadays, quite often people don’t have babies because they don’t want to. Personally, I think it is awfully clever of them, even though it mayn’t be quite right from the Church’s point of view.”
She led the way upstairs, still chattering, and Agnes Napier followed. It did not do to tell mothers that it hurt one almost intolerably to be shown the babies. It aggravated that odd, intense ache in one’s heart to see what others had and she and Alec still lacked.
The Daimler nursery seemed full to overflowing. The two elder boys were home for the holidays; they and the two little girls were indulging in wordy warfare over the dismembered body of a doll. The new baby lay on a rug in front of the fire, kicking his small toes in the approved Daimler manner. Ann sat apart—a morose, in her way, oddly pathetic figure. She had very straight dark hair, cut in a fringe across her forehead, great dark eyes that seemed to watch the world with undefinable reproach, and a thin, singularly unchild-like mouth, the lips closing together with the grim precision of a trap. Not a pleasing, laughter-giving, lovable child, Ann Fabian at four years old, and yet something about the little stiffly erect figure, hugging its battered doll, its eyes sullen with reproach, twisted Agnes Napier’s heart with a sudden wrench of pity. Poor little lonely soul, the other children, in their ruddy, golden-haired mirth and noisiness, so obviously ignoring it.
“Is that Ann?” asked Mrs. Napier, and felt the tears most ridiculously in her throat as she spoke.
“It is,” agreed Mrs. Daimler—she had picked up the baby and was going through the inevitable formula of tossing it and kissing it. “Come here, Ann, and say ‘How do you do?’ to the pretty lady.”
“Ann’s cross,” volunteered one of the boys. “We smashed her doll’s nose by mistake. She bit Reggie.”
“Oh, that is such a nasty trick,” said Mrs. Daimler.
“We can’t punish her out of it.”
Seeing conversation focused on herself, the small, stiff figure of Ann rose on its not too certain feet and, still casting glances of defiance in the direction of the other children, retreated towards the darkest corner of the room and squeezed herself in between cupboard and wall.
“She always does that,” Mrs. Daimler explained. “We call it ‘Ann’s Corner.’ If she hurts herself, she never comes to Nurse or me for comfort. She just creeps into there like a little wild animal.”
“Like a little wild animal”! The phrase followed Agnes Napier home, haunted her evening, intruded into her dreams. For that was what Ann was like. A small wild animal, afraid, vicious, defenceless.
“No one has ever loved her,” thought Agnes. “Oh, poor little soul! It is almost as though she realised it.”
She told her husband about Ann, she brooded over the thought of the child, she built up in her heart a paradise of love into which to admit it. Her dream child had never been like Ann to look at—but sudden pity ousted all memory of the dream. She would take Ann, if that funny, un-understandable mother would let her have the child—and she would love Ann—Alec should love Ann, love should be all round Ann like a radiant, shining wall.
The thing, of course, took some time to arrange. Mrs. Daimler was at first bewildered by the suggestion, and then a little shocked.
“Of course, Felicity would never allow Ann to be adopted,” she said. “They are very well off.”
Alec argued from the same point of view. “If you want an infant to love, old thing, why not adopt one that hasn’t any parents and no home?”
But Agnes wanted Ann, suddenly and intensely she wanted Ann.
“We need not adopt her,” she answered. “That’s just it, Alec. That’s what makes it so sensible. I can just have her for these years while she is a child, and love her and teach her to love. Oh, please, Alec, let me try!”
Who was he to refuse her? He knew too well the ache in her heart. “Have it your own way, Angel Heart,” he gave in. “She is a lucky little blighter, if you love her.”
So, in the end, Felicity was written to. Would she agree?
Mrs. Napier is a perfectly charming woman, wrote Mary. She has no children and has been married ten years, so now she probably won’t have. She has taken such a fancy to Ann. It would be better for her than school. I am bound to say that Ann would have a rotten time at school. She is so unpopular even with my own kids, and, Heaven knows, they are good-tempered enough, bless them!
In this matter, Felicity did not consult her husband. There had been some talk as to whether they should move on to another station, or go home first to England.
“We don’t need to go home now,” she said. “I have been able to make such satisfactory arrangements for Ann, Dick.”
“Have you?” he asked. “What are you doing with her?”
“She is going to live with a perfectly charming lady, whom Nancy knows. Quite well off, a nice home, no other children. It’s ideal, because Ann doesn’t get on with other children.”
“Sounds all right,” admitted Mr. Fabian. “What are you doing—giving her away with a pound of tea?”
“Oh, Dick, of course not!” Felicity felt quite righteously hurt at such a suggestion. “Only it is an almost providential arrangement, coming along at this time when we were just worrying over what to do for the best.”
“Were we worrying?” he asked, and laughed, and swung her round and kissed her.
Which shows how much Ann’s future worried her father—to say nothing of her mother.
The Napiers’ house stood high on a hillock of pine-covered ground. At least, the pines had been there before the house had come into existence. Now only a few remained, dotted about the garden, like slim, watching sentinels. From the drawing-room windows—wide French windows that opened down to the ground—the garden sloped almost steeply away, but at the foot of the bank on which the house stood the flowers grew in cheerful confusion.
Sometimes, on summer evenings, it was as though their perfume crept up the slope of the hill and flooded all the house. It was a big garden, with twisting walks and well laid out flower beds and stretches of green lawn. Till Ann came, Agnes had loved her garden next best to Alec.
Alec Napier worked in the City and went up and came down every day by motor-car. He was a big, noisy, cheerful man. One always knew when he was in the house; if he was not talking, he was whistling or singing. It had used to seem to Agnes that the house grew wistfully silent on Alec’s departure in the morning. The servants walked about softly, whispering. It only woke to noise and life again on his return.
They had, when they had first come to the house, set aside a room for the nursery. They had been so certain.
An empty, waiting room. It was the silence from there that crept about the house when Alec was absent. Now, for the coming of Ann, Agnes threw it open, she prepared it, she decked it with flowers, she made it beautiful and comfortable and homelike. There were no dark corners in it, into which Ann should creep and hide—there would never be any necessity for her to hide.
“To begin with, we won’t even have a nurse for her, Alec,” she confided to her husband. “I want her to learn to love me—and you won’t mind her sleeping in our bedroom, will you?”
“I don’t mind anything that amuses you, Angel Heart,” Alec answered.
He made, indeed, very noble-hearted efforts to make friends with four-year-old Ann, nor did he ever admit to Agnes that he found the child unattractive, unapproachable.
Unapproachable Ann certainly was. Mrs. Napier might throw wide the doors of her heart, it was obvious that Ann hesitated on the threshold. She was unlike a child, the way she looked for and suspected guile. The day when she first brought a scratched finger to Agnes and held it up to be kissed was a day of immense victory. Agnes felt it to be that.
Summer blossomed over the garden; the scent of flowers filled the house. In the nursery, Ann laughed, little unexpected shrill squeaks of laughter. She had a nurse now— a pleasant, pretty country girl who acted entirely under Agnes’s supervision.
Into this peaceful harmony Felicity and her husband descended one afternoon. They were home on six months’ leave and it was, more or less, a duty call.
“Our little daughter,” said Felicity. She was lovelier than ever, dressed in some soft blue, neat cut garment, her broad-brimmed hat trimmed with a feather of the same shade. “How can we thank you for being so good to her?”
No thanks were due, Agnes explained gently. “I love Ann as if she were my own.”
Fabian was immensely impressed with her. “A splendid woman,” he said. It rather relieved his mind, because at odd moments he did have twinges of conscience about Ann. Now he was satisfied, reassured. The child was infinitely better off here than she could be dragging round with them.
Felicity thought Agnes rather overpoweringly big—she did not herself like big women—and she was obviously quite mad. “Still, if she likes babies,” thought Felicity. And, in her heart of hearts, she too was not ungrateful. It was nice to be able to get rid of the thought of Ann so placidly and satisfactorily.
They went up to the nursery to see her, and Felicity knelt down, prettily enough, and put her arms round Ann and said, “Well, darling!”
Felicity made a perfectly enchanting picture. Nurse said afterwards she had never seen anyone so lovely. But Ann looked sullen and stiff, her eyes frowning, her lips tight shut. It was one of her unpleasant qualifications—she seemed to hate all strangers at sight. Agnes felt hurt that she should have shown herself so at her worst, for Ann, happy, laughing, loved and loving, was a very different small person to look at.
The Fabians did not stay long, and they made no suggestion of taking Ann away for a visit. They were fearfully busy, rushing from visit to visit, and shopping in between. Six months slip past very quickly under those circumstances.
Summer slid away from the house of the watching pines. Autumn made all the hill glorious with colour.
“Something has come over Missis,” confided Cook to the upper housemaid. “Have you noticed her face these last two weeks?”
“She ain’t going to be ill, is she?” asked the housemaid. “It has always seemed to me, she’s too good to live.”
“You mark my words,” said Cook darkly. “There’s a big surprise coming to The Pines, or my name ain’t Lucy Baines.”
A big surprise. Going softly about the house and her work, playing with Ann, watching the gardeners sweeping up the leaves from the paths, lying down at night, rising in the morning—this big surprise beat at Agnes’s heart. She would not believe it at first and thrust the whisper away; hope had so often cheated and lied to her. She could not tell anyone—not even Alec. Winter lay white all about the house before she told him.
“It is almost—oh, I know it is silly of me, Alec, but don’t laugh—it is as though Ann—Ann had brought me this happiness.”
“And yet it will put Ann’s nose out of joint,” he answered. Man-like, he could find nothing but jocular remarks to voice an emotion that shook him to his soul.
“Oh, no,” she affirmed. “Nothing will ever do that. The new baby does not oust the old, Alec. I’ve room for both in my heart.”
Ann loved best of all, though possibly she did not pause at this stage of her existence to catalogue her loves, summertime at The Pines. In summer, the garden blazed with flowers, the grass was quite often dry enough to roll on. And rolling down the steep bank in front of the house was one of Ann’s favourite amusements. She was so disporting herself one afternoon early in July. Nurse sat ensconced in the little summer-house that fronted the flowers down there, where the bank ended. She was pretending to sew; had Ann been a little older she would have noticed the pretence. For Nurse, this glorious summer afternoon, was agitated and nervous, constantly glancing up at the higher windows of the house which she could see from where she sat.
Ann did not notice. Always, all through her life, she was a singularly self-concentrated person. Nothing had any importance unless it was in some way connected with herself. Her tenth roll landed her almost at Nurse’s feet. She sat up, a small, sturdy figure, her dark hair tousled, her eyes shining. “I did dat purfutly,” she announced.
Nurse stood up with a sudden brusque movement. “Come away into the house, Miss Ann,” she said. “I can’t sit here no longer, not knowing.”
Ann remonstrated about being taken into the house. The gentle discipline of Agnes’s establishment had reawakened in her an amazing capacity for making a shrill noise, if annoyed or interfered with. A rather harassed-looking Mr. Napier greeted them in the hall. “For God’s sake, make her shut up, Nurse,” he said; then, catching the eager interrogation in Nurse’s eyes, he nodded. “It is all right,” he added. “A fine girl. But I don’t want Mrs. Napier to hear Ann crying.”
Ann was bustled forthwith into her own nursery; the door was firmly shut.
“Now be quiet, you naughty little girl,” said Nurse. “Mrs. Napier doesn’t want to be bothered with you just now. She’s got a little baby of her own.”
Who knows how deeply the words thrust themselves into that queer, unbabyish mind. Ann had many wordy arguments with Nurse about it in the days that followed. On the fifth day, allowed into Agnes’s room, she stood stiff and defiant, staring at the bundle, wrapped in a shawl, lying in Mummie’s arms.
“What’s dat?” asked Ann.
Agnes leant a little towards her. Indeed, her love overflowed out and beyond the baby lying against her heart to that other little forlorn figure staring with its odd reproachful eyes. She loosened a bit of the shawl and disclosed a small pink face, a halo of soft gold fluff, a little pursed-up mouth.
“It is our baby, Ann,” she whispered. “Yours and mine. Baby Rosamund—I’m going to call her that.”
The thin lips in Ann’s small face narrowed. “Aren’t I your baby any more?” she said. “Where’s my Mummy?”
Agnes handed baby over to the watching nurse, and signed for Ann to be lifted on to her bed.
“Let her stay here a little with me,” she said. “And take baby away. It is only natural. I had not realised she would be jealous.”
Easy enough for the time being to soothe the childish passion of jealousy; far more difficult to eradicate it altogether. Ann developed a new war-cry in the years that followed.
“Ann’s mother isn’t here,” she would say. “Ann’s mother is away in Africa. Rosamund is your little girl—I belong to my Mummy.”
It was Ann creeping into her dark corner as she had used to do when Agnes had first known her and so pitied her, but Agnes immersed in her own happiness hardly realised the full meaning of the gesture. She knew, every one in the house knew, that Ann was jealous of the new baby, but it was a babyish jealousy and, to help her grow out of it, Agnes perhaps laid stress on Ann’s own mother, her beauty, her radiance, how she could not live at home with Ann, because Ann’s Daddy had to live abroad.
Baby Rosamund was fortunately good-natured, easy-going from the time she learnt to toddle about; she let Ann rule her. They were, outwardly at least, good friends, spending the days in long interminable games which Ann invented, engineered and commanded.
“I’ll tell you what it is,” said Mr. Napier one day—this was when Ann was nine, and Baby Rosamund four. “That young Ann Fabian suffers from an inferiority complex. I think that is what they’d call it.”
“Anyway, what does it mean?” asked Agnes. “She is awfully clever, Alec. Miss Spencer was saying yesterday she can hardly keep pace with her learning.”
“Clever—humph—yes,” admitted Mr. Napier. “But I doubt if I’ve ever met a grown-up even quite as aggressive about everything she does as that kid.”
Mrs. Napier slid a hand into his and gave it a little remonstrating squeeze. “Alec, old thing,” she said, “don’t you always judge Ann by comparing her with Rosamund?”
He looked down at her and caught his breath on a laugh.
“Rosamund’s a sweet-natured baby,” he said. “And yours. Perhaps you are right—the contrast is hardly fair, only that is how Ann always strikes me—as though she continually pushed herself forward—determined not to be ignored.”
“Poor small Ann,” said Mrs. Napier. “No one can give her what she has always missed—a mother’s love.”
“Well, you did your best,” argued Napier.
“And even I failed,” admitted Mrs. Napier—afflicted for a moment by a twinge of conscience. “Once Rosamund came——”
“She’s old enough to go to school,” said Napier, watching the anxiety in his wife’s eyes. “I believe I’ll write to Fabian and suggest it.”
“Oh, not just yet,” said Agnes, and put out her arms and seemed to take Ann within their shelter again. “Let her stay a little longer, Alec. Rosamund loves her and so do I. Indeed I do.”
The years dealt kindly with Felicity Fabian. They brought a certain radiant perfection to her beauty which her youth had missed. She lived them so calmly immersed in self that they left but few traces in their passing.
It is sorrow—joy—hate—passion that make lines about our eyes and lips. And of all these things she had but a very faint conception.
She moved about with her husband from station to station. She paid brief visits to England to restock her clothes and refresh her mind. She had in this way paid three visits to the Napiers since the arrival of Rosamund. She spoke quite often of “My little daughter, whom I have had to leave at home.” What effect these visits had on Ann it was difficult to say; she only referred to her mother after absence had sufficiently dimmed the memory of her to a myth.
During Ann’s tenth year, Mrs. Fabian stayed in London for a little after her husband had been recalled to his duties by an unexpected wire. Mrs. Fabian had never done the journey out to Africa by herself before. It was in some ways an adventure for her. She was now thirty years old, and she had never even travelled from London to Tilbury by herself. So hemmed in and guarded had she been since her marriage that people had come to think of her more as a lovely statue than anything else. She paid a flying visit to the Napiers to say good-bye before sailing, and it was this picture of her that stayed longest of all in Ann’s mind.
Felicity’s mental picture of her daughter was most unflattering. She was never able to vision Ann as anything but ugly. Other people in days to come saw in Ann’s clear-cut, determined face, her glowing passionate eyes, the dark sheen of her hair a beauty which surpassed in character, if in nothing else, the beauty of her mother. But Felicity never saw it. To her, Ann was ugly when she was not plain—plain when she was not ugly.
They had, at least, a kissing acquaintance at this time in their lives. Felicity said that Ann’s little tight hard mouth was like cold iron against her face. The child, obviously, was unaffectionate.
Oddly enough, just here in her life, Felicity was becoming aware of something lacking in her surroundings. She was conscious of a faint passing desire to do something, be something, feel something. She had even for one very brief moment felt sentimental about Ann. Ann’s own complete disregard had nipped that in the bud. Surrounded by the various beautiful gowns and hats which her visit to London had provided, stocked with a certain amount of light literature, Felicity started the three weeks’ sea voyage to Africa with this sense of disquiet very insistent in her mind.
What did she want that life had not yet given? Dick loved her—adored her—worshipped her beauty, and alas, bored her. She was a little aware of a sense of boredom about everything she did. Sometimes she would stop in the midst of brushing her hair and lean forward and stare at her own eyes in the glass.
“What do you want?” The heart behind her eyes would ask, and she really could not find any answer to the question.
During the hot, lazy hours while the ship idled its course down the coast of Africa from Aden to Mombasa, she knew herself unaccountably restless. She joined in the life of the ship naturally, but it was as though she stood—scarce knowing it herself—on the brink of some great excitement. It was quite ridiculous how she visioned it as that.
Mombasa for the first time in all her many brief sojourns there stirred her oddly. Its slow, lazy sea lapping against black rocks, the magic of its palm trees standing against a cloudless starlit sky, the quaint perfume that came up from the queer, dusty, native town! She was alive suddenly—as she had never been before—to the mystery, the lure of Africa.
“Live, live, live,” something seemed to be whispering to her. “You’ve never lived. Be quick now, or you’ll be too late. Live, live, live.”
She was haunted by it. It drove her to do a thing such as she had never done before, such as she would certainly not have been allowed to do had Mr. Fabian been there on guard. She slipped away from her fellow passengers—they had all put up at the same hotel for the night before catching next day’s train into the interior—and wrapping just a scarf about her head, found her way down to the beach.
It was so wonderful down there by the edge of the sea. The wonder of it crept into Felicity Fabian’s small soul and woke an intoxication in her mind to which she was very unaccustomed. “How desperately dull life is,” she thought, and stood for a second her hands thrown out to that soft radiance of sea and moon. “It ought not to be. It ought not to be.”
And then, turning, she saw the Man. Undoubtedly he was staring at her, undoubtedly she intrigued him. He had seen her at the hotel; he was putting in a couple of days of enforced boredom at the coast himself, and watching her slip away by herself had amazed, and then amused him.
He took his hat off when she turned. He had been wearing one of those double terai slouch hats, popular with the planting community in Kenya. In the clear, amazingly clear moonlight, she could see his hard, keen face, his eager mouth, the flicker of laughter in his eyes.
“You’ll pardon me,” he said, “but Mombasa at night—it really isn’t wise for a lady to be out alone.”
Felicity tilted back her head. It gave her an air of defiance, and defiance in the opposite sex always intrigued Mark Heron.
“You saw me at the hotel,” she challenged, “and followed me.”
The challenge slipped out of her voice, his eyes made her feel shy and oddly unsure of herself. “I suppose it was silly of me,” she admitted, “but I thought the moon would be so beautiful on this sea.”
“It is beautiful,” he answered. He came and stood beside her. “And restless,” he added. “Did you feel the restlessness?”
It was so strange that he should have put her mood into words. A little flutter of something—was it fear?—swept over Felicity. She tried to be dignified.
“Now you have pointed out the unwisdom,” she said, and turned away from him, “I think I’ll go back.”
“You’ll let me walk back with you,” said Mark Heron. His voice fascinated her; it was as though his presence gathered the night close round her shut her away from the rest of the world. “I am staying at the same hotel.”
“Of course,” agreed Felicity, a shade stiffly, and turned her back on the moon and the sea, walking quickly, head a little erect.
It seemed though that they were to be forced into friendship. The group of people gathered in the hotel lounge greeted Mark Heron with shouts of recognition.
“Where did you pick him up, Mrs. Fabian?” they asked. “Never heard of him? Why that’s Heron, the worst breaker up of happy homes this side of the Equator.”
So he was that type of man—Felicity had met a great many of them. In Africa, on her journeys to and fro on the boats. She was a little scornful of them—taking her colour from Dick, who called them poodle fakers and skirt hemmers. None the less his eyes remained in her memory to tease her. They were such queer, laughing, secretive eyes.
They travelled up in the train together the next day. Mark Heron saw to that. He was not a man tied by any laws or conventions. Felicity Fabian, as the wife of a resident Judge of some importance, had a compartment reserved for herself. Heron travelled in the first class carriage adjoining. At one of the station halts he thrust his head in at her window.
“Aren’t you bored in there?” he asked. “Shall I come in and amuse you till we get to the next halt?”
Discretion should have said “ No.”
Surreptitiously a great many eyes watched the assignation out of their respective windows, but if truth must be told, Felicity was bored. Heron made himself very amusing. He was just that and nothing more. He showed her the various herds of zebras that grazed quite calmly close to the rail track, named the buck for her benefit, drew her attention to the quaint, high-stepping ostriches. And he learnt, incidentally, quite a lot about her. How her husband, Judge Fabian, had not been able to come down to the coast to meet her, because he was trying a very important native case, how it might even detain him for a week up country after her arrival at head-quarters.
And then, “You don’t often act on impulse, do you?” asked Heron suddenly, leaning forward a little to look up at her.
“No, I don’t suppose I do,” Felicity admitted. “You mean about last night? I don’t know what came over me. Generally speaking, I think it is a mistake.”
Heron looked down for a moment at his strong, brown hands. His whole personality gave Felicity the impression of rather ruthless strength.
“And yet,” he began slowly and broke off his sentence and lifted his hard, bright eyes to study her, “I believe you are narrow, aren’t you?” he said. “Rather a prude?”
The colour flamed to Felicity’s cheeks. There had been nothing personal in his talk or manner up to this, and now—now it was as though he had flung down a sudden challenge between them.
“I don’t know why——” she began.
He laughed her answer aside. “Supposing I were to say to you,” he said, “that you and I were affinities; that I wanted you more passionately than I have ever wanted any woman before.”
“I should think you were mad,” said Felicity coldly, and this time she did not look at him. “Or else deliberately insulting.”
“And yet I am neither,” he answered softly. She was most uncomfortably conscious of the spell of his voice. “There is something about your beauty—cold, white and wonderful. I don’t believe you have ever loved anyone in your life.”
“Let us talk about something else,” said Felicity. “Since I can’t ask you to get out here while the train is moving you might have the courtesy of your caste, Mr Heron, and realise that I am not that type of woman.”
“Type of woman!” Heron spoke mockingly. “There aren’t any types of women—they are all the same.”
The train drew up at a halt, quite soon after that and he disembarked, debonair and cheerful, standing outside on the platform to raise that outrageous hat of his. It was getting on for evening by then—away behind the seemingly limitless stretch of the Athi plains, the sun was setting, a red ball of fire, low in a crimson sky. A faint, dust-laden breeze was abroad after the heat of the day. From now on, the train would run through silvered darkness for the moon was full to-night. Lions would crouch to watch its passing, queer untamed beasts of the night would leap aside in terror as it swept past.
Felicity did her best to sleep. The native boy, whom Dick had sent down to the coast to meet her, had made up a bed for her in the carriage while she had dinner at the station where the train stopped an hour for that purpose. Mattress, sheets, blankets, pillows—a miniature swaying, rocking bed. Abdul had put out her nightgown for her, her bedroom slippers peeped out from under the seat. The shutters of all the windows were tightly drawn; she was alone in safe security while the train went rushing through the night.
She could not sleep. She sat up after a time and slid up one of the shutters and let down a window and immediately the moonlight, white, mysterious, throbbing, filled the carriage. The world outside looked grotesque—frightening. Every bush and shrub and rock magnified to something portentous under this magic light. She sat crouched by the window staring out. And then at last she fell asleep and dreamt strange, perplexing, haunting dreams. She slept with the moonlight falling across her closed eyes, and the natives of Africa will tell you that that is a desperately dangerous thing to do.
They ran into a little station at the early dawn. The noise, the chatter of native voices woke her. Felicity sat up and stared out.
An odd group just outside the window caught her attention. Ten or twelve native figures shrouded in tightly-drawn round them sheets of bark cloth, their heads and faces covered, only two holes cut for their eyes. Women, girls they must be, for the sheet garment outlined hip and breast. They stood huddled together, peering this way and that, craning their necks, restless with their hands.
“How absurd they look!” thought Felicity, “dressing up like that! They can’t expect anyone to throw them money at this hour of the morning!”
And then she saw Heron coming towards her carriage, a cup of tea in either hand, and immediately she felt hot and confused, conscious of the thinness of her dressing gown and of her hair still in two girlish plaits.
“I’ve brought you some tea, Mrs. Fabian,” his eyes laughed up at her. “I’m sure you must want it.”
Impossible to be ungracious. Felicity put her head out of the window again, and took the cup of tea.
“Look at those ridiculous creatures over there,” she nodded to distract his attention from her own untidiness. “I suppose it is their idea of fancy dress.”
His quick glance swept the group and came back to her. Odd eyes! They stared at her so!
“No, that’s not fancy dress,” he answered. “You’ve lived here without taking much notice of the country or the people, haven’t you? They are girls, they have just been through the Initiation into Womanhood ceremony. That shut away arrangement is supposed to be an indication of their purity. Queer custom, eh?”
He was laughing at her. She must not let him see that she realised the laughter.
“How nice this tea is!” Felicity said. “How thoughtful of you to bring it.”
“Oh, I’m always thoughtful,” he smiled up at her, “and all last night, I thought of you.”
At Nairobi, the train stops for a couple of hours. Weary, dust-laden travellers emerge out of the flat, tin, dusty station and find their way along the flat, bare, dusty roads to the different hotels where they can get hot baths and lunch in comfort. Heron lunched with Felicity. Their fellow travellers, watching the flirtation with amused eyes, drifted away and left Heron to it, as they tactfully said. Africa is a country in which the white community are very broad-minded about the moral laws.
A big bowl of red hibiscus flamed on the lunch table between Felicity and Heron. She kept watching them as he talked. They were so dark and velvety, such brilliant spots of colour against the soft green of their leaves.
“Let me drive you from here,” Heron was suggesting. “I’ve got my car. Your boy and heavy things can go on in the train. We’ll take your suit-case and anything else you want. My place is half-way between here and Kisimu. I’ll drive you over to Kisimu to catch next week’s boat.”
“And what do you think my husband would say?” asked Felicity.
When a woman asks that kind of question she has given in. Heron almost laughed out loud.
“You told me he wouldn’t be there till next week, anyway,” he whispered. “You can say you most sensibly broke the journey in Nairobi and stayed with friends.”
She looked away from him, the lashes fluttered over her eyes. It is only fair to say on her behalf that she had never before been so stirred, so moved by some odd, wild impulse. No other man had ever come near her like this. Dick’s love, his passion had left her all unmoved; she had never made any answer to it. That side of a woman’s life was a closed book to her.
“What will other people say?” she asked, and again he laughed, this time out loud.
“They’ll never know,” he reassured her. “And if they do, what is the harm? It isn’t a sin to go and stay with a friend, is it?”
All afternoon they drove, stopping at some place with a queer, unpronounceable name and a tin shanty for an hotel, to have dinner.
“We’ve only another thirty miles to do,” Heron said. “Are you fearfully tired?”
“It has been so much better than that dusty old train so far,” Felicity answered and summoned up a laugh.
They had laughed and joked like that ever since she had made her momentous decision. Never by word, or glance, or action had he referred to it. They were passing strangers, well pleased with other’s company, that was all.
“This last bit is the loveliest bit of the country,” he told her. “You’ll only see it by moonlight, but I am not sure that doesn’t add to its attraction. You love beauty, don’t you?”
“Yes,” admitted Felicity, “I suppose I do. Last night I couldn’t sleep. I sat up and pushed open the window. The moon was so wonderful, it almost frightened me.”
“You must have let a lot of dust into your window.” He was definitely prosaic. “The moon won’t frighten you to-night.”
He told her stories of big-game hunting as the car slid along the road, in and out of the shadows cast by giant trees, purring up the steep sudden hills, rushing through the long, level, moonlit spaces.
He was a man who had seen and known and done everything that a white man can do in Africa. Felicity sat beside him listening to him in a dream; it was almost as though his voice mesmerised her. She kept her eyes fixed on his brown, steady hands, controlling the wheel. She felt as though those hands of his had suddenly taken everything she had learnt to call life and torn it into small, fluttering scraps of uselessness.
She could not vision anything outside and beyond those strong brown hands, she certainly noticed none of the beauties of the moonlit country through which they flashed.
And then it seemed they had swept off the high road on to a grass track; the motor was climbing up a steeper hill than usual; they were passing through a plantation of coffee trees in bloom. The scent of them, overpoweringly sweet, was all about her face.
There is no scent in all the world like the perfume of coffee trees in full bloom, under an African moon.
“Have we arrived?” asked Felicity. “Is this your place?”
The car drew up in front of a long, rambling array of what appeared to be native huts—five or six of them in a row, joined by covered-in passage ways. A native boy in long white kansu. stood by the entrance to the centre one, holding aloft a hurricane lamp.
Heron jumped out of the car and spoke to him quickly before turning to help Felicity out. Immediate bustle and confusion reigned, native boys appeared from every direction, the boxes, the rugs were seized and carried indoors.
“Come,” said Heron; his hand round Felicity’s was warm and firm. “You’re dead tired. Hamiz shall get you a good hot bath and we’ll have supper out here in the moonlight, or you shall go straight to bed and to sleep, whichever you like.”
How cool and quiet and safe it seemed! “I’ll have a bath. That sounds delicious!” said Felicity. “And go straight to bed.”
“Right you are!” said Heron. He turned and gave some orders to the boys. “Come, then, let me show you your room.”
Felicity stood for a long time after she had had her bath and eaten the supper which a grave-faced Hamiz placed by her bedside—thinking. What was she thinking of? Only Fate, or whatever it is that arranges these things for us, knows. She was a woman who had never acted on impulse. All her life she had calculated and schemed and carried out things that would be for her own advantage. She had been immensely selfish—cold and calm. She had never given anything to anyone—it had always seemed as though she had nothing to give. What was she, doing here? Why had she come? Sudden fear shook her heart. Through the open windows the heavy scent of the coffee flowers invaded the room; the moon within the close confines was less vivid, more strangely alluring. Drawn by some throbbing sense of attraction, Felicity moved to one of the windows and, drawing back the curtains, looked out.
The man, Mark Heron, was standing on the garden path below the level of the veranda, looking up at her.
“Anything the matter, Mrs. Fabian?” he asked, his voice level, unsurprised.
She had a quick sense of the stopping of her heart. “No,” she said harshly. “No—only I couldn’t sleep. I thought——”
He moved a step nearer, his face very clear and distinct, stared up at her. “Come out into the garden for a little,” he suggested. “It is glorious out here—and if the moon has got into your blood, you’ll never sleep shut up in a house.”
“The garden!” she whispered back. “Surely it would be a mad thing to do.”
“It is an impulse,” he answered. “Are you still afraid?”
Perhaps, in all this, there is no excuse for Felicity. There was certainly very little for Mark Heron. But then he did not look for excuses. He had his own code of morals; they fitted into no recognised standards. He did not even pretend to love Felicity. That hurt her amazingly.
“It depends what you call love,” said Mark Heron. He sat beside her, their two deck chairs drawn close to the edge of the veranda. This was on the fourth evening of her stay there. To-morrow, he was going to drive her over to Kisimu. She was to catch the boat there and go back to Dick. How was she ever to go back, face Dick’s calm ownership, the monotony of the days that would settle about her heart?
Felicity’s soul asked the question, roused to heights of torturing doubt such as she had never experienced before, and Heron laughed back the answer to her face. “My dear, this has only been an impulsive interlude. You take things too seriously.”
“If only you loved me,” whispered Felicity. In these few days, love had taken on for her a new, almost fierce, meaning. “I should feel—oh, somehow, I shouldn’t feel so hopelessly mean and despicable. I never have loved Dick—I know that now—he must always have known it—I have never loved anyone but myself. And now——”
“People get involved when they talk about love,” said Heron; he lay back in his chair, puffing out clear, thin rings of smoke. “They try and tie it down to matrimony, for instance, shackle it with conventionality, load it with holiness. I could not love anyone till Death parted us, my dear, but I love you tremendously for the moments that you lie in my arms.”
“You are very scornful of virtue, aren’t you?” said Felicity. “I was good before I met you.”
“You weren’t so much good as dull,” said Heron, laughing a little. “What is your conception of virtue, Felicity of the wonderful scented dark hair?”
“I don’t know quite,” admitted Felicity. “But I know that I don’t want to go back to Dick and live a lie.”
“Supposing you went back to Dick, and told him the truth,” mocked Heron. “What happens then?”
“I suppose he would divorce me,” said Felicity.
“You wouldn’t like living here as my wife,” said Heron calmly. “It would bore you to distraction in a month. Besides, he mightn’t divorce you. It would hurt his pride to let you go. You are very beautiful, Felicity; you are calculated to rouse the possessive instinct in any man.”
“Not in you,” said Felicity; sudden tears darkened her eyes. “You’d take me and throw me away, wouldn’t you? It is what you have done really, though you clothe it in fine romantic words.”
“I’ve loved you,” he answered, “as I understand love, Felicity. You’ll stay in my mind, in my dreams, as a very fragrant memory. You couldn’t do that if I married you.”
She would have to be content with that. Through all the days that followed she had nothing but the memory of his mocking wisdom to help her. Let her soothe her pride with that if she could, ease her conscience if she had one. He, at least, had nothing else to give her. He had loved too often and too carelessly for it to mean much to him. A fragrant memory! Was she that to him? For Felicity, at least, the memory was tinged with an almost frantic bitterness of regret. For oddly, inconsistently enough, she loved him as she was never to love anyone else in this world. His brown hands, his blue, laughing eyes, the throw back of his head as he smiled at her, were to go with her for the rest of her days, though, in reality, they never met again.
Felicity went back the next day. The lake boat was comparatively empty; all the passengers had crossed the preceding week, and there had been no mail boat in at Mombasa since to swell the passenger list. Heron saw Felicity off. He stood on the quay, smiling and waving up at her, as the ship moved slowly off.
“Didn’t know you knew Heron, Mrs. Fabian,” the cheery ship’s captain, standing by her side, remarked. “He’s some knut, even for these parts, isn’t he?”
“I don’t really know him,” answered Felicity. “Only he’s been awfully kind about motoring me up from Nairobi, and saving me that wretched journey.”
“Oh, he’d be kind enough,” chuckled Captain Martin. “He’s a good-looking devil, isn’t he?”
He turned away from the subject and found Felicity’s deck chair for her and settled her in it. “Glad to be back, Mrs. Fabian?” he asked. “Had a good time at home?”
He sat chatting to her for a little. He knew the Fabians very well, had often admired her from a distance. But he also knew Felicity’s reputation. Sometimes she was called by irreverent flirtation seekers “The Perfect Wife” or “The Beautiful Statue.” He very much wondered whether she had succeeded in freezing the irrepressible Heron.
Dick was waiting at Entebbe to welcome Felicity. He had got their new grey Chrysler car in which to drive her up to their palatial home on the side of the hill. He was delighted to have her back again. Almost immediately the old life of dinner parties, dances, tennis parties, tea parties, settled about her again. That brief amazing episode of her journey up seemed as remote and unrecapturable as a dream. The truth! Of course she could not, did not want to tell the truth to Dick. She needed his presence, his adoration to buttress up her pride in those days, as she had never needed it before.
And then came the knowledge of the second child that was coming into her life. The thought at first terrified her. She saw in it the cruelty of a remorseless Fate which forgets nothing, passes nothing by. But by slow degrees the idea came to be a balm to her mind, a sedative to her tortured nerves. Dick would never doubt but that the child was his—only she would know, and in some obscure way the knowledge brought comfort to her aching heart. The child would be Heron’s. Would it have his hard, laughing blue eyes, the throw-back of his head, the indifference of his mind? Love grew in her heart, visioning the child as his. Reprehensible, doubtless, unbearable, had Dick guessed the trend of her thoughts. He did not guess, she did not even tell him of what was to be. He stood so strangely outside. And yet she was grateful to him. For his complaisance, for his never-failing trust, for his admiration and regard.
They went on tour together during the fourth month. Dick had not been too well of late. He had been having a great deal of fever, and the doctors opined that a thorough change from station life would be good for him. Felicity did not often accompany him on these trips; she had never been very keen on roughing it, and the discomfort of camp life hardly appealed to her. But on this occasion she had wanted to come and he had been glad enough to acquiesce. Perhaps, as is so often the way with men standing on the border line of a severe illness, he felt dimly what lay in front of him, and clung the more to her presence.
They travelled by motor-car and stopped at the various stations for a night or two—their stay depending on the number of cases waiting for Judge Fabian to investigate. Sometimes, blending pleasure with business, they avoided a station altogether and put up for the night for preference in one of the Government camps by the roadside. Their own car was followed by two other cars, bearing camp equipment and a domestic staff to render this camping out feasible whenever Judge Fabian felt like it.
It was at one of these camps that Dick was taken suddenly with his desperate last illness. They had arrived there the night before. It was a queer, bleak place standing on a flat, level stretch of ground between fields of low-growing cotton. The camp enclosure was surrounded by a roughly contrived fence, the ground within this being stamped and brushed dry of any speck of green. In the centre stood the square open mud and wattle shelter with its thick thatched roof to protect the white man from the sun, and behind it there was room for the tents and a makeshift garage for the car. Dick seemed ill before dinner. He sat huddled in his chair before the big bonfire which the boys had lighted before the tents. He was obviously in for another bad bout of fever and, finally, Felicity persuaded him to go to bed and helped him into it and had hot-water bottles filled to put at his feet. He held her back as she was turning to leave. They slept in separate tents, standing face to face, so that the entrance was practically the same for both.
“I can’t think why, Felicity,” he whispered, “but I’m pestered to-night with a worrying thought of Ann.”
She came back at once and knelt by his bedside and slipped a hand over his.
“I’ve been a beast to Ann, Dick,” she confessed. “I am only just realising that.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” he answered; he put up his hand and touched her hair. “You were very young, Felicity, when Ann was born—not much more than a child yourself. Let down your hair, Felicity; let me see you again as the child you were.”
Felicity took the pins out and shook down her hair. “Felicity of the wonderful scented dark hair”! Someone else had called her that. But Dick did not know—at least she had not hurt Dick by letting him know.
She put her face down close to his, and raised his hand to her cheek for a minute.
“Dick,” she said softly, “I am going to have another child. I have been waiting to tell you. I don’t know why. It will be quite soon now. I was going to ask you to let me go home and have Ann back with me for a bit, before—before it comes.”
He lay looking at her with an odd twisted smile. “Do you hate the idea as much as you did, Ann?” he asked presently.
She could not meet his eyes. Her hair made a shadow over her face.
“I am older, Dick,” she answered. “Perhaps wiser.”
A great shiver shook him. “Yes, you must go home,” he said. “Felicity”—it seemed he was going to say more, but the words broke off. “Don’t quite shut Ann outside——” was all she caught.
Three days after he lay dead. They had not liked to move him into hospital. With “blackwater” the only chance is absolute, complete quiet. Two doctors and two nurses hurried out from the nearest hospital, one hundred miles away; the queer, rough-looking shelter was transformed into something as nearly like a hospital ward as they could get it to be. There was nothing for Felicity to do, save wait and think.
How thought tortured her through those three unbelievably hot days! On the afternoon of the third, a thunderstorm burst on them from the direction of the hills, the thunder rolled, the lightning ran like streaks of flame across a leaden sky, and at last the rain came—swish, swish, swish, pouring from every down-hanging piece of thatch in a veritable waterspout.
“Your husband is conscious, Mrs. Fabian,” said the older doctor to Felicity. “It’s the last final flicker. If you go to him, will you keep very self-controlled?”
“Yes,” she answered, living up more than she realised to her reputation of a living statue. “I won’t make a scene.”
She stood quite quietly by Dick; the other watchers stepped discreetly away. When they had gone, she knelt down and put her face close to that other drawn white face on the pillow.
“Good-bye, Dick,” she said. “If you can—forgive.”
A sudden smile stirred his lips, he turned a little towards her. “Felicity,” he whispered, and shuddered and sighed and lay still.
They took her away then. It was all rather hazy to Felicity. She was driving with one of the nurses down the dusty, bumpy road, away from that queer mud and wattle building and Dick’s silent, unreproachful face.
“Do you think the dead come back and look at us and understand?”
It was her voice asking the question. The nurse answered with some platitude, trying to soothe her, patting her hands with little futile gestures. But Felicity did not want to be soothed. She wanted an answer to that question, and no one, alas, could give it her!
Do the dead come back and, understanding, forgive far more than do the living?
Joy came slowly and sweetly into Agnes Napier’s life, tragedy swept down on her unexpected, unannounced. They were spending the summer down by the sea that year. Agnes and Ann and Ann’s governess and Rosamund. It was to be Ann’s last summer with the Napiers, for, some time before, Felicity had written home announcing Mr. Fabian’s death and her own permanent return to England.
“Where I can make a home for Ann,” she wrote, “and the new baby that is coming to me.”
Only the doctors would not let her travel until after the new baby had arrived. Her husband’s illness, his death, had been a severe mental shock. They had been afraid for her own health and that of the baby. Kindly friends up in the Highlands of East Africa had offered her a home for the time being, and she would wait there till after the event.
Agnes told Ann of the letter, and Ann stood beside her, stiffly antagonistic, while she spoke. Ann was eleven years old now, tall, thin, aggressive. Always this aggressiveness was to be the outstanding feature of her character. She wore her hair short, cut in a straight fringe across her forehead. She had very large, very dark eyes. When she was angry they seemed to glow as though all the time a fire burnt behind them. She had a close-shut mouth, the lips thin and eager, but the rest of her features were finely modelled, and a great many people thought she showed the beginnings of great beauty.
“Shall I leave you then,” asked Ann, “and go and live with my own mummy?”
“You’ll like that, won’t you, darling?” said Agnes persuasively. She slipped her arm round the stiff, childish figure because she knew Ann well enough to realise that there was something in the proposition which the child resented. “It will mean really that you have two homes, because this will always be your home too, and Rosamund and I will be longing to have you whenever your mother can spare you to us.”
“I see,” said Ann, and said nothing more on the subject. Turning her back on it as it were.
Napier brought his family down to the seaside and settled them into the little house he had taken for them. It stood on the outskirts of a small Cornish village. There was only the road and a bit of green down between them and the sea, and a little narrow winding path led them down on to a stretch of lovely yellow sands, with great rocks scattered about and little hidden pools full of crabs and pink seaweed, and other such sea treasures.
It was an ideal place for the children, and they had it very much to themselves. As yet the tourist world had not learnt to know Cliff Hedon as a summer resort.
Every day, after breakfast, Mademoiselle Hothe, Ann’s governess, would take her two small charges down to the beach, if the weather permitted, and let them loose with bucket and spade, while she found a warm nook for herself and painted or read or sewed. Nearly every morning, sooner or later, Agnes would join her, only Agnes rarely sat down. She always wanted to join the children at their play, she was radiantly happy, immersed in their interests, catching crabs in their little tin pails, looking for the best bits of seaweed, the prettiest shells. Sometimes she would sit in a nest they had scooped out in the sand with Rosamund on her knee and Ann snuggled up against her, and she would tell them stories of the sea, of mermaids and golden fish and ships with silver sails. Alec came down for weekends, and they would vary the day’s programme and, giving Mademoiselle a day off, would drive into the country—just the four of them—and picnic out in some wood or up on the heather and gorse downs.
It was a glorious summer and they were all, Agnes felt, ideally happy, and it was into this Paradise of sunny hours that tragedy suddenly stalked on silent, pitiless feet.
It was one day when Agnes had driven into the neighbouring town to do some shopping. Periodically, she did this. It meant an all-day excursion, but the children were perfectly all right with Mademoiselle, and they had all the beach to play on. They were getting near the end of their stay; next week-end, when Alec came down, he would take them all back to The Pines together, and then Ann had got to be handed back to her own mother. Mrs. Fabian was already in England looking for a house, and Rosamund would have to be seen through and helped over the unhappiness of losing her playmate. Rosamund was oddly fond of Ann. Agnes used the word “odd” in her mind whenever she thought of Rosamund’s affection, because she had long ago had to admit to a knowledge that Ann was not fond of Rosamund, never would be. It was, as Alec had always said, the elder child had never recovered from its resentment against the younger one’s arrival. Sometimes it made things a little difficult. Agnes was so fond of Ann, but Ann was not like Rosamund. Whenever Agnes thought of Rosamund, a soft warm glow crept all over her; her heart ached with the love it carried for this babe of hers. So that to-day as she drove into Tunbury, Agnes was thinking to herself that life would perhaps be a little easier with Ann, aggressive, complex Ann, settled in with her own mother and baby sister.
“She will feel differently towards that baby,” thought Agnes. “After all, it is her own sister.”
Mademoiselle had taken the children down to the beach as usual. All morning she had sat immersed in a novel—a not quite proper French novel which was all the more engrossing to Mademoiselle because her own life had been so singularly free of all impropriety. At twelve o’clock she closed the book with a sigh and stood up, looking round for the children. It was time for them to go back to the house for lunch. They were not in sight, the sunlight flickered on clear, yellow sands, danced on a sea that lapped very lazily against the edge of the earth. It was so beautiful, with something sensuous and soft behind its beauty, that Mademoiselle stood for a moment or two, her eyes hazy, watching those slow, murmuring waves.
Then she raised her voice and called for Ann and Rosamund. There came no answer and she repeated her summons, moving as she called towards a cluster of rocks that sheltered a pool of which the children were fond. She laid a little stress on Ann’s name. Ann quite often annoyed Mademoiselle; she was apt to be resentful of authority.
At the third call the figure of Ann detached itself from behind the rocks and came slowly towards Mademoiselle. There was something about the child’s gait, her silence, what she could not quite have said, that frightened Mademoiselle. She broke into a run and drew level with Ann, panting, a little dishevelled.
“Rosamund?” she said. “Where is Rosamund?” And then before Ann answered, just by looking down at her face, Mademoiselle knew, she said, that something terrible had happened.
She caught hold of Ann; she shook her furiously. “Quick, tell me,” she said. “Oh, mon Dieu, Rosamund, has she hurt herself?”
“I don’t know,” answered Ann. “We were playing catching crabs—she slipped and fell in. I thought she was only pretending to swim. Now she is lying quiet. She won’t get out, or answer when I speak to her.”
“Mon Dieu!” said Mademoiselle again. She pushed Ann from her and ran, stumbling and shaking with fear, towards the rocks.
Ann followed her, more swiftly, more nimbly. The two of them reached the pool together. It wasn’t very deep, every inch of it was sun-flecked; placid and lying up against one corner of the rock was the little, limp body of Rosamund, half floating, face downwards in the water.
“Is she dead?” asked Ann. She stood beside Mademoiselle, while the frenzied woman with sobs and tears raised the inanimate body of Rosamund in her arms. “Is she dead?” she repeated as she ran along behind the pathetic cortege, that a quarter of an hour or so later carried Rosamund’s body up to the house. For Mademoiselle had stood shrieking for help, and some stray shrimpers had come running to her and pronounced what she, alas, knew to be true, that her little charge was dead;
“Is she dead?” No one answered Ann, no one took any notice of her. The household staff was thrown into such agitation as to be completely useless. A doctor, summoned to the spot by a kindly neighbour, took control. He wired to Mr. Napier, arranged for Mademoiselle to be driven out in his car to meet the returning Mrs. Napier and break the news to her.
“How shall I tell her? Oh, mon Dieu, how shall I tell her?” wept Mademoiselle.
“It is a terrible tragedy,” admitted the doctor, “but she has the other little girl; that must comfort her.”
“That is not her child,” wailed Mademoiselle. “Rosamund was the only one, and all her mother’s heart lies broken there with her. And I—I feel myself so much to blame. I was in charge. I should not have let Rosamund from my side. It cannot be me to tell her—it cannot, it cannot!”
“Very well, then, I must go myself,” said Dr. Smithson. “Poor woman! Fetch me the other child; let me see if I can get out of her what happened.”
Ann fetched, stood gravely erect between his knees. She had not cried. The servants said she did not seem to have realised what had happened to Miss Rosamund.
“Is she dead?” she asked again, staring at the doctor with her great dark eyes.
With kindly hands on her wrists, sympathetic eyes on her face, Dr. Smithson realised that the child had been through so big an emotional strain that it had left her dazed.
“Yes,” he nodded gravely in answer to her question. “I am afraid she is dead. But you mustn’t be frightened of death, little maid. It is God’s way of taking people back to Him.”
“I am not frightened,” said Ann, and shivered and, for a moment, shut her eyes.
“Can you tell me how it happened?” said the doctor gently. “You see, your little friend’s Mummy will want to know how it happened.”
“Will she be angry with me?” asked Ann.
“Why now—how could she be?” said the doctor. “Only she will be very, very sad. She will want you to comfort her and love her. For a little, she will be so sad that nothing will seem to comfort her. Now tell me how it happened. You were playing?”
“Yes,” said Ann. “We were catching crabs. There was one right at the very bottom. I told Rosamund to leave it alone. The stone was all slippery there. But she wanted him and she stooped, and I said ‘Naughty Rosamund, Mademoiselle will be angry.’ And she splashed about, trying to swim, and then she lay quite quiet and I couldn’t see her face, and I heard Mademoiselle calling, and I was afraid and came away.”
“You poor little soul,” said the doctor and patted her, and told the servants to take her away into the sunshine out of the house of gloom, and not bring her back until Mrs. Napier had been told and been given a little time to pull herself together.
“It is easy to see what happened,” he explained to Mademoiselle. “The child slipped in and floundered about, just out of her depth. The water was unusually deep there this morning owing to last night’s high tide. But I don’t want to needlessly harrow the poor mother. If you will combine with me, I will say that she hit her head in falling and must have been quite unconscious of the water.”
So Agnes was told. She took it, the doctor said, with surprising fortitude. Just once, while he was speaking, keeping his voice as calm and professional as possible, he saw her stiffened lips form into the whispered words, “My baby, my little Rosamund!” And the agony of her face brought him as near to tears as he had ever been in his life. He took her back to the house and Mademoiselle, huddled among the other servants, watched her pass into the room where Rosamund lay. She shut the door like that between them and the wilderness of her grief. Alec was the only person allowed in to share it with her.
Two days of wind and rain followed. It was as though all Nature wailed and mourned for little Rosamund, who had been so full of laughter, who had so loved the sun. And on the third day they buried her. Not near the sea—Agnes felt that she could not bear that—but farther inland in a little peaceful country graveyard where the grass grew very soft and green and flowers starred all the graves with hope.
Alec Napier wrote to Felicity:
After this most terrible tragedy I am taking my wife abroad for a good spell. We’ve got to learn together, she and I, to rebuild our life without Rosamund. Will you take over Ann at once? There were a great many little preparations my wife was going to make for her, but after this I feel she must not be bothered, and I should like to despatch Ann in charge of her governess direct to you.
Agnes did not see Ann until the morning of the day they were all leaving. She had heard the doctor’s story; she had accepted it; she had asked no questions. There was no particle of blame in her mind for Ann. How could the child have helped it?
It was not that that kept her shut away; it was the knowledge that Ann had never loved Rosamund. And then, on this morning, something that Alec said, roused her to contrition.
Poor waif, little unwanted Ann! Agnes had gone to look for her that morning and, finding her, had taken her by the hand and led her out into the fields behind the cottage and sat with her on a bank of green and talked to her, telling her in very simple language of the agony of grief that lay for her in this parting with Rosamund, whispering her hope that Death only meant the giving back for a little of someone she had so dearly loved to God, Who loved and cared for them all.
“Shall I stay with you?” asked Ann, her small hands hot and eager, clutching at Agnes’s hand. “I can be your little girl again. My own Mummy doesn’t want me.”
“And no, Ann, my dear,” said Agnes. “I haven’t lost Rosamund, not really; she is still in my heart. She always will be. Other little girls grow up and learn to love other people and leave their mummies. Rosamund will always be with me, my little baby.”
And as though the words opened some uncontrollable gate of tears, she wept sitting there, loosening her hand from Ann’s, hiding her face, sobbing and whispering, “My baby, my little baby!”
The sound of Ann’s voice, shrill and high with passion, brought her back to her surroundings.
“Then it has all been pretending,” said Ann. She stood upright, her whole small body shaking with passion. “You never loved me like you loved Rosamund. Now if you want me to love you, I shan’t. I shall never love anyone but myself.”
Such queer, unchildish words. They shocked Agnes back to a knowledge of how, at such a grave crisis in her life, she had failed Ann’s small, distraught soul. She put out quick hands and drew the little shaking form into her arms and held it there, kissing the top of the dark head.
“Ann, love is too big for you to understand,” she whispered. “Don’t not love me, Ann. You’ll hurt yourself if you go through the world like that, child—more than you’ll hurt others.”
It was on her conscience then to let the child go, but Alec was adamant. Far more determined than he had ever been in any decision of their married life. He did not pretend to know what Agnes’s attitude about the disaster was, but he instinctively felt he never wanted to see Ann again. Not that he blamed her, no one in the ordinary way of justice could. But it was just an unreasoning antipathy. He had never been very fond of Ann, less than ever since Rosamund’s coming. Now Rosamund had been taken and Ann left, he felt that the continual sight of her was more than he could very well bear.
So Ann, escorted by Mademoiselle Hothe, was returned to Mrs. Fabian, and Alec and Agnes, facing the future with what courage they could, started out on their journey to America.
What to call the new baby? Felicity had brooded over that for weeks and months.
She did a great deal of thinking in those months of waiting. She had a feeling that she was remodelling the whole of her life. “The old Felicity is dead,” she said. As if we ever succeeded in killing ourselves as completely as all that.
Of Heron she heard a great deal during her enforced stay in the Highlands of East Africa. He was very well known to all the planter community. His escapades, his affairs with this or that notorious lady were a constant source of gossip. But from him personally, Felicity never heard. He must, she realised, have known about Dick’s death; he had probably heard all about herself and why she was staying on in Kenya. The subject, obviously, had no interest for him. The thought had bitterness in it. She wanted to write to him and say “Have you heard I am going to have a child? It is yours—yours. That you cannot take away from me. That share in your life must always be mine.”
But a memory of Dick held her back. She was eager to be loyal to Dick now that he was dead. It was as though she hoped in some way to placate that all-knowing ghost of his.
“See,” her thoughts whispered to Dick, “I could have gone back to him—abasing myself as the animal in me longs to abase itself. But I won’t do it. I’ll never do that kind of thing again, Dick. You may stay by me and see if you like.”
And by degrees, the slow passing of the months blurred her passionate sense of longing for the man. She could think of him now impartially, remember little details, revision the long lines of coffee trees, smell the fragrance of their blooming without being hurt to tears. More and more she concentrated on the child. If she had never loved before, at least here she was going to love passionately and without stint.
Little Dolores—she called her that finally—was a usual enough baby. Pink and white, small featured, with misty blue eyes and gold down that Felicity fondly called hair. Her name fitted her less than any other name could have done, for she was a sunny-tempered, peaceful baby, a laughter-loving child. When she was two months old, Felicity took her to England and bought a house, a new-fashioned, modern house, in one of the growing suburbs of London, and settled down.
It was here that Ann joined them and very rigidly, feeling that in so doing she repaired some of the wrong she had done Dick, Felicity set herself to love Ann. A difficult task she was to find it. Something in the events of the last month had twisted and warped Ann to sullenness. She had been a difficult baby, shrieking her protest against existence; she was an even more difficult child. She was secretive now, Felicity felt. She was always suspecting Ann of evil motives, of little disobediences that she slyly concealed, of untruthfulness and hypocrisy. Dolores’ nurse, a wise, tolerant, well-trained woman, told Felicity quite soon after Ann’s arrival that it was a mistake to keep the child in the house.
“She gets on your nerves, Mrs. Fabian,” said Miss Rowton. Baby Dolores lay on her stiff, starched lap during the conversation, and kicked and smiled up at them. “And that is neither fair to yourself, nor to her.”
“But what am I to do?” said Felicity. “I have tried—you’ve seen me trying. She is such an odd child, Nurse. Don’t you think in lots of ways, she is odd?”
“She is a very highly strung, dangerously introspective young person,” said Nurse Rowton. “She wants young companions, cheerfulness. If I were you, I should send her to school.”
“School!” remonstrated Felicity. “It looks as though I had failed. You see I did fail Ann to begin with. I was young and horribly selfish, I couldn’t be bothered with her. I want to make it up, I want to teach her to love me——”
“You can’t teach or force love,” pointed out Nurse Rowton. “The child has grown up away from you. I dare say part of her queerness is a home sickness for this Mrs. Napier, who was obviously a great deal with her. Send her to school, Mrs. Fabian, she’ll forget and settle down.”
“Sometimes I go into her room when she is asleep,” confessed Mrs. Fabian. “She doesn’t seem so aggressively a stranger when she is asleep, but even then she isn’t all natural, Nurse. Have you noticed, she is like a little wild animal in her sleep, always her head under the clothes, twitching and muttering. If you try to straighten the clothes, she starts awake with an almost terrified cry as though one were going to hurt her.”
“She probably had night terrors as a younger child,” explained Nurse Rowton. “They’ve left her nervous in sleep. But, honestly, Mrs. Fabian, I do think she needs school and other children of her age to tumble about with.”
So Ann went to school. A very nice school. The lady in charge of it—plump, capable, bird-like, said she had often had children quite as aggressive and difficult as Ann. It was only a question of patience and discipline.
“The child is clever,” she wrote at the end of the first term, “only very backward and most obstinate. Her temper is her worst fault, but with wise guidance she will learn to control this. I am really very fond of Ann and am convinced she will turn into the type of noble woman we would wish her to be.”
Miss Winston was always “very fond” of her charges. She invariably radiated hopefulness as to their future. The fact that she was essentially unpopular amongst the girls must have occasioned surprise among the parents honoured with their children’s confidence.
Ann did not confide in anyone, but her contact with Miss Winston and Miss Winston’s methods of subjecting unruly members of her flock, at least taught Ann the benefits of self-control.
“She is much better behaved,” admitted Felicity, “but she is so terribly secretive. She grows farther and farther away from me every year.”
Sometimes she visioned herself as beating with desperate hands against this aloofness of Ann’s heart. The girl’s presence was almost like a blight in the house; it seemed to slide between Felicity and the sunshine of Dolores’ laughter. Always when the end of the holidays came she breathed a sigh of relief, and all through the term she plotted and planned for new ways of winning Ann’s love.
Wise Miss Rowton left. Dolores had reached to the dignity of a governess. A spoilt little monkey, Dolores, but very lovable, none the less. There was no talk of sending her to school. Felicity felt her life would end when Dolores left her.
“What are you going to do with Ann when she leaves school?” Miss Winston wrote. “Have you thought of it at all? She shows considerable talent with her pencil and brush, and I strongly recommend her being trained in some branch of Art. Ann is not a home bird—I know, dear Mrs. Fabian, you will forgive me saying this. She is independent, a strong, rather ruthless character. The very worst thing for a girl of her disposition is to be at home with nothing definite to do.”
“I will consult with Ann when she comes home for the holidays,” wrote Mrs. Fabian. “I do not want to stand in her light in any way, but I want her to realise that there is love and a home waiting here for her.”
Poor Felicity! Getting near the dread age of forty as she had visioned herself doing while the newly-arrived Ann lay wailing in her cot. Ann would be twenty in a few months now. Dolores was getting on for nine. And at forty, one is not altogether finished with life as Felicity was to prove, though Ann, doubtless, would frown her contempt at any such suggestion.
For once again Felicity was beginning to take an interest in her personal appearance. Spending long hours now in front of her glass, rubbing in creams, smoothing out the wrinkles, brushing the gloss back to the still thick, dark hair.
“Mother’s got a young man,” said Dolores to Ann, on the first night of the latter’s return from school. “Cook says, in the words of the old song, ‘It’s never too late to hope.’”
Dolores sat curled up on Ann’s bed, watching the older girl unpacking. They were very good friends, Dolores and Ann, but then it was almost impossible not to be good friends with Dolores. And to Ann, the child’s open admiration, her puppy-like devotion during the holidays was very soothing.
“What do you mean?” she asked now. Straight and tall she stood, the things she had just taken out of the box hanging over her arm. Ann’s hair had been shingled during the last term at school. It was very sleek and black, with the beauty of a blackbird’s wing about it. Her eyes were heavy-lashed, a little furtive, perhaps. Ann never let anyone look into her eyes—it was a very bad fault. Miss Winston was always lecturing her about it. She was a big, tall girl—a little coltish at this stage in her existence, but one day she would be a very magnificent woman.
“The doctor from up the street,” explained Dolores. “He isn’t very ‘Valentine-ish’ to look at, but he’s potty on Mother. Comes to see her every day, drives her out in his car, takes her to the theatre.”
Ann let the stream of information slip past her without paying much attention. It gave her a weapon of attack though, for her coming interview with her mother.
“You are going to marry again, aren’t you?” said Ann. “I don’t suppose he’ll want me in the house. He’ll have to have Dolores for the next ten years.”
“Well, really, Ann,” remonstrated Felicity, and blushed. “I don’t know who can have told you.”
“No one has,” said Ann. “Dolores hinted. She gets her news from the servants. Anyway, it is true, isn’t it?”
“Dr. Cole has asked me to marry him,” admitted Felicity, “but I’ve got to think of you and Dolores.”
“You need not bother about me,” Ann assured her. “Are you in love with Dr. Cole? It seems funny to go on falling in love when one is as old as you are.”
“That,” said Felicity coldly, “is not a question that I care to discuss with you.”
“Well,” anyway, can I join those classes in town and live on my own?” asked Ann. “You ask ‘Old Winnie.’ She says it is much the best thing for me to do.”
“I will see,” answered Felicity. She had never in all her experience of Ann felt so antagonistic to her “I must consult Arthur—Dr. Cole. He is naturally interested in my children.”
A comfort to be able to shelter once again behind a man. To get away from Ann’s malicious amusement to the soothing balm of Arthur’s appreciation of her worries.
“I want so to do my duty by Ann,” so Felicity, looking exceptionally girlish, sitting with her hand held tight in Dr. Cole’s. “She’s terribly on my conscience, Arthur.”
“She’s a rum looking girl,” Arthur admitted. “She’s direct opposite to my pal, Dolores.”
“You love Dolores, don’t you?” asked Felicity, and searched his face anxiously. It was so very necessary for her peace of mind that Dolores should be loved.
“Of course I do, my dear,” said Dr. Cole. He was an elderly, pleasant, grey-haired gentleman, very much in love. “Isn’t she a part of your wonderful self?”
“And so is Ann,” sighed Felicity. “And yet she is so different.”
“Well, why not let her go into diggings on her own?” suggested Dr. Cole, “and study Art? Girls are branching out more and more on their own every day. Ann looks as though she could take care of herself.”
It was against her wish, and yet it was an immense relief to let Ann go. Felicity fussed a great deal about the sort of rooms she took to live in, the school she joined, the companions she was likely to have.
Ann watched all this with far-seeing contempt.
“Mother is awfully glad to get rid of me,” she confided to Dolores. “Why is she so hypocritical about it?”
Dolores, torn between loyalty to her mother and loyalty to Ann, whom she adored, offered no suggestions. She was a loyal little soul, Dolores, but even she was beginning to feel that Dr. Cole had more or less ousted her from her position of prime importance.
“You’ll be sent to school next,” said Ann. “See if you aren’t. And then I suppose Mother will wax sentimental and have another baby. It is pretty disgusting, isn’t it?”
“Is it disgusting to have babies?” asked Dolores, out of a real desire to know something about a subject which was generally considered taboo.
“Oh, I suppose we’ve all got to be born somehow,” answered Ann, with magnificent condescension, “but it is a filthy business.”
“Anyway, I shall like school.” It was in Dolores’ nature always to skim away from nasty subjects, however interesting. “And when I am old enough, I can come and live in London with you, can’t I, Ann? Dear Ann, I do love you.”
Felicity married Dr. Cole in the autumn of the year that Ann started on her own. The little house was sold up, Dr. Cole himself moving to a practice in Chelsea and taking his new family with him.
“So we’ll be quite close to Ann,” said Felicity, “and she can feel that we are just there at her back.”
She could console herself with that if she liked. Dr. Cole, in the face of Ann’s firm disregard of her mother, felt it to be rather a fallacy.
Felicity, very much to Dolores’ relief, did not indulge in any more babies. Indeed, the years slipped by very peacefully in the Cole household. Dolores went for a short period to a day school, was swept across to Paris to be “finished,” divided her affections quite successfully between Mummy and Daddy—she had easily slipped into calling Dr. Cole that—and queer, bitter-mouthed Ann.
The years clothed Dolores with a radiant beauty. She was Felicity over again, but a much fairer, gayer-hearted Felicity. Her eyes were blue, her hair sunny. Sometimes Felicity, looking up at her, would catch her breath and be startled back to a sudden memory. The lines of coffee trees would dance before her eyes, their scent stir against her lips, and Mark Heron would seem to be standing behind the lithe and young Dolores, laughing at Felicity through his daughter’s eyes. Memory, as we grow older, grows keener. A fragrant memory. He had promised she should be that to him.
At nineteen Dolores came home for good, according to herself. Dancing into Felicity’s sitting-room, throwing aside suit-case and travelling coat, and flinging herself into Felicity’s arms.
“Darling heart’s-ease of a mother, I’ve come home. I’ve done with that silly old Paris and the Misses Stanhope. Behold me, Ma—I’m a young lady!”
She stood erect, laughing, tossing her hat aside to be admired.
“And now, where’s Ann?” she added. Felicity tried to check the frown that came unbidden between her eyes. Dolores was so dearly loyal. It was one of the most lovable traits in her character.
“Ann’s all right,” she answered. “Full of wrath against some unknown person, as usual.” She laughed. “Poor Ann! I wish she could find some nice man to marry her.”
Dolores ran slim, white fingers through her hair and patted it back to the right waves in front of the glass.
“Ann won’t marry now,” she said. “She’s too old.”
“Oh, my dear,” remonstrated Felicity. “Your sister is only just thirty. I married, you know, for the second time at forty-one.”
“I know you did, Ma,” Dolores nodded. “But you are like me, full of sex allure. Ann’s modern. She hasn’t a particle of it.”
“Dolores!” gasped Felicity. “Is this what you’ve been learning in Paris?”
“Something of all I’ve learnt,” said Dolores. “Tell me, beautiful mother, weren’t you a bit of a gay dog in your young days?”
She pulled up a footstool and sat down, elbows resting on Felicity’s knees.
“I bet you had lots of lovers,” she said. “I don’t think Ann has had one, at, least not one she talks of.”
A fragrant memory! Felicity stirred and sighed, and put out her hand and touched Dolores’ hair.
“If Ann had lovers,” she answered, “I don’t think she would tell you or me, Dolores.”
“Oh, yes, she would tell me,” said Dolores. “Not you, perhaps. You and Ann have never hit it off, have you, mother?”
“It has been my fault,” said Felicity. She was always very frank about this, though Ann was inclined to allude to her frankness as hypocrisy. “You see, dear, when Ann was born, I was very young. As young as you are now.”
“Gee-whiz!” interpolated Dolores. “Just fancy me with a baby!”
“And I was selfish,” Felicity went on. “I did not want Ann. I could not be bothered with her. She was a terribly noisy baby. So I left her with other people and went abroad with my husband.”
“And when I came,” suggested Dolores, “didn’t you want me either?”
“Oh, my dear,” said Felicity, “I was older. I had learnt so much. I’ve loved you, Dolores, better than anything else in my life.”
“Rum thing, isn’t it?” said Dolores, “getting married, having children, loving them! After all, why should you love a baby? I believe they are very uncomfortable things to have.”
She rose presently and stood in front of the glass, putting on her hat again.
“I think I’ll go round and see Ann,” she announced. “She knows I am coming home to-day.”
“Yes, do,” said Felicity, and fought back the frown again. “Only come in to supper, won’t you, Dolores? Your father will be disappointed if he doesn’t see you to-night.”
Dolores paused at the door to look back at her. “What was my father really like?” she asked. “I’ve got so used to calling Arthur ‘daddy’ that sometimes I forget I had one of my own.”
Felicity looked down at her hands. They were perhaps the oldest things about her, for she was still very punctilious about keeping the beauty of her face.
“He was like you,” she said quickly. “Sometimes, when your eyes laugh at me, I seem to see him.”
Ann had her rooms in a little square off the King’s Road, Chelsea. She had not made as much success out of her painting as she had originally hoped to do. But she was not dependent on her work. Judge Fabian had left a good deal of money, and Felicity had divided it between the two girls on her remarriage. So the work she did now—a poster or two, book jackets, fancy advertisements—Ann did, more or less, for her own amusement. She had not made a very large circle of friends during her nine years in London. She was a queer girl. That was the opinion generally formed of her. One love affair she had had, though, as Felicity said, she had confided it to no one.
He had been rather a useless type of man—a fellow student like herself. He had seemed to need someone to cling to, and for a couple of years he had clung to Ann. But all their associates had known that all the earnestness had been on her side. And, finally, the fervour of her devotion had frightened him and he had gone off with someone else.
Ann had said nothing—no one had dared to question her. She was essentially a woman whose private thoughts and deeds and feelings one left alone.
She answered Dolores’ ring at the bell herself. If she was intensely pleased at this proof of sisterly devotion, she gave no sign.
“Oh, it’s you, is it?” she said. “You’d better come upstairs.”
Upstairs Dolores flitted in her wake. She knew every angle of funny old Ann’s mind, she knew exactly how welcome she was. How big and handsome and, in a way, terrifying, dear old Ann was, thought Dolores. No wonder men did not have the temerity to fall in love with her.
Anyway, her room was artistic, delightfully furnished. It had a soft, low couch drawn up to the open window, a silver kettle and tea-things stood on the neighbouring table.
“I believe you expected me,” said Dolores, and threw off her hat and snuggled down among the cushions as of old. “Didn’t you, Ann? And what is this you are reading?”
She picked up the heavy book that had lain open on the sofa and studied its title—“Insanity and The Criminal.” What odd books Ann did read! Dolores confined her literature to Ethel M. Dell and Gilbert Frankau, for both of whose works she had a passion.
“You would not care for it,” said Ann. She stood by the open window and looked, not at Dolores, but at the little open square with its green trees and its mockery of a lawn. “But, personally, I am frightfully interested in crime. Especially murder!”
“Good Lord!” laughed Dolores. “Who are you thinking of murdering now?”
“No one,” answered Ann. She turned away and sat down. “But it is funny, isn’t it, how easy it is to take life. To make a human being, Dolores, takes nine months, and then the agony of birth; to kill one——” she made a little expressive movement with her hands, and Dolores wriggled in protest. Dolores always said that Ann had the most expressive hands. They were very lovely and long and white and pliable.
“Don’t be so gruesome, Ann,” Dolores remonstrated. “I hate death. It frightens me.”
“Does it?” said Ann, and, drawing the table nearer her, she began pouring out the tea. “Well, then, let’s talk about life and yourself. What are you going to do now, Dolores?”
“Do?” asked Dolores. She opened wide blue eyes, the laughter came back to her lips. “Have a good time, I expect. I’m finished, Ann. I’ve learnt how to brush my hair till it shines, and polish my nails and keep my neck slim. And how to Charleston without looking vulgar, my dear, and oh, heaps of things!” She broke off with a little laugh. “Of course, I’ve learnt lots more,” she added. “But those that I’ve first mentioned are what the Miss Stanhopes laid the most stress on.”
“I see,” said Ann. “I’ve been waiting for you to come home, Dolores, to suggest something to you.”
“Yes?” encouraged Dolores, and sat forward and took her tea. “What bee buzzeth in thy bonnet, dear sister?”
“I want you to come away with me,” said Ann slowly. “I’ve waited all this long time for you. I want to go abroad—Africa, Egypt, anywhere out of civilisation. Just you and I alone.”
“But—but, what about mother?” Dolores began.
“She doesn’t need you as I need you,” whispered Ann. It was ridiculous, but that low whispering voice of hers seemed to fill the room with a kind of waiting tenseness.
“Dolores, I have never had anyone in all my life. You don’t know—you’ve always been loved—how lonely I’ve been. It is as though it has eaten into my soul.”
She stood up with a sudden sweeping gesture. “Oh, it isn’t much I ask. When you were a little girl you used to say to me, ‘When I’m grown up, Ann, I’ll come and live with you.’ And all these years I’ve waited, feeding my heart on that.”
“Well, of course,” said Dolores. Tragedy was so foreign to her that she felt at that moment supremely uncomfortable. “I’d love to come with you, Ann. It sounds topping. Only we’d have to let Mummy have a little time for the idea to simmer in.”
“If you ask her,” said Ann, “if you go by what she wishes, you won’t come. Mother—don’t you know that mother has always hated me?”
“Oh, Ann dear, that isn’t true,” remonstrated Dolores; she slipped to her feet and put warm, protesting arms round her stiffly erect sister. “You and mummy have never understood each other. Only to-day mummy was saying it had all been her fault. Ann think, dear, she was only as old as I am now when you were born. I know I’d hate to have a baby. I have had it all carefully explained to me, and it sounds disgusting.”
“Dolores, come with me,” said Ann; she seemed to ignore everything else. “It means so much to me. If I can’t get away, find some new interest in life, I shall go mad. We won’t stay there for always; just a year’s trip and then you can come back. If you knew your love was going to save me from something, Dolores, wouldn’t you give it to me?”
“Of course,” said Dolores, “I do love you. You know I do. And you know quite well I’d love Africa and Egypt and seeing the world. But you know mummy has been tremendously keen on my coming home and——”
“What can it matter to her?” argued Ann fiercely. She disengaged herself from Dolores’ arms and moved away and sat down again. And now her eyes glowed as Dolores so well remembered their glowing then where was a tempest of rage brewing in the old days. “She could let you go to Paris for two years; can’t she let me have you for one? But she won’t—she won’t. Not if she knows that I’ve asked for it. She’ll set her whole heart and mind on keeping you from me.”
Dolores thought that was rather absurd. She had always stood outside this feud between mother and Ann, and she was wise enough, despite all her frivolity, to be impartial. It was not true to say that mother hated Ann, but it certainly would be true to say that mother would hate to let Dolores go. But that hating would have applied to anyone—not exclusively to Ann, because she was Ann. However, Dolores was not at this stage going to argue with Ann. Instead she came and sat on Ann’s chair and put her arm round the other’s neck.
“What’s happened, old thing,” she asked, “to make you so hate London and civilisation?”
“That’s a long story,” said Ann, “and one I don’t want to tell you.”
“Is it a man?” asked Dolores, feeling delightfully wise. “Nearly all the trouble in this world seems to come from men and women loving each other.”
“Does it?” said Ann. She stirred a little, it was almost a shiver and, putting her head down, she suddenly caught up Dolores’ hand, holding it against her face.
“There’s been a man all right, Dolores. I tried to put everything into loving him, but it wasn’t a scrap of use. He meant nothing to me really. I wouldn’t even, if he were here and likely to agree, ask him to come away with me as I am asking you.”
“Then I’ll come,” said Dolores. “You’ve known I will all along. Only we’ve got to break it softly to mother. Hush, now,” she moved her fingers against Ann’s lips. “Don’t say anything against mother. It makes me feel disloyal, and I hate being that. Besides, she never says things about you. Ann, tell me about those people you were with when I was born. Didn’t you love them?”
“Mrs. Napier,” said Ann. “What makes you think of her now, Dolores? I hardly remember her. I expect I made a beastly little nuisance of myself there, and they disliked me as everyone else has.”
“You’ve got a complex about being disliked,” laughed Dolores. She went back to the sofa and curled herself up again. She had smoothed over the storm and got Ann on to what seemed a fairly safe topic. “Didn’t they have a little girl, the Napiers, and wasn’t she drowned or something, just before you came back to live with mummy?”
“Yes,” said Ann. “A little girl. Her name was Rosamund. I was there when she died. It was the first time I had ever seen death.”
She stood up and moved a little away, and came back again and stood behind Dolores so that the other had to screw up her head to look at her.
“Don’t let’s talk of it,” she said. “The memory is hideous to me. I was only a child, but I shall never be able to forget it—never.”
“I’m so sorry, Ann,” said Dolores. She jumped up. “I’m a heartless little monkey. I am always dashing in where angels might well fear to tread.”
“There has been nothing hideous in your life.” Ann spoke slowly. “You’ll never be an outcast, Dolores. People bring love and lay it at your feet, and you dance across it. You’ll always do that.”
“I wouldn’t willingly hurt anyone,” said Dolores. “If people give me love, Ann, I give it back.”
“Then give me some,” said Ann quickly. “Do this for me, Dolores, for I need your love. You haven’t any idea how much I need it.”
They ended in each other’s arms—cheek pressed to cheek. Of course, Dolores would do whatever Ann wanted. “Only do let’s do it nicely, Ann,” she stipulated, “so that it will hurt mother less. It will be just a year’s trip—you chaperoning me and painting, I seeing the world. The best possible education,” she lisped, copying the elder Miss Stanhope. “Leave me to show it to mother in that light.”
“You can put forward any excuse you like,” agreed Ann. She radiated cheerfulness now she had gained her point. “I’ll go and see about our tickets to-morrow.”
As may be imagined, poor Felicity was horror-struck, Ann had not been altogether wrong in her estimation.
“If it had been anyone else but Ann!” Felicity wailed to Arthur, “I should not have minded so much.”
“But why mind Ann?” he argued, sensibly enough. “I grant you she is never very affable to either of us, but she has always been fond of Dolores, and Dolores is devoted to her. And if Dolores must go on a wild goose chase— big game hunting—’pon my soul, I don’t know what girls are coming to—she is probably safer with Ann—who, I must remark, is a most formidable female—than she would be with anyone else.”
“She will poison Dolores’ mind against me,” said Felicity. “Ann has always hated me.”
“My dear, you are too introspective about Ann,” Dr. Cole answered. “Hate is a big word and doesn’t mean much between civilised beings. Ann is flesh of your flesh, and so is Dolores. There is jealousy between you and Ann—nothing else.”
“And it is of Dolores that we are jealous,” Felicity pointed out. “Don’t you see, she’ll try and take Dolores’ love from me?”
“Well, she won’t succeed, my dear,” said Dr. Cole philosophically. “At least not a quarter as well as the first young man who flutters that young lady’s pulse. It is a waste of time loving the rising generation with an absorbing passion, Felicity. They don’t belong to us—and no love is much use unless it holds possession.”
“Dolores is mine,” whispered Felicity. “My love will never let her go.”
“All right, my dear, have it your own way,” agreed her husband. “Only for Heaven’s sake, if you want to retain what hold you have, give way in this with as good a grace as possible. A year’s travelling won’t do the child any harm.”
Dolores explained the matter to her mother with delicious ease. “Of course, Ann doesn’t say much about it, mummy, but she has had a disappointing love affair, and she is just tremendously wrapped up in getting away somewhere and forgetting.”
“I don’t at all mind her going,” said Felicity tensely. “But why must she take you?”
“Well, we’re sisters,” argued Dolores, “and in a way, we have only got each other.”
“But what of me, Dolores?” wept Felicity. “How can you leave me like this? I don’t understand.”
“It is only for a year, mumsie,” consoled Dolores, but obviously she thought the tears rather absurd. “I’ll come back then whatever Ann does. Mummy, what happened to those people that Ann used to be with as a baby?”
“The Napiers!” said Felicity. “They went over to America and settled there. I hear from her sometimes. I think she always writes Ann.”
“Does she?” Dolores seemed to think that over. “Ann didn’t tell me that,” she added. “You know, mummy, Ann has got an odd kink in her mind about nobody loving her and being all alone!”
“It wasn’t true as far as Mrs. Napier was concerned,” said Felicity. “She was amazingly good to Ann. Only when her own baby girl died in that dreadful way, her husband did write and say that I must take Ann away as quickly as possible.”
“Why on earth?” asked Dolores.
“Oh, my dear, it was understandable,” explained Felicity.
“Well, I don’t understand it,” Dolores stated. “It seems to me that all love is very un-understandable and uncomfortable. Mummy, please don’t cry any more about my going with Ann. I wouldn’t do it, except that I really do think she needs me. And I shall rather love Africa, mummy. After all, that is not unnatural, is it?”
To Ann, Felicity did no pleading. There was hostility between them now which could scarce clothe itself in decent language.
“Ever since she was born,” thought Felicity, “she has waited to hit at me like this.” And her memory would slip back, back through the years—ten, twenty, thirty years—and see herself lying in that high white bed again, staring at the chimney pots. And then one evening, finding themselves alone together by some freakish chance, Ann having called round, not knowing that Dolores and the doctor were out, hate did suddenly take words and flare out between them.
They had talked to begin with, politely, like strangers might. Felicity had asked Ann to stay till the others came back—they would not be long—and Ann had stayed. Never at home with each other, these two, always oddly on guard, waiting for the other to strike, and it was Felicity now that set a match to the fire.
“You know if anything happens to Dolores,” she said harshly in the middle of the inanities that had passed between them, “I shall never forgive you.”
Ann’s dark eyes glowed, her thin lips tightened. “Never forgive me,” she answered. “Have you ever forgiven me for being born?”
“Don’t be absurd and theatrical,” said Felicity. She was shaking with sudden rage. “I am tired of that pose of yours, Ann. I left you when you were a baby, that is quite true. You were a singularly unpleasant baby, and I had a duty to my husband which necessitated my living abroad. But I never failed in my duty to you—you have shared everything with Dolores.”
“Mother,” said Ann, “what an amazing liar you are!” She said it quite calmly; there was no sign of rage shaking her. “Do you think I was fool enough, even at nine, to think that you had ever loved me as you loved Dolores? Do you want to know what I really think the difference between us is?”
“If it amuses you,” said Felicity coldly. “To be insulting to me, don’t let me stop you.”
“I don’t want to be insulting.” Ann leant forward, her hands tightly clenched. “I want just for once to have truth stark naked between us. You love Dolores. You have always hated me. I am old enough now to know the reason. My father was not Dolores’ father, was he?”
She had got her answer perhaps before Felicity spoke; anyway she had the decency to drop her eyes.
“How dare you!” said Felicity, and stood up and caught at the back of her chair and felt the room sway round her.
“Oh, I shan’t tell Dolores,” said Ann. “I shan’t tell anyone. Don’t be afraid. But it is true, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it’s true,” said Felicity. It seemed for the moment as if hate could best express itself along those lines. “And I am glad of it—horribly glad. It separates Dolores from you. I was a child when you were born. I knew nothing. I never loved your father; he meant nothing to me. But Dolores’ father I loved passionately, and Dolores was the child of our love.”
“I see,” said Ann. She too stood up. “The world calls that sort of thing by another uglier name, doesn’t it?”
“How dare you stand there talking to me like that?” said Felicity. “Am I accountable for my actions to you? You can say what you like to anyone you like, they wouldn’t believe you., But the knowledge can stay to torment your own mind. Dolores is not yours. She is mine—all mine!”
“Was it my fault?” asked Ann, “that you did not love my father?”
“No!” The anger, the rancour dropped out of Felicity’s voice. She suddenly felt old and tired. She sat down again; her thin, elderly hands clasped on her lap trembled, the fingers twitching against each other. “No,” she repeated, “but was it altogether mine? Girls married in those days without knowing much about anything, Ann. Oh, why have we never succeeded in being friends. I have tried. God knows I have tried.”
“Yes? Well, let’s leave it at that,” said Ann brusquely. “I shan’t tell anyone, as I’ve said before, and for the rest, you needn’t worry about Dolores. She’s quite safe with me.”
She went away then, not waiting for Dolores to come in and Felicity sat on, staring at the fire. What ghosts walked across its red glow! What had possessed her to say all that to Ann, thrusting a weapon into hands that hated her.
“If she tells Dolores!” Felicity’s thoughts leapt to sudden fear.
How would Dolores view it? With sympathy, with horror, or with disgust! Was one answerable to one’s children for these kind of things? One’s children who came into being as the result of one’s passion, one’s indifference, or one’s hate! And sooner than that Ann should tell her, ought she not to tell Dolores herself? It seemed as though the idea, once in her heart, refused to let her rest. All the years of silence while she had lived and spoken her lie surged round her. Dolores was going away from her; might in that absence meet someone whom she thought she loved. How was Dolores going to understand about love; how not make the same muddle of her life as Felicity had made of hers?
“Only four days of love in all my life,” whispered Felicity’s heart, “and that a sin!”
And out of the past, Mark Heron’s eyes seemed to laugh at her and mock her.
She told Dolores finally, choosing one evening just before the start of the girl’s adventures, when Dolores was staying at home to be with mummy because Dr. Cole had to attend a Masonic dinner. Dolores had had a riotously happy time shopping, buying clothes for the trip. A workman-like outfit of khaki shirts and shorts and leather belts and gaudy coloured ties. She was going to disregard skirts altogether once she landed in Africa. She had been told on the best authority that all ladies did out there, especially when they were big game hunting.
“But why ‘shorts,’ darling?” Felicity had ventured to argue.
“I think it is a lovely idea,” Dolores had answered. “I’ve always hated skirts and stockings.”
What did it matter? She was pretty enough to wear what she liked unabashed. Even Dr. Cole chuckled when he saw her arrayed in her war kit. She was the loveliest parody of a boy one could hope to see off the stage.
“Your knees will get damned painful when the sun catches them,” was his only comment.
Frocks, of course she had bought some frocks too for the voyage, in case she stayed with anybody in Mombasa or Nairobi. These she bought with Felicity’s assistance. Felicity who still had her flair for wonderful clothes, who, if she had had her way, would have sent Dolores out arrayed as a fairy princess. And now all the shopping was over, the packing practically done and Dolores would only be here for a few more evenings to sit like this with Felicity, tucked up in the easy chair opposite her mother, her fair head bent reading some ridiculous trashy novel with intense absorption.
“Put that book down, darling,” said Felicity. “Come and sit here by me. Let’s put out some of the electric light. I want to talk to you.”
“Oh, mummy, he is just going to make her do what she knows she oughtn’t to——” Thus Dolores, in a tone of light remonstrance. She swung the novel aside however and rose, switching off the bright reading light, as desired. “It isn’t a lecture, is it?” she asked.
“No, not a lecture,” said Felicity. “I suppose it’s more of a confession.”
“A confession from you to me.” Dolores settled herself on the cushion footstool and leant her young grace against Felicity’s knees. “Mummy, what have you been up to?”
“It isn’t easy for me to tell you this,” said Felicity slowly. “Perhaps some people would think it wrong of me, Dolores. You know so little of life, and you are going so far away from me. I want——”
“I know more than you imagine, old darling,” interrupted Dolores. “I know it’s not the thing to talk sex with one’s mamma, so I’ve never mentioned all my knowledge. But, dearest, you’d probably be horrified if you knew all I knew.”
“Should I?” said Felicity. “Is it knowledge that is going to help you, Dolores, as I was never helped? Listen dear, let me tell you. I must, for, of late, it seems almost to be tearing its way out of my heart. I did not know anything of men when I was your age, Dolores.”
“Mummy, darling, you had Ann by then,” remonstrated Dolores. Felicity touched her quickly. “That was a knowledge something like yours perhaps, Dolores. That is what I want you to understand. Sex doesn’t mean anything—anything to a woman until she loves. Dolores, I’ve often heard you say that having babies was rather a disgusting business. In your heart of hearts, don’t you think of the whole thing like that as rather a disgusting business?”
Sobered to seriousness, Dolores sat up, her arms round her hunched up knees.
“That is true enough, mother,” she admitted. “I don’t think about it more than I can help because it does strike me as rather horrid. And when I read about it in books, it sends little shivers—I suppose they are of disgust—down my spine. And yet, it’s odd, mummy, because I like being kissed.” She turned and looked up at Felicity. “As we are on the confessing stunt, I may as well admit to that. I’ve let a man kiss me.”
“Dolores,” said Felicity. “Who? Which one?”
“Oh, no one you know,” Dolores laughed a little. “Someone I met at a dance who wanted to awfully, and I let him, and I liked it.”
She sighed a little. “And some day,” she went on, “I fully intend to get married and go through with it—I mean all this body-giving stunt—but I’m not at all sure I shall like it.”
“Dolores,” said Felicity again, and sudden tears darkened her eyes. “Hush, let me tell you. Lean closer to me. Turn your face away. How can we women protect each other, protect even you, our babies that have been, from the same old agony of mistakes. Dolores, I never loved my husband. I married him because he loved me, because I did not mind his kissing me, because he had a lot of money and a good position. Ann was born and I suppose it was unnatural of me, but I never loved Ann. She had made me hate myself when she was coming, and she was not a very sweet or lovable baby. Perhaps that was my fault; I had so hated her coming. And the years came and went and I said I was having a good time and enjoying myself, and Dick, my husband, went on loving me, and it meant nothing to me—nothing—except a faint sense of disgust and a very real dread of another Ann. Then one year, Ann must have been about ten, I think, Dick had to leave me to come out to Africa by myself. I don’t think in all our married life I had ever been away from him for so long before. I landed at Mombasa. One evening—we were only there two nights, it must have been the second—I felt I don’t know what; it was very unlike me, oddly dissatisfied and restless. I wanted to get away from all my tiresome fellow passengers. I wanted—though I did not put it into those words at the time, to get away from all my tiresome, dull life. I put something over my head—a scarf I think it was—and slipped out of the hotel, going down through the native town to the beach. It was a mad thing to have done. What followed was far madder.”
She stopped a moment and Dolores snuggled nearer into the hollow of her knees.
“Go on, mummy!” she whispered. “It is like a novel. Did you meet a man down there and fall in love? A white man?”
Felicity smiled a little stiff smile. “Oh, yes, Dolores he was white,” she answered, “and I fell in love.”
“Well, what happened?” prompted Dolores.
Now that it came to the point Felicity’s mind moved stiffly. Memory flooded back on her. Would Dolores understand?
“It’s a long journey up from Mombasa to Kisimu,” she began again. “You’ll be travelling it yourself soon. Long and dusty. The dust blows in at the carriage windows and covers everything with a thick red layer. The dust! I have to blow it aside off my heart, Dolores, to tell you this, for it has lain there untouched, unshaken, these last twenty years.”
“Was this,” asked Dolores slowly, for she was not, as she had said, entirely ignorant of the ways of the world, “just before I came, mummy?”
“Yes,” whispered Felicity. “The man travelled up in the train as far as Nairobi. I left it there and went on with him in his car. He had a place up in the Highlands. We stayed together there for four days, then I went back to Dick.”
“But——” began Dolores.
“I lied, of course,” said Felicity, “to everyone. Dick thought I had been staying with friends in Nairobi. I was not the sort of person about whom you would think anything else. I lied to all the world—and then you came, and I have lied ever since.”
“You mean,” said Dolores, “that that other man was my father. Oh, mummy, who was he?”
“I can’t tell you that,” said Felicity. “It isn’t exactly my secret. I never saw him again, Dolores. Does all this seem very strange and terrible to you? I look back on it after all these years, and I cannot feel I sinned. It gave me you, Dolores—the one golden love of my life.”
“Of course I am not shocked or anything like that,” said Dolores. “I don’t pretend to understand it. But didn’t you feel a bit of a beast to—to——”
“To Dick—Ann’s father,” Felicity put the words in for her. “Oh yes, Dolores, I felt that. But at least I never hurt him with the knowledge. He died three months afterwards.”
“And why didn’t you and this—this other man marry?” asked Dolores.
One more lie leapt to Felicity’s throat. “I could not hurt Dick’s memory by that,” she said, and wavered and put her head down suddenly against Dolores’ hair. “And, no, that isn’t true,” she said. “He didn’t love me enough for that, Dolores. I don’t think he really loved me at all.”
“My father,” said Dolores, with immense gravity, “seems to have been rather a rotter.”
She turned and scrambled to her knees beside Felicity, flinging young, warm arms round the other’s stiffness.
“Love seems a damnable affair all told,” she said softly, “ but thank you for telling me, mumsie. I had a right to know, hadn’t I? And I see what you mean. I’ll try not to marry with my eyes shut, but as one is not allowed to open them before one does, it is rather difficult, isn’t it?”
And in her statement, though this she did not realise herself, she voiced the age-long perplexity of woman whose love is offered as a perpetual sacrifice on the altar of man-made laws for the protection of the race.
Dearest mumsie, Dolores wrote from Port Said, I am having the most glorious time. Of course I was seasick to begin with, and that did cramp my style. Do you remember at all, dearest, that awful feeling of not really minding how green one looks? However, I’ve been recovered now for quite a week, and I really am a success. One young man has already asked me to go for a camel ride with him into the desert when we get to Port Sudan, where we stay for a day and a night, loading or unloading, I forget which. But a camel ride, mumsie—doesn’t it sound Sheikh-like? Ann doesn’t quite approve, but I am not sure that I shan’t do it all the same. This entirely between ourselves. Two women and one man on a camel would look absurd, whereas I and the young man will look, I feel, quite romantic.
Don’t get alarmed, darling ; your youngest daughter is behaving with the utmost decorum, as a matter of fact. She just writes tosh! . . .
She broke off here to nibble her pen. She had ensconced herself for the morning in a sheltered position on the top deck. So far none of the young men, who took it in turns to flutter round her, had discovered her whereabouts.
I think Ann is enjoying herself too, she went on, more slowly. But you know, Mum, Ann is a queer bird. We share a cabin. I don’t think we ever shared a room at home, did we? I don’t remember doing so. Anyway, here we are at night, boxed in together, and I get the most extraordinary feeling of a different Ann to the daytime one that we all know. Isn’t it silly, but at night she frightens me. When she’s asleep, I mean. For one thing, she starts and talks—not intelligibly—and moans, coping apparently with most dreadful nightmares. Once I tried shaking her awake, and she woke screaming. The night steward came running to see what was up, and I’ve never done it since, because—I know this sounds quite absurd— the Ann who sat up screaming, who fought to push my hands off her, was not the Ann I knew at all. It was a complete stranger. Come to think of it, Mumsie, you and I don’t really know Ann at all, and though she loves me—I’m sure she does—she never lets me any nearer knowing. You mustn’t think from this that I’m not happy with Ann—I am, and I’m having a perfectly glorious time. Only I just had to tell someone about this night-time Ann—it strikes me as so uncanny. Perhaps Daddy, being a doctor, can explain why Ann, who doesn’t eat a quarter as much as I do in the way of ices and cheese, gets nightmare and I don’t.
A shadow fell across her page and she looked up quickly. Ann stood beside her.
“We are just rounding the coast,” Ann said. “Port Said is in sight.”
Dolores dashed off a hasty “Oceans of love, Mumsie, and a big hug—your baby, Dolores,” slipped it into its envelope and stood up quickly. Not for worlds would she have had Ann see what she had written. It was not only the night-time Ann of whom Dolores sometimes felt afraid.
“Oh, Ann, let’s go and see it!” she said, and slipped her arm through the other girl’s. “I’ve been writing mother.”
“You write her a great deal,” said Ann. “Long letters. What do you find to say? Life on board ship is so monotonous; we eat and sleep and wake to eat again.”
“Well, darling one, that’s life, isn’t it?” laughed Dolores. “Besides, mother’s quite ridiculously hurt if one doesn’t write reams, even if it is about nothing.”
“She doesn’t mind whether I write her or not,” said Ann slowly. “That’s funny, isn’t it?”
Dolores pulled her down to the side of the ship without replying. She never did attempt to reply to these sullen accusations which Ann would make from time to time.
“Look, Ann,” she said. “Isn’t it too exciting for words? The Gateway of the East, isn’t it? And over there—that must be the Canal. Breathe it all in, Ann—we’ll never get this first fine rapture again. Don’t you want to paint it—the sun dancing on those blue waves, the sand, those white houses and shimmering roofs?”
“Yes, I think I could paint it,” answered Ann slowly. The antagonism dropped out of her face, her lips relaxed, her eyes softened. “It is very beautiful.”
“Then wait just here,” urged Dolores. “I’ll go and get your paints—your block.”
She turned and ran lightly down the saloon stairs, not waiting to ring for the lift. It was not quite her fault that her progress was considerably impeded by Reggie Anstruther, the hero of the camel suggestion, who waylaid her on the second deck.
“Where are you dashing to?” asked Reggie. He was an extremely nice-looking, typically English boy, white flannels, a shirt open at the throat, sleeves rolled up to his elbows. The whole kit suited him to perfection.
“Down to the cabin,” explained Dolores. She also was rather desirable to look at, her hair golden in the hot sunlight, her face faint flushed by the young man’s obvious admiration. “To fetch Ann’s painting things.”
“Is she going to paint?” said Reggie. “Oh, good! then you can come ashore with me.”
Dolores raised speculative eyebrows, her mouth dimpled to laughter. “Ann won’t be all morning painting,” she pointed out. “She’ll want to see Port Said too.”
“Damn!” said Reggie; he said it with such unabashed fervour that Dolores had to laugh.
“You aren’t very polite to my sister,” she remonstrated.
“It is so extraordinarily difficult to believe she is your sister,” explained Reggie. “You’re like—well, you’re like sun and shade.”
“We should be an overpowering constellation if we were both sun,” laughed Dolores. “And surely you’d rather have shade to walk about Port Said with.”
“Not on your life,” Reggie answered her. “To tell you the truth, Miss Fabian, your sister has a very considerable capacity for making me feel afraid.”
“How silly you are!” reproved Dolores, a shade of seriousness in the blue eyes she lifted to his. “I’m very fond of Ann—her friends are my friends—see!”
Apparently he did. If he saw anything, that is to say, beyond the wonder of her eyes. Anyhow, with a little quickly suppressed sigh, he turned away.
“Where is Miss Ann?” he asked. “I’ll go and try to persuade her to see the beauties of Port Said with me for guide.”
“That’s nice,” said Dolores; she looked away reflectively, catching her lip on laughter. “Then I’ll come too, instead of going with Captain Plumer.”
“I should damn well hope you would,” expostulated Reggie, shocked out of good manners.
“Well, I half promised Captain Plumer,” said Dolores; her eyes danced back to the face of her unhappy victim. “Ann’s on the top deck,” she added. “Go and ask her. I shan’t be long about the paints.”
Yet on her further way down to their cabin—they lived in the very depth of the ship—a little frown showed between her laughing eyes. It was a pity Ann frightened everyone away from being friends like. she did—it made living with her very difficult for frank, free-hearted Dolores. What was the use of going about and not making friends?
They went in a party of four ashore finally. Captain Plumer was the fourth. Captain Plumer was a rather dark, intriguing (so Dolores described him) looking man, very nearly forty years old. Privately, Reggie Anstruther hated him, but all women, for some reason or other, found him attractive. He had a habit of staring at the woman to whom he happened to be talking, watching her every movement with concentrated attention, and that in itself was flattering, and in a way disturbing. And he was very sympathetic towards women; it was almost as though he understood the small things, passing emotions, fine shades of feeling, which no one else would bother to understand.
Ann, for instance, had allowed him to make friends with comparative ease, and Ann was, as a rule, very shut away from companionship with men. Obviously it was Dolores who attracted him, but he took a lot of trouble to make himself pleasant to Ann. He was in the East African Police, it seemed, and was going out to rejoin his depot somewhere in the wilds. Anstruther was going out as a new recruit to the settler community of Kenya. He had started his career by falling in love very desperately with a quite inaccessible Dolores, and taking a very decided dislike to law and order as personified by Captain Plumer. However, on this occasion he had reason to be grateful to him. Captain Plumer monopolised Ann, walking about the narrow, crowded, dusty streets with her, piloting her in and out of the various celebrated shops. Port Said gave Dolores a headache—she said so frankly. But Ann, apparently, loved it—she could not have too much of its noise, its crowds, its smells. She wanted to explore into the native town, let its atmosphere sink into her, get a rough sketch here and there, perhaps, and then paint in the rest of remembered colour afterwards.
She made this suggestion while they were sitting at one of the marble-topped tables out in the street, in front of one of the hotels, having iced coffee. Captain Plumer shrugged his shoulders.
“The native quarter of Port Said,” he said in his attractive, compelling voice, “is full of the choicest criminals of all nationalities. And, Lord, how they smell!”
“Oh, don’t go, Ann,” said Dolores. “It sounds horrid. And I’ve got a headache. I don’t believe I like Port Said—the people have cruel, crafty faces, and I’ve seen two horses being driven with most terrible sores on their backs.”
“Yes, by Jove,” agreed Anstruther. “I’ve had to keep my hands in my pockets this morning, or I’d have landed one or two of these black drivers on the jaw.”
“Don’t lose your temper in Port Said,” said Captain Plumer. “It makes you look a fool and the authorities hate scraps of that sort.” His dark eyes rested on Dolores. He smiled. “So you don’t like your first peep at the East,” he said.
“Oh, I do,” said Dolores. “Only here there’s such a jumble of people all making a noise. And it is a little smelly, isn’t it, and the sun glares.”
Captain Plumer turned to Ann. There was a certain little attentive air of deference in his voice as he spoke to her. “And you, Miss Fabian?”
“I love it,” said Ann. “It suits something restless in me. Why not go back to the ship, Dolores, if you’ve got a headache? I’ll impose on Captain Plumer, if he’ll let himself be imposed on, and make him take me through the native quarter.”
“I shall be delighted to,” smiled Captain Plumer. “Like you, I find an odd interest in these queer, disreputable people.”
“Then I’ll take you back to the ship,” an obviously delighted Reginald said in an aside to Dolores. “What a topping idea!”
They parted after the iced coffee had been settled for, Captain Plumer and Ann going off in one direction, Dolores strolling back to the landing place along the front. Captain Plumer carried Ann’s sketching things and, as he walked beside her, his dark, scrutinising eyes took in everything about the girl’s appearance. Girl! Well, she was hardly that. He summed her up in his mind as being about thirty-two, which was a little on the over side, for Ann at this time was only thirty. She was a tall woman, and she walked remarkably well, but there was about her beauty—he did not for a moment grudge her the adjective “beauty”— something arresting, aggressive, in some odd way unpleasing. The lines of her face were very perfect, though seen full face the thinness of her lips was a pity. And her eyes were amazing—great wells of darkness, shaded by long, straight lashes. Now, with a little eager excitement about her, she was talking, for her, quite vivaciously. He thought her almost lovely, and yet—quite vaguely—he disliked her. Perhaps the very masculine element in his own nature sensed the aggressive strength of hers, and subtly resented it. She was not a woman, he decided at that moment, whom men would love easily, despite her good looks, which probably accounted for her being thirty-two and still unmarried.
Dolores, now! Captain Plumer’s eyes softened, his lips smiled. He was not going to make a fool of himself by falling in love with Dolores, but he admitted that she was devilishly attractive—the little witch! That young man, Reginald Anstruther, with no earthly chance of success before him, was probably proposing to her at that very moment.
“You and your sister,” he said presently, apropos of the thought in his mind, “are most singularly unalike, aren’t you, Miss Fabian?”
“She is, as a matter of fact, only my half-sister,” said Ann rather deliberately. Ever since Felicity had tried to wound her with the truth of that knowledge, she had, as it were, kept it in front of her as a weapon she might one day use. “Though Dolores herself doesn’t know that.”
“Ah!” said Captain Plumer. “All the same, it explains quite a lot, doesn’t it?”
“I am very fond of Dolores,” added Ann. “Fonder than I am of anyone else in this world. And I think she loves me—though there are not many people who do that.”
She laughed a little, realising that she had suddenly dragged personalities into a frivolous conversation, but Captain Plumer remained perfectly grave, his dark eyes watching her face.
“You have always shut yourself from love, perhaps,” he suggested quietly. “It is a mistake to do that.”
She shot a quick glance at him, and flushed under the steadiness of his scrutiny.
“I’ve got a kink, or that is what Dolores calls it,” she admitted, “about people not liking me. I always have had. But then”—she looked away with a little shrug of her shoulders—“I was a very disagreeable child,” she said. “I think very few people did like me. And as I grew up, I sort of hardened myself. I don’t know why I’m saying all this to you.”
“But I am immensely interested,” said Captain Plumer. “This is where we turn down into the real native quarter, Miss Fabian. Walk well in the middle of the road, and don’t pay much attention to the things you see. You have interested me enormously from the first time we met, because I am keen on character. I’ve made a sort of study of it, and yours—don’t think me rude, will you—yours is singularly strong, almost ruthless, isn’t it?”
The question at the end softened his description. He had intended it should.
“Ruthless,” said Ann slowly. “What strange words you use.”
“Now here’s a bit worth painting,” suggested Captain Plumer. He had for the moment gone far enough with his probing. “Don’t you think so, Miss Fabian?” It was certainly picturesque, the winding, none too clean street, the Arab houses with their carved and studded doorways, their little balconies jutting out overhead, their shuttered windows. Ann took her things from him and began to sketch quickly. She was deft and certain with her pencil, he could see that at a glance, but he watched her face more than he watched the picture growing on the paper. He was extraordinarily intrigued by the intricacies, the almost sullen concealment of her thoughts.
Presently, as they stood there, Ann sketching with rapid strokes, Captain Plumer standing idly watching her, a window behind one of the balconies of the house which Ann was drawing opened, and a woman’s figure stepped out on to the balcony and stood looking down at them. She was dressed in the long trousers and floating chemise adopted by Arab women in undress, and her head and face were partially concealed by a thin veil of some dirty-looking white stuff. Ann would have included the figure quickly—it added the finishing touch to her sketch and looked up at it for this purpose, but, with the pencil motionless in her hand, she paused. The woman looking down on her from that little Arab balcony was white, as white as she herself or Captain Plumer standing beside her. Surprise made her catch her breath; she put out her hand as though to draw Captain Plumer’s attention to the surprising fact, and at that the woman, smiling a little—yet there was none the less most horrible tragedy in that smile—drew the dirty white thing closer about her face and sat down, the bangles on her ankles jingling as she settled her feet.
It seemed that Captain Plumer’s eyes, noting everything, had noticed that little by-play.
“I wouldn’t sketch her in if I were you, Miss Fabian,” he said. “It seems unkind. Let’s move on.”
“Did you see her face?” asked Ann. She felt, she hardly knew why, troubled, upset, but she started to move away with him. “She was quite white.”
“Yes,” he answered. “Some poor devil, cut adrift from her kind.”
“But—but couldn’t we help? I mean—it seems dreadful.” She looked round her with a shudder. All the romance, the glamour had faded out of the scene; there was only squalor and unbelievable filth left. In a corner of the street a dead dog lay, the flies rising and settling like a cloud about it.
Captain Plumer put his hand on her arm with a little reassuring pressure. “Sorry you should have seen it, Miss Fabian,” he admitted. “But Port Said is full of black hells where white women hide. And, alas, one can’t help them! They’re like the poor devils in the Bible—‘Reprobate silver men call them, for the Lord hath rejected them.’”
“You mean——?” said Ann.
“They lose themselves purposely,” said Captain Plumer, as they emerged on the broader, slightly cleaner street of shops. “There is no place in the world to which they could creep back. They live and die here—and after death—God knows, we certainly don’t, what happens.”
As matter of fact, Reginald Anstruther did not propose to Dolores at Port Said.
Ann and Captain Plumer found them engaged in an amicable wrangle on their return to the ship.
“Have you enjoyed yourself?” asked Dolores. “And what have you sketched?”
Ann would not show her. “I hate my things being looked at before they are finished,” she said, not too politely. “You know that.”
She brushed past the little group of three and went on down to her cabin.
“You have been ruffling Ann,” Dolores remonstrated with Captain Plumer. “She was quite sweet-tempered when I left her with you.”
“There is something about Miss Fabian that reminds me of a volcano,” said Reginald, a shade plaintively. “You never do know when she is going to blow up, or why.”
“And I’ll be a volcano in a minute,” said Dolores, with a little stamp of her foot, “all over you. Fire and brimstone. That is the second time you’ve been rude about my sister to-day.”
“Well, leave the base creature,” suggested Captain Plumer, “and come for a walk with me on the top deck. We’re just heaving up anchor, half an hour should see us in the Canal.”
Dolores wrinkled up her nose at Reginald to show that she did not care a hang for his disapproval, and slipped her hand into Captain Plumer’s.
“All right,” she agreed, “I’d love to. You’ll talk sense, and Mr. Anstruther’s talked nothing but nonsense all the afternoon.”
“Ever watched a cat catch a mouse,” asked Captain Plumer gravely, as side by side they paced the top deck, leaving a disconsolate Anstruther to bury his sorrows in a whisky and soda at the bar.
“No,” said Dolores. “Why on earth should you imagine I would.” She paused to consider the matter. “Either I shut my eyes and scream,” she added, “or else I smack the cat—or if it is simply imperative that the mouse should be killed—sometimes it is—I go away and try to think it isn’t happening.”
“And yet your methods,” smiled Captain Plumer, “are very feline.”
“What on earth do you mean?” asked Dolores.
“Our worthy, if slightly dull, friend Anstruther is very much in love with you, isn’t he?”
“Don’t be absurd,” said Dolores, and blushed delightfully.
“And you tease him and stick little sharp claws into him and purr over his torture,” went on Captain Plumer, quite unperturbed. “For you know it is very nearly torture to a man to be in love with a girl and not have the foggiest chance of making her love him.”
“But why are you so certain I shan’t, or don’t, love him,” asked Dolores. “He is awfully nice, even though you do call him a bore.”
“When you fall in love, young lady,” said Captain Plumer, “it is going to sweep you right off your feet. Do you know that?”
“How do you know?” asked Dolores again. “I am not a terrible believer in love.”
“No,” Captain Plumer laughed. “You’ll give most royally when you do, though, my dear, and it is not going to be either poor Anstruther or—alas!—my ancient self.”
“You aren’t in love with me,” said Dolores. “You don’t want me to love you?”
He glanced at her. Somehow, if ever she met his eyes full like that, she caught her breath on a little flutter of surprise. She did so this time and, noticing it, Captain Plumer was perhaps tempted. He pushed the thought aside.
“If I were ten years younger,” he said, “I shouldn’t rest till I had made you love me.”
There was a little silence. Dolores walking beside him, with the fresh wind from the open sea blowing against the gold of her hair, seemed to be meditating about something. The steamer swung round as she thought. Port Said lay behind them now; in front stretched miles and miles of interminable sand cut by that little thin streak of water running between high banks—the Canal.
“You are not so very old,” said Dolores presently. She stole a glance at Captain Plumer’s face, half hoping she might meet again his disturbing, fluttering eyes. But he was not looking at her, and his side face seemed a little set and stern.
“You’re a young monkey,” he answered briefly, “and someone ought to be in the position to give you a good smacking.”
He stopped by the end rails and, turning, caught her two hands in his. The sands at the back made a straight, almost blinding background for his stiff-held figure, his clean-cut head of black hair.
“Look here, young thing,” he said, and now his voice was gentle and kindly, “don’t go about East Africa asking men to make love to you like that.”
He saw the hot colour flame into her cheeks, the angry shame in the eyes which she dropped quickly before his. His grip tightened on the hands she tried to loose. “Now, don’t get angry,” he said. “I could have done what you asked most damnably easily, and I do, in a certain way, attract you, don’t I? But you don’t love me, and I, my dear, am most absurdly near to loving you.”
He lifted her protesting hands to his lips—though if the truth were but known, protest had died out of Dolores’ mind. She was feeling sorry and ashamed.
“Do you understand?” asked Captain Plumer softly. “For you’ll meet quite a number of men, Dolores, who will love you in much the same way as you have felt you might love, and if you take, or offer to take, what they give you—well, in the end, you cheapen yourself, kid. Don’t you see that?”
“I am awfully ashamed,” said Dolores. She wanted her hands now to rub quickly at her eyes before they made a worse fool of her.
“If you cry,” said Captain Plumer very sternly, “I shall lose my head completely, and then all my lecture will have been wasted.”
“Well, I’m not going to cry,” whispered Dolores, “and your lecture isn’t wasted. I do see what you mean. I did once let a man kiss me just for fun to see what it was like. And I didn’t really mind it a bit; in fact, I rather liked it.”
She raised bewilderingly beautiful eyes to his. “And just now when we were walking, I did sort of mean to make you kiss me. Perhaps not then and there, but later on.”
“Damn!” said Captain Plumer softly.
“And it is quite true I don’t love you,” went on Dolores, plunging at truth, “but then I don’t know anything about love, and I can’t see how I am going to find out if I don’t experiment.”
“O Lord!” sighed Captain Plumer. “Look here, don’t you go experimenting with young Anstruther, will you?”
“No.” Dolores shook her head. “I’ve never wanted to. I always feel quite calm and nice and friendly even when I am quarrelling with Mr. Anstruther.”
“I see,” said Captain Plumer, “and with me——” He broke off quickly, loosening her hands. “No, don’t let’s talk about it. You’ll know right enough when the right man comes along, Dolores. Let’s leave it at that.”
It was on the strength of that, taking, as it were, his lecture to heart, that Dolores definitely said “ No” to the camel ride as sketched for her enthusiastically by Reginald.
“What’s been the matter with you the last two days?” said Reggie gloomily. “You’re awfully kind of stand-offish and ‘mind your p’s and q’s’ to me!”
“I’ve been considering myself,” said Dolores, “and I have decided that I am a little cat.”
“You aren’t,” argued Anstruther. “I’d knock the fellow into the next world who dared suggest you were.”
“Yes, I am,” said Dolores. This was after a most strenuous game of deck tennis which had reduced both of them to an almost dripping state of heat on the top deck.
“You see, I have been flirting with you. Oh, you know what I mean, letting you hold my hand and say silly things to me in between the dances—and——”
“Has it all been flirtation?” asked Anstruther, and suddenly he looked immensely serious and harassed, and with a little shock of dismay Dolores realised what she had brought on herself.
“I am awfully afraid it has,” she admitted.
“I love you most damnably,” said young Anstruther, and gulped on the saying of it. “Couldn’t you—can’t you——?”
Dolores was terribly distressed. The feline in her laid aside. “I’m so dreadfully sorry,” she whispered. “You see, I’ve been playing; I thought you were playing too, and then the other day Captain Plumer spoke to me and said I was being rather a beast.”
“Damn him!” said Anstruther, with surprising force. “Dolores, are you going to marry him?”
“No, of course I’m not,” answered Dolores. She put a consoling hand on his arm. “I am not going to marry anyone for years and years. Oh, why can’t we cut out this stupid old love and just be friends?”
“I understand,” said Anstruther, and at that moment it was almost as though he had grown from boyhood to manhood. “Well, then let me be a friend, Dolores, for as long as you can stick me.”
A slightly subdued Dolores went ashore at Port Sudan—all thought of a camel ride abandoned.
He sort of proposed to me, mumsie, she wrote in her letter home, and it was terribly embarrassing. I like him awfully, but he is quite absurdly young, and when he gets really sentimental, I simply want to laugh. So it can’t be love, can it? Ann has been very moody since we left Port Said; I think she started to paint something there and it won’t come right. You know how cross that makes Ann. We get into Port Sudan this afternoon, and they say one can bathe there, and it is rather topping. Lots of love, my angel mother. I’m still having a good time, but I do wish we could eliminate this rotten love stunt. Reggie Anstruther, when I’m not sorry for him, makes me laugh, but there is something right away inside myself that answers, when I least expect it to, to other men’s eyes, and I feel a little uncertain of myself. There’s one man on board, a very nice person, almost old enough to be my father, and he gave me an awful lecture the other day about being a flirt. Captain Plumer his name is, and I had been secretly hoping for days that he would—well, sort of lose his head and kiss me. I felt I’d like it. Wasn’t it awful of me, mumsie, and I did feel ashamed of myself when he lectured me quite nicely. He says when I do love, I’ll be a generous giver, but I mustn’t go slopping my gifts about before I do love. And he’s quite right—of course, I know he is. But I believe there is something not quite good in me. Tons of love.
Your Baby,
Dolores.
Port Sudan lies flat and sun-baked in a scooped-out hollow of sand. It boasts an hotel whose rooms are built round an open-air courtyard where queer, stiff orange trees grow in giant green pots. Nothing much else grows green in Port Sudan. For colours, those who live there have the blue of sky and changing sea, and at night and morning the flaming reds of sunset and sunrise. And under a full moon, or beneath a sky laden with immense sparkling stars, the yellow sand dunes that surround Port Sudan become impregnated with some strange magic.
The ship’s passengers, as the ship was to be loading all night, got up a supper picnic party and went out on to those queer magic sands and made all the glamour of the night hideous with their singing of choruses, singularly out of tune. None the less they all enjoyed themselves, Dolores among the number. And when their voices died down between the songs and they were silent for a little, letting the magic of the night steal round them, they could hear from the little spread out town behind them all the pariah dogs of Port Sudan baying the moon, or catch from farther off still in the proper native quarter the throbbing of native drums, the chanting wail of native dancers.
It was a night when it was extremely difficult for people of the opposite sex not to lose their heads and become sentimental. Dolores realised this as Reggie Anstruther kissed her.
“Only it doesn’t mean anything,” she caught her breath on that as he let her go.
“Darling,” he whispered, in no mood to listen to either common sense or wisdom, “oh, Dolores, you didn’t hate it. I’ll wait for years—surely in the end, you’ll love me.”
“No,” answered Dolores, troubled in her conscience, struggling after truth, while all her heart and soul and mind seemed melting in the warmth of this star-laden night—melting to a mood of acquiescence to his desire. “I don’t love you, Reggie, I never shall, but the little animal in me likes being kissed.”
He was so seriously in love that her answer hurt him. He let her go and turned away and Dolores, ashamed and miserable, crept back to the rest of the party and tried to single out Ann. She found her presently. Ann was sitting a little apart from the others, on a hillock of sand. She sat very still, the palms of her hands pressed in the sand on either side of her, her grave face a little tilted up as though her eyes studied the stars. She seemed to come back to earth with some little shiver of protest as Dolores sat down beside her.
“It’s very wonderful here, isn’t it?” she said. “At least, it would be wonderful if it weren’t for all these noisy people. One loses oneself looking up at those stars. I’d like to live here”—it was almost as though she were talking to herself—“out here with all this sand round me, those stars up above at night. Alone!”
“Oh, Ann!” remonstrated Dolores, and snuggled nearer for comfort. “It would be awful alone. Ann, why are you so fond of being alone?”
“I have always been alone,” said Ann slowly, “ever since I can remember.”
“You put things so queerly, Ann,” Dolores sighed. “Why, you’ve been part of my life ever since I was born. How can you call that being alone?”
“Have I?” asked Ann. It seemed as though for a moment she put strong, possessive arms round Dolores, holding her close.
“I love you, Dolores,” she whispered. “There is no one else in the world that I say that to. If you ever fail me, the whole thing, the whole of life as far as I am concerned, will crumble to pieces. I wonder if you understand that.”
“I don’t,” admitted Dolores quite frankly. “I think something must have been left out of my composition when I was born. I don’t really understand love at all. But in my own shallow way, I love you, Ann, and I certainly shan’t fail you.”
Captain Plumer joined them. “What are you two doing—star-gazing?” he asked. “The march back to the ship is about to commence to the strains of ‘Shall we gather at the river?’”
Ann stood up. Her figure showed tense, her voice sounded dramatic.
“How we desecrate the silence of night and stars and earth with all our noise!” she whispered. “Come, Dolores, we’ve got to be getting back.”
“And what, Miss Dolores, have you been doing all evening?” asked Captain Plumer, falling into step beside them.
Dolores hoped—a haunting moment of discomfort—that he had not been a witness to the kiss.
“What I ought not to have done,” she answered, flippantly enough, “but that’s because you didn’t stay on guard.”
“Humph! A strong man tempted is a strong man slain, sometimes,” he answered, and made no attempt to explain this cryptic remark.
Dolores had several invitations to go and stay with friends made on the voyage by the time the ship reached Mombasa. They included Ann, naturally enough, but in a rather perfunctory manner. It was clear that they regarded Ann in the light of a slightly damp blanket.
Ann said as much, laughing rather sarcastically, to Captain Plumer. He was the one person on board with whom she had advanced to a certain degree of friendship. He took such infinite pains to be nice to her, and yet, had he been asked, he could not have said honestly that he liked her. Perhaps he was sorry for her. He had hardly worked that out in his mind. Or perhaps it was because she was Dolores’ sister. Anyway, he spent a good deal of his time with her, and not a few people on board said that the friendship might ripen into romance.
Ann never thought that. But she had more or less taken him into her friendship. She almost wished that if Dolores had got to fall in love with someone, it could have been Captain Plumer.
So now she told him about Dolores’ many invitations to Nairobi and the half-hearted inclusion of herself.
“Well, why not let her go on her own for a bit?” suggested Captain Plumer. “She’ll have a good time and see a side of the life out here that camping out won’t show her. And you’ll have heaps to do getting your kit and staff together to give her a good three weeks to butterfly in.”
“Ought I to do that, though?” asked Ann. “Sometimes I feel awfully responsible for Dolores. She is such a scatterbrain herself.”
“Oh, those friends the Dennisons will look after her all right,” Captain Plumer assured her. “And if you’ll allow me to, I’ll personally conduct you right up to your base and put you in charge of the D.C. at the Ravine—that’s where you’ll branch off from the railway and get your safari to go through into Uganda. You are going that way, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” said Ann. “We want to do Elgon and then go on into Uganda and up Ruenzori. Those are the Moon Mountains, aren’t they? I’ve always wanted to go there.”
“Well, Colin Baird is just the man to put you wise on all that,” said Plumer. “And my own station is not far off. We’ll look after you between us. There’s an hotel at the Ravine and there are some fine bits of country all round.”
Dolores was overjoyed at being allowed to stay at Nairobi. She had heard so much about it, and the joy of wearing shorts and hunting paled beside the thought of dances and races and young men by the hundred.
“You are sure you don’t mind, darling?” she said, arguing the matter out with Ann. “If you’d rather, I’ll come straight up to the Ravine with you. I don’t want to seem to be deserting you at the outset.”
“You aren’t,” said Ann. “I shall be all right. You go and have a good time, Dolores, and mind you behave yourself.”
So Dolores went to Nairobi, and Ann, in charge of Captain Plumer, went on up in the train to the Ravine.
“Perhaps he’s in love with her, my dear,” said Mrs. Dennison to Dolores. Mrs. Dennison was stout and immensely good-natured. She loved giving girls a good time. She had had no children herself, but she adored young things. “You really ought to give her her innings. Because you’re a fascinating young monkey and you do throw that sombre sister of yours into the shade.”
It was on that thought that Dolores consoled herself for her seeming neglect of Ann. For the rest, she had, as she described it, a glorious time.
Mark Heron saw her first at a ball given at the Mathaiga Club, a great rendezvous for Nairobi society. He had heard of her before. Dolores was so radiant in her young loveliness that her presence had caused quite a flutter in Nairobi. Mark Heron had heard her spoken of in the Club, at one or two of the houses which he frequented. The name had caused an almost forgotten stir of memory in his mind. Fabian—by Jove, that had been the name of the lady with the dark, soft, scented hair! One of many ladies, certainly, but somehow, now that he came to think of it, one of the most perfect and fragrant memories. And then, at this ball, someone had said to him: “Come along and be introduced to Miss Fabian. Not that you’ve much chance of getting a dance, but I’ve told her that she ought at least to know the oldest man in Africa.”
They called him that in those days. It was an old-standing jest. He had been one of the first pioneer settlers, and he had had such a tremendous reputation for gallantry. Now he bore his years gallantly. He was still quite one of the best-looking men there, with his silvery grey hair, his lean face, his vivid blue eyes.
He asked Dolores for a dance and, a little flattered because he seemed so old and so distinguished, Dolores hastily obliterated the name of some young cavalier from her programme and replaced it with his.
“You’ll find I don’t Charleston,” said Heron, smiling at her with his eyes. “But I can stroll round the room with that grave precision considered necessary nowadays.”
Dolores thought him delightful. He was one of those people with whom one slid into immediate confidence. She told him all about herself and Ann, their plans and how Captain Plumer was helping. She described her shorts and he agreed with her that she would look very nice in them. He did not talk much. They danced, and he, contrary to his description of himself, proved, Dolores said, beautiful to dance with. They sat out and he listened to her talking, and visioned to himself the woman whom he had met down on the sea-shore at Mombasa. Dream scents stirred against his face, dream hands touched his. Now he looked really old—sitting forward, his hands loose held, his eyes looking into the past
“Mother was out in Africa,” Dolores was saying. “She has told me such heaps about it.”
“Your mother,” said Mark Heron slowly, “was a very beautiful woman. I met her once.”
“You knew her?” Dolores was all eager excitement. “She’ll be so interested to know we’ve met.”
“I don’t suppose she’ll remember my name,” said Heron. “I wouldn’t tell it her. Just say an old friend. Your eyes are blue, aren’t they—not like hers. I remember hers as very dark—like pools of soft darkness.”
A sudden wavering thought came to Dolores. Perhaps something in his voice, as he spoke of her mother, brought it there. She did not look at him as she answered.
“My eyes are like my father’s,” she said. “Mummy has told me that often. She says, when I laugh at her, she seems to see him standing behind me, laughing at her through my eyes.”
Mark Heron stirred; his hands seemed to brush away a dream.
“Your father, Judge Fabian,” he said—“I never met him. But he died out here, didn’t he, before you were born? I remember hearing about that.”
And now Dolores was almost certain. Everything that she had heard about this man fitted into her mother’s description. She felt for a second bewildered and angry. She was not old enough to know how to deal with the situation. She stood up.
“Let’s go back to the ball-room,” she said stiffly. “I hear the band tuning up.”
He rose too, and stood beside her. He was very handsome though he was so old. It was just in that little moment of standing that their eyes met, and suddenly Dolores’ face was all aflame with trembling colour.
“Judge Fabian wasn’t my father,” she said, a little breathlessly. “Mother has told me that. Didn’t you know it?”
He was acutely touched by her confusion. A feeling such as he had never experienced before in all his life welled up in him. His presence there in her life seemed somehow a desecration. He sought for her hands very humbly.
“My dear,” he said, “if you can find it in your heart to do so—forgive me. I am realising most bitterly at this moment all that my utter selfishness has caused me to miss.”
Of course, it might only be a pretty speech. He had so great a reputation for pretty speeches to women. Dolores tried to harden her heart against him. He had been horrible to mother in that long ago past. But just as Mrs. Fabian’s voice had shown no anger in speaking of him, so Dolores’ heart could feel no real rancour. Once or twice during the evening she stole a glance in his direction, and always he was standing rather straight and stiff beside the wall, watching her as she danced.
She visioned him as old and tired and lonely, with all the lovely things of the world finished as far as he was concerned. And mother and he had loved each other, and she, Dolores, was the child of their love. And she remembered suddenly Captain Plumer’s grave voice warning her: “When you fall in love, it is going to sweep you right off your feet.”
Something in all this, or it may simply have been the generosity of her own nature which would not let her cherish dislike towards anyone for long, made her go up to Mark Heron towards the end of the evening where he stood against the wall watching her. She broke off her dance with someone to do this, and the flush and sway of the movement and music was still with her as she stood in front of him.
“Shall we be friends?” she said. “Will you call for me at Mrs. Dennison’s to-morrow and take me for a drive?”
“Thank you,” he said, and his eyes, smiling at her, were suddenly amazingly young. “What a dear you are, Dolores—isn’t that your name?”
“Yes,” she nodded. “And you may call me by it, if you like. I’ll expect you about eleven.”
And on that she had turned and rejoined her partner and floated away, while Mark Heron moving stiffly, shoulders and head very erect, passed out of the ball-room into the still quiet of the night outside.
A very fragrant memory! One of many! And that was all! Good God, what a fool he had been!
They became very close friends. The secret open between them, they treated it with all the disarming frankness of their nature. For they were very oddly alike in thought and feeling, despite the dissimilarity of their years.
“Mummy wanted to warn me,” said Dolores, on one of their long outings together. “That’s why she told me. I expect other people would think it dreadfully odd of her. I did, to begin with—though I don’t think I let her see that. But you see she told me she had married with bandaged eyes, and she was so terribly afraid I might do the same. I never could understand why mummy never liked Ann, and why she was so fond of me. It didn’t seem fair. But you know she loved you. It must seem funny to you, looking back on things, to think she loved you.”
“It doesn’t seem funny,” said Mark Heron. “It seems tragic. We get things horribly messed up when we are young—as we grow old they straighten out and we see just where the strands went wrong. The only thing in my life that can ever have been worth having was you, Dolores, and I put you right outside in those days.”
“Yes. Well, I don’t think that the only thing worth living for at the moment is a baby,” said Dolores. “I don’t see how one can be expected to, when one is young. One’s own life, one’s own emotions, one’s own feelings seem much more important.”
“And, in the end, they go out like a candle when there comes the puff of old age,” said Heron a trifle sadly. “And what then?”
“I don’t know,” admitted Dolores. “Because, you see, I don’t really think children are much use to you. Mummy has got me and Ann—and Ann and she very nearly hate each other, and even I, though I love mummy most tremendously, do resent her trying to interfere in any way. If I am quite frank, with myself,” said Dolores, “I’d say that I am the most important factor in my life at present. Mother belongs to the past ages and doesn’t count very much, and mythical babies belong to the next generation and don’t count at all. The whole world—I mean my world—revolves round me.”
“Yes; well, that is exactly how I used to feel,” remarked Heron. “You’re damnably like me.”
Dolores stole a side glance at him. “Were you tremendously curious?” she asked. “I mean about emotion, sensations. Did you just kiss people—make love to them—to find out what it felt like?”
“The joy of life,” said Heron. “Yes, I was a bit of a pagan about that.”
“I wish I knew,” said Dolores, “what was really right—what wrong. Oh, I know what one is taught at school by wise, elderly spinsters, who really don’t know anything about it. But I wish the innermost me knew what makes it wrong to give oneself in love, outside of marriage, and right to do it, in.”
Mark Heron gave a little laugh and put his hand over hers. “The right and wrong of that question,” he said, “lies in big, beautiful answers like yourself, my dear.”
“Children,” said Dolores. “But that’s just it. Why must I be what the Church and society calls moral, for the sake of the next generation, when in reality I am the person that matters?”
He laughed again and swung her to her feet. “You come to the wrong guide, my dear,” he said. “I’ve no wisdom that could be any use to you—only I’d give all that I possess to keep your present purity untouched. That’s all I know.”
“Well, but that’s illogical,” said Dolores. “And quite outside the point. I shall have to settle it for myself.”
“Or perhaps some man will settle it for you,” said Mark Heron, and helped her back into the car. “I only pray to God that he is a better man than I have ever been.”
Colin Baird, broad-shouldered, good-natured, cheerful, met the train which deposited Ann and Captain Plumer out on the narrow, uncovered platform of the Ravine Station.
“There he is,” said Captain Plumer to Ann. “Good old Colin, I knew he’d turn up to meet the train.”
Ann followed his pointing finger. She was, though she would only admit that to herself, most desperately tired of this long, seemingly endless journey. They had been in the train now two whole days and three nights. Everything was smothered with dust and dirt. And though the last part of their journey had led up and up into the Highlands, she had been too tired, too out of tune with everything, to admire the fresh greenness or the radiant views. She had never perhaps in all her life felt so on edge, and then they had rattled into this little set-apart station, surrounded by its tall, swaying pine trees that made one think of Scotland somehow, and Captain Plumer was saying, “Look, there’s Colin Baird.”
She saw him then, a large, powerful figure in his khaki uniform. Khaki shorts, leaving exposed strong brown knees, white shirt collar open and turned down over the khaki coat. He did not wear a hat—it was late afternoon and the sun had long ago lost all fierceness—his short brown hair had a distinct tint of red in it, his blue-grey eyes laughed out of a sunburnt face. His appearance was in some strange way restful to her jaded nerves; she had an odd feeling of immense repose, meeting his eyes.
Captain Plumer introduced them. “Miss Fabian—Colin Baird—our District Commissioner. Within his hands, Miss Fabian, lies the settlement of all your difficulties.”
Ann had a queer, sharp feeling that it would be good to put her difficulties into those strong, brown hands.
“You must think, from Captain Plumer’s description, that I am going to make an awful nuisance of myself,” she hastened to say.
“I am not afraid,” Colin smiled at her. He had a very infectious smile. It showed such perfect teeth. “I like difficulties and helping ladies with their safaris.”
“Colin’s almost notorious,” laughed Plumer. “Last year there was an intrepid lady came out to these parts on a motor bike. Do you remember her, Colin?”
“She wasn’t a bad sort,” said Baird calmly, “though all the rest of you poked fun at her.”
“I assure you, Miss Fabian,” explained Plumer. “This lady, I don’t remember her name, came up to these parts husband-hunting on a motor bike. Each bachelor D.C. passed her on to the other until she landed up here in Colin’s place, and he was so soft-hearted he nearly married her, only one of the settlers stepped in and did it for him.”
“Shut up, you ass,” said Colin. “Miss Fabian, I’ve booked you a room at the hotel, and I hoped to-night that you and Plumer would dine with me. You’ll meet our doctor and his wife.”
“That is most awfully kind of you,” said Ann. “Perhaps after a very large bath I shall feel clean. This journey leaves one feeling like something that has never seen either soap or water.”
“Well, a bath you’ll get of sorts at the hotel,” he assured her, “though I can’t vouch for the size. This is a queer country for baths. Let’s get your stuff together, and then I’ll drive you out to the hotel. Plumer, old man, you are staying with me for the night.”
How friendly everyone was in this strange, new world in which she found herself. Some of Ann’s aggressiveness melted away in the genial atmosphere of the little dinner in the D.C.’s house. The doctor and his wife were a very cheery couple—he, round-faced and rubicund, she a little sun-dried perhaps, her prettiness faded, but still charming enough to be very attractive. And what a fuss they all made of Ann. Mrs. Mackenzie thought her a beautiful girl and said so plainly after Colin had driven Ann back to her hotel, and he and Plumer had dropped into the doctor’s house for a final drink.
“Do you think ‘beautiful’?” asked Colin. He was very soft-hearted where women was concerned. It was just chance that he was still a bachelor—he had very often wished to get married. “I don’t think she’s that, but somehow, she strikes me as pathetic.”
“Lord—that’s good,” chuckled Plumer. “Wish Miss Fabian heard you. If ever there was an aggressive, well able to look after herself female——” he broke off. “And yet I don’t know,” he went on more slowly. “Perhaps you are right. She is pathetic. She has an immense—don’t know what other adjective to use—hunger for being loved, and she is, in some odd way, unlovable.”
“She won’t be to the right man,” said Mrs. Mackenzie. She glanced reflectively at Colin. She was a born match-maker, and so far life in the Ravine District had provided her with scant material.
“You don’t sound as if you’d fallen in love yourself, Plumer,” chaffed Dr. Mackenzie. He poured out drinks for all round. “Or has the young lady given you the turned down thumb?”
“Lord, no,” said Plumer. “My courting days are over. I’ve seen a lot of Miss Fabian on board. She interests me immensely.”
Mrs. Mackenzie glanced up at him. “I thought you were only really interested in criminals, Captain Plumer,” she said.
“Well, that is my pet hobby,” admitted Plumer. “And a great many people whom you’d never suspect come into the category, Mrs. Mackenzie.”
“I dare say—but not Miss Fabian,” laughed Mrs. Mackenzie. “You may as well own up at once. You have been whiling the time away on board ship by a little flirtation.”
“Seems rather a shame,” thrust in Colin lazily, “to dissect my late guest like this. Anyway, she’s a sporting damsel, and I take my hat off to her.”
“You’ll do more than that when you see her sister,” said Plumer darkly, and turned the conversation into other channels.
Whether he thought her beautiful or whether it was as he had said that he felt sorry for her, at least Colin contrived to see a lot of Ann in the weeks that followed. He would take her out in his car to show her this or that beauty spot, which she must try and paint; nearly every afternoon he dropped in at the hotel for tea; he met her constantly at Mrs. Mackenzie’s, or gave little dinner parties at his own house at which Ann was the guest of honour. Perhaps he felt himself to be falling in love. He was for all his size and strength and wisdom—the natives called him “The Man who knows all”—a very simple creature. And there was much about Ann that appealed to him. He liked her tallness, the gravity of her watching eyes, her lips it was so difficult to make smile. He rather gathered from little things she said to him that she had never been happy. He thought one often saw the reflection of this unhappiness in her face, and it made his attitude towards her very kindly. He got a great deal of satisfaction out of being able to make her laugh.
Mrs. Mackenzie said to both her husband and Captain Plumer that Colin Baird was just on the verge of being in love. Just a little touch would send him toppling in. She set her wits trying to discover just this little something that would upset his balance.
“For God’s sake, leave him alone,” warned Dr. Mackenzie. “You once before tried your hand at matchmaking, and it was—and still is—a ghastly failure.”
“Don’t be unkind, Jack,” remonstrated his wife. “The man in that case had been drinking himself to pieces, and I hoped she’d stop him. She wasn’t strong enough, that’s all. But Colin has got no vices. He’s a dear, and as a bachelor he’s completely wasted.”
“Yes. Well, you don’t know much about the girl, do you?” said Dr. Mackenzie. He stood on the veranda of his house with his golf clubs slung on one shoulder. He was just off to play a round with Captain Plumer. Golf was about the only distraction they had in this small outpost of the Empire. “And love is a ticklish thing. Plays the devil with some people’s lives.”
“You’re an ungrateful thing,” said Mrs. Mackenzie. They were very good friends, these two, a comradeship which had evolved out of a brief spell of very passionate love. “And you are getting stout. I shall cut your food. Run along and play your little game of golf. Colin’s taken Miss Fabian out to the Bamboo Forest this afternoon.”
And Ann! In the midst of all this, Ann’s heart was standing quite still—waiting. Happiness—she never remembered being happy. All her life had been twisted and warped by a great aggressive hunger for love. Always it had seemed to be denied to her, now it was as though slowly, breathlessly, the wonder of it was unfolding in her soul. She loved Colin long before he came to think he loved her—with such an intensity of passion that it left her dazed. Hearing his voice, touching his hand, meeting his eyes, her whole body would thrill—flooded with some mysterious joy. She could not keep that secret to herself. All the small society of the Ravine knew it before Colin himself guessed.
She dared not look into her own heart to ask any questions. She could only wait, every fine fibre of her being stretched to make no movement till he himself should speak.
“You should go carefully, old man,” warned Captain Plumer, looking in one afternoon, after his game of golf with Dr. Mackenzie, to find Colin stretched out in his easy chair having a sundowner. “You go about with her a lot, you know. She’ll think you’re in love with her, and then her love will engulf you.”
He helped himself to a drink, and then stood by the table, studying Colin.
“Are you in love with her?” he asked slowly.
Colin stirred and stretched great limbs and half closed grey-blue eyes. He was thinking of this afternoon that he had spent with Ann, and of some of the things she had said to him, of the queer fervent glow that had been in her eyes as she looked at him, and of how her hands had trembled meeting his.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “But I wish you wouldn’t talk about her like that, Plumer. It seems pretty beastly.”
Plumer shrugged his shoulders. “Sorry,” he said. “It is so much my habit to discuss people—dissect them where I can——” he broke off. “Though, mind you, I haven’t succeeded in dissecting Miss Fabian,” he added. “But she’ll do nothing by halves, and I’m afraid”—he took a sip of his whisky, looking away—“that she is loving you.”
“Why afraid?” asked Colin. He swung his feet off the rests of his chair and sat up. His face looked eager, boyish—for all his thirty-four years he was singularly young. “If I thought that, I’d ask her to marry me tomorrow.”
“Yes—that was why I said ‘afraid,’” said Captain Plumer. He put his glass down. “It is the kind of hotheaded, generous stupidity which I should expect from you, Baird.”
Colin swung to his feet—he was for the second, angry. “Look here,” he said, “what the hell do you mean by that, Plumer. You’re always sneering at something.”
Captain Plumer put a quick hand on the other’s arm. “Now don’t flare up, Baird,” he apologised. “You’re quite right. It is no damned business of mine. Only Miss Fabian’s personality has impressed me. She is a very strong character—far stronger than, I believe, you realise. And I don’t know that you’ll be happy, Baird, with that amount of strength opposing you all through life.”
“Well, when I want you to choose my wife for me, I’ll tell you,” said Colin still fiercely, and turned away.
It was perhaps just the toppling touch that Mrs. Mackenzie had felt was wanted. If Baird felt that anyone needed championing, he was on their side at once. Besides the knowledge that Ann loved him—that she had let other people see that she loved him, roused all the inherent chivalry of his nature.
He proposed to her the next day. They had only known each other for three weeks, but Africa provides an atmosphere in which emotional events move with extreme rapidity. Besides, Ann would be going away in a couple of days—Dolores was expected to arrive that evening. He could not let her go without setting her heart at rest.
He proposed to her during the course of their afternoon walk, standing up on a little hillock that overlooked the golf courses. Away in the distance two diminutive figures, Captain Plumer and Dr. Mackenzie, played their inevitable round of golf, surrounded by a bevy of golf boys. No one else was in sight. The world, sloping and green and fresh, stretched all round them and in the distance, black in contrast to the other green, the bamboo forest raised spiderly spikes and swayed with every current of breeze against a blue sky. But for that forest one would have thought oneself in England and, looking up, Colin half expected to see a lark in the sky. Jolly little fellows—larks! He would have liked to have seen one stationary up there in the sky, singing its little heart out like they did in England. Then he looked back at Ann.
“Let’s sit down,” he said. “The grass is as dry as a bone, and I’ve got something I want to say to you. We are as alone here as though the whole world was ours.”
Ann sat down. She kept her eyes lowered, her lips very tight. She looked at that moment sullen and dangerous and unresponsive, and for just one queer second Colin hesitated, as though warned by fear. Then he put out his hand and took hers.
“Ann,” he said, “you know what I am going to say, don’t you? Ann, I love you—will you marry me?”
He waited a second or two for her answer, waited for her to raise her eyes to his. When she did so he got his reward, for the glory of her eyes transfigured all her face to a glowing tenderness. She was very beautiful at that moment—as beautiful as ever Felicity had been.
“Oh,” she whispered and caught her breath. “You love me.”
He took her into his arms then and tilted back her hat and kissed her, saying all the little whispered things which men say on these occasions. But Ann only said one thing and she said it over and over again with passionate intensity. “I love you. I love you.”
It was her love engulfing him as Captain Plumer had foretold it would.
They met Mrs. Mackenzie as they strolled back, hand in hand, to the hotel. She stopped her car to speak to them.
“What have you two been doing?” she asked, her eyes dancing from their clasped hands to their flushed faces. “Come now—own up.”
“Ann and I are engaged,” said Colin. “You can be the first to offer us congratulations.”
“Oh, you dears,” said Mrs. Mackenzie. “I am glad. I won’t stop now, but you must come over this evening, and we’ll celebrate.”
“My sister is arriving by that same train as I came by,” explained Ann.
“Well, then, you must bring her too,” insisted Mrs. Mackenzie. “How surprised and delighted she will be.”
She drove off, waving her free hand at them. Colin slipped his own over Ann’s again.
“You didn’t want it kept secret, did you?” he asked.
“No,” she answered. “Only—oh, Colin,” there was a break in her voice, “if only you and I were alone in the world. These other people brush in and interfere.”
“Would you wipe them all out?” he laughed. “Ann, I’ve got an idea. Why shouldn’t we get married at once before you go off on this Ruenzori trip, and then I’ll take a month’s leave and come with you.”
“But, Dolores,” said Ann. She hesitated on the name as though sudden memory came to her.
“Oh, bother Dolores!” he answered. “Does she matter? If you’re a married woman and can chaperon her, we’ll take Plumer along to make a four. Ann, I’ve always thought of getting married like that and going on safari for my honeymoon. Part of me loves this country—her queer, mysterious nights, her great haunting moon, the camp fire, the little tents in the shadow of some old tree. Ann!”
“Oh, if you’d like to, let’s do it,” said Ann. “Nothing matters to me but you.”
Dolores did not arrive that evening by train. She sent a telegram, which arrived rather belatedly as Ann was changing for dinner, to say that she had found someone to drive her up and knew Ann wouldn’t mind, it was so much nicer. They were stopping for the night at Nakuru with friends.
It was a long telegram; obviously Dolores had wanted to stress the respectability of her adventure. Reading it, Ann smiled. Had romance come dancing into Dolores’ life? And then the smile faded out and she stood quite still for a second or two, staring at herself in the glass. Dark and fierce her eyes looked, staring back; the straight black line of her hair made a frame for her face.
“The past is all finished and done with,” Ann’s thin lips whispered. “Do you hear? I am never going to think of it again. I love and am loved. Dolores won’t want to interfere.”
None the less, she was glad that Dolores had seemingly her own romance, that she was not arriving that night for dinner. Dolores was so lovely, her laughter so infectious, her heart so free from any shadow.
“Mine can be free too,” stated Ann to her watching shadow. “No one knows. No one need ever know.”
The dinner-party was a cheerful affair. If Captain Plumer and Dr. Mackenzie both had their respective doubts, they concealed them very successfully. Colin mooted his idea of an immediate marriage amidst much laughter and good-natured chaff. Mrs. Mackenzie was, of course, enamoured with the idea.
“A wedding in my house! What a lovely thought! We can motor the Rev. Mr. Simpson over from Eldoret.” For the Ravine was too small a station to boast of either church or parson.
“Or drive over the whole party in a char-a-banc to the church at Eldoret,” suggested Dr. Mackenzie.
“Oh, no, do let us have it here,” argued his wife. “It is so much more romantic. Ann, wouldn’t you like a proper East African wedding, now you are here?”
“Yes,” said Ann. “Only I feel as though Captain Plumer were eyeing me darkly and saying to himself: ‘She’s worse than that female who came up on a motorbike.’”
There was general laughter at this, in which Plumer joined.
“I am,” he admitted, his voice cheery enough to rob it of offence. “And I am adding, ‘And, damn it all, I brought her.’”
“Oh, I should have come in any case,” said Ann, and for a moment her eyes challenged his. “You can’t arrogate Fate to yourself like that, Captain Plumer.”
“Well, if you ask me,” put in Dr. Mackenzie, “you are a couple of rash young things to talk of marrying when you’ve only known each other three weeks. Why, Mollie and I were engaged for years.”
“Yes, and horrible it was,” shrugged Mrs. Mackenzie. “I nearly married other people several times in the interval.”
“Joking apart,” said Colin; he glanced at Ann, and his eyes smiled with their new tenderness. He felt tremendously responsible now for Ann’s new happiness; she had made no attempt to conceal how much it rested on him. “It does seem the sensible thing to do. You see, I’ve six weeks’ leave due to me. I can take it now and go off on safari with Ann and Dolores—we thought of asking you, Plumer, old man, as a fourth.”
“What an amazing way to go on a honeymoon!” grunted Mackenzie.
Captain Plumer shook a decisive head. “Thank you, Colin, my lad,” he said. “I quite realise that you will need a fourth, but it can’t be me. I’ve just come back from leave.”
“By Jove, that’s true,” said Colin, a little perturbed.
Ann laughed. “We must leave it,” she said, “and ask Dolores. You don’t know my sister yet, Colin. She is quite capable of arriving up here complete with a husband of her own.”
So they left it, but the suggestion had been made, and Mrs. Mackenzie’s eager, matchmaking mind had seized on it. A marriage in her house! Already she was making the arrangements, the little lunch that would follow the event, the people from outside who could be asked in, the bride’s dress hastily evolved out of a white dress she had seen Ann wearing one day. If Mrs. Mackenzie had anything to do with it, they certainly would be married.
“Leave it all to me, dear,” she whispered, hugging Ann, when she said good night. “I’ll arrange everything beautifully.”
Colin walked back with Ann to her hotel. It was quite a short walk and it was a very lovely night.
“I’ve got to be out all day to-morrow,” he explained. “I shan’t see you till dinner-time, Ann.”
“And then Dolores will be here,” said Ann. “Will you dine with us, Colin, and meet her?”
“Would you rather that—or will you come to my house?” he asked.
“No, I’d rather you came here,” said Ann; a little stiffness had come into her voice. It had come there when she spoke of Dolores.
He drew her into his arms and kissed her in the shadow of the veranda. There was no one about to either see or hear.
“You are sure about things?” he asked. “I am not rushing you, Ann, am I, into marrying me without giving you time to think?”
She clung to him with sudden passion. He could feel her whole body pressing against his.
“If you could take me to-night,” she whispered, “make me all yours, I’d be glad—so glad. Colin, I want to give you myself, soul, mind and body.”
He was a little taken aback, perhaps even shocked. Of course she didn’t mean the thing as she said it, but the passion of her surrender was very evident. He had a sudden memory of Plumer’s good-natured, sarcastic warning. He tried to soothe her with his hands and, stooping his head, he kissed her very gently. There was perhaps a certain cool detachment in that kiss which warned Ann. She showed, anyway, sudden self-control, drawing away from him quickly.
“Good night, Colin,” she said, and now the stiffness was back again in her voice. “We’ll see you to dinner to-morrow night, then.”
“Good night,” he answered, still a little embarrassed, and stood and watched her disappear into the darkness of her room.
He walked back to his own house, hands thrust deep into his pockets. His mind was very considerably perturbed. In that brief second when she had stood against him, so swayed by passion, he had known that he did not in reality love her. All sorts of things had gone to make him think he loved her—being sorry for her, being thrown into her company so much, being teased by Plumer. And now here he was on the edge of marriage, and to-night her passion had left him quite unmoved. He hoped to God Plumer would not be on the veranda waiting to dissect him when he got in.
To escape never occurred to him. All his ideas of honour stood arrayed against that. He had damn well got to go through with it, having gone so far. And all the chivalry of his nature rose up to do battle for Ann. She loved him. God! That was an immense compliment for a girl to pay a man. He was grateful and quiet and humble in his thoughts before her, but he did not love her. There was no getting away from that.
There is no new soft coming of the day in Africa—no dawn, as there is no twilight. Light leaps suddenly into being. The world with one short, quick step swings from the dark shadows of night into the brazen sunlight of day.
Colin woke at six the next morning, and already the sun lay everywhere in his room. It had probed with long, shifting shafts of light into the darkest corners. As a little boy he had been tremendously fond of sunbeams. He had used to try and catch them in his hands and carry them to his mummy, and it had always disappointed him—a fresh blow each time—to find, when he opened his hands to show them to her, there was nothing there. A portrait of his mother stood on the table by his bed. He lay looking at it. She had always been so wise—that mother of his—so consoling in all his childish griefs. He never remembered her laughing at him over his disappointment about the sunbeams.
She would not laugh at him now. But what would she tell him he ought to do? He wished she was there so that he could go to her and ask her—showing her his empty, disappointed hands.
Anyway, it was no use lying in bed, lauding oneself with self-pity. Colin swung out of bed and shouted lustily for his tea. He had got a long day in front of him. A hundred miles to drive in the car—a case to investigate at the other end. And it was a case that needed a certain amount of concentration—a pretty nasty murder case. He must put his own troubles out of his head for to-day.
Of course they went with him. Dancing along the road in front of him, peering out of that cluster of trees, pouncing on him if the road lay straight and clear and he could let the car hum along without too much thought to the steering. Ann’s face went with him, her dark, tragic eyes, her heavy black hair, her thin lips. Always unhappy—longing to be loved—and now she loved him. His must not be the hand to hurt her with unkindness again.
“Colin, don’t ever let a woman down!” His mother’s voice that, her soft, gentle hands saying good-bye to him. “I know I can trust you not to do that.”
“Well, I won’t let her down, and that’s that,” said Colin almost aloud to his attendant thoughts. “And now, for God’s sake, let me concentrate on that case.”
An old woman had been found murdered in her hut. Three men were implicated. Three men and a young girl. The evidence was all tangled up and distorted by the usual lies. One very rarely got to the truth at the bottom of these native cases. There was always their inherent fear, their dislike at having old customs interfered with, to contend against. Colin was fond of the native, but he did not make any attempt to understand him. He did not claim to be a very understanding person about anything—he was not like Plumer, always dissecting and labelling people’s motives, their reasons, their desires.
The accident had occurred almost before he had had time to realise that there was another car on the road with him. It must have been driving at a tremendous speed, and the corners on this road were notoriously tricky. There was a kind of flash of grey, a jarring wrench of brakes and gears, and then his own car was at a standstill, still throbbing from the force of the contact, and the other car—a long, grey-bodied car—lay on its side, some distance back along the road he had been travelling.
Colin wrenched open the door of his car and leapt out, his native boy, ashen green in the face and quaking, crept out at the rear.
“Pretty bad smash, bwana,” said the boy; his eyes glinted towards the overturned car. “Plenty many dead there,” he added.
“Don’t be a confounded idiot,” ordered Colin, and strode back along the road.
A man’s figure greeted him crawling out from the open side of the stricken car. He knew it at once. Mark Heron. That was just the sort of foolhardy thing that old villain would do to drive at forty-five miles an hour along this almost notorious road.
“Hallo, Heron,” he called out, “I’m damned sorry. You were nearly for it that time.”
“It doesn’t matter a curse about me,” said Heron. Colin noted now how sick and white he looked. “But there’s a girl in there. I almost believe she is killed.”
“Good God!” said Colin. He turned and shouted for his boy. “Can we get her out? Is she pinned under?”
“I don’t know,” said Heron. “I spoke to her. She made no answer. O God, curse me for this thing I’ve done!”
“Steady, old chap.” Colin put a restraining hand on his arm. “Let’s see. It may be only a faint.”
They had, the three of them, the most terrible difficulty to get her out. In the end, it was Colin who lifted her bodily from the wreckage and laid her down on the bank by the side of the road, under the shade of some giant tree.
She had lain so horribly still in his arms, and, looking down at her, he had caught his breath in fear and reverence. She was so lovely, so exquisitely made. Her gold hair brushed against his face as he staggered on to one knee to lay her down. It was fragrant and soft like the hair of “dear, dead women” of whom he had read and dreamt. The lashes, laid close down on her pale cheeks, were dark gold at the roots, shading to a very faint colour at the tips. Her small hands, her delicate wrists, her little folded feet were the most exquisite things he had ever seen.
“I believe it’s only a faint,” said Heron. “Oh, thank God! Water! We ought to get some water for her, Baird. Feel her heart—here!”
They knelt beside her; he guided Colin’s hand till it rested on the soft, sweet-scented skin just under the open front of her dress.
“Yes, she’s alive,” said Colin stupidly. “Who is she, Heron? Where were you making for?”
“I’ll tell you all that later,” said Heron. He stood up, straightening his shoulders. “Water—there used to be a water-hole round these parts.”
“It’s down there,” said Colin. “By that clump of trees; There’s a can in my car. Tell my boy to get some.”
“No, I’ll get it myself,” Heron answered. He moved away. “Can’t trust them to be quick.”
Colin realised afterwards that he ought to have gone himself. At the time he just stayed on rather as though he were in a dream, staring at the girl. She stirred at last under his gaze, those gold-flecked lashes quivered, a little colour floated back to the perfect face. And then she opened her eyes, intensely blue eyes, hazy now as though with sleep, and stared straight up at him.
“Where am I?” whispered Dolores; a long, shivering sigh passed over her. She put out her arm and clung to him. “Oh, I’ve been so desperately frightened. Are you quite, quite sure I’m not dead!”
He gathered her rather absurdly into his arms. He had to sit down on the grass beside her to do that, and with obvious content Dolores snuggled against him and let her head lie back against his shoulder. She liked this young man. Her first brief glance, when she had had a sort of floating impression that he might be the Angel Gabriel, had assured her of that. She liked everything about him—his eyes, his mouth, the kind of tobaccoey smell that clung to his clothes, his hands. Most especially she liked his hands. She clung to them, so she had good opportunity to observe them.
“What happened?” she asked again. “We were rushing along. I saw you coming. I was so afraid I shut my eyes. Something hurt me. I don’t remember anything more.”
“Are you hurt?” asked Colin. “It was perfectly damnable of me to let my car run into yours.”
She sat upright, feeling all her delicate limbs, twisting her feet for his benefit, taking deep, long breaths.
“No, I’m not hurt,” she said, and lay back against him in perfect content. “It probably wasn’t your fault. Mr. Heron is a scandalous scorcher.”
“He does drive pretty fast,” admitted Colin. “But this has probably taught him a lesson. He’s had a bad fright.”
“Where is he?” asked Dolores. “Isn’t it absurd?” she giggled faintly. “When I woke up just now and saw you, I thought I must be dead and you were the Angel Gabriel.”
“Do I look like an angel?” Colin frowned a little over the gold head that rested so bewitchingly just under his chin.
“I don’t know,” said Dolores. “The man who did St. George in ‘Where the Rainbow Ends,’ the time I saw it, had just your coloured hair and eyes.”
“Yes? Well, St. George wasn’t an angel,” said Colin. “Do you know, if you feel up to it, I think you ought to put your hat on. This sun is treacherous, for all it seems so cool.”
Heron staggered back with a tin of water. He had run most of the way. He was hot and very much out of breath.
“Dolores, you imp of mischief,” he gasped, “what a fright you gave me?”
Dolores! The name brought Colin to his feet with a stammered exclamation.
“Are you—are you Miss Dolores Fabian?” he asked.
Dolores nodded. She had put her hat on at his suggestion. It was a soft brown double terai and it was amazingly becoming.
“Why?” she added, and smiled at him. He really was very attractive to look at—like the St. George for whom she had had at one time a very fervent admiration.
“I must introduce myself,” said Colin, “in more ways than one. Your sister Ann has done me the honour of becoming engaged to me. My name is Colin—Colin Baird.”
“District Commissioner of the Ravine,” added Heron. “By Jove, your sister hasn’t been long about it!”
Dolores stayed very still, staring up at him, her blue eyes oddly perturbed.
“You’re engaged to Ann?” she said softly.
Colin tried to laugh. Yet he, too, was conscious of distress, perturbation. Her eyes—it was ridiculous, but her eyes seemed to implore him for truth which must deny his announcement.
“It is hardly fair,” he said quickly. “Two shocks in one morning. Please try to approve of me, Miss Fabian.”
She looked away; the colour flooded her face. “How rude you must think me!” she whispered. “It wasn’t that—only——”
“Only you’ve had just about as much as you can stand,” Heron intervened. “Now, Baird, what about it? Where were you dashing to, when my grey car interfered?”
Colin told them. “We can’t drag Miss Fabian all out there,” he added quickly. “I’ll turn round and take you back to the Ravine.”
“Oh, please,” said Dolores. She held out her hands to Heron. “Help me up, Mark,” she ordered. “I’m quite all right. I’d like to go with you. Ann will expect me when she sees me.”
“It won’t take an hour to drive you back to the Ravine,” argued Colin. “You had better let me do that, hadn’t you?”
Dolores drew closer to Heron; she was still holding his hands.
“Explain to him how mad and wilful I am, Mark,” she said. “I don’t want to be driven back to the Ravine and Ann—not just yet.”
“Better give way,” said Heron; he tucked her hand under his arm. “We’ll go your way, Baird. You can drop us at that new hotel—you know it, just by the railway cutting—and pick us up on your way back, and they’ll send out a salvage party for my car and kit. We can leave your boy with it, can’t we? I don’t happen to be travelling with one.”
“You are quite sure?” said Colin. He tried to catch a glimpse of those blue eyes again; she kept them very obstinately lowered; the gold lashes mocked him.
“Quite sure,” said Dolores. “You shall tell me all about yourself and Ann as we go. It sounds most wonderfully thrilling.”
Everybody, except perhaps Mrs. Mackenzie and Ann herself, saw the tragedy which loomed over Colin Baird’s mad wedding. Plumer, Mackenzie, Mark Heron, even Dolores herself, would have done what they could to stop it had they dared. But there are times in people’s lives when even friends do not dare to interfere, and this seemingly was one of them.
He could not let her down. That sentence was written in letters of fire across all Colin’s waking hours; it followed him into his dreams. He did not, oddly enough, in his own mind connect it with Dolores. He did not say “I love Dolores—that is why I have no love for Ann.” He did not realise it as that because he had found out before he met Dolores that he did not love Ann. He did not even admit—perhaps he did not know—that he loved Dolores. They were very good friends, and he thought of her as a most perfectly beautiful girl. He had told Ann that he thought of her as that, and Ann had not seemed to resent it. Dolores was the only person in the world, beyond himself, whom Ann loved.
No, the fault of his failure did not lie in Dolores’ presence; it was something inherently wrong with himself. He had thought he loved Ann, and he did not love her. He had asked her to marry him, and he could not let her down. The problem was delightfully simple really; he imagined that no one knew of it but himself.
The trip to Elgon had been abandoned, and Ann and Dolores stayed on at the Ravine Hotel for a month, waiting for Colin’s leave to come through and the arrangements for the marriage to be completed.
A month can sometimes pass with the seeming swiftness of a few days and, at others, it appears to drag along, packing years into its going. To most of the little groups of white people at the Ravine, this month was the longest they ever remembered. They were as gay, as sociable as ever; picnics were arranged, dinner parties given. The hotel gave a dance to which all the settlers of the district rolled in; Mark Heron and Plumer took it in turns to teach Dolores golf. But behind all their gaiety, their friendliness, this foreboding of disaster hung like a dark cloud. Colin was very popular with everyone; the knowledge that he was obviously making a mistake and might have to pay heavily for it, depressed them all.
“Supposing one went to him,” said Plumer to Mark Heron, two or three days before the ceremony—Mark Heron had joined their little group at Dolores’ urgent request, he was to be the fourth member of the honeymoon safari—“supposing one went to him and said, ‘Colin, old chap, you are making a damned hash of things. You don’t love this girl—life’s going to be hell for you——’”
“Well, we don’t know that it is,” interrupted Heron lazily. “Each man to his own mutton, Plumer, don’t forget that!”
“You old hypocrite,” said Plumer. For some reason or other, he was feeling this matter very deeply. “You’ve practised the gentle art often enough to know damn well that Colin doesn’t love Miss Fabian.”
“I don’t suppose I know anything about love, as Colin understands it,” answered Heron. “He’s a most moral and upright young man.”
“He’s a damned good sort!” Plumer stirred restlessly. “And the cursed thing about it all is that he’d have fallen in love with Dolores—as she has undoubtedly done with him—if he had been given the chance.”
“Dolores!” said Heron, more quickly. “You don’t think that she——”
“Poor kid!” said Plumer fiercely. Always when he thought of Dolores in trouble’—those blue eyes of hers wet with tears—he felt fierce like this, hot with a desire to protect her. “Of course, she likes him and it hurts, and she doesn’t know why it hurts. Love is going to hurt Dolores most damnably one of these days.”
“You’re a queer fellow,” said Heron. He rose and stood beside Plumer. “Why don’t you marry Dolores yourself?” he asked. “If I know anything about love at all, you’ve got it pretty badly.”
“Yes,” said Plumer. He gave a little hard laugh. “Well, some of us are content to give without asking too much back, Heron. I’m too old for Dolores, but I’d give my life to shield her, and that is quite true.”
“It seems”—Heron’s voice sounded a trifle sarcastic, though perhaps he did not mean it that way—“that you’d also be quite willing to hand her over to another man, if you thought that would bring her happiness.”
“I trust I’d have the guts to do that,” said Plumer rather vulgarly, and turned away.
He did not, however, speak to Baird, though it was on the tip of his tongue to do so more than once.
He even meditated tackling Ann on the subject, but again fell back on silence. There are things in which one cannot interfere.
Mrs. Mackenzie, all delighted bustle, hurried on the event deaf to her husband’s pessimism. The only thing she was a little doubtful about was the originally arranged honeymoon.
“That young and lovely sister,” admitted Mrs. Mackenzie. “I don’t know, if I were Ann, that I would take her with me. Two other people with one, on one’s honeymoon, is perhaps rather dangerous, isn’t it, Jack?”
“Dangerous!” snorted Jack. “It is the most utter tomfoolery. You’re asking for trouble, Mollie, and when it happens you can’t say I haven’t warned you.”
“You and that silly Captain Plumer,” sniffed Mrs. Mackenzie. “I believe he is afraid of marriage—he talks of it as though it were an infectious disease.”
“Well, it’s a disease in this case, anyway,” groaned Mackenzie. “Baird’s a decent lad and a damned good sport, but why the hell he wants to marry one girl whom he doesn’t love when the other girl, whom he is certainly ripe to fall for, is just under his nose, passes my comprehension. And you’re a wicked, matchmaking old woman to encourage him.”
“Jack!” gasped Mrs. Mackenzie, in shocked consternation. “You don’t mean to tell me that Colin Baird has fallen in love with Dolores. Oh, he couldn’t do that. I know men are awful where a pretty face is concerned, but that——”
“I did not say it, anyway,” corrected Dr. Mackenzie. “The point is, he is not in love with Miss Ann.”
“She ought not to go on the safari with them, if you really think that.” Mrs. Mackenzie pursued her own thoughts. “I think I’ll ask Dolores to stay here with me.”
“If you’d ask Miss Ann to do that and let Baird marry Dolores,” said her husband dryly, “there’d be more chance of happiness all round.”
Dolores told Ann of Mrs. Mackenzie’s invitation. She broached the matter two days before the wedding when they were in their own room at the hotel, getting ready for bed.
“But don’t you want to come with us?” asked Ann. She stood straight and tall in her white nightgown, watching Dolores brushing out her hair.
“Oh, of course I do,” said Dolores. “Only——”
“Only what, darling?” asked Ann. She moved impetuously and knelt by Dolores, and flung her arms round her. “Dolores, I don’t want to shut you out of my happiness,” she whispered. “Does my love for Colin make you feel shut out?”
“No, oh no,” said Dolores, and hid her face against the dark of Ann’s hair.
“I am so happy,” Ann’s voice went whispering on, “that sometimes I am afraid. Dolores”—her arms tightened —“I’ve never known happiness before. I’ve been starved and twisted by hate. Oh, I know you think I’m not all sane when I talk like this. But I am most horribly sane. You don’t know how hate has crept through all my life, darkening it, Dolores. How should you know—you’ve never hated anyone.”
She turned her face and pressed hot, hard lips against Dolores’ cheek.
“I love you, Dolores,” she said. “You and Colin—the only two people in the world whom I love. Don’t leave me now, Dolores—don’t fail me—it makes me feel a little as though you grudged me my happiness.”
“Oh, Ann, how could you think that?” said Dolores, and stood up suddenly and felt the hot colour rushing through her heart because of the half-truth of Ann’s words.
And yet they were not all true. She did not grudge Ann her happiness. Only to have to stand by, always a looker on—that was most desperately hard. His grey-blue eyes that stirred her to such dreams; his strong, brown hands that she had loved from that first day when they had held her. Her very dear St. George! Who could not look at her—who dared not brush against her hand in passing who was so miserably tongue-tied when they were left alone. She knew why. Oh yes, she knew why. But he was going to be Ann’s husband, and Ann did not want to shut her outside their joy!
“Of course I’ll come with you, if you really want me, Ann. Of course I’m not jealous of your joy!”
“You’ve always had everything,” Ann’s voice sounding a little hard now. She was rising; the folds of her nightgown hung straight and stiff about her. “Perhaps it seems a little strange that this should come to me instead of you. I loved him from the first day I saw him, Dolores. I was glad, glad that you weren’t here, because if you had been he would never have noticed me.”
“Oh, I don’t think that’s true, Ann, dear.”—Turn now, take her into your arms; if you do not do something like that, she will suspect; her hate will slash out and hit you like a sword.—“You’ve always been so funny, Ann, about people not liking you. The Napiers loved you. I love you. Colin loves you. Ann, dear Ann!”
A sudden, shivering sigh shook the stiff figure held in Dolores’ arms. She felt herself pushed away. Ann had walked over to the window; she stood with her back to the room, staring out.
“Why did you want to speak of them?” she asked. “Drag them in.” She swept round to look at Dolores. “My memory doesn’t go back much farther than the day when I found out that Mrs. Napier had no love for me at all—it had all been a pretence.”
“Oh, Ann,” whispered Dolores. “Are you sure? You were so young; how could you know?”
“I knew right enough,” said Ann. She seemed to suddenly weary of the subject and coming back to the dressing-table, took up the brush and started to brush her hair with long, sweeping strokes. “Don’t let’s talk of it, Dolores. That’s all finished and done with. Colin’s love builds a new world for me—and I want you to come into it.”
“And of course I want to come,” said Dolores. “Mark and I will amuse ourselves—not get in your way.”
“I like your Mr. Heron,” said Ann. “Only he’s oddly old to be a friend of yours. Dolores, why don’t you marry Captain Plumer. He is very much in love.”
“I don’t love him,” said Dolores slowly. “I don’t love anyone.” She threw her head a little back, fronting the future. “I—I don’t know a thing about love, Ann. I think I’m too shallow ever to feel it.”
Colin and Ann were married two days later. An East African wedding, as Mrs. Mackenzie delightedly explained it. The Mackenzie house was all decorated for the occasion, hung with gay festoons of flowers. Dolores was bridesmaid, Captain Plumer best man. The clergyman read the service over them in the little mud and wattle mission church, and joined their hands together and pronounced them man and wife. And afterwards there was an hilarious luncheon party, and all the men drank champagne with a hectic disregard to its possible effect, taken in large quantities like that in the middle of the day in Africa.
Colin and Ann were going to drive down to Nakuru for two or three days before the safari started off for Uganda. Ostensibly it was to buy a few things for the trip, but everyone was very facetious and amusing about it. They drove off from the Mackenzies’ house in Colin’s car, gaily festooned with old pairs of shoes and with a large “N.W.” (Newly Wed) painted on a card and stuck on at the back. Ann turned to wave at Dolores as the car swung away from the house. Her face was radiant. “Wish me joy, Dolores,” she had whispered as she had said good-bye.
And immediately the car had disappeared out of sight, flat despondency descended on the wedding party. Champagne, as Dr. Mackenzie pointed out, often does have that effect in Africa. Even Mrs. Mackenzie felt that the house looked oddly untidy with all its flowers and the rice lying about in heaps, and before she went to lie down for her afternoon rest she ordered the boys rather irritably to clear everything away.
The Rev. Mr. Simpson, a mild and unassuming little man of not much imagination, said he thought that everything had been a great success and the young couple had looked radiant. Captain Plumer, who helped him to find his car and saw him drive off, made no reply whatsoever to this remark. He went back to the house and without looking at Dolores at all, suggested to Dr. Mackenzie that they should get their golf clubs and see whether a couple of strenuous rounds might not clear off the effects of that damned champagne, and Mackenzie agreeing with him, gloomily they departed.
Mark Heron sat watching Dolores. Neither Dolores nor Ann had yet got into the African habit of lying down in the afternoon. Dolores had moved over to the Mackenzie house that morning because Ann had not liked to leave her alone in the hotel. She sat with her feet tucked up under her on Dr. Mackenzie’s long chair and stared at the boys busily sweeping away all the debris of the wedding.
“Well?” said Mark Heron presently. He was wondering whether there was any truth in Captain Plumer’s assertion.
“Well,” answered Dolores. “That’s that, isn’t it?”
She looked across at him and he noticed that though her lips smiled, her eyes stayed very quiet and shadowed, which was unlike Dolores. Generally her whole face lit up with the laughter of her heart.
“It’s a funny business, getting married,” said Heron slowly. He went and stood over beside her, and put his hand down on her shoulder. “Would you rather get out of going on this safari, Dolores?” he asked. “I’ll help—if I can.”
“Why do you ask that?” said Dolores. She sat very still and he realised that for the moment, at least, she shut him out of her confidences. “I am looking forward to it most tremendously.”
“I thought,” answered Heron. He broke off—after all, what right had he to intrude. “Sometimes one feels de trop with newly married people,” he added.
“Ann wants me to go,” said Dolores. “I spoke to her about it a day or two ago.” Now she looked up at him. “You know Mrs. Mackenzie has invited me to stay here. But Ann said if I did that, if I left her now, she would feel as though I were jealous of her joy.”
“What an amazing creature that half-sister of yours is,” said Heron. “Passionate; intense; morbid. And Baird’s a simple creature. God knows what he’ll make of her.”
“Ann loves him,” said Dolores slowly. “Perhaps love will alter her, make her happier.” She stood up quickly. “Oh, I hope they’ll be happy,” she whispered. “I don’t think I’ll be able to stick things otherwise.”
But farther than that in confidence to him she did not get.
Dolores was trying very hard to face the future and her own fear without making a fuss about it.
Mummie darling, wrote Dolores, Here we are right out in the gubber—that’s the African name for the wilds, you’ll remember. I don’t think I’ve spelt it right, but that is what it sounds like. Do you remember it at all, Mummie? I’ll try and bring it back. Well, first of all, there’s amazing greenness everywhere. Somehow, I thought Africa was all dust and sun. But here, though there is heaps of sun, it sparkles and shines and dances on, I should think, twenty different kinds of green. This present camp is slap in the middle of a banana grove, and in amongst the bananas are great trees with dark green leaves and scarlet flowers, and away behind them again are the mountains, all different coloured green till they lose themselves in a sort of hazy blue right up at the top. Then, if you come out of the banana grove, along the funny little flat-stamped path past the few fields of tall green Indian corn, you move suddenly into a forest of elephant grass. It’s like a forest, Mummy, so high it grows over your head, so thick the stalks are together. The little winding path goes through it, and it whispers and bends and crackles all round you as if hundreds of insects all the time worked in and out between its stalks. I can’t tell you how creepy these forests of elephant grass seem to me. The others laugh at me. We had to leave our car three camps ago, and from then on we have really marched. To-morrow we tackle the mountain. Half-way up the first day, the top the next. Stay there a day, just to see the beauty of it, and then drop down the other side into the Bwamba forest. That’s what I’m looking forward to. Elephants, Congo pygmies, adventure! I’ll write you letters from there, Mummie, that will make your hair curl I
How funny you are, darling, to say I don’t write you anything about myself—and how dare you wonder if I am happy. Of course I am—breathlessly. I love every minute of the hot day, every minute of the soft, marvellously cool nights. We start marching about six in the morning. I, in my shorts (most becoming they are, though I admit that Daddy was right; the sun did give me gip to begin with). And how the others laughed because I rubbed cold cream in and went hopping about when it stung. Anyway, jolly nice I look. Mark says so, and he knows. Ann and Colin walk in front and Mark and I bring up the rear. Ann never tires. She strides along, dear old Ann, and when we stop to breakfast she looks quite fresh, and I am hot and moist all over. We always stop for breakfast about eight-thirty, a kind of swanky picnic, for the boys and the porters have gone ahead, and they carry tables and chairs and tablecloths and everything, and the cook goes with them, and by the time we’ve got there he’s lit a fire between two stones and cooked us bacon and eggs and strong coffee, and often porridge. Oh, Mummy, I’ve such yards to tell you, I get all muddled up. But, happy? Can you see your daughter not happy under these circs.?
Of course, I don’t see so much of Ann as I used to do. She and Colin are a lot together, and Mark and I try to be discreet and keep out of the way as much as possible. Mark is an old dear—I am ever so fond of him.
She paused, her pen making an idle little splotch on the page. In all her letters to Mummy she had tried to refer to Mark Heron as casually as possible—not let Mummy see she guessed—and Felicity had answered in the same indifferent way: “Mark Heron—Heron—I seem to remember the name.” How funny life was, thought Dolores. They all sort of played parts and hid things from each other, and pretended there was nothing to hide. And love—one talked so indifferently about love—lightly! Sometimes, people made jokes about being in love. “You see, I loved him.” Mummy had said that simply, quietly, remembering, so it seemed, without any rancour, that episode of the past which had brought such glamour—so much wonder and such bitter tears into her life.
“I’ll talk about it like that one of these days,” whispered Dolores to herself. “I’ll say ‘I loved him’—and it won’t hurt any more.”
She caught her breath and pushed thought from her. She must get on with this letter to Mummy. She must stress the cheerfulness and leave out the pain.
And then just when I am feeling I couldn’t walk another step—yesterday I flopped half a mile from camp and asked Mark to carry me—we get into the camp, and there is such a hurry and bustle while we four lords of creation lie out in the long chairs, specially provided for us, under the shelter of the banda—you know what a banda is. I’m not going to stop and explain. Colin’s orderly supervises the putting up of the tents. He is always so funnily discreet about it. Ann and Colin’s big tent in the middle, Mark and I in our little humble ones on either side. And as soon as the tents are up, Ann and I have our baths, and after that we have lunch, and they carry our beds into the banda because the tents are too hot to sit in during the day, and we all lie down. Only Colin won’t do that. He’s so restless, he must always take his gun and go out and see if he can find anything to shoot. And sometimes, if she is very energetic, Ann goes with him, but Mark and I are the lazy ones, and we lie there till tea-time reading the papers or talking to each other, or sometimes sleeping. And then comes tea. It’s getting cool now, so we have that out-of-doors, and nearly always Colin’s orderly comes gravely and salutes just as we are finishing tea and says, “Bwana, there are plenty guinea fowl waiting to be killed,” or “Bwana, there is buck two fields away, and the porters are hungry.” So off we go, tramping through the elephant grass again, or across the fields of cultivation, and Colin and Mark kill things. I don’t like killing things or seeing them killed, but Ann doesn’t mind that side of it at all. Colin says she’s a wonderful shot. And then we come home, so tired and hungry, and the men have baths this time, and we all get into our pyjamas and dressing-gowns—don’t be shocked, Mum, there is something highly respectable about pyjamas—and in front of the tents the boys have lit a huge bonfire and we have dinner and sit round in our comfy chairs and chat till, one by one, we feel sleepy and toddle off to bed.
Again Dolores paused. So much of this was truth; such an undercurrent of drama lay hidden underneath. Those still, clear nights—that little group sitting round the fire. Colin’s grey-blue eyes, full of such misery, watching her. Had Ann ever noticed that he watched? Was Ann happy? Those moon-filled nights that woke such an agony of restless desire!
So you see, Mummy, everything is wonderful and your daughter is having a glorious time. Oceans of love, my angel mother, Yours ever, Dolores.
Mark, seeing the letter finished, sat up and yawned, letting his book drop to the mud floor of the banda with a thud. Ann and Colin had gone out this morning, after butterflies.
“Well,” he said, “is that that? I must say, young lady, you are an industrious letter writer.”
“Mum likes long letters,” Dolores explained. “And she has got some bee in her bonnet about my not being happy in her last one. I had to destroy that illusion.”
“And are you?” Mark yawned and looked down at his book. “Happy?” he asked.
Dolores rose quickly; he could hear her move across in front of him, but he did not look up. She stood by the rough doorway into the banda, looking out.
“Mark,” she said, “don’t you start asking that sort of question.” She swung round to look at him. “Is it so blatantly evident?”
“I’m sorry for Colin,” he answered; he gave his shoulders a vague shrug. “I think Colin is going through hell. He is so damned upright, and now something crooked has crept into his life without any asking from him, and it’s twisting his very soul.”
Dolores’ face had gone a little white; she leant back against the post.
“Am I—the something crooked that has crept into his life?” she whispered.
Mark rose abruptly and came over to her, putting his hands on her shoulders.
“You poor little kid,” he said. “It is twisting you too, isn’t it? You are up against Nature, Dolores. In this country she can be amazingly cruel.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, and it was as though her blue eyes, so like his own, implored him for assistance.
“You and Colin,” Mark answered slowly, “you’ve got your code of morals—they are fairly strict and narrow, aren’t they, and to all our ways of thinking—even mine, Dolores, though, God knows, I’ve kept few moral laws in my life—they are the only possible code. But they aren’t Nature’s! Nature doesn’t care a cuss about Colin being your sister’s husband, about Ann trusting you——”
“Oh, don’t,” said Dolores with a little shiver, and drew close to him and hid her face against his coat.
“Nature just takes you and Colin,” went on Mark, “and works all her magic on the two of you to draw you together—because she knows, perhaps, that by all her own ancient laws—so much older and wiser than man’s—you two were meant for each other.”
She gave a little cry, held down against him. “What am I to do, Mark?” she said. “Help me. You are so sane and wise.”
Mark laughed—though there was not much amusement in the sound.
“Wise?” he said. “Good God, my dear, I’m only old. And being old, I think what I ought to do is to break off this safari here and now and take you right away.”
“Oh, I can’t do that,” said Dolores. She drew away, rubbing her eyes. “If I did that, Ann would guess. It would be terrible.”
“And do you think,” asked Mark slowly, “that she has not, as you say; guessed already?”
“Oh, no, no,” said Dolores. “Ann must not guess I——” She broke off, for she could see that his eyes, looking over her shoulder, had seen something. “Are they coming?” she whispered. “Do my eyes look as though they had been crying?”
“No, you’re all right,” he answered. “It’s our cue. Let’s get on with this cursed play.”
Ann and Colin came walking slowly together through the sunshine. It was very hot outside. This camp, hidden in its banana grove tucked right away at the base of the mountains, seemed set in a little patch of stagnation. It missed whatever breeze might be abroad. Perhaps it was the heat that accounted for their depression. They walked in silence a little apart and, under the brim of her wide, double terai hat, Ann’s face looked a little sullen, her mouth tight shut.
Dolores was ready to greet them with laughter as they reached the banda.
“Well, intrepid hunters,” she said, “where are the victims of your bow and spear?”
“We caught some quite fine curaxies,” answered Colin. He moved into the banda and leant his butterfly net up against its far wall. “But it’s too hot outside for Ann.”
“Yes, it’s hot,” said Ann. She sat down and took off her hat. Her black hair lay straight and vivid along the line of her forehead. “There must be a thunderstorm coming. One feels as though it were banked up all round one, shutting out the air.”
“But the sky is quite blue,” said Dolores. She hesitated a moment, looking out, then she looked back at Ann.
“Have you got a headache, Ann?” she asked. “Can I get you the aspirin?”
“If I wanted aspirin, I could get it for myself,” said Ann. “I am neither an invalid nor so old that you must wait on me, Dolores.”
Her sudden animosity was plain to all three of them. Mark Heron groaned inwardly and turned away.
“I’ll call the boys and get tea—it will liven us all up,” he announced.
The thunderstorm came that night as Ann had predicted. It swept down on them from the mountain. The rain pattered and slashed upon the banana fronds, tearing their delicate greenness to ribbons. It swished in at the tents and flooded the floor of the banda. The lightning was like great flames of light in the sky. Dolores could not sleep, she lay huddled up, the blankets tight over her ears, listening, shivering, thinking. It had been a disastrous evening. Ann had been terrible. But then Dolores had known Ann often enough before in these suppressed, vindictive moods of temper. It might only have been the coming storm.
Colin did not sleep either, but he lay very still. He wanted to pretend that he was asleep. Ann and his camp bed were under the same mosquito net, and he knew because of her intense quiet that she was not asleep. The thing between them last night had hovered on the brink of speech; he did not want it said. And presently he heard her turn and sigh, and with a little, quick movement she had turned back the clothes and stepped out of bed. He lay and watched her, his eyes half closed. There was no lamp in their tent, and last night, because of the rain, they had put the flaps down. Ann moved across to the opening now, and flung one of the flaps back and stood there holding the pole of the tent. The rain splashed at her feet, the lightning flashed about her. What on earth was she doing? Had she gone mad?
He sat up abruptly. “Ann,” he called out, “my dear—it’s madness to stand there. You’ll get all wet.”
She turned to look at him, but she did not let the flap of the tent down; that outside scene of storm and havoc made a dark background for her dimly seen figure.
“How long have you been awake?” she asked.
“Not long,” he lied. “I heard you get out of bed. What’s the matter, Ann? The storm is nearly done.”
Still she did not move, standing there, staring at him. “I’ve been awake all night,” she said.
He tried to keep his voice very normal, very unstirred. “That’s bad luck, old thing,” he said. “Still, you don’t remedy matters by getting wet. You’ll get pneumonia.”
“Will that matter?” asked Ann. “Pneumonia is quite a good way of going out, isn’t it?”
He threw back the mosquito net and stood up beside his bed.
“What is the matter, Ann?” he said. “Why do you talk like that? Have I made you so unhappy?”
“Unhappy!” There was a queer, breaking note in her voice. She came back quickly and stood close to him, tense, expectant. “Colin,” she whispered, “let’s have the truth out between us. Have you ever loved me—hasn’t it all been some pitiful pretence?”
Pitiful! It was that all right. But he must not fail her now. Must not let her pay the price of his mistake. He put out his hands and drew her to him. “My dear,” he said, “of course I love you. Ann, what have I done to make you think I did not? You’ve been angry with me all to-day. It has made me feel wretched—not knowing——”
“I love you,” said Ann. “If your love fails me—if it has been all trickery and lies——” Her hands seemed to dig into him with strong fingers of iron. He felt an almost irresistible impulse to shake them off, to break free. Instead he bent his head and kissed her hair.
“Ann, how queer you are,” he whispered. “Of course I love you.”
She turned up her face for his kiss, her lips were hungry. He had to fight the feeling of repulsion in his heart. Later, when she lay quiet in his arms, he felt amazed that she, with all her jealousy so passionately awake, should be so easy to deceive, and cursed himself for the thought. She slept, it seemed, her head nestling in the hollow of his arm, but he stayed awake, and through the open flap of their tent he watched the storm die down, the stars creep out and fade away, and dawn come marching into the sky full-blown almost before it was born. God! What was going to be the end of all this? When would he reach the day when all endurance snapped and he shouted the truth aloud. “Till the end of time, Colin,” his mother’s voice was whispering in his heart. “You can’t do that, my son. It wouldn’t be playing the game.”
The whole earth seemed radiant after the storm. They started their march up the mountain, passing out of the banana grove into a world of shimmering beauty. Ann and Dolores walked together—the two men had gone on a little in front. Ann was all friendliness this morning. She talked and laughed.
“I was in a beastly mood yesterday,” she confessed. “Dolores, own up. Aren’t I sometimes unendurable? You’ve known it before, but poor Colin, he loses himself in the fog of my bad temper.”
“Yes,” admitted Dolores. “You were cross. And Mark had been lecturing me—just before you came in.”
“What about?” asked Ann. There was a sudden warning note in her voice.
“Oh, it wasn’t exactly a lecture,” said Dolores. “Only he was saying that you and Colin must find us most horribly in the way, and that really it had been rather trying to have a honeymoon with two lookers-on.”
“I don’t mind lookers-on,” Ann laughed. She drew nearer to Dolores and put her hand on the other girl’s arm. “But if you were to try and take Colin from me——” she began.
Dolores flushed, her whole face suddenly a flame of colour “Oh, Ann,” she said, “how can you think——”
“I don’t,” interrupted Ann quickly. “I’m only jealous. It eats into my mind, this jealousy. You know it has always been there, Dolores, but never against you—until now.”
“Would you like Mark and me to turn back from here?” asked Dolores. “We can, quite easily.”
“Of course I wouldn’t,” said Ann. She loosed Dolores’ arm and quickened her pace. They had reached the base of the mountain; from here their climb began in real earnest. Looking up the steep green slopes in front of them, they could see the zigzag thread of brown, which was the path, and the figures of the two men already quite a long way up. Behind them crowded the safari, a long row of porters carrying on their heads the rolled-up tents, the boxes, and all the camp equipment. They sang as they trotted along, one hand held up to steady their burden, the sweat already running down their bare, lean bodies. The queer, distinctive aroma of native humanity pervaded the air.
“Let’s wait till they get ahead,” said Ann. “They rather spoil the atmosphere. And there is no hurry. Colin says we have only a two hours’ climb this morning.”
A small stream crossed the path just at this place. It was so cool and fragrant, splashing and hurrying down to the plains. Great rocks stood about in it, trying to bar its progress, but it seemed to laugh and slither past, in and out, twisting and turning, hurrying and singing. Ann and Dolores moved a little up-stream, because at the ford all the porters splashed across, their bare feet revelling in the icy coolness of the water, and nothing would satisfy Dolores but that she must tiptoe from stone to stone till she found a flat stone in midstream large enough to sit down on.
“It’s heavenly here,” she called back to Ann. “Come across. The water is like soft, slipping ice. Oh, Ann, have I time to take my shoes and stockings off for a paddle?”
The last of the porters splashed across. Hamiri, Colin’s orderly, looking very important and strangely unsuitable to climb a mountain, smart in his uniform and carrying a rifle, bringing up the rear. He saluted Ann in passing. He did not like Ann, but she was his master’s woman and entitled to respect.
It seemed Ann did not see him. She was staring at Dolores, perched out there on that rock, stooping forward, splashing her hands in the water, trying to reach a shining pebble that had taken her fancy. Staring at Dolores, her face set in some grim mask of memory. Would it be as easy to . . . Her thoughts, it seemed, frightened her. She drew back shuddering, her hands to her eyes. Dolores, looking back at that moment, thought that Ann had suddenly felt faint or giddy. She jumped up and hurried back across the stones.
“Ann, dear, what’s the matter?” she said. “Don’t you feel well?”
“I’m all right,” said Ann; she dropped her hands at once. “The sun on the water dazzled my eyes, that was all. We ought to get on. Our menkind will wonder what has happened to us.”
The porters, with Hamiri panting behind them, sped up the steep path, quite unencumbered by their loads, it seemed.
They were mountain folk—had been taken on purposely at the last camp. The climb meant nothing to them. Their chanting songs came swinging back to the white people struggling along behind. For it certainly was a struggle, at least to the two girls.
“But, Mark,” complained Dolores, not for the first time, “it is exactly like walking up the side of a house.”
“You’ve only got another hour to do,” Colin called back to her; he was helping Ann up a sticky part. “And then we are there.”
“Let’s rest,” supplemented Ann. “And look behind us. The whole world seems spread out like a map.”
It did look like that—lying far down below them, great stretches of green, here and there, a miniature village of huts, linked to one another by the narrow thread of a brown road. Very far away in the distance, they could see the tin roofs of the English houses in the Government station of Fort Portal, and just about there the little stream they had passed at the foot of the mountain widened into a river and showed as a ribbon of silver winding its way along. The sky and earth were radiant; a clear, keen wind blew in their faces. It came straight from the snows, and already they seemed lifted into another world out of the stagnation of last night’s storm. They were all friendly with each other for the moment—at peace.
By the time they staggered—that was Dolores’ description of it—into camp, the porters had already been there a full hour. The tents were up, breakfast was ready. There was no banda here, but the thoughtful Hamiri had erected a rough roof on four poles for the white folk to rest under.
“There’s a party of baboons down there,” Colin called out from behind their tent. “Come and see them, Ann.”
“I could not move another step,” said Ann from her chair under the shelter. “Not even if he told me there was a pygmy elephant to be seen. You go, Dolores.”
“Shall I?” Dolores hesitated. Mark was away in his tent, washing down.
Ann looked across—it seemed her dark eyes laughed. “Dolores, my infant child,” she said, “I’m not jealous. The wind has blown all that away. Go and see the baboons.”
So Dolores went. It was not until she stood alone with Colin out of sight of the others that she realised the danger of what she had done. He was looking through his glasses at the baboons as she came up, and he thought she was Ann. He put his free arm round her and drew her against him.
“See that fellow down there,” he said. “He’s lord of the pack.”
He looked down at her and broke off, and for a second they stayed quite still, very close, his arm still holding her, staring at each other. And then his lips just formed her name—a whisper of “Dolores!” and all her pride and loyalty rose up to do battle for her secret and try and keep it safe.
“Ann was too lazy to come,” she said, and laughed and drew away. “Aren’t they ugly-looking creatures, those baboons?”
He said nothing. He was shaken out of speech. She could see his hands fumbling in an endeavour to put his glasses away. She was so sorry for him—pity ached through all her heart.
“Colin,” she said. “You and I . . .” She put out her hand to touch his, and for a second his, strong and possessive, closed over it.
“Don’t,” he said hoarsely. “For God’s sake, don’t, Dolores. Everything breaks if you . . .”
Mark, strolling out of his hut, saw them. “O Lord!” thought Mark, and quickened his pace and joined them, whistling as he came. Their hands fell apart. They stood silent, waiting for him.
“Baboons!” said Mark. “Didn’t someone say something about baboons?”
Captain Ewart, late of the Gordon Highlanders, now District Commissioner of a big tract of land which included the mountain range of Ruwenzori, the forest of Bwamba and a bit of the Semeliki plains, sat in his official capacity under the shade of a large tree, the only giant which had been left growing in the little cleared space of the jungle which had been selected as a Government post. The camp table in front of him was littered with an odd assortment of things. An ivory horn made out of the tusk of a female elephant, uncouthly carved with strange figures purporting to be men; a string of glass beads from Birmingham; a cluster of human teeth; a dried scalp from some human head; the claw and whiskers of a lion tied together; and a small, unclean-looking little bag which contained, so his interpreter had just told him, some grains of the most deadly and most mysterious native poison. They were all spoils of war, so to speak, taken that morning from the hut of the most notorious witch-doctor of the neighbourhood. A personality who had spread terror and death all round her. To such an extent, indeed, that at last Government had seen fit to interfere, and Captain Ewart in person had descended to what he called this pestiferous swamp to investigate.
Captain Ewart was a little blind to the beauties of the Bwamba forest. Its immense tangle of tropical vegetation struck him as unhygienic. Its hot springs—home of the devil by common repute among the natives—might be interesting, but they rendered the atmosphere almost unbearably enervating and stagnant. The trees shut out the sun, which was certainly a good thing, but they also held away the breeze. And, personally, Captain Ewart preferred to live on a hill. He had always held that some positively insane predecessor must have selected this forest clearing as a camp.
However here he was, and the witch-doctor had been run to earth. Some achievement that. They were as slippery as eels, these people, and the terror they inspired in the natives rendered them very immune to capture or punishment. No one, for instance, would be found willing to give evidence against that bundle of rags which sat huddled up under his own immediate eye for greater security, but officially in charge of the two stolid Nubian policemen who stood either side. A queer caricature of a female she had turned out to be. Old! Why the people of the district credited her with being immortal! A bag of skin and bones, with evil eyes in a wizened up face, and a thin, slobbering mouth which for all he knew—and to judge her by his orderly’s terrors—had already condemned him to all the unpleasant deaths in her catalogue of magic.
She should not escape. That much was certain. He had all the majesty of English law and justice behind him. The symbol of it waved—or rather it did not wave, for there was no breeze to stir it—in the presence of the Union Jack stuck up in the centre of the cleared space. The Nubians were not afraid of her fortunately. They were a stolid crowd of men, very well disciplined, obedient, contemptuous of the savages in these parts. They would take her back, carrying her in a blanket slung on a pole, poor old devil; she would have to be carried, and then a full-blown English magistrate would go solemnly into the case, sift first this lie and then that to its almost unfathomable depth, construct his theory of the truth and sentence her with infinite formality for something like two hundred murders. It would be quite interesting to watch him endeavouring to make the punishment fit the crime. “And, thank God, it’s not my shawri, once I’ve got her home,” chuckled Captain Ewart. “Shawri” is a useful word in Africa, and means anything.
The orderly standing behind his master moved from one bare brown foot to the other. “Bwana,” he said, “is it your pleasure that four other white people come here to camp?”
“What?” asked Captain Ewart, in some astonishment. “Who are they? Where do they come from?” For in this district it was very unusual to run into even big game hunters. There were elephant enough, but it is more like hard work than amusement going after elephant in thick forest.
“There are four,” the orderly repeated. “Two bwanas and two memsahibs. This morning they come down the mountain—and already their first porters have arrived.”
“The devil!” said Captain Ewart. He rose, stretching. He said “The devil!” it being a favourite expression of his, but he was really rather glad at the prospect of some companionship in this pestilential hole. And ladies! Given the proper opportunities, and he did not have many in his present district, Captain Ewart was rather a ladies’ man.
“All right!” he agreed. “They can put their tents over there. Keep their porters separate from mine, Simoni, and see there’s no trouble about water and wood.”
He strolled across to the old witch and stood looking down at her.
“Well, old Mother of Sin,” he said in his cheery English. “What shall we do with you?”
The bundle of rags stirred; the withered, wrinkled face peered up at him. The eyes were amazingly vivid and evil, the lips mouthed at him.
“What does she say, Simoni?” he asked the still attentive orderly. Simoni was very useful as an orderly because he knew these parts, and could often act as an interpreter. On this occasion, it seemed, he did not choose to interpret. Perhaps he felt that the words would gather dangerous strength by being repeated in the master tongue.
“I do not know, Bwana,” he answered. “She says many evil things. It is not good to listen.”
Captain Ewart glanced at him and laughed. “Simoni, you are an idiot,” he remonstrated. “Hasn’t twelve years’ service with the English shown you that all this magic stuff is eyewash?”
Again perhaps Simoni felt that silence was best; he made no comment.
“Oh well!” said Captain Ewart. “Tell them to house her over there in one of the huts. And warn them there’s to be no hanky-panky. I punish very severely if she is allowed to escape.”
Simoni saluted and repeated his orders to the two watching Nubians. The disrespect with which they hustled the bundle of filthy rags to her feet and piloted her away satisfied Captain Ewart that they at least had not as yet fallen under her spell. He could not resist pulling Simoni’s leg about it.
“Will they die, Simoni,” he asked, “for poking her like that? The air must be hot with her curses.”
Simoni looked away. His face was quite impassive. “They do not know,” he said. “It is easy not to be afraid, Bwana, when one does not know.”
“Quite,” acknowledged Ewart. “It is also easy, Simoni, not to be afraid, when one does know. This woman has killed by poison—not by magic.”
“The Bwana knows everything,” answered Simoni gravely. “His courage is like the courage of a bull elephant. I go to tell the porters of the new white people where they may put their tents.”
“All right,” said Ewart. “And, Simoni, tell the chief here that to-night I would see the Moon-devil dance. It may amuse the strangers.”
“Very well, Bwana, I will give orders,” said Simoni, and saluted and disappeared.
Captain Ewart waited with some impatience for the arrival of the other white people. Who on earth could they be? He rather hoped they would turn, out to be “trippers” from Kenya, because Kenya harboured a most amusing crowd of men and women, who occasionally floated into the placid waters of official life in Uganda and her sister protectorates, and brought quite a flutter of scandal and amusement in their train. Two women and two men sounded hopeful. He strolled to the beginning of the clearing to greet them as they arrived.
This morning the path had dropped straight down from the mountain where the wind sang and hurried, where the sun glimmered on everything, into this entirely different shadowed forest world. Such mighty trees grew high on every side the small, brown, twisting path, and as one entered the forest almost immediately one was greeted by the warm, close atmosphere of stagnation.
“It’s the hot springs,” Mark had explained to Dolores. For the last three days’ marching the party had separated quite definitely into this grouping of two and two. “They lie just on the edge of this belt of forest. Two or three fair-sized ponds of boiling water. Yes, it really is boiling. You can cook an egg in it. And of course one doesn’t know how close the heat is to the surface all round.”
“I don’t like it,” said Dolores. “Mark, I don’t like these great watching trees. It is as though they shut silence all round one and waited—waited for something terrible to happen.”
He glanced at her in quick concern. “This whole business is getting most damnably on your nerves,” he answered. “I wish to God we were out of it.”
And then they came in view of the clearing and the already erected huts and the Union Jack on its proud white pole.
“By Jove, the District Commissioner is on tour,” said Mark. “That is a bit of luck. He’ll bring some fresh interest into things.”
He meant what he said very heartily. These last three days things had been deplorably near to snapping. He was almost sure now that Ann had guessed. Her eyes when she looked at Dolores were dark and watchful, her mouth tight shut. When he learnt that the District Commissioner was Ewart, he could have fallen on his neck for joy. For he knew Ewart—a keen, cheery soul who would at a moment’s notice start the most ardent flirtation with any lady.
Captain Ewart fell at once for Dolores. Dolores, looking adorable because of her exhaustion; sitting back in the long chair he hastily provided for her, her white shirt opened at her soft throat, her gold hair rumpled into curls by the heat. Ann had gone straight to her tent. He had been introduced to Ann as “Mrs. Baird,” and he had been rather relieved when Mrs. Baird had said she was going straight to her tent. She was, that was his rather rapidly gained impression, an overpowering personality. Dark, unhappy, strong! He gathered, rather vaguely, that the others were equally relieved when she had gone. They sat more at ease in their chairs, talking, laughing, teasing Dolores because she would have it that the forest frightened her.
“Wait till twelve o’clock to-day,” Captain Ewart laughed at her. “I am taking evidence against a lady witch I’ve run to earth. You’ll see something to frighten you then. A wicked old woman who has poisoned hundreds of people.”
“You’ve caught her?” said Colin. “Jove! That’s good work, isn’t it? They are amazingly hard to run to earth.”
“You won’t get anyone to give evidence against her,” said Mark. “Natives are the same about that all over Africa. Their fear of witchcraft is amazing.”
“I know,” admitted Ewart. “But I’ve got her, and she doesn’t get away from the clutches of the law this time.”
“But aren’t you a tiny bit afraid yourself?” asked Dolores. She liked Captain Ewart—he was a man whom most women liked very easily. “Aren’t there things in this Africa which we don’t understand—which we can’t always manage for all our Western wiseness and power?”
“Witchcraft isn’t one of them,” laughed Ewart. “You are as bad as Simoni, my orderly. He thinks, privately, that I am doomed to a sticky end because this old woman has cursed me.”
“I should be afraid,” said Dolores. “One doesn’t feel really so strong about wisdom out here as one does in England.”
And beyond Captain Ewart’s laughter, she caught a glimpse of Colin’s face, half turned away from her, his grey-blue eyes staring out into the forest. A flutter of fear shook her heart. He, too, was afraid; she knew it because of his eyes that dared not meet hers. Afraid—oh, not of witches or of witchcraft—but of the something unlawful and wild that seemed here to be pressing so close against them.
“I’ll go and have my bath, I think,” she said, and stood up. “And when you try your witchcraft case, Captain Ewart, I shall sit well in the background and hope her eyes don’t ever rest on me—that’s all.”
Ann was very interested in the witchcraft case. She lost some of her stiffness listening to Captain Ewart’s description of what he had already been able to find out. She fingered one by one the trophies that had been collected from the witch-doctor’s bag.
“Those are magic right enough,” laughed Captain Ewart, showing the elephant tusk, the dried scalp, the human teeth. “This is what she really did the damage with.”
He picked up the little bag. He had looked at its contents already. When he got back to Fort Portal he was going to have them tested by a doctor.
“It looks like fine grains of sand,” he explained. “It has no smell. I presume not much taste, though I haven’t tried; but I’m told it’s very deadly.”
“Who told you?” asked Colin.
“The rival witch-doctress who was really responsible for my capturing this one,” acknowledged Ewart. “A charming elderly dame—only just a shade younger and no cleaner than my prisoner.”
“Oh, well, she’ll die right enough,” said Mark. “You wait and see.”
“I don’t see how she can,” laughed Ewart. “I have the old hag’s stock-in-trade.”
He put the bag down again. “Is it going to bore you all very much?” he asked. “It will only take me half an hour, and then we can have lunch. You are all my guests for to-day. I hope you know. We have enough guinea fowl in the larder to feed a regiment.”
They sat behind him in the shade while he went through the case. There was no evidence to be taken, as Mark had said, only that of the askaris who had effected the capture and the rival witch-doctress who had led them to the hut. Hate shone out then—it flashed like lightning between the wizened-up bundle of filth whom the Nubian soldiers had carried out again and dumped on the ground in front of the D.C. and the other quivering, shaking figure that stood at the table and gabbled through its evidence. But all the other witnesses stood at a discreet distance and kept silence, and Simoni stood behind his master, with his fingers held in the right position, so he hoped, to avert the evil eye.
And after it was all over and the prisoner had been carted away still broadcasting spells, as Captain Ewart said, the five white people gathered round the luncheon table and dismissed the case from their minds in much the same way as Ewart had dismissed the old lady’s stock-in-trade by sweeping it carelessly into a basket and having it carried into his tent.
“To-morrow I climb the mountain,” said Captain Ewart. “Having just come from there, do you envy me?”
“By Jove, it’s a steep pull from this side,” admitted Mark. “Don’t know how we are going to get Miss Fabian up it. Her legs went on strike coming down.”
“Oh, Mark, how rude you are!” said Dolores. “I really bore up very well.”
“Leave them, Miss Fabian,” suggested Ewart. “Come back with me.”
“Do you know,” said Dolores with mock gravity, “I almost wish I could!”
Ann, from her side of the table, gave her quick, hard laugh. “It has always been a peculiarity of Dolores,” she said. “On with the new love before she is off with the old.”
“Wish I could call myself the new love,” said Ewart, with sentimental ease, though he was not stupid enough to be blind to the sudden tension of feeling that Ann’s manner had evoked. Damn it all! She was jealous. That dark, hard, thin-lipped woman—jealous of her sister because of her husband. Ewart took a quick glance at Baird. What an amazingly awkward position for a man to find himself in. Jealous! O, Lord! How damnably uncomfortable!
The day passed uneventfully. The night closed down on the forest. It came at first with almost overpowering darkness, for the moon was late in rising. The camp-fires twinkled and glowed in all directions. There were a great many of them, for Captain Ewart had killed meat during the course of the afternoon, and every porter’s hut had a fire outside it, at which to cook the occupants’ share of the feast. The porters slept three or four of them to a hut, roughly constructed of branches of trees so low that to squat inside them was barely possible. They looked in this queer, flickering light like an army of giant mushrooms. The white people dined out near their own bonfire at a table gaily illuminated with Ewart’s petrol hurricane-lamp, but after dinner, when the moon was drawing near, they put that out and drew up their chairs to the fire and waited for the white magic to take possession of the forest.
“I’ve arranged a show for you,” Captain Ewart told them. “It’s quite worth seeing—a fantastic, absurd thing they call the Moon dance. Don’t be afraid, Miss Fabian, however fierce they look; these fellows are all trained dancers, and have had to be bribed to perform with an extra portion of meat.”
So they waited. And presently a faint, scarce seen lightening of the dark began to take place in the forest. One by one the tree trunks disentangled themselves from the general gloom and stood out distinct, casting long shadows.
And then it was as though the moon, full, round and faintly yellow, had leapt into the sky and the clearing was suddenly bright—not quite with the brightness of day, for there is something eerie and fantastic about the brilliant moonlight of Africa.
From behind the trees faint-seen moving shapes came creeping out; the porters sitting in the outer circle commenced to chant—the dance had begun. Perhaps it was just as well that none of the white people could follow either the words of the chant or the meaning of the dancers. There was something very unhallowed in the abandon of their ecstasy under the moon. They leaped and capered and rushed, darting from light to shade, shaking their spears and shields, nodding their feathered heads. Seen by daylight, their caperings would have seemed absurd and uncouth, but in this queer, floating light they gathered about them a disturbing sense of dignity and the monotonous chant rose and fell, attended by some strange spirit of unrest.
Presumably each of the watchers felt it in a different way, but to Colin and Dolores the call was the same. It sang and thrilled through their blood; it whispered and urged and beckoned. The love song of the moon! The mating dance of queer, uncouth, grotesquely bedecked savages!
And then, one by one, the dancing shadows melted back into the trees; the singing ceased. Only the moon was left, spreading her magic everywhere—whiter now, clearer, more magnificent. Colder now—more aloof, tired of trying to cast her spells about these strange, inaccessible white people.
“I am going to bed,” said Ann. “I am desperately tired. It was rather revolting, wasn’t it, that dance of yours, Captain Ewart?”
She moved towards her hut. “Good night, Dolores,” she called back. “Don’t be long, Colin.”
Ewart stood up. “What about a drink, everyone?” he asked.
“I’ll have one,” said Heron. He, too, stood up; they moved away together. “Can I get you anything, Dolores?” he asked, looking back.
She made a little movement as though she meant to rise and follow. “No,” she said, “ I don’t want anything; I——”
“Don’t go,” Colin’s voice whispered. “Stay just a little here with me. Oh, for God’s sake, Dolores; there’s no sin in that.”
She sat quite still immediately. The other two moved farther away; they could hear Ewart’s good-natured, cheerful voice explaining something. Colin was standing beside her chair; if she lifted her eyes they would meet his eyes. She was afraid; she kept her eyes on his tight-clenched hands.
“Dolores,” said Colin, his voice harsh, as though he found the words difficult to say, “I think you know I love you. I’ve loved you ever since the first day. Oh, dear God, isn’t there any way out of this for us?”
His agony woke her to sudden womanhood. She put out her hand quickly and slid it into his.
“Don’t,” she whispered. “Colin, I love you, too, if it helps at all.” She drew his hand against her face, holding it there. “But we mustn’t hurt Ann, you and I.”
The moon was all round them everywhere, cold and indifferent, spying on their grief. His other hand drew her almost roughly to her feet.
“Come out of this cursed moonlight,” said Colin. “I’ve got to speak to you to-night. I can’t go on.”
His face somehow had altered; his eyes seemed hard, eager. She was afraid. More for him than for herself, she was afraid.
“It won’t do any good, Colin,” she whispered.
“Are you afraid of me?” he answered. “Are you so conventional as all that?”
The dark of the forest shut them in. It seemed friendly full of little whispering voices of desire.
“I love you,” said Colin. “Nothing else matters. Let me love you, Dolores.”
She stood quiet in his arms. It was his hour of weakness. How was she to help him?
“Colin, Colin, if we do this now, everything fails. My loyalty to Ann—your honour. Colin, Colin, try and think. Dear, there’s some madness about to-night. It’s in your blood—it’s in, mine too, Colin. Help me to be good—there’s no one else to help me here.”
“I love you—say you love me, Dolores.” Lips held up to his—a sudden passion of surrender shaking her.
“Colin—oh, please—please don’t.”
The madness ebbed out of him. He let her go and stood away, leaning against the tree.
“You’re right, Dolores. I’m most damnably wrong. Let’s get back.”
Heron and Ewart, waiting for them by the table, tried to pretend that they had noticed nothing.
“Here’s your drink, Baird; poured it out for you,” said Heron. “Thought you’d change your mind and come for it.”
“Let me light you to your tent, Miss Fabian,” Captain Ewart’s eyes laughing at them for their indiscretion.
“Good night, Colin,” said Dolores. “Good night, Mark.”
The two men left by the table stared at their respective whiskies.
“She’s a good kid, Dolores,” said Mark softly. “It is up to us to try and keep her out of this trouble, eh, Baird?”
“Yes,” said Colin stiffly. “It is up to me.”
Colin and Mark went out after elephant early the next morning. Ann had an intolerable headache and could not rise from her bed. Dolores stayed to look after her. Stayed also to say good-bye to Captain Ewart, who was to start his climb back that morning, taking his captive with him, slung in her blanket, tied to a pole.
Dolores walked a little way through the forest with him. He thought that this morning she seemed tired and listless, all her fine radiance laid aside. Watching her, he decided that perhaps the uncomfortableness went further than he had at first thought. Was this girl in love with Baird, and he with her? That gave good cause indeed for the sombre wife’s jealousy. That episode last night, for instance, when the two of them had slipped away into the dark. It had been, to say the least of it, indiscreet.
“Funny thing,” he said to her as they started along, he searching through his mind for something that would draw her from her gloom, “but that bag of poison has been pinched by someone. I suppose I was a bit careless about it—just bundled it into the basket with the other things. And, of course, the old hag would have lots of associates hanging around. They must have realised it was a pretty incriminating piece of evidence.”
“Wasn’t anything else touched?” asked Dolores.
“Not a hair of the lion’s whiskers,” laughed Captain Ewart. “I’ve kicked up a fuss, and Simoni, much against his will, remains behind to investigate. Tell Baird to make what use of him he likes. He’s a smart orderly and a useful interpreter in these parts.”
“Thank you. I’ll tell Colin,” said Dolores. She turned her face a little away as she spoke. “I wonder if they’ll have any luck with elephant to-day,” she added.
“There’s a big bull round these parts,” Captain Ewart told her. “One-hundred-pound tusks, the natives say—but he’s tricky. I’ve been after him myself once or twice.”
“I wish I could have gone,” said Dolores. “Only Ann has a headache.”
The name seemed to recall her. She paused and held out her hand. “I ought to get back,” she said. “Ann may be wanting me.”
Captain Ewart pressed her hand very fervently in goodbye. “We’ll see you, shan’t we, on your way back? You are all going to stay with me. I’ve settled that.”
“Then we shall see you,” said Dolores. “How nice!”
She had said that Ann might be wanting her, yet she made no attempt to hurry back. Colin’s orderly in charge of her, for he had been told he was never to let either of the white ladies walk outside the camp enclosure unattended, walked very slowly and gravely behind. He was, in his way, interested in the mentality of white people, and he had long ago decided that this was the woman his master desired, though he had married the other. Possibly, the other one’s dowry had been much larger, and a wise man does not only look for beauty in his wife.
They reached the camp enclosure at last and, with a little reluctant shiver of distaste, Dolores saw that Ann was up and waiting for her—sitting in one of the camp-chairs under the shade of the banda. Somehow, this morning, Dolores was almost intolerably afraid of Ann. It was as though Colin’s defection of the night before stood between them, and Ann would count her to blame. She tried to keep this sense of reluctance out of her voice, as she came into the banda, taking off her hat.
“Well, Ann,” she said, “is the headache better?”
Sitting rather straight and erect in what ought to have been a comfortable chair, Ann lifted dark, sombre eyes.
“I did not have a headache,” she said. “That was not why I stayed in bed.”
“Oh!” began Dolores. “I thought——” She broke off. Her voice was going to give her away; it trembled on the verge of fear.
“I know,” said Ann slowly, “I let you think it. I let Colin think it. I wanted time—time to gather my thoughts together—to fight down the anger in my heart.”
“The anger!” said Dolores; she caught her breath and stood quite still. The crisis was upon her, and she had no weapon of excuse or defence in her hands. “Are you angry with me, Ann? What have I done?”
Ann stood up. To-day she had discarded her marching clothes. She had on a straight, white linen gown. It fell in rather stiff folds. It made her seem taller, straighter than usual. The black fringe of her hair lay heavily above the white of her face.
“If I were to kill you,” she said slowly and vindictively, “I should be within my rights.”
The words seemed incongruous. Outside there was such bright, clear sunshine. They could hear the porters moving about, shouting to each other. Simoni came in and stood for a moment looking at them, then turned discreetly on his heel and passed out of sight.
“Well,” said Ann, “haven’t you anything to say?” Dolores’ eyes, wide and troubled, tear-shadowed, looked at her quickly and away again.
“What can I say?” she whispered. She made a little hurried movement and stood nearer Ann. “Ann, it hasn’t been my fault, or his. We didn’t want it. From that first day when he picked me up out of that car accident, I—I’ve loved him. Oh, but I’ve known, too, that he was yours. I——”
“What have you got that I cannot give him?” said Ann swiftly. She stooped towards Dolores; the agony of her mind made her face pitifully ugly, and tears only softened Dolores’ beauty—made it more perfect. “Love! I love him with my very soul. Passion! He could take my body and break it in pieces; if it were his hands doing it, I should not mind. Before you came, he loved me, Dolores.” Some harsh sob shook in her throat. “All my life, I’ve had nothing—nothing. Love has mocked me. Must you do me this last cruel wrong?”
“Oh, no, Ann—no,” wept Dolores. She held herself close to the other’s stiffened figure; her small, soft hands soothed and caressed Ann’s face. “Whatever you want me to do, I’ll do. Mark can take me away to-morrow. I’ll never see Colin again or speak to him.”
Ann drew herself away. She stood by the table, her lips thin and tight.
“We mustn’t talk rubbish,” she said. “That doesn’t help things at all. Colin is in love with you—oh, don’t go on crying and saying it isn’t your fault. Perhaps it isn’t—the fact remains, and your going away won’t alter it. One does not cure a man’s desire by those means. We will have to think of something else.” She lifted her face again and stared at Dolores. “What did he say to you last night?” she asked.
The colour flamed to Dolores’ face and away; she stood twisting her hands together.
“I can’t tell you that, Ann,” she said, very low. “Please don’t ask me. He hates being disloyal to you——”
“Disloyal!” said Ann, and her voice rang with scorn.
“Oh, he does, indeed he does,” said Dolores. “This love—this madness has been agony to him as it has been to me. We——”
“From the beginning he has lied to me.” Ann spoke slowly, her thoughts seemed moving back over all the little intimate scenes of their married life. “I have lain in his arms and his lips have kissed me and lied to me.”
“Oh, don’t, Ann, don’t,” wept Dolores. “It makes him sound so treacherous, and he hasn’t been that. Indeed, indeed, Ann, he hasn’t. Till last night, we’ve never looked at each other or spoken to each other.”
Ann stirred; it was as though she came back out of a trance. She looked across at Dolores.
“Once before in my life,” she said distinctly, choosing every word with care, “someone whom I loved lied to me like that. I was only twelve years old at the time, but I have never forgotten, nor, do I think, has she.”
She straightened herself and moved over to the door of the banda, standing with her back to Dolores. “Let us leave it at that,” she said. “Words won’t help us. Go and wash your face, Dolores—the boy is just going to bring lunch in.”
The two men had a long chase after the bull elephant of whom Captain Ewart had told them. They sighted him once, standing lonely and magnificent, clear of the forest on an outrunning piece of the mountain. But a dark ravine lay between them and him; it would take, Mark said, a day’s march to get to him. They had to leave him and return to the camp, footsore and weary. Already evening was drawing in, the camp fires were lit. They would miss Captain Ewart’s cheery presence this evening—it was going to be difficult, just the four of them together.
Neither of the ladies were in sight. Mark and Colin separated at the door of the banda to go to their tents. As Colin passed across the open space, having shouted for his bath to be got ready, Simoni stepped out of the darkness in front of him and saluted briskly.
“Hallo!” said Colin. “Haven’t you gone with your master? What’s up?”
He spoke in English. Captain Ewart always used that language in talking to his orderly, and Simoni was proud of his knowledge of the white man’s tongue.
“Can I speak to the master?” asked Simoni.
“Why, of course,” said Colin. “Only hurry up. I want a hot bath more than words can say.”
Simoni hesitated. He seemed to be searching for the right word. “Is there anyone the master knows of, that would wish for the master to die?” he asked suddenly.
“What on earth do you mean?” Colin stared at the man’s face, only very dimly seen in this light. It was quite impassive.
“The bag of poison which yesterday my master had on his table,” explained Simoni, “has been stolen. I, Simoni, have been left behind by my master to find who has taken it.”
“Well?” said Colin sharply.
“My master thought that some of the people of this place, knowing the power of the woman whom my master has caught, and being afraid of her and thinking to please her, might have taken it to hide it from the eyes of the Magistrate Bwana. But that is not so. I, Simoni, have moved among them and questioned them, and not one of them has done this thing.”
“Don’t be absurd,” said Colin. “Would they be likely to tell you if they had? And, anyway, what are you hinting at? Do you think my cook has pinched it and is going to put it in my soup?”
“I do not know,” said Simoni with intense gravity. “Only it is right that I should warn the master and that he should watch and see.”
“Well, have all the boys’ things out,” ordered Colin. “Search them—you have my permission.” He moved forward towards his tent. “Is that what you want?”
“No, master,” said Simoni; he had also moved a shade or two back into the darkness. Colin could only just faintly see him saluting. “I only wanted to warn the master.”
What on earth did the man mean? Colin dismissed the wonder with a shrug of his shoulders. The native mind, especially the native official mind, fairly revelled in mystery and self-importance. He pushed back the flap of his tent and entered.
Ann was sitting on the edge of the bed. She was very still, her hands held loosely in front of her. She did not look up or greet him as he entered, and immediately he was aware of some crisis impending, and would have given anything he could to escape from it.
“Well, Ann,” he said, “we’ve had a damned long day for nothing. That tusker has tricked us. We glimpsed him, that is about all.”
Quite still she sat, her eyes brooding. He could not ignore her silence.
“Ann,” he spoke gently, “what is the matter, dear?”
Then she looked up at him; he was horrified at the change in her face, the agony of her eyes.
“Why do you call me that?” she asked. “To-day I have been speaking to Dolores.”
“You’ve spoken to her,” he said quickly; he looked round him. “O God, Ann, why drag her in?”
“Is it I who have dragged her in?” she asked. She stood up. “Has she not rather thrust herself in between you and me?”
“It has all been most hideously my fault,” he answered. “Never for one moment hers. Last night I was mad. I suppose you saw us last night.” He moved past her and sat down. In the small bath-room behind the tent he could hear the boy filling up his bath, splashing the water in. It sounded absurd coming at such a moment. He leant forward, his head buried in his hands. “O God, forgive me,” he said, “for all this.”
Ann stood watching him. Passion after passion passed across her face, darkening her eyes, making them glow with their fierce, strange light. Her hands were tight clenched.
“If she had never come into our lives,” she said softly, “you would have gone on loving me. I love you, Colin.” Her voice was a cry of protest; she moved and knelt beside him and flung her arms round him. “You did love me, didn’t you, before she came? Oh, Colin, Colin, say you loved me. Tell me it hasn’t all been pretence. I’ve given you everything—my life, my soul, my body; haven’t you anything to give me back—not one small grain of comfort?”
Her hands, her nearness tortured him. He stood up quickly. He had never loved her, but all his code of decency forbade his saying that now. She stayed crouched by the chair he had left, a passion of tears shaking her. She was scarce human in her abandonment to grief. Colin stooped over her; he put his arms round her and gathered her up against his heart.
“Hush, Ann, hush!” he whispered. “Oh, my dear, of course I love you. This—this other—is just some madness that will pass away. You are my wife. Nothing shall alter that.”
Simoni, Colin could see, felt himself oddly important after his communication about the poison. He presented himself the next morning as they were packing up to move on to their new camp.
“Have I leave to return to my master?” he asked.
“Well, that hasn’t anything to do with me,” said Colin. “Have you found out what he told you to find out?”
“Yes, Effendi,” said Simoni. “I have found out.”
“Caught the thief?” asked Colin.
“No, that I have not done,” admitted Simoni. “It is not possible, Effendi.”
“Is your master likely to be satisfied with that?” suggested Colin. “Anyway, it is none of my business. I can’t give you leave to go or ask you to stay. If you’ve done your job, I suppose it is up to you to get back and report.”
“Yes, Effendi,” said Simoni. “I will lay my report in front of my master.”
He turned to go, saluting with extreme smartness. There was something about the man’s manner that intrigued Colin. He knew enough of native methods to realise that the man was hinting at some knowledge he was eager to pass on and yet afraid to volunteer.
“Half a moment, Simoni,” he said. “I suppose it’s not my cook who has got the poison, is it?”
The native paused, his eyes on the white man’s face. “No,” he said gravely. “The cook has nothing, Effendi.”
“And the other servants?” asked Colin.
“It is not with them,” said Simoni.
“Then——” Colin began. He broke off with a shrug of his shoulders. “Oh, well, it’s not my job,” he ended. “You had better get back to your master and report.”
“Very good, Effendi,” said Simoni, and saluted again and turned on his heel and walked away.
Mark and Dolores had already started off for the new camp. They had a twelve-mile march in front of them, and Mark always liked to get the bulk of the walking done before eight. Colin saw the last of the porters shouldering their loads and starting off down the narrow jungle path, chatting as they went, before he joined Ann. She was waiting for him, leaning against one of the great trees that ringed the camp enclosures. This morning, after last night’s storm, she was very quiet and self-contained, almost it seemed at peace with herself and him—as if the torture of her mind had ceased. They were going to butterfly hunt as they walked along. Colin carried the nets, Ann had the poison bottle slung by a strap across her shoulders. It was a great relief to Colin to be able to talk about butterflies, to find Ann quite prepared, it seemed, to keep away from the all-harassing topic that had swept over them last night. And the forest on either side of them offered fine scope for distraction. In some places where little pools of water lay under the trees, the butterflies seemed to be hovering in clouds of radiant colour. He caught some most beautiful specimens. Each one he caught he brought eagerly to Ann—he was almost like a boy immersed in the keenness of his favourite hobby. Only once he was bothered with an odd, unhappy stab of memory, and that over something so indefinite as to be almost absurd.
He had just caught a rather lovely powder-blue curaxis, a butterfly with an almost unearthly sheen of beauty about its wings. He had got it in the poison bottle, and Ann and he were bending over it watching the last feeble flutterings of its radiant wings.
“How long it takes to die,” Ann had just said slowly. “How unhurried death is!”
Something in her voice made him glance up at her and he was suddenly, quite unexpectedly, afraid of her. There was a remorseless quality in her voice that he found difficult to describe. It was as though her eyes gloated over the last faint struggles of the butterfly.
He took the bottle from her quickly. His brusqueness broke the spell. He knew in a minute that his sensations had been ridiculous.
“Let me carry the bottle,” he said. “I hadn’t thought before—you probably hate to see them die.”
“Oh no,” said Ann, her voice cool and unhurried, “it rather interests me. Life fluttering to go on and Death, all quiet, calm and ruthless.”
He thrust her words, as it were, out of his mind. They jarred on him. “We’ll have to hurry,” he said, “or Mark and Dolores will bless us, having to wait for breakfast.”
Simoni, it seemed, was in a hurry to get back to headquarters. He travelled with the speed to which only a native well versed in mountain climbing could attain. He divested himself of most of his equipment; he carried tunic, belt and puttees in a compact bundle slung on to his back. His bare brown skin glistened in the sun as he walked; his bare feet were as nimble up the stony path as any goat’s could have been. By midday he had reached the summit of the mountain; the late afternoon sun saw him clambering down the other side. Still unexhausted, it seemed, still imbued with marvellous energy.
Captain Ewart had not travelled so fast. He had spent a night on the mountain, for instance; he was at present camped just at its foot. To-morrow he would go on into the station.
He was sitting in front of the camp fire, attired in his gorgeous pyjamas, with his Bond Street silk dressing-gown wrapped round him and his feet thrust into mosquito boots, when Simoni’s sleek figure slid into the camp enclosure and padded round to the servants’ huts at the back. Captain Ewart knew it was Simoni, but he did not pay any attention. Simoni was very much in undress, and would be bitterly hurt at being noticed in such a state. Captain Ewart expressed just the right amount of surprise when Simoni appeared ten minutes later, immaculate in uniform with his belt making a tight, definite line round his slim waist.
“Hallo!” said Captain Ewart. “Where have you sprung from? Anything to report, Simoni?”
“The business which the master has given me to do, I have done,” said Simoni.
“Ah, good!” said Ewart. He poured himself out a whisky. “Well, who had it?”
He knew quite well that he would not get his answer quite like that. Simoni had a report to make. He would start from the very beginning and go through the whole of his doings for the past three days in careful stilted English.
“Go on,” he added, “I’m listening.”
Simoni went on. His tale was long and concise. This he had done, that person he had questioned, this person had told him things without being asked. One fact emerged. He knew who had got the poison, for he had watched her holding it in her hands and looking at it. A woman! One of the white mem-sahibs! The one who was tall and quiet and strong, who had black hair; the grave-faced, silent mem-sahib.
Ewart stirred in some astonishment. “What the devil are you talking about, Simoni?” he asked sharply.
“I talk, master, of what I know,” said Simoni. “At first I, too, did not believe. I thought it to be but the lies of servants. But I watched and waited. Many things I saw, master. The tall, dark, white woman was angry; she spoke fiercely to the other missie-sahib, making her cry. Then she go quickly back to her tent and pull out her box and feel in it and bring out the small bag for which I, Simoni, have been told to look. And she hold it in her hand; she look inside it. I, Simoni, watch her. Then she kneel and put it back again and do this “—he made swift brushing movements with his bare, brown hands—“with her hands.”
“But Good God!” said Captain Ewart. He held back the words. One cannot discuss the doings of English people with a native. “Very well, Simoni, that will do,” he added, “you can go.”
He could not however dismiss his own bewilderment at this turn in his witchcraft case. If Simoni were right—and he knew that Simoni was an exceptionally clever, conscientious native—what had Mrs. Baird taken that poison for? And the row with Miss Fabian, what did that portend? Anyway, what was his own position in this affair? What ought he to do? Supposing Mrs. Baird had the poison; supposing she—oh, it was fantastic, absurd! That unpleasant forest on the other side of the mountain where he had left them camped was not a good sort of place for white people. Hate could flare out between them there as it was very unlikely to do in civilisation: passion would sway them. That stupid episode of going away into the dark with a jealous wife probably watching—that had been madness and it had led, of course, to the row next day which Simoni said he had witnessed. But poison! That was unthinkable. And yet he thought, and as his mind moved from this point to that, he got an uncomfortable feeling of Mrs. Baird’s eyes watching him from the dark. She was an amazing, slightly unpleasant personality; he had felt that from the first.
“Damn it all!” said Captain Ewart aloud at the end of his cogitations. “I shall have to go back.”
It was dark by now—the camp silent, the boys asleep. He had to shout several times for Simoni before he got an answer.
“Simoni,” he announced. “To-morrow, tell the porters we will not go into the station. We will go back again over the mountain.”
“I understand,” said Simoni gravely.
What the Hades did he understand? “It’s that bull elephant,” said Captain Ewart, with determined lightness. “I’m not going to let those other white men get it if I can help it.”
“No, master,” said Simoni. “I will go clean the master’s gun to-night. What of the prisoner, master?”
“She can go on,” said Ewart, “and most of my safari. I’ll travel back light.”
There are certain things about which it is very difficult to talk, even when the people concerned in them are thrown into daily very close companionship. Silence stood as a barrier between the four people of whom Captain Ewart was now thinking.
Silence between Ann and Colin, between Ann and Dolores, between Dolores and Mark. There was no need for it to creep openly into evidence between Colin and Dolores, for they never saw each other alone; their eyes never met; their hands never touched. But between Ann and Colin it was terrible. It slid in as it were between every word they said, between every look and action.
Silence! It was like a wall; the stones might have been fashioned of hate. And each and every one of them was uncomfortably conscious of it. Their new camp was just outside the forest. The trees hemmed them in on one side, but behind the banda, stretching away up towards the mountain, was a slope of gently waving grass.
And at the gate of the enclosure was a wonderful old tree; it spread its branches out over the cleared space making a welcome shade for the tents—its leaves were dark and velvety and at the end of each branch it carried a spike of flaming flowers. Their petals dropped about on the ground; when the wind shook the branches they lay there, small vivid splashes of red.
Mark and Colin went out after elephant industriously. They tramped for miles. Once Ann and Dolores went with them. It was thrilling work, waiting among the trees, hearing the great beasts moving about quite close to them, breaking down the branches, trampling them under foot. Colin shot one. There was immense joy among the natives. The forest seemed suddenly to sprout life. They came from miles round, bringing all sorts of implements with them wherewith to hack their way into the great carcass and drag out chunks of meat to eat still raw. The sight made Dolores feel quite ill. Mark had to take her home. But Ann stayed with Colin to watch them start cutting the tusks out. It was a job which would take some time—it meant postponing their next day’s march.
Ann and Colin got back to the camp fairly late. Mark was waiting for them by the entrance into the enclosure.
“I’m worried about Dolores,” he said, as soon as they joined him. “She seems very queer.”
“What is the matter with her?” asked Ann. “The elephant made her squeamish—isn’t that all?”
“I don’t know,” admitted Mark. “She has been very sick; almost collapsed.”
“I’ll go to her,” said Ann. “I don’t suppose it is anything.”
She left the two men and went towards Dolores’ tent. Mark stole a glance at Colin’s face. It was strained and tired; one could see that the man was living on his nerves.
“Think we ought to chuck all this, Baird,” said Mark, “and cut off home. It has been a failure, this honeymoon party.”
“Yes,” said Colin slowly. He did not look at Mark. “A failure.”
“I’m damned sorry for you, old chap.” Mark spoke impulsively. What was the use in being sorry for a man who had married the wrong woman and found out about it on their honeymoon. “But you’ve got to face the ugly fact. You can’t go on messing up Dolores’ life just because you’ve messed up your own.”
“I know,” said Colin. “We must go back. If Dolores is fit enough, we’ll start to-morrow.”
Ann stood by Dolores’ bed, looking down at her. The young girl lay very quietly. It seemed she was asleep. The gold-tipped lashes rested on white cheeks, the gold hair was all moist and ruffled, brushed back from the soft face. She was like a child asleep, a child worn out with tears. Ann stood watching, her lips thin, her eyes dark. She had loved Dolores. Is it possible for love to turn to hate? She put her hand down presently and touched Dolores, and the blue eyes opened at once, looking up at her.
“Oh, Ann,” sighed Dolores, “I’ve been so sick. It was worse than the Bay of Biscay.”
“Are you better now?” asked Ann. “Perhaps you got a touch of the sun this morning.”
“I’m all right now,” said Dolores, “only tired. It was so horribly painful.”
“And the pain has gone?” said Ann.
“Yes,” said Dolores, “I feel exactly like a pillowcase looks after all the feathers have been emptied out.”
A little smile stirred Ann’s lips. “Well, you had better not have anything to eat to-night,” she said. “If you feel you can’t sleep, I’ll get you an aspirin.”
“Oh, I’ll sleep all right,” said Dolores. “I’m more than half asleep already. Good night, dear Ann.”
“Good night,” said Ann. She turned away. Silence was down between them again, stern, inscrutable. In the old days they had always kissed each other good night. They made no mention of that now.
Dolores said she was quite all right the next day. She got up in the morning and arrayed herself in her marching kit, and said she was ready to move anywhere. But Mark and Ann voted against it. Dolores, they said, must have a quiet day in camp, and after that they would start to move back. Her illness had frightened them. They were too far off from a doctor. Oh, any excuse did. The fact remained; they were all four of them eager to get back to civilisation.
At least she would not allow any of them to stay in camp with her. She was quite happy on her own. Mark and Colin and Ann went off for another shot at the bull elephant.
Dolores pulled her long chair out on to the shady side of the banda and ensconced herself, her writing-pad on her knee. It was full time she wrote mummy another letter, and this morning she was poignantly home-sick for mummy, for the comfort of mummy’s love, for the old care-free life in Daddy Arthur’s house. Why had she ever come out to this wretched Africa; met Colin? Colin—— Her thoughts stopped there. A sudden tenderness took possession of her heart. Poor Colin; his eyes so full of misery, his strong hands clenched. She could comfort him. If he was there beside her now, kneeling, his head near her heart, her hands could soothe him, her lips console. She wanted so desperately to give him happiness. And all this was a sin, just as the one love in mummy’s life had been a sin. How queer Life was—one got it all twisted with one’s own stupid, wilful desires, with love and hate. Did Ann hate her now? Ann had such a strong capacity for hate. Poor Ann, too, who must feel so desperately that Life had cheated her. Dolores sighed and dipped her pen in the ink and started her letter.
Darling Mummie——
The words would not come. What could she write about? Not about herself and Ann or Colin. And what else was there to write about? Her thoughts refused to move from there.
Some little excitement occurring among the native boys brought welcome distraction. She looked up.
Another safari was coming towards the encampment. A white man leading his little band of porters. Dolores stood up. She was surprised to see that it was Captain Ewart. What was he doing here?
He came straight towards her, anyway. He looked hot; he had evidently hurried. His porters, too, seemed exhausted. They put down their loads and lay or sat about on the ground panting, not laughing and chattering as usual.
“Hallo, Miss Fabian,” said Captain Ewart. “Like the clown in the pantomime—here I am again!”
“But why?” asked Dolores. “Though, of course, I am delighted to see you,” she added, with a little laugh.
“Something to do with my witchcraft case brought me back,” explained Ewart. “That, and a hankering after a certain elephant.”
He dropped into a chair beside her. “Where is everyone?” he asked.
“They’ve all gone out after your elephant,” said Dolores. “Shall the boys make some coffee or something for you?”
“That would be delightful. We’ve done two marches in one to-day,” said Ewart. “I got to the last camp at eight, and somehow it was such a disappointment your not being there; I had to push on to find you.”
“How ridiculous you are!” laughed Dolores. She called the boy and ordered coffee. “You might have had to walk another fourteen miles, only I’ve been sick and that has hung up the party.”
“You’ve been sick?” He sat forward staring at her, such real concern on his face that Dolores came to the conclusion that he must, most tiresomely, have fallen in love. “What has been the matter?”
“Just unromantically sick,” she answered. “Only yesterday—I’m all right to-day. Mark thinks it may have been the sun.”
“I suppose that is possible,” admitted Ewart. The tenderness seemed to drop out of his attitude. “I’ve got some letters for you people,” he added. “The mail runner was resting at the last camp, so I brought them along for you.”
Dolores read her letters while he went to his tent to bathe. There was one among the home ones from Captain Plumer. He wrote from Kampala.
Have been sent in here on a job, he wrote, so I am going to bag a week’s leave and motor up to see you folks. Hope you’ll be this side of the mountain by then. I’m no Alpine climber. How go things? Hope you are being good. The Ravine has been unbelievably dull since you left.
Hope you have been good! What would his wisdom say to the mess she had made of things? It would be nice, though, seeing him again—she could talk to him as she had never even been able to talk to Mark. And though he condemned, he would also understand; he had always seemed to understand her.
The other three were amused to find Captain Ewart there when they got back from the day’s hunt. Mark was openly delighted and yet curious.
“Bull elephant!” he said. “It would have to be a mammoth, or a lady, that made me turn round and reclimb a mountain.”
“Ah,” said Ewart. “But you forget—duty also called me.”
“Duty?” asked Colin. “What’s up? Is it something to do with that witchcraft case?”
Ewart took a cigarette that Mark held out to him and lit it before he answered. He was studying Ann’s face. She had sat down by Dolores. There was nothing about her appearance which could in any way bear out Simoni’s story. She seemed indeed calmer, more sure of herself than she had been the last time he had watched her.
“Well, yes,” he answered Colin’s question. “I believe Simoni did tell you he had been left behind to investigate the theft of my lady witch-doctor’s poison.”
“Oh, that little bag,” said Dolores. “I remember you told me it had been stolen.”
“Simoni also told me he had found it,” put in Colin. “Or at least that he knew where it was.”
“Yes,” admitted Captain Ewart. He glanced at Ann again. She was sitting very silent in her chair, but she was not a person who ever spoke much. Her dark eyes met his quite serenely. “But then Simoni is apt to be too cocksure over his work,” he ended.
“Is it very important?” asked Mark. “You know she had it—you found it in her possession.”
“I wanted to get it analysed,” Ewart explained. “Besides, if it falls into vindictive hands it may do quite a lot of harm.”
“You never really knew that it was poison,” said Ann. “It may have been just grains of sand.” She seemed to turn away from the discussion. “Have you been all right all day, Dolores?” she asked.
“As right as anything,” laughed Dolores. “I’m a bilious fraud.”
“Anyway, we are moving back,” Mark told Captain Ewart. “She has given us a fright. We’ve had enough of your forest of Bwamba.”
“I accept no responsibility for it,” said Ewart. “It is a horrid spot and you are very wise to get out of it. I shall devote this evening to getting down to my missing property, and hope to settle things sufficiently to start back with you to-morrow.”
“Then do you think it is here among our crowd?” asked Colin.
Mark laughed. “Perhaps somebody popped some into your tea yesterday, Dolores,” he said. “Which of the boys have you been annoying?”
Captain Ewart stirred abruptly. Just for a second he had caught Ann’s eyes. They had looked from Dolores to him.
“Of course not,” he said. “I’m having the chiefs up to-night. I’ll give them a lecture; and then, as you say, Simoni has an idea where it is. I expect he’ll be able to clear it up with a little patience.”
He had, it seemed, cleared it up sufficiently to be able to start back with them next day. He walked with Dolores and Mark. By common consent, with no word spoken between them, he and Mark had constituted themselves Dolores’ guardians, they shut Colin out from any communication with her.
When all five of them were together, as at meals, they kept the conversation going on light, easy planes. It was an undoubted boon, Mark felt, to have Captain Ewart with them all through this awkwardness.
The camp of the silent trees received them again. The bonfires gleamed in all directions. The moon was four days older, slower to rise but just as brilliant once she came. Dolores and Colin had not spoken alone together since the last night they had been here. It seemed they were never again to speak. Misery beat at Dolores’ heart. Other things like honour and loyalty dropped out of proportion, there only seemed to be left this aching, passionate desire for the touch of his hands, the knowledge of his love.
“When we get to the other side of the mountain,” Dolores’ thoughts whispered, “it will be all finished. All . . .”
For it had been decided that Dolores and Mark were to take advantage of Captain Plumer’s arrival to break up the original party. Mark and Dolores would go back in Plumer’s car, and leave Ann and Colin to finish their honeymoon alone.
Dolores was feverish and hot that night when she went to bed. She could not sleep. She had stayed up for as long as she could, long indeed after Ann had gone to her tent, sitting over the camp-fire talking to the three men. And presently Colin had got up and said “Good night” and strolled away, and still she had sat on with Mark and Ewart, talking, finding all sorts of silly things to talk about so that they might drown and keep out of hearing the insistent whisper of her heart. But at last Mark had said firmly: “It is really time you went to bed, young thing.” And Captain Ewart had stretched and yawned and admitted that he could not stay awake another minute. So they had escorted her to her tent and left her.
Dolores undressed slowly and slipped into her pyjamas, and put back the mosquito net and sat on the edge of the bed and waited. Through the flap of her tent, which was thrown back once her undressing was completed and the lamp lowered, she could see a stretch of sky, moon-flecked, silent, lit by silent, watching stars. How far away it seemed, how quiet. She remembered a verse of poetry now that she had once learnt by heart, not at the time thinking of its meaning at all, but simply because the sound of the words appealed to her:
“And this inverted bowl we call the sky
Whereunder, crawling cooped, we live and die,
Lift not thy hands to it for help, for it
Rolls impotently on as thou or I.”
And yet she wanted help from somewhere. Mark’s philosophy could no longer help her; he had forgotten what it was to love. Captain Ewart’s cheery laughter was no use. Ann, with her gloom, stood far apart. She wanted help against herself, against the little whispering urge of her heart.
Rather like a child might have done, she slipped to her knees and, with hands tight clasped and eyes shut to those dancing stars, she began to pray. Quaint, childish prayers, and then a sudden passion of supplication: “O God, dear God, help me to be good.”
Perhaps she whispered it aloud; she was oblivious, anyway, to the figure that came softly into the tent. Ann’s voice made her start round and scramble to her feet.
“Why are you praying?” asked Ann. “Do you think God listens or helps us out of these muddles that we ourselves make?”
“Ann, what’s the matter?” whispered Dolores. “Do you want me?”
“I want to talk,” said Ann. “It might be as well to you as to anyone else. Colin hasn’t come into our tent yet. I don’t know where he is.”
Dolores turned a little away, looking out into the still, white night. For to-night the moon was making everything very white. Colin was somewhere out there. Had he been waiting, longing for her, fighting his longing as she had had to fight hers?
“Well?” asked Ann’s voice harshly. “Do you know, I half thought——” She broke off. “It doesn’t matter. Sit down, Dolores. I’ve got something I want to tell you.”
Dolores sat down. “Don’t scold me any more, Ann,” she said; there was a break in her voice, showing how desperately near tears were. “I can’t bear it. Ann, there are only two more days, and then I’ll go right away. You and Colin can shut me completely outside.”
“Do you think I am a fool?” asked Ann. “Do you think I believe that Colin ever will shut you out?”
“Oh, Ann, he will, indeed he will,” said Dolores. She twisted her hands together. “Everyone forgets after a little time.”
“Do they?” said Ann. “I wonder if I shall ever forget.” She moved over to beside the tent opening and stood looking out. “Dolores,” she said softly, “have you ever known what it is to have something within you urging you, driving you to—to——”
She choked back the words. Outlined by the light from outside, she seemed a tragic, tense held figure, her hands hanging stark at her sides. “It is as though,” she said, “ever since I was born I have been hate-driven. Hate all the time, eating into my heart, poisoning my dreams.”
“Oh, Ann!” whispered Dolores. “Don’t hate me. I love you—this has just been some horrible trick that Fate has played us.”
“Fate!” said Ann. She swept round and looked at Dolores, and moved with quick steps and knelt beside her. Dolores could feel her hands, hot and fierce they were, holding her, clinging to her. “Let me tell you something, Dolores. For years it’s burnt into my life. Sometimes I feel . . . Dolores, you remember hearing about the Napiers—those people whom I used to live with. Let me tell you . . .” Not that Dolores was making any attempt to escape; she sat shocked by the intensity of Ann’s voice to absolute stillness. “I loved Mrs. Napier—oh, I was only a child at the time, but my love for her filled my whole life, just as my love for Colin fills my whole life now. And then her baby Rosamund came. You wouldn’t understand—how should you? You’ve never hated anyone—but I hated Rosamund. Sleeping, waking, playing, reading, talking to her, laughing with her, watching her, I hated her. It was like——” She stood up sharply, her hands loosening their hold of Dolores—“A great cloud that blackened all my life.”
“Ann,” said Dolores. She too stood up. In the narrow confines of the dimly-lit tent they faced each other. “Why are you telling me all this?”
“I was glad when Rosamund died.” Ann spoke slowly. She did not seem to notice that Dolores cried out and drew back.
“Mademoiselle had left us alone all morning—we had been playing out of sight on some rocks. There was a little, deep pool there. The water was so clear, one could see the sand at the bottom; but I knew it was deep. Rosamund leant over it, looking in. I saw a crab walking about at the bottom. Rosamund fell in. She did not cry out. She did not seem to struggle very much. Her body seemed to slip along the rocks. She stayed quite still, face downwards in the water.”
She lifted her hands to her eyes, brushing, as it were, some dream out of them. Dolores had crouched back on the bed; she held her breath, else surely she must have screamed.
“Mademoiselle called me,” went on Ann in a more indifferent voice. “I went back to her. I told her Rosamund had fallen in, that I was frightened and did not understand why she lay still. They carried Rosamund’s body up to the house. Mrs. Napier was away; she did not come back till a few hours later. When she came, they had told her about Rosamund. She went straight in to her. She never asked for me, or thought of me. Through all those years her love had been a pretence. She had never loved me.”
“Oh, Ann, that isn’t true,” said Dolores quickly. She fought against her fear and stood up and put her arms round Ann. “Why will you think that people don’t love you? You were jealous of Rosamund, and Mrs. Napier must have been terribly upset over her death; that was what made you think she did not love you.”
“Yes, I was jealous,” said Ann, her voice very low. She looked towards the open flap of the tent. “Is that Colin out there?” she said.
Dolores followed her glance. It was Colin. He was standing looking towards the tent. He had missed Ann, had thought that perhaps she might be carrying her rancour into a row with Dolores.
“Yes, it’s Colin,” she whispered.
Something seemed to flame up in Ann. She caught Dolores in strong hands, twisting her round against the pole of the tent. “Does he come here to you when he creeps out of my tent at night?” she asked. “If I thought that——”
“No, Ann, no,” said Dolores quickly. “Don’t say things that will make love impossible between you and me. Colin is looking for you, I expect.”
Ann drew back. “Why have you come between us?” she asked. “What magic is it you use to make men love you? Colin was mine—mine till he saw you.”
A little dignity came to Dolores. It was as though she realised that for the moment she was dealing with someone not all sane.
“Ann, don’t be absurd,” she said. “Colin is your husband and I am your sister. You credit us with very little loyalty to anything, don’t you?”
She moved to the door of the tent. “Colin, Ann is here,” she called out. “Were you looking for her?”
He came across at once. “Is anything the matter?” he asked. “Are you, or Ann, ill?”
“No,” Dolores answered. She turned to Ann. “Go and rest, Ann,” she said. “You are worn out and I am desperately tired.”
Ann moved forward into the moonshine. It glinted on her white-clad figure, the heavy black of her hair.
“It would be easier for you two, if I could only die,” she said; there was immense bitterness in her voice. “Unfortunately I am very strong. O God, why is it so difficult to die?”
Colin led her away. Dolores saw in the moonlight that he put his arms round Ann’s antagonistic figure and tried to draw it nearer to him, bending his head to speak to her. All courage dropped from Dolores’ heart. She shivered and drew back, and crept into bed and lay sobbing, her face buried in the pillow. She remembered so many things now that made her afraid of Ann.
Captain Ewart felt himself to be in a very awkward position. He could not really mention Simoni’s suspicion to anyone. It sounded so preposterous. Oh, there was some kind of unpleasantness between this unhappy trio of people, but he could not really feel that it included prospective murder. He watched Ann carefully. She was a very unhappy woman—he could see that; she was perhaps ridiculously jealous, and in jealousy, as Captain Ewart knew, other things drop out of proportion. If he watched her, she constantly and all the time watched her husband and Miss Fabian.
But they, as far as he could see, gave Ann no fuel to feed the insane passion of her mind. They had drawn entirely away from each other. Dolores was always either with Mark Heron or himself. Colin was attentive, deferential to his wife. And yet—there it was. Captain Ewart had the uncomfortable feeling of all four of them being poised on a volcano which might at any moment flare out.
They camped on the far side of the mountain two days later. The mail runner had come in again. It seemed that Captain Plumer was waiting their arrival in Fort Portal. They had written to say they were coming in as fast as they could; he had got their letters and was delighted.
“Well, that’s that,” said Mark Heron as they sat round tea the afternoon of their arrival into the camp at the foot of the mountain. “No one ever persuades me to climb the Moon Mountains again. Isn’t that what they are poetically called?”
“Yes; there’s some yarn about their being connected with the moon,” Captain Ewart admitted. “Of course, it is queer, the elusive effect they have from the station. On cloudy mornings you wouldn’t know there was a mountain in view, and then, puff! with the first scrap of wind, there they are, tall and stately, snow and all.”
“I don’t want ever to see them again,” said Mark.
“Oh, why?” asked Dolores. “I think they have been rather lovely. I know I shall never forget them.”
And just for a second—a rare event for them in those days—her eyes caught Colin’s and she smiled a little wistfully.
They separated, all five of them, after tea. Captain Ewart had some work to do; Colin went after butterflies; Ann and Dolores, and Mark, who was always a little lazy in the afternoons, said they were going to lie down and rest. But Dolores did not stay in her tent. She put on her hat again and wandered out in the direction of the little stream over which Ann and she had crossed on their first day’s climb up the mountain. This time she took her stockings and heavy shoes off and dabbled her hot, tired feet in the cold water. These last two days had been unbearable; she would have liked to take off all her clothes and slip into that cool water and see if its freshness could wash away some of the sore perplexity of her mind.
The horror of Ann’s suspicion had been with her night and day; it pressed in on her, robbing all the outside world of beauty, making her laughter a pitiful fraud, tearing her courage to shreds. And in addition to all this, or perhaps because of it, she had not felt well these last two days. She had not told any of the others, she did not want them to worry, but she was awfully afraid that something was the matter with her—that she was going to be ill.
Colin, coming out farther up-stream, saw her sitting there like a child might have done, dabbling her feet in the water, and stood and watched her for some time before he let her know of his presence. In the end, he moved quietly along the bank towards her, and not until he was quite close to her did Dolores look up and see him. Then she gave a little cry and gathered her bare feet up under her.
“Oh, Colin,” she said, “what a start you gave me!” Purposely her voice levelled itself; she looked away. “Have you caught anything?” she asked.
Colin put aside his net and sat down beside her. One of her hands lay on the grass near him; he put his over it.
“Colin, don’t,” whispered Dolores. “It isn’t either wise or right.”
“No, perhaps it isn’t,” he admitted. “But, Dolores, I shan’t lose my head again, and this is, practically speaking, good-bye between us, isn’t it?”
She sat silent. His touch thrilled through every nerve of her body. She felt sick and faint. Captain Plumer had been right when he had said that in love Dolores would give most generously.
“I haven’t brought much into your life, have I, Dolores?” Colin was saying. “Except tears and disaster—and yet I love you. My dear, if things had been different, would you——”
“Don’t let us put it into words, Colin,” said Dolores. “It only hurts.”
“You’ve never said you loved me,” Colin spoke softly. “Somehow I feel life might be easier to get on with if I had heard you say it just once. And yet I don’t know. Oh, Dolores, it is all so damnable.”
“I don’t know if it’s our fault,” said Dolores. She took her hand away from his and sat with both her hands tight clenched on her lap. “Other people hearing about it would say we were most hopelessly in the wrong, Colin. I can’t think why love should have come just like this into my life.”
He leant towards her. “You do love me?” he asked.
She looked up at him, her blue eyes misty with tears, the laughter all driven out of her face. He wanted, most desperately, to take her into his arms and kiss her—those tear-wet eyes, her soft, sweet lips, the little shadow at her throat. But he did not kiss her. Instead, he put his head down just for a second and laid his lips to her hands. “Forgive me, Dolores,” he said. “I’ve been a most almighty cad to you.”
He stood up quickly. “Let’s get back to the camp, shall we?” he said. “Take my hankie—it is larger than yours—dry your feet with it before you slip on your stockings again. I believe you ought to be scolded for paddling in that ice-cold water—it is a very unwise thing to do in this country.”
She took his handkerchief and wiped her feet, and struggled with her stockings and shoes. Tears blinded her all the time; one by one they splashed down on her hands as she worked; she felt the taste of them on her lips. She must not let him see that she was crying. She rubbed furtively at her eyes, trying to drive those silly, useless tears away.
When she stood up she was able to force a little laugh.
“I’ve made your handkerchief awfully wet,” she said.
“I’m so sorry.”
They walked back to the camp in silence. Ann saw them coming, but she made no comment about it. She had indeed hardly spoken to Colin since the incident of the tent two nights ago. She had been very silent to them all. She was a person dominated by one strong idea; she could not dissemble or swerve aside even in little things.
But murder! No, she would stop at that. Captain Ewart shrugged his shoulders over the idea that very evening. It had been fantastic. Some mad impulse might have been accountable for her stealing the poison. Simoni was so positive he had seen it in her possession, and there was no reason for Simoni to have lied about that. Some mad impulse! But it had not gone any further—it would not. They were back in civilisation now; everyday, placid life was closing in on them again. One had impulses when one got right away into these odd, disturbing wilds of Nature; but they were impulses that faded once one got back to ordinary life—just as certainly as night fades before the coming of day.
None the less he found himself that evening studying Ann with unusual interest. What on earth was she going to do about this crisis that had arisen in her life? He visioned her as going forward ruthlessly, keeping by force the allegiance which should have been hers by right, shutting Dolores most firmly outside.
And, after all, she was quite within her rights in doing that. But, good God, what happiness did she hope to get out of it? Was there anything uglier in this world than a marriage without love!
No one stayed up late that night. With the end of their safari in sight some of the glamour and romance of sitting round a camp-fire chatting seemed to have vanished. One by one they said good night and went off to bed. Captain Ewart was wakened about midnight, he supposed it must have been by Mark Heron. The older man seemed intensely agitated; he had his dressing-gown wrapped round him; he carried a hurricane-lamp.
“Wake up, Ewart,” he said. “Dolores is desperately ill. God knows what is the matter with her!”
Ewart sat up with a start, rubbing sleep from his eyes “ Ill?” he said. “How?”
“She seems in such agony,” Heron explained. He looked round him; his hand holding the lamp was shaking. “I don’t know what to do for her. I’ve tried brandy.”
“Did she call you?” asked Ewart. He pushed aside his mosquito net and stood up. “Is Mrs. Baird with her?”
“We are all there,” said Heron. “I fetched them at once. The boys have got us hot water. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a woman in such agony before.”
“My motor-bike is here,” said Ewart. He was struggling into his clothes. “I’ll ride into the station and fetch the doctor out. It’s some of the tinned food perhaps that has upset her. Has she been sick?”
“Most horribly sick,” Heron admitted. “Ewart, as God sees me, I believe she is dying.”
“Nonsense, man!” Ewart spoke sharply because of a sudden, most terrible thought that had come to him. “Keep her absolutely quiet—don’t let her have anything except water to sip. I’ll be back in under two hours. He’s a sound man, our Dr. Redmayne—he’ll pull her through.”
“She told me, before it got too bad for her to speak, that she has been feeling seedy off and on for the last two days. I wish to God we had never gone the other side of that damned mountain,” admitted Heron.
Ewart was on his motor-bike and buzzing away from the camp almost before the last word was said. Horrible thoughts and fancies and fears went with him as he rode through the dark. Had he been in the wrong not to speak? Good God! Did it really mean that Mrs. Baird had . . .? Even now he would not face it; he pushed the thought aside and rode on.
It was still all dark when he got to the hospital. The doctor’s house stood just behind. He left his bicycle outside and ran shouting up the steps of the veranda. Dr. Redmayne was an elderly man with a keen, very clever face. He had slate-blue eyes, and grey hair that grew a little thin over the lines of his forehead. He had served the Mission now for twenty years, for the hospital here was a mission-run affair. People said it was amazing how up-to-date in his methods, how keen and conscientious Dr. Redmayne remained after twenty years of coping with native hospital work. But keen he certainly was. He had Ewart into his room and questioned him closely while he dressed. The native boy, roused with some difficulty, was getting the medical chest ready—finding the different things as Dr. Redmayne called out their names to him. Already the native chauffeur had run the car round to the front of the house.
“Poison!” said Dr. Redmayne—he had snatched that word out of Ewart’s mouth, as it were. “What can she have taken to poison her?”
“I don’t know”; confusion still dominated Ewart’s mind. He could not put his thoughts into words—it sounded so hideous. “Perhaps some of the tin stuff we had last night.”
“Ptomaine poisoning—humph!” said Redmayne. “None of the rest of you have shown any signs, have you? Now, what about coming back with me? I can’t take you in the car—I must take my dresser and I shall have to bring the two ladies back with me. I should cut along to your house and have some breakfast. I’ll have the girl back in hospital within two hours.”
“Yes, I don’t suppose it’s much use my coming back,” admitted Ewart. “I’ll call back later and find how things go.”
Still he had said nothing. What, in Heaven’s name, was he to say? A figure greeted him on his return, standing on his veranda. It was by now early dawn. A figure dressed in gay pyjamas strolling about with a cup of tea in his hand. Captain Ewart handed over his motor-bike to a surprised boy and went to inspect his uninvited guest. It was Captain Plumer. On his first trip to Africa he had travelled out with Captain Plumer—they had been good friends ever since.
“You didn’t mind, old chap, did you?” asked Captain Plumer. “To tell you the truth, the rest camp here is damnably uncomfortable, and your house was vacant and inviting.”
“Of course I don’t mind.” The two men shook hands. Ewart moved forward and sat down, a shade wearily. “I am delighted to see you! I am also tired.”
“What’s up?” asked Plumer. He stood surveying his host, the tea-cup poised in one hand.
Ewart looked up at him. Plumer was a sound fellow and a man intensely interested in his work. Besides, he knew these other people better than Ewart did.
“All hell is up,” said Ewart tersely. “At least that’s how I feel at the moment.” He stood up. “Let me order some breakfast—things fall out of proportion seen on an empty stomach, don’t they?—and over breakfast I’ll tell you. As far as I’m concerned, it is for your private ear alone.”
Captain Plumer listened to the story without many interruptions. He nodded at Captain Ewart’s stumbling attempt to explain Ann.
“A curious, powerful woman,” he agreed. “A terribly mistaken marriage.”
When it came to Simoni’s share in the story he leant forward eagerly. “Have you spoken to him since?” he asked.
Ewart admitted that he had not. “These people were my friends,” he explained. “I couldn’t set a nigger to spy on them.”
“No, possibly not,” admitted Plumer. “All the same, he has probably spied on his own. We’ll have to ask him.”
“Do you really think, then,” asked Ewart, “that Mrs. Baird has——”
“Look here; like you, I daren’t think,” Plumer answered. He stood up. “I happen to love Dolores Fabian. I am being quite frank with you, so you may see how deep my interest goes. If she dies, nothing on this earth shall stop my running her murderess to earth. If she lives”—he gave a little shrug to his shoulders—“we’ll have to see.”
“It’s all been pretty damnable,” said Ewart. “The wretched, unhappy woman—she’s had her provocation all right. It’s pretty plain for anyone who cares to see what has happened.”
“You mean that Baird loves Dolores,” said Plumer. “That is the tragedy. He loved her from the first. But he had got engaged to this other girl, and some mistaken sense of honour made him go through with it.”
“But then to come up here, all three of them!” remonstrated Ewart. “The man must be a blinking idiot.”
“He couldn’t exactly help himself,” Plumer said slowly. “He was engulfed by Fate. I’ll go and dress and we’ll cut up to the hospital and see if they’ve arrived. What time will that orderly of yours get here?”
“The safari takes six hours to march in,” Ewart told him. “They should be here by twelve.”
Ann sat beside Dolores. One of the small, limp hands still lay in hers. Wave upon wave of agony had swept over Dolores; now she lay most mercifully quiet. Not beautiful any longer, her face sharpened and drawn out of all resemblance to her usual self. It was almost as though she were dead.
Was she dead? Ann, leaning a little forward, saw the hardly perceptible going and coming of Dolores’ breath. How long it took to die! The butterfly in the bottle that Colin caught and held for her to see had taken just so long to die. Faint fluttering wings of life! And Dolores had so loved life!
The two men had moved outside the tent. They stood there close together, whispering, looking along the road. They had not been able to bear watching Dolores’ agony. But Ann had watched it. She had never wavered. Her hands had held and soothed Dolores; her voice had whispered and reassured. Now she sat quiet, and her eyes in the whiteness of her face were like dark pools of fire.
Outside, night gathered together her floating draperies and crept out of sight. The sky flamed red, heralding the coming of the sun.
“They can’t be much longer now,” said Mark. “Ewart said a couple of hours.”
Colin looked back into the tent. “She’s been quiet now for some time,” he whispered. “God! Supposing——”
“Don’t!” Mark spoke sharply. “She can’t die. Look—isn’t that a haze of dust on the road? I believe it’s the car. Your wife’s been wonderful through this, Baird—all rancour laid aside. We’re up against truth at this moment. There is no use pretending any more. She had cause for rancour, hadn’t she?”
“I love Dolores,” said Colin. It came like that from him, almost a cry of agony. “Nothing else counts—I love her.”
“Yes, and your wife loves you.” Mark moved beside him and placed a hand on his arm. “The bitterness of that has been hers as well as yours. Go in to her now—tell her the doctor’s in sight—that is a car. She needs your comfort, Baird.”
He himself walked a little bit down the road towards the approaching car. His heart was very sore for Dolores. He had learnt to love her in their weeks together as he had never thought to love a woman. Gently, tenderly, desiring to shield her from all harm. She was his daughter— his thoughts bowed before that word as indeed they had never learnt to bow before to the other women in his life whom he had loved.
In the tent Ann and Colin faced each other. She had risen as he came in, replacing the limp white hand softly against the other one where it lay above Dolores’ heart. There was something in the immobility of those small hands most horribly suggestive of Death.
“The doctor’s car is in sight,” whispered Colin. “Ann, is she——?” His voice broke; he turned away suddenly and knelt by the bed, his face hidden. Because it seemed to him that Ann’s still face had given him his answer, and this was his good-bye to Dolores, before the others should come in and the conventionality of the world should shut him away from her again. If only he could have died instead of her! Did God send Death like this as a punishment for their love? Their love, which had never known any joy, which had only beat with feeble and protesting hands against the walls of Fate.
“Ah, Colin, don’t!” Her whispered, broken words speaking to him now out of her silence. “It isn’t either wise or right.” Her blue eyes wet with tears—the answer to his questions. Her love that had fought so hard to keep him constant to ideals.
Ann stood with head erect, hands tight clenched. Anger was flaming in her heart again. It swept aside any faint feeling of regret that might have lingered there. When she spoke her voice was hard, her words cold and distinct.
“Get up, Colin,” she said; “the doctor is coming. You outrage common decency with your grief.”
He stumbled to his feet. “Yes,” he admitted. “I’m sorry. I’ll go to my own tent. I shan’t be wanted here.”
“Sorry!” she said scornfully, her head thrown back. “How easy it is for you to say that. Do you think it wipes out any of the wrong you’ve done me? I didn’t ask you to lie to me, did I?”
She was shaking all over now—passion, rage, despair were shaking her. “You offered me love—I took it as a sacred gift. I was so glad of it that all my heart sang—and you . . . you . . .”
She seemed to be screaming at him, her voice had grown so shrill. He went closer to her and caught her by the shoulders and shook her.
“Be quiet,” he ordered. “It is you who fail in decency, dragging all this in where she lies dead.”
“I am glad she is dead,” said Ann. She drew back from him. “I could laugh my gladness aloud. She, too, lied to me, cheated me. She stole your love—she had always had everything else—she could not even leave me that.”
The doctor stood in the doorway of the tent, Mark Heron just behind him.
“May I come in?” he asked. “Is this where she is?”
If he had heard anything he gave no signs of having heard. He was very professional and deft. He stooped over Dolores and touched her with his long, slim hands and put his head down and listened and studied her with his wise, keen eyes. Mark Heron put his hand on Colin’s arm and drew him outside. Ann stayed where she was, standing straight and stiff by the pole of the tent.
Presently Dr. Redmayne looked up at her. “She’s not dead yet,” he said tersely. “It has been touch and go, though, hasn’t it? How did it start?”
“I don’t know,” Ann answered stiffly. He thought she was immensely overwrought with the night’s vigil. “She had called Mr. Heron before we were called. Her tent was nearer his. When I came she had already been very sick; she was in violent pain. Sometimes”—it was as though she caught her breath—“she has screamed with it.”
“Drawn all her limbs up, did you notice?” asked Redmayne. “And then suddenly slackened out again and come out in a great perspiration.”
“Yes, it was like that,” Ann admitted.
He seemed to be studying her thoughtfully, but he was not really thinking of her at all.
“It looks most damnably like strychnine,” he said softly.
“But where can she have got it?”
“Is she going to die?” asked Ann.
He gathered, not unnaturally, that that was all that really mattered to Ann. He looked back at Dolores before speaking.
“I don’t know,” he answered. “I always think it is best to be perfectly frank in these matters, Mrs. Baird, and this thing has gone so far that it doesn’t rest on my skill to save her. It is up to her own recuperative powers and that something outside human skill, which is God!”
“There is not a God!” said Ann. “Don’t speak of Him here, or to me.”
She moved and passed quickly out of the tent. Mark Heron and Colin, standing close together a little aside, saw her go, but she did not see them. She walked stiffly, held very erect, her hands hanging by her sides, her head thrown back. She was like a tragic, sullen figure of Fate.
Grief, as Dr. Redmayne knew, affects different people in different ways. He dismissed Ann’s violence with a shrug of his shoulders and turned back to Dolores. Could he make her live? She hovered, he realised, just on the border line. He went outside the tent presently and spoke to the two men.
“We can’t move her,” he said. “I had hoped to get her back into hospital, but it is out of the question. It would shake the little flicker of life that is still burning into darkness. Will one of you take the car and fetch back Nurse Lawson and one or two things I want? I’ll write a note to the nurse. And Captain Ewart—someone ought to let Captain Ewart know what is happening.”
“Let me go,” said Mark. “It won’t take me five minutes to throw my clothes on. You ought to stay with your wife, Baird.”
“Yes, I gather she is in a very overwrought condition,” agreed Dr. Redmayne. “It’s no wonder—this must have been pretty ghastly for her.”
“All right, then, I’ll go.” Mark didn’t give Colin time to speak. “Come into my tent, doctor, and write what you want, while I put my clothes on.”
It seemed Ann heard the stir of their movements, for as the doctor and Mark emerged from the latter’s tent five minutes later, she joined them. She, too, was dressed now—she wore her sun hat.
“Oh, Mrs. Baird,” the doctor explained, “Mr. Heron is driving my car back. I want to get a nurse out here. I had hoped to move your sister into hospital, but——”
“If the car is going,” interrupted Ann, “please let me go with it.”
“But——” began Mark. She looked up at him; her eyes made him drop the remainder of the sentence.
“Colin can stay with Dolores,” she said. “I can’t stand any more.” She looked round her. “I must get away,” she whispered. “I shall go mad if I stay quiet— waiting—waiting for the end.”
Behind her back, the doctor nodded at Mark.
“Mrs. Baird is right, Heron,” he said. “There is nothing she can do here, and the drive may distract her thoughts.” He drew him aside. “If the girl is going to die—though, mind you, I hope she won’t,” he added, “it will be within the next hour or so. She is just as well out of it.”
Mark Heron never forgot that drive back into the station with Ann sitting beside him. He had never really liked her; she had the type of overpowering personality which he did not understand and could not condone in a woman. But he had, on one or two occasions, been sorry for her. Not that he understood the torment of her heart in the slightest—love had always been for him a light and joyous thing—it was beyond him to analyse the frantic depths of her passionate desire to hold Colin, but he had sensed the desire, and its immensity compared with its futility had struck him as rather pathetic.
Now, in this desperate departure of hers, he thought he saw a final surrender to the thing that had so hurt her. In the end, she was not going to stand between Colin and Dolores. She could not stay and see their leave-taking, but at least she had left them to it.
That was how Mark’s mind visioned the position, and because of Dolores he felt for the moment oddly grateful to Ann. Perhaps her capitulation had not been over-graceful, but at least she had capitulated, effacing herself completely by this retreat.
So he would have tried to find words wherewith to help her, but in some strange way her silence imposed itself on him; it enveloped him with a queer, disturbing sense of discomfort.
How strangely silent and stiff-held she was. The car bumped and swerved and swayed along the uneven rough road. She seemed to stiffen herself, to resist each movement.
It was nine o’clock when they drove up to the front of the hospital. Ewart and Captain Plumer were waiting for them on the steps. Seeing Ann, they looked from one to the other and away again as quickly as possible. They thought the worst had come. Mark got out of the car and explained; he and Ewart went into the hospital to find Nurse Lawson; the native driver slipped out of the car and went round to the front to get some water for it. Captain Plumer moved stiffly and went and stood beside the car and now, for the first time, Ann turned and looked at him.
“Well,” he began slowly, “this thing——”
She stopped him with a quick, sharp movement of her hands.
“It is you I have come to see,” she said. “Is there somewhere where we can go? I have something to tell you.”
He nodded. “Get out here,” he ordered briefly. “I’ll drive you back to Captain Ewart’s house. We can talk there.”
He opened the door of the car and stood aside while she got out. He did not hold out his hand to help her. If she had stumbled and cried out, he could not have lifted a finger to help her. He never in all his life remembered to have been so conscious of a horrified dislike.
Captain Ewart and Heron came out, carrying the things the doctor had said he would want; Nurse Lawson was with them. She was a small, cheerful person, rather like a plump young bird. She went immediately to Ann and put friendly arms about her. Nurse Lawson was very—it is not irreverent to say this—sloppy in her religion of good will and love towards everyone.
“You poor, poor thing,” she said. “But there, God can be very merciful. If He so wills it, she will recover.”
Ann drew away from the embrace. She said nothing. Captain Plumer spoke for her.
“I have asked Mrs. Baird to come back with me to your house, Ewart,” he said. “She cannot do any good by going back.”
“No, that’s quite all right,” said Ewart. He said it so queerly that Mark Heron looked up at him in astonishment.
Nurse Lawson was climbing into the car. “We shall come back with good news,” she asserted. “I have great faith in the goodness of God.”
Mark got in after her. What was up between Plumer and Ewart? He had been, he felt, just for the moment on the verge of understanding something unpleasant.
Ewart turned to Plumer as the car drove off. “Take Mrs. Baird down to my house, will you, Plumer?” he said. “I’ve got to get back to office, but I’d rather foot it. I’ll see you later.” He just glanced very quickly at Ann. “We’ve all got to hope for the best, haven’t we?” he added, and turned sharply and left them.
“Come this way,” said Plumer to Ann. “We’ve left the car just outside. It will only take ten minutes to get to the house.”
And again he did not look at her, but moving quickly he put himself in front of her and led the way to the car.
Captain Ewart’s house was very much a bachelor’s domain—it had about it none of the dainty furnishings and fripperies so dear to a woman’s heart. The Government allowed him three tables and nine chairs, one cupboard and one bed. They were simple and useful articles of furniture, but they were not beautiful. He had supplemented them to a very limited extent. There were some mats on the floor; rather harsh green curtains hung over the doors; a fine lion skin covered a native bed that had been converted into a couch. There were one or two deck-chairs, and a Bombay chair for Captain Ewart’s special comfort, and a bookcase on which stood several photographs of Captain Ewart’s latest fiancée at home.
Ann sat on the couch and Captain Plumer stood at one of the doors which opened on to the veranda, with his back to her. They had not as yet said anything to each other. He was waiting for her to speak, and he was remembering Dolores as she had looked the last time he had seen her. Dolores—who had so immensely enjoyed being alive; who had laughed so easily; whose blue eyes were apt to dance with pleasure at such little, simple things.
Ann was thinking about herself. Introspective, groping, her thoughts were back in the past. There was self-pity in her mind more than self-accusation. No one had ever really loved her, and she had been so hungry, so greedy for love. Now her heart was dead, a black, dull weight within her, and it was Dolores who had stabbed it to death— Dolores and Colin; and visioning again Colin’s figure kneeling beside the bed, her eyes glowed with all their old fierce resentment.
It was this aggressiveness which made her voice harsh when she spoke presently.
“Is all the blame mine?” she asked. “Shan’t I find pity anywhere?”
He swung round to look at her. “You haven’t come to ask me for that, have you? You know that I love Dolores.”
“She stole from me the one thing in all the world that I valued,” said Ann slowly. “She who had so much grudged me just the little I had won. She stole between me and Colin, and looked at him with her soft eyes and laughed with her soft mouth, and Colin loved her. All my joy turned to agony, all my love twisted to hate; and she with everything, everything under her dancing feet.”
“It was all such madness,” said Plumer a trifle impatiently. “Let’s get down to facts, Mrs. Baird. I already know some of them. There is a certain bag of poison—very deadly poison the natives hold it to be—which Captain Ewart had lost and which Captain Ewart’s orderly is prepared to swear is in your possession. What have you to say in answer to that?”
She looked up at him; a little smile stirred on her lips.
“Yes,” she agreed, “I took it.”
She looked away again; the glow had died out of her eyes, now they were cold and tired. “I wanted to kill her. It was like a whispering voice in my mind, day and night, day and night. ‘Kill her,’ it said. I wanted to see her lying quiet and still with those laughing eyes closed—just as Rosamund had Iain.”
A great shivering shook her; she put her hands to her eyes. “I did not think it would hurt her so much,” she whispered. “I did not know she would take so long to die.”
“You gave her the poison,” said Plumer. He had to control his voice, keep the hate out of it. He was questioning her officially, not as a man who loved Dolores. “How did you give it?”
“That doesn’t matter, does it?” said Ann. “I can answer those questions somewhere else.”
“Before God,” said Plumer, and all his fierceness leapt to sudden life, “if she dies—you shall.”
Ann stood up. A great dignity had come about her. She was at that moment amazingly handsome.
“Before God,” she repeated. “Is there a God, I wonder. And if there is, will there not be more justice in His judgment than there is in yours? Now, what are you going to do with me? I have surrendered—isn’t that how one puts it?—to the police.”
He did not know what to do with her, and that was the truth. If Dolores died—then there need be no question. He would have as little remorse, as little pity as he would have in killing a snake that crossed his path. But—if Dolores lived. He visioned suddenly the ugliness of the case. The dragging of Dolores’ name through the courts. Because Colin had loved Dolores, this thing had come about. One must not, if one could help it, let that ugliness stain Dolores’ life.
“I don’t know,” he admitted slowly. “If she lives——”
He looked up at her quickly. “Mrs. Baird,” he said, “will you promise to leave this thing in my hands—to trust me to do the best I can?”
“For Dolores—if she lives?” asked Ann, and smiled only with her lips, not with her eyes. A horrible smile. “Yes, I understand—I promise.”
“Thank you,” said Plumer. She had understood, he saw; he was suddenly grateful to her for that. “Now I must leave you here. The boys will get you some lunch. I’ll see Captain Ewart at his office and arrange things with him. As soon as news comes through, I’ll let you know it.”
“Yes,” she agreed, “let me know that.”
He left her standing there. The picture of her impressed itself on his memory. He was never to forget it. In after years he could think of her with pity, so tragic that tense-held figure seemed, but for the moment pity was swamped in dislike. He had always really in his heart of hearts disliked her.
Ewart listened to his story in all gravity. “Simoni has just come in,” he announced. “He says, when he left, the doctor’s native boy had said the white mem would live. It’s damned awkward, Plumer, for Simoni knows that she has been poisoned right enough and who gave the poison.”
“We need not worry about him,” said Plumer. “He won’t chat to other white people unless you give him leave, will he? It doesn’t matter about the natives.”
“I don’t know that I agree with that,” argued Ewart. He was a very conscientious officer as far as the prestige of English law was concerned. “These things get whispered about; they undermine the people’s belief in the white man’s justice. If Mrs. Baird has attempted to poison her sister, why should she be let off just because she is white?”
“That isn’t the reason at all,” stated Plumer. “As far as Mrs. Baird is concerned, she could go to the gallows without my stirring a finger to save her. And yet, I don’t know, Ewart; how the devil are we to judge, anyway? The whole point is that Miss Fabian gets dragged into this if we make it public. Miss Fabian and that good-natured ass, Baird, who married one sister after he had fallen in love with the other.”
“Yes, I can see that,” admitted Ewart. He chewed the end of his pen. Their interview was taking place in the D.C.’s office, and Captain Ewart’s table was littered with papers dealing with the witchcraft case. He put out his hand now and picked up the little bag of poison which had caused all the trouble. “Simoni brought this in with him this morning,” he added. “He said that as the white mem had left her tent unguarded, he thought it a good opportunity to retrieve it. Look here, Plumer, it is practically certain that all the boys know what is the matter with Miss Fabian.”
“Let them know,” said Plumer. “If our black staffs got up and sang out all the secrets they know about us, the white community would look pretty small out here, Ewart. The fact remains, they don’t sing them out. Either they aren’t interested sufficiently in our doings to bother, or else they put them down quite rightly to the madness of the white man. I’m out to protect Miss Fabian. She’s been through quite enough as it is.”
“Well, what’s to stop her formidable sister having another whack at her?” asked Ewart flippantly, because of the very bigness of the subject.
“No,” said Plumer slowly, “I don’t think she’ll do that. We’ll have to see how things turn out. Anyhow”—he stood up to take his departure—-“it’s agreed for the time being, isn’t it, we keep our mouths shut?”
“I don’t quite approve,” admitted Ewart. “But—well, I’ll follow your lead. I’ll have to put Simoni off with some yarn of her going home to be tried.”
“Yes, you can tell him that with perfect truth,” said Plumer. “I have no doubt that justice will pursue her and finally have it out with Mrs. Baird.”
Dr. Redmayne was able to bring Dolores into hospital the next day. Her constitution had defeated the poison, but it would be some time before she regained her usual health. She must lie still now and wait for life, which had been so nearly driven out of existence, to creep slowly back. Dr. Redmayne was very puzzled about the whole affair, but, professionally, he was an extremely silent man. He did not go rushing about from person to person saying, “Miss Fabian has been poisoned by some drug which resembles strychnine. Who do you think can have done it?” He did not even question the natives, which would have been for him a comparatively easy way of finding out. For Dr. Redmayne had a great reputation among the natives; they brought the truth to him as they would bring it to few other white men. Perhaps, in this instance, he was more than a little inclined to leave truth alone, sensing something utterly unpleasant behind it which, on the whole, did not really concern him. That, however, was after his official visit to Captain Ewart. He looked in at Captain Ewart’s office on the day after Dolores had been brought into hospital. He found Captain Plumer already there. Captain Plumer was returning to Kampala the next day, and he was taking Mr. and Mrs. Baird with him. The decision had only been arrived at that afternoon. It seemed a curious end to the safari—a strange desertion of one sister by the other—but Captain Plumer felt it to be un- avoidable, and he had been explaining that to Captain Ewart as Dr. Redmayne came in. They both looked up at Redmayne’s entrance, and Captain Plumer stood up at once.
“Come in, Dr. Redmayne,” he said. “Have you come to see Ewart officially? Shall I clear out?”
“Oh, I’m very semi-official in my visits,” said Redmayne. He put his hat on the table and stood with his long, thin fingers playing a little tune against it. “And I’m glad for you to be here, Plumer. As a matter of fact, it’s about Miss Fabian.”
“She isn’t——?” Captain Plumer began. The doctor’s keen eyes smiled their reassurance.
“She’s all right,” he answered. “But what is worrying me is, who did it? She never took that amount of poison by mistake. I’ve questioned her a little; she says she is quite certain she did not eat anything in the way of berries or leaves picked up outside. It is an amazing thing for the servants to do—it is unlike them. They don’t use poison even against their own pet foes; its use is almost entirely confined to witch-doctors and comes under the category of magic. I——”
He seemed to realise that his words were tumbling into a very stiff silence, for he broke off, glancing from one to the other man in front of him. Ewart had his eyes lowered; Captain Plumer was staring out of the window. It was he who answered.
“You are quite sure now, aren’t you,” he asked, “that Miss Fabian will live, and that she will not in any way be permanently affected by this unpleasant experience?”
“Oh, I’m as sure of that as I can be of anything,” admitted Redmayne. “Only it was not thanks to whoever gave her this poison that she did not die.”
Captain Ewart glanced up. “Both Plumer and I are aware of that, Redmayne,” he said. “Believe me, we have gone very carefully into the pros and cons. It sounds unprofessional, but supposing we told you that we had decided after very careful thought not to take any steps into investigating this”—he gave a little shrug to his shoulders—“this accident; would you be content to stand in with us?”
Accident! The word challenged Dr. Redmayne’s attention. Again he looked at his two companions. “You have your reasons, no doubt,” he said. “I think I know you well enough, Ewart, to realise that they are good enough for me.”
“Thank you.” Captain Ewart flushed. “That’s damned decent of you, Redmayne.”
They shook hands warmly; they were good friends; they understood each other. Captain Plumer stirred and, picking up his hat, moved to the door.
“We are off to-morrow, the Bairds and myself,” he said. “It is an immense comfort to know that we leave Miss Fabian in such good hands. When will she be able to travel, Redmayne?”
“Not for another fortnight at least,” Dr. Redmayne told him. “I understand that one of your party is staying behind to look after her.”
“Yes, Mr. Heron is staying,” explained Plumer; “and a Dr. and Mrs. Mackenzie, very good friends of hers, “will motor up here towards the end of her stay to take her back with them. It is unfortunate, but Mrs. Baird is unavoidably unable to remain.”
“I see,” said Redmayne. “Rest assured Miss Fabian will be quite all right with us. Miss Lawson is a most motherly person.”
Silence had come down between Ann and Colin again. It was Captain Plumer who told Colin of Ann’s intention to return to Kampala at once.
“She is leaving Dolores,” said Colin. “Doesn’t that seem a little queer?”
Captain Plumer glanced at him impatiently. Was the man an utter fool or wilfully blind?
“Your leave is about up,” was all he said. “Isn’t it time you got back to work?”
“Yes, but Ann need not come with me,” said Colin. They were sitting on the veranda of Ewart’s house, and Ann was somewhere indoors, shut in with her silence in one of the sparsely furnished rooms. Now Colin stood up with a little brusque movement.
“I cannot go on with it, Plumer,” he confessed. “It has all been a most ghastly mistake. Ann and I cannot go on living together, carrying on a pretence through all the years.”
“You’ve made a damned fool of yourself,” said Plumer curtly. “I can’t be polite about it. You would not listen to me before—you’ve mucked up your life, and Ann’s, and Dolores’.”
“Not Dolores,” said Colin quickly. “Oh, my God, Plumer, it won’t hurt her for long! I shall go right out of her life. She’ll never see me again. She’ll forget. But Ann——”
He came back and sat down again and rested his head on his hands. “I think Ann has grown to hate me in these last few days,” he said.
“Well, what are you going to do?” asked Plumer. “I must say it is a most ghastly tangle.”
“What can I do?” said Colin. “I thought of applying for an out-station somewhere, asking Ann if she would like to go home. It can settle itself down into a separation—or she can divorce me if she likes.” He looked very tired, almost old. “These things can be arranged, can’t they?” he asked.
“I suppose they can,” admitted Plumer. “Meanwhile I think you will have to travel as far as Kampala with us. It will make things look better for Dolores.”
Colin sat staring before him.
“I shan’t see Dolores to say good-bye to,” he said presently. “I don’t suppose I shall ever see her again. Will you say good-bye to her for me, Plumer? If she thinks I’ve failed by not sticking to Ann, by not trying to make the best of something that is absolutely hopeless, put in a good word for me—try to make her understand.”
“Oh, I’ll tell her all right,” said Plumer. “But it is in my heart to hope she won’t ask too much. I don’t want her to cry her eyes out over the tragedy of your life, Baird.”
“No,” said Colin. “I don’t want that, either.” He stood up again. “Perhaps Ann and she will make friends once I am out of the way.”
“Perhaps,” said Plumer; and left it at that, marvelling at the simplicity of Colin’s mind, which had not yet, so it seemed, glimpsed the real meaning of Dolores’ illness.
There is an hotel in Kampala, the most pretentious of its kind in these remote spots. It has big, airy bedrooms on its first floor; they are stiffly furnished with mahogany suites of bedroom furniture. The beds are not disfigured with mosquito curtains because, if you have attained to the dignity of two floors, the mosquitoes are not supposed to rise with you. If, however, you are among the wary few who consider this statement a fallacy, the hotel management will always issue mosquito nets for your benefit. It is just perhaps that the beds look more sophisticated and blend in better with the Tottenham Court Road furniture unadorned by unseemly tropical reminders of mosquitoes.
Ann and Colin and Captain Plumer arrived at the hotel fairly late on the evening of the second day after their departure from Toro. They booked three separate rooms, and almost immediately Captain Plumer sallied out to seek distraction, if not consolation, at the Club. The two days’ journey had to him been a very purgatory of discomfort. He suggested that Colin should come with him, but Colin said he would rather go down to the boat and book his berth for the next day. Neither of them, however, came back to dinner. Ann had it alone. Ever since her interview with Captain Plumer she had seemed to be like this—alone. Even when other people were with her, still she was alone, with the barrier of her thoughts like a black wall between herself and all human companionship. And within this solitude her hands worked, her body moved, like a machine that goes on working long after the mind which has directed it is still.
After dinner she went up to her room, which was one of the bedrooms that opened on to the front veranda, and very methodically she started to unpack, putting all her things in neat, orderly piles. Captain Plumer had asked her what she meant to do after Kampala, and she had told him that she meant to go home. And as she was going home there would be no need for all these light, cool clothes—it must be winter at home by now—it would be very cold when she got back.
Colin’s knock at the door, his entrance when she called “Come in!” took her completely by surprise. Yet of this she gave no sign, moving at once to the dressing-table and sitting down in front of it with her hands folded.
Colin stood awkwardly just within the door. “Plumer tells me you are arranging to go home,” he said. “Is that what you want to do?”
She was sitting in front of the glass; she did not turn to look at him. She looked at her own reflection in the glass instead.
“Yes,” she answered. “What else is there to do?”
“I wanted to tell you how damnably sorry I am.” Colin spoke stiffly. “Beyond this, I’ll make it as easy as I can for you. You can divorce me or not, just as you like. And I want you to know that I shan’t ever see Dolores again, or try to communicate with her.”
Small sops—thrown down to try and ease her pride. Ann shut her eyes. The mirrored reflection hurt her intolerably.
“There is no need to do all that,” she said. “It does not matter to me what you, or Dolores, do now.”
“I see,” he said. He turned away; with his hand on the door he looked back at her. “I am most damnably sorry,” he said again, quite simply.
Ann rose and faced him. Her hand holding the back of the chair was clenched so tight that the knuckles showed white.
“I don’t want your pity.” She spoke fiercely. “Go—get out of my sight quickly. Let me try and forget your treachery—your lies—your deceit. Go back to Dolores take her into your arms—my kisses have dried on your lips; they won’t poison her. Poison”—high and shrill the word seemed to break in her throat; she leant forward, her eyes blazed. “I tried to poison her,” she whispered. “I nearly succeeded.”
Colin let go the handle and drew back against the door.
“What are you saying?” he asked sharply. “Have you gone mad?”
The venom, the rancour, died out of Ann; the lashes hid her eyes.
“Oh, they all know about it,” she said. “All except you. You’ve always been a fool, Colin.”
“But——” he began.
She lifted her eyes and looked at him. “Because of Dolores,” she said, “nothing is going to be done about it. It would hurt her reputation”—was there sarcasm in her infinitely weary voice—“for it to be known that her sister had tried to murder her.”
“My God!” said Colin. “You—it was you. Dolores—that night Dolores nearly died!”
“I should have been glad if she had died,” said Ann. “Glad. What was the agony of her body compared to the agony of my mind!”
She raised her clenched hands and beat them against the chair. “Oh, go—go!” she shrilled. “I hate you now just as much as I loved you before.”
The closed door answered her. He had gone. The armour of hurt pride roused to anger shivered and fell from Ann. There was nothing left but the agony of her heart that still loved, despite all she had said.
“Colin,” she whispered. She swayed a little where she stood. “Colin.” She ran to the door, perhaps with some idea of wrenching it open, of calling him to come back. But, instead, she stayed quiet against it, drawn up to her full height.
If she called, he would not come. It was all finished and done with. “Colin,” she whispered again, and seemed to crumple up where she stood and sag downwards, and lie with her face against the floor where his feet had touched.
The world reeled round Colin as he shut the door of Ann’s room behind him. Memory was most horribly with him. He was remembering Ann rising to face him as he had stumbled into Dolores’ tent that morning to say good-bye. Ann and Dolores and the love that had been between them until his coming. The mischief that his blundering love had brought to pass seemed to him unbearable. Africa is not a country which helps men to face out any emotional strain.
As he stood there for one brief second visioning this thing that Ann had said to him, it was as though something snapped in Colin’s brain. He was beyond and after that not accountable for his actions.
He stumbled out on to the veranda anyway, and Captain Plumer, who had come back from the Club half an hour earlier and who was smoking a final cigarette before retiring to bed, noticed that Baird walked almost like a drunken man might have done, or like someone stunned by a heavy blow. It was so unlike Baird to drink, even as an escape from an accumulation of unpleasant worries, that Plumer was moved to a sense of disaster. He threw away his cigarette and crossed the veranda to speak to the other man.
“Hallo, Baird, old chap,” he said. “What’s the matter?”
It was as though the mind of Colin struggled for a moment to regain control. He looked straight at Plumer, and his whole bearing seemed to stiffen.
“Ann has just been telling me,” he said. “Plumer, did you know it was she who had tried to kill Dolores?”
Over the last word his voice broke, and Plumer put out a hand to steady him.
“It is all right, old chap,” he said quickly. “The thing did not go far enough to matter desperately. Dolores is all right, and for the rest—well, your wife wasn’t all sane; we have got to be as charitable as we can to her.”
“To her,” Colin admitted; his eyes wandered away from Plumer’s, his mouth twitched. “But what about my share in it, Plumer?” he asked.
“That’s past and done with.” Plumer tried to reassure him. “You can’t blame yourself too much, Baird. Temperamentally, I think your wife is very unbalanced. The whole thing has been a most tragic mistake.”
“You can say that of it.” Colin spoke abruptly. “I have to answer it in another way.”
He moved as though to go past Plumer, but something in his manner made the older man unwilling to stand aside.
“What are you going to do, Baird?” he asked quietly. “Don’t make matters worse, old chap, by going off the deep end.”
Again, for a moment, it was as though something struggled to life in Colin’s brain. He lifted his hand and brushed it across his eyes.
“No, that’s all right,” he said. “You’ve had trouble enough with it all as it is. I won’t complicate matters. Good night, and, Plumer, I am damnably sorry—you’ll know that, won’t you, whatever anyone else may say.”
“Come into my room,” suggested Plumer. “Have a stiff drink. You need one, Baird, to pull you together.”
“No, thanks,” said Colin slowly. “I’d rather be alone. What’s it Kipling says: ‘The sin we do by two and two, we pay for one by one’1—though, before God,” he swayed round to the other man again, “in all this there’s been no sin as far as Dolores is concerned. She fought her damnedest to keep us both straight.”
“I guess I know that,” said Plumer. “Don’t worry over things too much, Baird. This country plays the devil with our nerves if we are worried.”
He stayed for quite a time out on the veranda after Colin had gone. He lit another cigarette and smoked it to the end without moving. He had a sense, a very vague sense—else, as he assured himself afterwards, he would have acted on it sooner—of waiting for something.
He stood with his elbows on the rails staring out over the golf course as he waited. It was softly dark out there. One by one, the lights in the surrounding houses died out; cars flashed past very rarely. It was growing late; people were settling themselves in for their night’s sleep. Poor old Baird! He had gone through hell. Plumer had seen it coming and had tried to prevent it, and Baird would not listen. Ann’s love had engulfed him. God! What a formidable woman she was; yet pitiful, too, in her own way. And little laughter-loving Dolores! Plumer’s thoughts grew warm and soft, visioning Dolores. Naughty little monkey, too—not so much a heartless flirt as one incapable of any great depth of feeling. Fighting her damnedest, though—as Baird had said—to make the two of them run straight.
“I am too old for her,” thought Plumer to himself. “But, by Jove, I think I’ll make her marry me! I could, I know, and she’d not get into these kinds of scrapes with me to look after her.”
And because his thoughts had called up Dolores, they went chasing away now down the most delightfully pleasant channels.
A sharp, thin sound cut across his pleasure. It was a sound that made him sway and catch at the veranda rails behind him. Now he knew with startling poignancy how instinctively this was the sound he had been afraid of hearing ever since he had looked into Colin Baird’s eyes. He had been afraid, half guessing the torture of the man’s mind, and he had done nothing. The carelessness struck him almost like a blow across the face, rousing him to sudden action. He dashed along the veranda and down the passageway to Colin’s room.
Already a little group of startled servants had gathered there. Mr. Armstrong, the hotel manager, a fat, pallid-faced man in a pink shirt with its sleeves rolled up to the elbows, turned from his scrutiny of the keyhole to greet Plumer.
“Door locked, Captain Plumer,” he said. “No answer. I guess he’s shot himself.”
“Break the door in, then,” said Plumer. “We can’t waste time guessing.”
“No need to do that,” said Armstrong. “I guess he won’t have shut the windows. Come round this way, sir.”
“Tell them to wait,” ordered Plumer. “We don’t want a lot of damned natives staring at him.”
“No, that’s right, sir,” agreed Armstrong; he issued his orders in no uncertain terms. “It’s not fair to a hotel to do this kind of thing, is it?” He added his own “grouse” as they drew level with the windows.
They were not shut, as he had predicted. The “jinmills” had been closed, but a gentle touch swung them open. The light still burned. The hotel at Kampala has electric light and is very proud of it. Colin’s body lay face upwards across the bed. He had put the gun into his mouth to fire—there was very little left of his face. On the small table by his bed was a framed photograph of an elderly woman. Her brave, courageous lips, her tired eyes seemed to be keeping a smiling watch over what lay on the bed. Plumer recognised it at once as the picture of Colin’s mother. Colin had so often, in the days before his marriage, spoken of her. Some instinct impelled Plumer—Armstrong was too busy over his own investigations to notice his action—to take up the picture and lay it very reverently face downwards on the table. Colin would not have wished his mother to see him as he lay just then. “Not so much a coward,” Plumer’s mind argued in his behalf, “as a man defeated by his own despair.”
It was Captain Plumer who told Ann, going across to her room after the doctor had been and all the necessary formalities had been gone through. It was long past midnight by now, but he did not expect to find her asleep. Nor was she. When he knocked he heard the something eager, almost aggressive in her voice which he had always disliked. He gathered that she thought it was Colin coming back, perhaps to admit his fault and plead for pardon.
The thought hardened his mind against her. He came in and closed the door behind him and stood with his back to it. Ann had switched on the electric light. She was sitting high up in her bed; her black, heavy hair framed her face, her eyes glowed in its whiteness. Seeing him, she caught her breath and looked round her quickly for something to put round her shoulders. Dolores had often laughingly said that Ann was a tremendous stickler for the proprieties.
“What is it?” she asked, and the eagerness had gone out of her voice—only the aggressiveness remained.
“You have not heard anything?” he asked.
She shook her head. “What has happened?” she said again. “What makes you want to see me at this time of night?”
“I have something very painful to break to you,” he said lowly. “Colin has shot himself.”
She did not make any answer, and for a minute or two he did not look at her.
“He passed me as he came out of here a couple of hours ago,” he went on stiffly. “He stopped and spoke to me. You had told him about Dolores. It seemed to have shaken him to his very soul. He was not a very strong man, Baird, but he was my friend. I blame myself most fiercely that I let him go on to face things out alone.”
He heard a little movement from the bed; he gathered she was getting up, putting some garment round her.
“Where is he?” she asked.
Sudden antagonism stirred in his mind. “You cannot go to him,” he said. “It will do no good—and it was the last thing he would have wished. They are moving his body up to the hospital for the rest of to-night. He will be buried to-morrow morning.”
“Why did he do it?” asked Ann. “Why not have killed me? There would have been more justice in that.”
He turned to go. He had told her. For the life of him he could not offer either sympathy or condolence, though he could see that her tragedy was deep enough. He was thinking of that other woman who had still to be told, whose pictured eyes had smiled as they looked down at Colin.
“If you want to attend the funeral to-morrow,” he said, “I’ll make the necessary arrangements.”
“Do you blame me for this too?” said Ann. She stood with frenzied hands clenched in each other. Her dressing-gown, a flimsy thing in blue silk which she had bought for the honeymoon, had fallen apart; it showed underneath it the long, stern lines of her white night-gown. Captain Plumer, glancing at her, swallowed his resentment.
“No,” he said quickly. “In this, I only am to blame. I should have stuck by Baird to-night. My sympathy cannot mean much to you, Mrs. Baird, but such as it is, you have it, and I suggest that for Colin’s sake as well as for your own we carry through what is left to be done as decently as possible.
“I see,” she said. A sudden mask seemed to come down over her face; she attained as once before to a great dignity. “Please go now. I will see you again in the morning.”
Dolores came slowly and placidly back to life. She did not seem to notice or resent Ann’s desertion. Her heart, like her body, had been swept clean for the coming of Death. Now it was a new Dolores that lay out on the hospital veranda and watched the shadowed clouds chasing each other across the sides of the mountains. On clear, fine days the snows stood out against the blue sky, wonderful, beautiful, calm and remote. Sometimes they were covered with a blanket of thick white cloud, even though the sun still shone on the rest of the world.
Every day Mark came up to the hospital to sit beside Dolores. He was staying with Ewart. Sometimes Captain Ewart came with him—but since her illness Captain Ewart had grown strangely shy of Dolores. His conscience was uneasy about the thing he had done. He felt that Simoni must often watch him taking cases and dispensing justice with cynical eyes, and he hated the feeling. No one had said anything to Mark. He carried on as though he did not know. In fact, once Dolores had shown definitely that she intended to recover, everyone dropped the subject of poison, of where she could have got it, or how she could have taken it—even Miss Lawson never referred to it.
Captain Plumer wired up the news of Baird’s death to Heron, but at Dr. Redmayne’s suggestion it had not as yet been told to Dolores. He felt it would be a pity to hamper her progress by any sudden shock of that tragic description.
Dolores was surprised sometimes at herself to realise how little she missed Colin. Love had been like a fire in her mind and heart, and now it had burnt itself out and there was nothing left but fine ashes that lay so lightly she could almost be unaware of them.
She spoke of that to Mark one afternoon after the two of them had stayed quiet, not laughing or talking for quite a long time.
“I have forgotten,” said Dolores. “Oh, Mark, how horribly shallow I must be.”
“I should say how ‘wisely shallow,’” answered Mark, “if I admitted the ‘shallow’ at all. My dear, I am not a person to come to with self-reproaches.”
“I thought I loved Colin so desperately,” whispered Dolores, “that life without him was going to be impossible, and now”—she made a little movement with her hands—“it is as though a keen cold wind had gone blowing through my heart, leaving it all bare and empty. I can think of Colin without its hurting. I think I could even see him without——”
“Well, I’m damned glad to hear it,” said Mark. “It hurt me pretty considerably to see you wasting yourself on something that could never bring you any happiness.”
“It hurt Ann, too,” went on Dolores. She did not really seem to be paying very much attention to him; she was pursuing her own thoughts. “Oh, why did I do it, to hurt Ann so?”
He put out his hand and laid it on hers. “My dear,” he said gently, “you aren’t altogether to blame. I think, as I said before, that you and Colin were really meant for each other and love ran between you like a flame—it was bound to burn and hurt the people who stood in between.”
She looked at him, her eyes very grave. “That’s just a fallacy, Mark,” she said. “If I had really loved him it might have been true. Loved him as Ann loved him. Ann will never forget.”
“No, perhaps not,” agreed Mark, and sat silent for a little, wondering if this was a good time to break to Dolores the thing she would soon have to know.
And presently Dolores stirred a little and wriggled her hand out of his. “Mark,” she said, “tell me what has happened. I am strong enough—wise enough to know now. Ann and Colin, what have they decided to do?”
He slipped his hand over hers again. “Are you wise enough,” he said, “not to let something hurt you too desperately if I tell it to you?”
She turned startled eyes on him. “What is it?” she asked. “It’s not Ann, is it?”
He shook his head. “Ann’s down at Mombasa waiting for a boat to take her back to England,” he answered. “I heard that from Plumer only to-day.”
“Then Colin,” whispered Dolores. She felt his hand tighten over hers; she looked away quickly. “Tell me now, Mark,” she said, “that’s kindest.”
So Mark told her as quickly, as kindly as he could. It had been, they thought, an accident. He had been cleaning his gun. At least it had been instantaneous—he had known no pain.
“OhColin!” whispered Dolores. “And Ann—poor, poor Ann!”
And then, with a rush, it all came back to her. The start of their voyage, the aggressive eagerness of Ann, the determination to force Dolores to come with her. And then at the Ravine with her new happiness, a changed, radiant Ann going off on her honeymoon. The safari up the mountains, suspicion creeping to life. Hate flaming out. That awful scene in the tent. Her low, tense voice “Yes, I was jealous.” She had admitted that. Her silence, her jealous eyes that glowed and watched. Fear beat at Dolores’ heart again as it had beat on that night of terrible agony. Ann had sat beside her; Ann had held her hands; Ann had watched! Ann—sudden truth sprang at Dolores—Ann had wanted her to die. And all because of Colin; and now Colin lay dead. And she—before she had heard that, she had almost forgotten him. Colin! She pushed the thoughts and the memories from her and took her hand from Mark’s and hid her face.
“I want to go home,” she said. “I want to go home to mummy.”
Kindly Dr. and Mrs. Mackenzie, instigated to it by Captain Plumer, journeyed up to Toro to escort Dolores back. She must stay with them for a little at the Ravine. Felicity wrote frenzied letters. Dolores had been so ill she must not think of travelling home alone. What had Ann been thinking of to leave Dolores at such a time! She had never trusted Ann; she would never, never trust Ann again. Meanwhile she and Daddy Arthur were making plans to come out to Africa and fetch Dolores home.
“What an important personage I am,” said Dolores smilingly, a little ruefully. “Poor mummie! And I was so utterly selfish about leaving her and coming out.”
“I shall melt away here,” Mark told her. “I have no right to force a meeting on your mother, my dear. Dolores, will you keep a kindly place in your heart for me? I’ve grown absurdly fond of you.”
“‘Absurdly’ is not a polite way of expressing it,” remonstrated Dolores. She gave him her hands. “You know I will,” she said. “I’m glad I met you. I’m glad I know.”
He went, however, as far back as the Ravine with her. They did the journey, travelling by easy stages for Dolores’ sake, in seven days. Mrs. Mackenzie was very tactful. Perhaps she had already received her fill of “I told you so” from her husband and Captain Plumer. She never referred to Ann or Colin. She spoke only—brightly and insistently—about the future. An incurable optimist, Mrs. Mackenzie. Her heart was now set on a match between Plumer and Dolores. “I did not really realise it before,” she confessed to her husband, “but of course the poor man is very much in love with her.”
Dr. Mackenzie raised hands of wrath to Heaven. “Another marriage from our house,” he said. “Good God, woman, haven’t you worked enough mischief already?”
Mrs. Mackenzie took his railings in good part. Of course, the Baird affair had ended rather tragically. Ann had gone straight down to Mombasa and not touched the Ravine at all, and Colin’s tragedy had certainly shocked Mrs. Mackenzie, but she could not really feel herself to blame. Marriage was the best state for everyone; she had always been so happy herself she could not but believe it.
She set herself assiduously, anyway, to make the path clear for Captain Plumer’s courtship. She was always leaving them alone together, sending them out together—smiling, hinting, helping. It is amazing how much a kindly matron can achieve and bring to pass in these delicate matters of the heart.
Captain Plumer proposed to Dolores one evening after dinner, sitting out on the Mackenzies’ veranda. The doctor had been called out to a case—a settler’s wife some thirty miles out—and Mrs. Mackenzie, most thoughtfully, had accompanied him. “They have no nurse, I know,” she had said, “and the poor thing may need a woman’s hand to hold on to.”
So Dolores and Captain Plumer had dined alone, and after dinner they had pulled up their chairs to the edge of the veranda and sat side by side. They had been talking about all sorts of things—the journey, life in Africa, morals and love—and suddenly out of a little silence Captain Plumer leant forward and just touched her hand with the tips of his fingers.
“Tell me the truth about something if I ask for it, Dolores,” he said.
She looked up at him, her eyes a little startled. “Why, of course,” she answered. “That is one thing I’ve always been to you, Philip, truthful.”
He smiled, his fingers still caressing her hand.
“Still grieving for poor old Colin Baird?” he asked.
Dolores flushed, but her eyes did not look away from his. “No,” she said. “You’d guessed that, hadn’t you? It is awful of me, but the thing that was like a great fire in my heart has died away into nothingness.”
“Thank God!” A sudden urgency crept into his voice; his hand closed over hers.
And now Dolores looked away, and the colour creeping out of her face left it a little pale and very earnest. “Why do you say that?” she asked. “Doesn’t it prove that the thing I call love isn’t worth anyone having?”
She took her hand away with a little swift movement.
“I’m so desperately shallow,” she confessed. “Ann had a poem she used to quote about me in the old days:
“Your pleasures spring like daisies in the grass,
Cut down and up again as blithe as ever;
From you, Ianthe, little troubles pass
Like little ripples in a sunny river.”2
“Well?” he said softly.
“You don’t know,” she went on—tears darkened her eyes—“what agony I brought into Ann’s life by thinking I loved Colin. What agony I brought to Colin.”
“My dear, that has nothing to do with it.” He leant over and possessed himself of her hands again. “The agony came because Colin loved you, and he, poor devil, did that from the moment he saw you.”
“It was my fault,” whispered Dolores; a tear fell and splashed on their two hands. “You told me yourself, that day on board ship when you scolded me, that I was the type of girl who went about asking every man to love her.”
Her voice broke in a little sob, and, quite against anything he had intended to do, Plumer found himself on his knees beside her with his arms round her.
“Dolores,” he remonstrated. “Darling, I’ve never scolded you in my life. How dare you say such a thing?”
“You have,” whispered Dolores. She felt strangely comfortable, at peace, with his arms round her like that, with her head nestling against him. “And every word you said was true. I’m a wretched, soulless little flirt.”
“Look up at me,” he ordered. She tilted back her head, obeying. “Do you know that I love you?” he asked, and did not wait for her answer, but stooped and kissed her.
Perhaps her own definition of herself had been correct.
Perhaps she was shallow, her heart turning easily from one love to the other—it made her none the less desirable? lovable. It is not the very strong or noble natures that draw love to them.
“I love you,” said Plumer again. “When are you going to marry me?”
It was an important question, with Dr. and Mrs. Cole hurrying out to Africa, Felicity all eagerness to reclaim her baby and take her home.
“I ought to go back with mummy,” Dolores argued. “Philip, I’ve been an awful little beast to mummy. She so hated my coming with Ann, and I would do it.”
“And I so hate your leaving me,” he answered. “On your own confession, how am I to know that you’ll still be loving me in three months’ time?”
“Philip!” Dolores’ cheeks were pink. “How can I be worth marrying if you think that?”
They compromised finally. They would ask Felicity what she would prefer, and if Felicity said definitely that she wanted Dolores at home for a year or eighteen months before she married, Dolores would go, and Philip should get leave as soon as he could and follow her, and they would be married in England.
Philip hated the compromise, but he acquiesced with seeming good nature. Dolores had been through quite a hectic enough time already, without his adding to it.
“I was afraid of Ann,” Dolores acknowledged. “I have always been oddly afraid of Ann. We shared a cabin on the boat coming out; it was the first time in our lives we had ever lived as close as that. For it is true what Ann used to say—mummy never liked her. She used to try and keep me as far away from Ann as she could. And Ann awake, I knew and thought I understood; but Ann asleep—oh, it is silly and I can’t explain it—but Ann asleep terrified me.”
“That is understandable,” said Plumer. “People who talk in their sleep or have nightmares are always rather terrifying.”
“That night before we came back over the mountain,” Dolores confessed, “Ann came into my tent. I think she half expected to find Colin there. She started talking to me. She asked me if I had ever known something inside me urging me—driving me to—— Do you think she meant to kill, Philip?” Her voice dropped very low; she sat close-held against him, her eyes hidden from him.
Did Dolores know? Had she guessed?
“Don’t let’s worry about it now, Dolores,” he went on. “I don’t like your thinking and brooding over what is past. I don’t think she’ll ever come into your life again, somehow.”
“You mean she’ll never forgive me,” said Dolores. “Never want to see me again.”
That was not quite what he had meant, but perhaps it was easier for her to think of Ann’s silence as that.
“She does not find it easy, with her nature, either to forgive or forget,” he admitted.
“And if I had not interfered—she and Colin——” began Dolores.
“No—that—never,” he interrupted quickly. “Don’t blame yourself too much, Dolores. Before ever you came on the scene I tried to show Colin the stupidity of the thing he was doing. There never were two natures less suited to each other.”
But she did blame herself, and he knew it. He must let her think of the past as little as possible.
Felicity and Dr. Cole arrived a fortnight later. The latter had enjoyed his trip out immensely. “You’re a fraud, young lady,” he admitted, looking his stepdaughter over with a professional eye. “But I forgive you because the sea voyage was worth it, and now that I’ve come I’m damned if I’m going away without seeing Africa. You look to me to be in perfect health.”
“And happy,” said Felicity. “Oh, Dolores, it’s a tremendous weight lifted off my heart to see you looking so happy.”
“Did I sound miserable in my letters, mummy?” asked Dolores.
“No, not exactly,” admitted Felicity. “But ever since I let you come away with Ann I’ve been afraid, horribly afraid.”
That was, curiously enough, the only reference she made to Ann. She asked for no particulars as to her wedding, or where she was now. Ann, she thought, it can only be concluded, was definitely settled outside their lives. She was more than content to leave her there.
As to Dolores’ engagement, what could she say? She liked Captain Plumer. Arthur liked him. Dolores loved him. Dolores was quite, quite sure she loved him.
“I’ve been through the sham, mummy, and come to reality,” said Dolores. “You need not be afraid to let me marry him.”
But if mummy wanted her to, she would come home first; Philip had been made to understand that she must do that. How could Felicity insist? Put ever so tactfully, she could still see where Dolores’ heart lay. Let them get married then. She and Arthur could stay for the wedding, and do a tour of the country afterwards and come back and stay with the young couple for a little and then go home alone. Philip and Dolores would follow when his leave fell due.
“If you love him, Dolores, my dear—it’s your life. You are just starting it—I am getting ready to leave mine behind. How could I interfere?”
So most mothers have to give up the thing in life they hold most dear.
Dolores and Philip were married a month later. A proper church wedding, as Mrs. Mackenzie said. Even her inexhaustible optimism rather jibbed at the idea of the second wedding taking place from her house. The first had proved so disastrous.
There is no doubt at all that Dolores should have felt very humble before the attendant memory of Colin. No doubt she did. She had so thought she loved him, that perhaps her heart grew quiet in the midst of its happiness, remembering the misery in his eyes. Thought she loved him! How hard it is for the average run of humanity to be certain, despite all their wisdom and the clearness of modern thought.
Sun blazed down on the narrow and wide streets of Port Said. Simon Ertz, famous to all travellers, was doing a roaring trade in the main street; all the humbler curio shops, the street sellers, the cafes were busy. For that morning a big homeward-bound steamer had come in from the Canal, and the returning travellers were thronging the streets of Port Said, buying their last souvenirs of the East, taking their last look, some of them at least, at the splendour of her sunshine, at the swarming squalor of her life.
Ann had come ashore with a boatload of people; they had parted company with her at the quay. She walked now alone, threading her way in and out of the throngs on the pavement, jostled by would-be sellers of beads and amulets and charms, by impudent post-card men who leered in her face as she passed, and by conjurers who dragged about with them their live stock-in-trade—a half-grown, squeaking chicken, a wilting snake, a kitten that miaowed piteously.
Ann had made no friends on board. People had, good-naturedly enough, tried to include her in the various festivities, in the games and the dances, but she had very purposely stayed outside. She was a woman, so her fellow-travellers guessed, who had been through some very deep sorrow—she was immersed in her thoughts and her memories and her pain; she had no wish for contact with the outer world. The most charitable of her companions thought that, but not unnaturally other whispers got about. She was a drug fiend, at least one lady firmly believed, immersed in her unpleasant habit; she had committed some crime and was conscience-stricken, said another. Their interest, however, did not go beyond this rather vague curiosity; since she did not wish to join in with them, they left her alone.
So Ann was alone this morning. She walked with her head a little thrown back, staring at the people she passed, but not really seeing them. She was, as usual, rather tragically engrossed in self. The agony of her own mind was driving her now, as it had driven her for the last few months. The agony of her mind! Subconsciously, perhaps, it was looking for the dark corner behind the cupboard into which Ann might creep and hide.
The ghosts of other people’s pain went with her. Agnes Napier holding Rosamund against her heart; Colin, Dolores, Felicity. Very, very far in the background, Felicity. Ann’s own mind in its agony was like a snake squirming among them trying to assert its right to strike back. They had failed her—each of them in turn had failed her. Their love, on which she had tried to set such store, had been only a sham and a mockery. Rosamund lying face downwards in the water; Dolores’ cold, limp hands twitching with pain; Colin’s eyes! These things had mocked her too. It had brought her no satisfaction to hurt. She had wanted to love and be loved.
And all the time she walked straight on. Her tall, stiffly erect figure, her set face brought a feeling of surprise to one or two people—they turned to stare after her. A group of fellow-passengers sitting in one of the street cafés noticed her passing, and spoke about her among themselves.
“That odd Mrs. Baird,” said one of the ladies. “Where can she be going to?”
“Hades, I should think,” laughed a young man in answer. “At least to judge by her face.”
They forgot her again almost at once. Some ridiculous conjurer with his live chicken claimed their attention. Afterwards they remembered having seen her; they told how they had noticed that she seemed strange, and that she was walking towards the native town. They wondered what on earth could have happened to her. This was when the Nulbera had steamed out of sight of Port-Said and an officer happened to mention that one of the passengers had overstayed her time on shore and got left behind.
The lady who had thought Ann “odd” felt intrigued. Indeed, it had been pity that had stirred in her heart for a vague moment, watching Ann’s face as she went past.
“But what happens?” she asked. “Doesn’t anyone notify the authorities—make any attempt to find her?”
“Oh, they’ve been notified all right,” the officer reassured her. “Mrs. Baird will put up at one of the hotels and come on by the next boat. The stewardess says she seems to have taken her brushes and combs, etc. It almost looks as though she had intended to stay behind. Might have notified us, though. We delayed starting a good half-hour.”
“How odd!” said the lady again. It seemed the only word she could find to express the impression Ann had made on her. “Supposing,” she hesitated—“supposing she went farther into the native town than she meant to go—lost herself—would anything awful happen to her?”
The officer—he was young and not over-sympathetically inclined towards Mrs. Baird, whom he had placed in his category as “unflirtable with”—admitted Port Said to be a bit of a sewer. “She had no right to go wandering into the native quarter on her own. If they thought she had any money on her, they might quite conceivably murder her and no one be any the wiser. However, if the authorities did not trace her to one of the hotels, they would know what to do,” he added.
“I wish I had got up and spoken to her as she went past,” confessed the lady. “She looked sort of odd—as though——”
“Come to that, she always looked odd,” said the officer. He laughed cheerfully. “If you are visioning some awful tragedy, Mrs. Mathers, of Mrs. Baird being kidnapped into a disreputable Sultan’s harem, I don’t think you need. Mrs. Baird wasn’t what could be called a tempting proposition in the female line.”
“How horrid of you!” remonstrated Mrs. Mathers. “I wasn’t thinking any such thing. Only she looked unhappy, lonely. I wish I had got up and spoken to her and asked her to join us.”
“I expect we’ll get a wireless in an hour or two, telling us of her fate,” said the officer, anxious to reassure Mrs. Mathers, whom he thought quite nice. “Don’t you fuss your head about her, anyway.”
The house with its little balcony and its carved and studded door had offered no sort of welcome to Ann. She stood looking at it for a minute or two before she went up to it and knocked. She was remembering that other day, not so very long ago, when she had stood out here with Captain Plumer. She was thinking of the white woman who had come out on to the balcony and smiled and sat down, hiding her face from them. What was it Captain Plumer had said?
“They lose themselves on purpose. There is no place in our world to which they can creep back.”
So she was going to lose herself. There would be no creeping back. Something warped and twisted in her nature took satisfaction in doing it this way, instead of choosing death. She could not have explained it had she been asked to, but she was afraid of death.
A native, slithering along by the shadows of the wall behind her, grinned, seeing her standing there. He had followed her for some time, wondering whether the money in her bag would be worth a sudden pounce and risk of capture. Now other figures joined him. They were quite oblivious of being onlookers at the last scene that mattered in the tragedy of Ann’s life. They were rather cynically amused at the picture of this tall, erect white woman hesitating before she knocked on the carved door.
As though the imps of Fate hounded them on, they started to jeer at her, laughing out loud, pointing derisive fingers at her.
A quick, shivering sigh shook Ann. She moved forward and, lifting her hand, beat on the door.
It seemed hours before anything happened—it could scarcely have been more than a few minutes, and then the door opened slowly. A figure in the long, severe get-up of a nun stood in the opening. The stiff white lining of the black thing worn over her head framed a face made sweet by old age and gentle patience. She carried in one of her hands the largest thing in sun-hats that Ann had ever seen; her other had been raised to open the door; now it had dropped again to the rosary that hung knotted from her waist. She had very clear blue eyes and a fine, white, wrinkled skin.
“Whom do you seek, daughter?” she asked softly. “The white woman who lived here is dead.”
It seemed as though she was known, even respected, by the riff-raff of the neighbourhood; the crowd that had collected to jeer at Ann melted away. Ann looked back into the street. In its bareness, with that hot sun beating down on it, it looked bleak enough.
“I——” she began; she swayed a little where she stood.
She had walked a long way that morning, she was tired and overstrained.
The nun with the gentle eyes and the clear, quiet voice put out a cool hand and touched hers.
“You are tired,” she said. “Something has hurt you. Perhaps she was a friend of yours—the poor woman who lies dead in here.”
“No,” said Ann harshly. “I didn’t know her. I saw her only once by chance. Why are you here? Did she send for you?”
“Come inside.” The black-robed figure stood a little aside to let her pass. “Let us talk. The sun outside is too hot.”
She closed the door behind them and, turning, led the way into a small, partitioned-off room at the back. It was unspeakably tawdry, not to say dirty, cheaply ornamented, got up to represent exotically an apartment for pleasure. In its strange surroundings the figure of the nun looked out of place, austere, dignified; only her face seemed perfectly human with its calm, shining eyes and patient lips.
“Sit down,” she said to Ann. “Rest. You need rest. In a little, you shall tell me why you are here, what you wanted from the woman upstairs. Perhaps I can help you.”
“You—help me?” whispered Ann. She stumbled to a chair and sat crouched up. “Nothing and no one can do that.”
Sister Marie Thérèse stood watching. Her thin, fine fingers touched the beads of her rosary, they slipped over them as though she were reciting her prayers. She had just assisted one agonised soul out of life. She was not even unused to this house. To-day’s had not been the first death she had attended there. For fifteen years Sister Marie Thérèse had lived in Port Said and gone in and out of these small hells where human bodies were bought and sold and souls counted as non-existent. And nearly always at the end, as the flickering candle of life guttered to its final splutter, the flame of the soul shot up and out. Sister Marie Thérèse had seen it—she knew there were such things as souls. Now she stood watching Ann. She had spoken of helping—how could she really help?
“Has not God helped you at all?” she asked. “He is everywhere and ever ready.”
“I don’t believe in Him,” said Ann. “If there is a God, He has never done anything for me. I think He must hate me.”
Sister Marie Thérèse put religion aside. She had long ago learnt that if it is going to be accepted by those who cry “There is no God,” it must come through channels of human love and kindness.
“Tell me, my child,” she said simply, and sat down beside Ann and put her cool, quiet hand on Ann’s. “To share one’s troubles lightens them. Tell me—and presently we will go away from this house where indeed there is no peace nor anything good, except the poor dead woman who lies up above. And you shall come back with me and find a little quiet and rest for your tortured mind.”
The touch of her hand seemed to soothe Ann. The hardness died out of her face; she bent her head so that the other should not see her eyes.
“If I were to tell you,” she said, “your pity—for it is pity that makes you kind to me, isn’t it?—would harden into hate.”
She stood up. “You had better go and leave me.” She spoke quickly. “I came here to lose myself—in degradation I shall find forgetfulness. There is not a soul in the world that cares what happens to me. Leave me alone. Let me go my own way.”
“But I can’t do that,” said Sister Marie Thérèse; “for your way is my way, and my soul cares what happens to yours.” She stood up too. “Won’t you give my way a trial first? This one, believe me—for I have travelled it with not a few poor souls—is long and bitter, and leads in the end, after all its agony, only as all other roads do, to death and God.”
“God!” said Ann. “You believe in God, don’t you? That raises the barriers between us.”
“Oh, no, my dear, it doesn’t,” answered Sister Marie Thérèse. “It levels them.”
“Supposing that I were to tell you that I had committed murder,” Ann said it fiercely, almost vindictively. “Supposing there is blood on my hands and I am trying to escape from justice.”
“That is between you and your God,” answered Sister Marie Thérèse. “You do not escape Him, dear, by hurrying down these roads of sin.”
“Isn’t there any escape anywhere?” whispered Ann. The antagonism had gone from her voice; she sounded young and tired. “Shall I never forget?”
“You will escape in Him,” said Sister Marie Thérèse, “and find forgetfulness in love. I know, for I have proved it. Come.”
She turned and moved to the door. Once she looked back; it was when she had reached the end of the badly lit passage and had her hand on the carved and studded door. Ann’s figure was standing in the entrance to the little room. It seemed to be hesitating there; her eyes were dark shadows in her face.
“Come,” said Sister Marie Thérèse softly, and opened the outer door and stepped out into the sunshine. The figure of Ann followed her. It seemed almost as though the sunshine leapt up to meet it and enfold it, the sunshine which is like the love of God.
Mr. Anderson, the British Consul at Port Said, was giving a dinner party. Not a rare occurrence—he was most essentially a hospitable man. He looked for opportunities on which to entertain people, and on this occasion he had found one in the presence of Captain Plumer and his bride on the home-going Llan Stephen Castle, which had put into Port Said that morning.
Captain Plumer and Mr. Anderson had been to school together, and, in any case, Mr. Anderson always consulted the incoming passenger lists to see whom he might ask to dinner. Mr. Anderson was small and plump and immensely talkative. There were really not enough people in Port Said to keep him supplied with refreshing conversation.
To-night, though, he was going to have quite a large dinner party, for in addition to Plumer and his bride—who, Mr. Anderson had heard, was a very charming and lovely girl—there were her father and mother, a Dr. and Mrs. Cole. Mr. Anderson had only heard of them that morning, and had included them at once. It swelled the number of his party to twelve, and he was, at the moment, personally supervising the placing at table, because the boys were very apt to make people sit too close together rather than go to the trouble of putting an extra leaf into the table.
Mr. Anderson had given himself an hour away from office in order to superintend these delicacies of his hospitality; it rather annoyed him therefore when his head boy approached with all suitable deference and announced that three people had called to see him on business.
“Who are they,” asked Mr. Anderson, hand on his watch to see how much official time had still to run, “and where have they come from?”
“From the office, Effendi,” explained the man. “They say their business is important.”
“Well, and who are they?” repeated Mr. Anderson.
“It is two women of holiness and a stranger who is with them,” answered his head boy.
He meant, of course, the nuns. Mr. Anderson was used to their being alluded to as “women of holiness” by the natives. Equally of course, they had come to beg. They periodically descended on all the European offices and houses in an essential search for funds.
“All right,” said Mr. Anderson with a sigh. “Show them into my study, and I’ll come at once.”
He gave just a few parting instructions, delved into his pockets to see whether he had the wherewithal to satisfy the Mother Superior—who was, in fact, a very dear friend and almost as fond of conversation as himself, before he followed the man. He could see, as he opened the door, his visitors sitting on the row of chairs which had been placed for them. The nuns in their black robes and immense sun-hats always tickled his sense of humour. The woman who sat between them rather startled him. She, too, was dressed in dark, plain clothes, but they were not the recognised convent garb. She wore a white blouse open at the throat, a white terai hat which concealed her hair and threw a shadow across her dark eyes. She was very beautiful in some queer, impassive way, and she gave fussy little Mr. Anderson a most uncomfortable feeling of tragedy.
He advanced, however, cheerfully enough, holding out his hands to the older and smaller of the nuns, who had both risen.
“Why, Mother Superior,” he said, “I had no idea it was you. It is generally I who come to see you.”
Mother Superior smiled, her very blue eyes twinkled. “No, I do not often go out,” she admitted; “but it is long since you have been to see me, and you know what the natives say about Mohammed and the mountain.”
Her face grew grave, her eyes softened. She had, Mr. Anderson always said, the most delightful old face he had ever seen on any woman—so wise it was, so gentle, so humorous, so patient. She turned a little away towards her companion.
“It is to-day something very grave that has brought me out,” she said. “This child”—she put out her hand and touched the hand of the tall stranger—“has something she wishes to tell you, Mr. Anderson.”
The sense of uneasiness deepened in Mr. Anderson’s mind. He felt now that it was dislike. He did not like the woman; she made him nervous. He turned to the other nun.
“This is Marie Thérèse, isn’t it?” he asked. “We’ve met before. Do all sit down, won’t you?” He moved to behind his desk. “As you know, Mother Superior, I am always ready to give what help I can.”
“I know,” said Mother Superior. She moved a little back and sat down again. “I have said to this child that she shall tell you the thing that is torturing her heart and what you tell us ought to be done, shall be done.”
Child! Mother Superior used that word, Mr. Anderson felt, with strange indiscrimination. He had heard her apply it to the most debased and hopeless members of the Port Said community.
He cleared his throat now and glanced, though he was most unwilling to do so, at the woman who was standing alone in front of his desk, for Sister Marie Thérèse had also drawn back and was sitting by Mother Superior.
The woman stood very straight and tall, her hands hanging by her sides. Her eyes met his, yet he got the impression that she was not seeing him.
“Won’t you sit down too?” he asked, with all the politeness he could muster.
“I would rather stand,” she answered.
He glanced towards Mother Superior. She was smiling at him a little wistfully.
“You have not introduced us,” he suggested. “May I not know——”
“My name does not matter, does it?” said the woman. “At least, not to begin with. If you want it afterwards, I will tell it you.”
“Oh, of course,” he agreed quickly, and sorted some papers on his table and played with a pencil. He was terribly embarrassed. “Just as you like.”
There was a little silence. He did not look at any of them. Instead, he had started rather vaguely to draw out a plan for his table to-night. He would have to have the bride sitting by him, of course, and Mrs. Cole on his other side, and——
The woman had begun to speak. She had a clear yet heavy voice. It was as though she chose her words with great deliberation.
“I am a murderess,” she said. “Twenty years ago I committed a murder. No one has ever known anything about it. Even now, no one need ever know, but it has always been a weight in my heart, dragging me down—down. I have tried to forget, and I have not forgotten. My heart has tried to laugh because of its security, because no one knew; and all the time God knew, and all the time He has waited.”
Mother Superior stirred and rose and came softly and stood beside the woman.
“That is not how we think of God, my child,” she said. “He is always with us, but it is His love that is all round us.”
“You say twenty years ago,” said Mr. Anderson. He lifted his head and looked at the two women. “You will pardon my saying so, you must have been very young.”
“I was eleven years old,” said the woman. She moved a little from the Mother Superior’s encircling hands. “Go and sit down again, Reverend Mother,” she said. “Let me tell you the whole truth; let me tell it myself. I was eleven years old. All of my life that I can remember before then I had lived with a woman who I thought loved me. My own people were abroad, and I never saw them. This woman was like a mother to me, and I loved her. Then when I was about five a little baby was born to her—a little girl—and the baby I hated. When I was eleven, I killed her.”
Mr. Anderson made a queer noise in his throat. He glanced at Mother Superior. “Is the woman mad?” his eyes asked; “and if so, why have you brought her to me?”
But Mother Superior’s eyes were very grave and very pitiful. She said nothing.
“Well—er——” said Mr. Anderson. “How did you kill her—this child, I mean—and you yourself a child?”
“We were playing down on the beach,” answered the woman. “There was no one watching us. I had a governess but she was out of sight. There was a pool of sea-water, deep and still, in between the rocks. I made her lean forward to look. I pretended there was a crab at the bottom. I was behind her. When I could not see her eyes any more. I leant forward and pushed her in. She struggled and tried to cry, but I held her face down till she lay still.”
“But, good God——” said Mr. Anderson. Mother Superior rose again.
“She has felt that she must tell this,” she explained. “If the law demands payment, she is willing to make it. It is at her own request that we come to you to-day.”
“No one suspected murder?” asked Mr. Anderson. “No one else was accused?”
The woman shook her head. “They thought she had slipped and fallen in,” she answered; “and I was too young to be held responsible.”
“Yes, of course,” agreed Mr. Anderson. “You were too young.”
He really had not the slightest idea how to tackle the problem. It was intensely disagreeable. He glanced at Mother Superior again.
“We are waiting to admit her into our Sisterhood,” she explained softly. “But first she felt she must tell this thing to you.”
“I see,” said Mr. Anderson. He shut his eyes for a minute and tried to vision that scene of twenty years ago. Most unpleasant—most distinctly unpleasant. He opened them again and stared at the woman standing in front of him. God! She was right when she said that all her life had been bitterness; the agony of it was written in her eyes.
“I don’t know what I can do,” he said abruptly. “If you ask my opinion as a man, I think, Mother Superior, that in going to you she does the best thing she can do. If I speak as an official, what can I say? The crime is twenty years old, and you were a child when it was committed.” He rose, putting his papers together. “Candidly,” he added, “I do not feel that the law has any interest in this confession.”
Mother Superior and Sister Marie Thérèse both rose; their full black skirts made little floating sounds against the polished floor.
“Come,” said Mother Superior softly. “Come, dear child, with us.”
Mr. Anderson was not quite sure whether they took the woman’s hands. They moved, all three of them, towards the door. They did not say good-bye to him or anything—they just passed quickly and silently out of sight.
Mr. Anderson sat back and mopped his brow and smoothed back his already very smooth, carefully-brushed hair. Had he done the right thing? Lord, what else could he have done? “Eleven years old”—he jerked his thoughts back to that. Of course she did not know what she was doing.
The story, however, persisted, haunted his thoughts. Constituted as he was, he had to talk of it, though he drove it as far into the background of his mind as he possibly could.
They had a very cheery, riotous dinner party. Mrs. Plumer quite lived up to his expectations. He thought her both lovely and fascinating. And indeed marriage had added a very definite charm to Dolores’ beauty. She radiated happiness. Mr. Anderson found Felicity very charming, too, in a quieter, older way. He thought her very sympathetic—so much so, that she was the person, in fact, to whom he finally confided his rather grim experience of the morning.
It was after dinner, when, to the light, haunting tunes of jazz music as played on a gramophone, Mr. Anderson’s guests were dancing out on the veranda. The young people were dancing, that is to say. Dr. Cole had been inveigled into a game of bridge, and Felicity was sitting out with Mr. Anderson watching in turns the beauty of Dolores’ happiness as she danced, and the beauty of a new-risen moon that shimmered down on the waters of the harbour. Africa, on the whole, had been very pleasant. Arthur, at least, had enjoyed it—so much so, that they had stayed on for nearly a year, making their home from time to time with the young couple, but moving about all over the country in the intervals. They had none of them heard from, or about, Ann; they had none of them, it is sad to say, bothered their heads over her, thought of her more than was necessary. Dolores had had her times of sorrowful regret, but she dared not intrude on Ann’s silence, feeling that it was the result of righteous bitterness and dislike.
But Felicity, so far, had only been conscious of a sense of relief. Ann had most firmly cut herself adrift; her going brought with it a grateful peace.
So that on this evening as she sat there, still looking lovely despite the old lines of her face, the grey shadows in her hair, Felicity’s heart was feeling singularly at rest, satisfied with life. She had developed a very real affection for Philip Plumer; he was so dear to Dolores and so thoughtful. She had always known that Dolores would marry someone; she was so grateful that Fate had provided someone so nice and so entirely reliable.
This sense of satisfaction made her listen very attractively to Mr. Anderson’s continual flow of conversation. She was, in fact, a very soothing listener, and by degrees she drew him on to unbosom his mind.
“Had a trying experience to-day,” he confided presently. “Had to listen to a confession of murder.”
“Murder!” said Felicity. “How horrible! A white person?”
“A most strange case,” Mr. Anderson admitted. He settled himself into his chair more comfortably. He had been privately longing to describe that woman to someone ever since he had first seen her that morning. “A woman—oh, yes, a white lady. An amazingly striking, I suppose some people would call her, beautiful woman.”
“But murder . . .” said Felicity, appropriately stirred. “What did you have to do?”
“Well, to tell you the truth, dear Mrs. Cole, I did nothing—nothing.” Mr. Anderson waved his hands. “Let me put the case before you. No names mentioned, so no harm done, and you will tell me what I ought to have done. This woman said she had committed a murder when she was only eleven years old, and that it had taken place over twenty years ago.”
“Of course she was mad,” said Felicity. “How awfully tragic!”
“I don’t know about mad,” submitted Anderson. “She had got her facts all very pat. I don’t know where she came from originally, but the nuns here—the Sisterhood of the Sacred Heart—have her in tow at the moment. I expect”— he considered this aspect with his mind’s eye— “they found her among the riff-raff of our none too pleasant slums.”
“Why did she commit a murder when she was eleven?” argued Felicity. “I mean, how could she? I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
“Nor I,” he admitted. “She explains it as jealousy She was jealous of another younger kid, it seems, and one day when they were left alone playing on the beach she found a pool of sea-water and shoved this other child in and held it down till it was drowned.”
Sudden, immense, shattering blackness descended all round Felicity. She sat quite still; she was afraid to speak, or breathe, or move. Would he notice anything? Apparently not. From out the blackness his voice came to her, a little pompous, very cheerful.
“Well, what would you have done, Mrs. Cole? Damn it all, twenty years ago, and then, it seems, no one had thought of it as murder. It was taken to be an accident. Oh, an agony of grief probably to the dead child’s mother, but she herself quite possibly dead by now—and——”
“What was she like, this woman?” Felicity heard her own voice asking.
“I am afraid the story has shocked you, Mrs. Cole. I ought not to have told it. It impressed me horribly—and her face. A big, tall woman, dark, impassive. Great eyes in a white face; a most formidable mouth. And tragic.” He gave his plump shoulders a shrug. “Oh, horribly tragic. Let’s go indoors, Mrs. Cole; they are just starting another Charleston. I’ll get you a drink. Stupid of me—very stupid of me to have worried you with this. You’re sensitive—I can see that.”
“Wait just a minute,” said Felicity. “Where—where did you say this woman was staying now?”
“With our good nuns,” explained Anderson, “in the convent just outside the town. I gather they are admitting her into the Sisterhood; and between you and me, I told them I thought that was the best thing that could happen. Don’t want to go prodding the law awake after a twenty-years’ sleep, eh what?”
“No, I suppose not,” said Felicity. She rose. She seemed suddenly very stiff and old.
“Will you find my husband for me, Mr. Anderson?” she said. “I feel it is time we went back to the boat. She sails at dawn, you know, and that means waking very early for me.”
“It is not late yet,” he remonstrated.
“Dolores will probably quite firmly refuse to come,” she smiled at him. “She adores dancing. But I am really tired, and Arthur is used to that; he won’t mind.”
“If you must.” He hesitated. “I am afraid I have upset you with that silly story.”
“Oh, no,” she lied. “Only”—she hesitated a second—“don’t let Dolores hear it, Mr. Anderson,” she added quickly. “She—she is so sensitive to other people’s troubles.”
“Of course not, dear lady; as if I would! It is entirely confidential between you and me.”
He hurried off to find Dr. Cole, and Felicity stood for a little, her back to the dancers, staring out at the sea.
Ann! So this was how Ann came back! Ann! Oh, no wonder she had always been afraid.
“Ann! Your daughter,” something seemed to go whispering round her heart. “The being you fashioned and made.”
Outside in the quiet streets, their pompous, fussy host disposed of, sitting side by side in the carriage which he had insisted on having fetched for them, Felicity turned to Dr. Cole.
“Arthur,” she said, “Ann is in Port Said.”
The information conveyed nothing very momentous, certainly nothing very pleasant.
“Is she?” he commented. “How did you hear? Does Anderson know her?”
It seemed as though she hesitated a moment; it was probably the only touch of loyalty that she had ever felt for Ann in all her life.
“Yes,” she answered finally. “It seems Ann is thinking of entering a religious house here.”
“Here?” repeated Dr. Cole, not unnaturally surprised. “What a rum place to choose!”
“Arthur, I must go and see her.” Felicity spoke urgently; she did not indeed know quite what prompted her to this desire. “Can’t we drive out there now? Just outside the town, Mr. Anderson said. Do ask the man if he knows the Convent of the Sacred Heart.”
“But, my dear, at this time of night!” remonstrated Dr. Cole. He looked at his watch. “It’s past eleven o’clock.”
“Oh, please, Arthur,” she answered. “I must, I must.”
He stood up and poked the driver in the back. “Do you know the Convent of the Sacred Heart?” he asked.
The man turned a grinning face to him. “Yes, Effendi, I know,” he answered. “It lies there.” He waved his whip in a direction away from the sea-front.
“Very well, we want to go there,” said Dr. Cole, and sat back with a sigh. “What’s the trouble, Felicity?” he asked. “Why do you want to see her to-night?”
“We’re sailing at dawn to-morrow,” Felicity explained; he could not see her face very clearly, but he could hear the strain in her voice. “Arthur, perhaps I shall never see her again. We’ve never understood each other—never even liked each other—but, after all, she is my daughter.”
“Yes, my dear, of course she is,” soothed Dr. Cole. “And as for the not liking, not understanding, that has been just as much her fault as yours. If you ask me, she has always been extremely tiresome.”
“Ah, Ann, poor Ann!” whispered Felicity, and suddenly began to cry, soft, useless tears, huddled up against him, her face buried in her hands.
Dr. Cole was considerably perturbed. “If you are going to upset yourself like this,” he announced firmly, “I shall order the man to turn round and drive back to the boat.”
“No, no,” she said at once, stifling her sobs. “I want to see her. Oh, please! I must, I must.”
They arrived finally with a good deal of noise and clatter, the miserable horses for the last part of the journey having been most unwilling to travel at all. Dr. Cole got out and looked round him. A high wall confronted him; it was a very blank wall except for a small wooden door that stood just in front of him.
“You ring, Effendi,” the driver told him, looking downwards from his box to point out the bell-rope. “All night and all day the door opens to those who ring.”
Felicity stepped out on to the road beside Dr. Cole. She seemed to have recovered from her tears.
“Go back into the carriage and wait, Arthur,” she said. “Let me ring. I’ll try not to keep you waiting too long.”
“Don’t you want me to come in with you?” asked Dr. Cole.
“No,” said Felicity, her hand already on the bell-rope. “I must face this alone. Ann means nothing to you, Arthur. How should she?”
The grating in the door slid back even as they spoke. A nun’s face peeped out at them.
“Who are you?” she asked. “What do you want?”
Dr. Cole stepped back and climbed into the carriage. It was, after all, as Felicity had said, her affair. He lit a pipe to help him pass the time. It was quite cool out here, and still and quiet. Port Said seemed to be asleep. He had imagined from its reputation that it never slept.
“Please let me in,” Felicity answered the waiting nun. “It is very important. I must see someone.”
The door slid back at once. The nun’s figure, drawn back against the shadows behind the door, was scarce visible.
“Go straight along the passage,” she said softly. “There is a room at the far end—open the door and walk in. Everyone is welcome.”
“It is late, I know,” Felicity started to explain.
“That makes no matter,” answered the nun; she spoke her words with a funny little foreign accent. “There is a Sister who will receive you.”
Felicity went forward. There was quite a bright light in the room; coming from the gloom of the passage, her eyes took a few seconds to accustom themselves to it. Another nun rose to greet her from behind a table. Felicity stumbled into speech at once.
“You have someone staying here whom I must see. Oh, please forgive me for coming so late, so unannounced. But I only heard of her being here to-night at dinner. We were dining at the Consulate. We are travelling home to England on the Llan Stephen—she sails at dawn tomorrow. I couldn’t leave it, because I may never see her again. I——”
“Who is it you wished to see?” asked the nun. “Madam is tired, distressed; will she not sit down?”
She put forward a chair with a little friendly gesture, but Felicity made no move towards it. She stood there with her hands pressed together, almost in an attitude of supplication.
“She is my daughter,” she said. “Oh, please let me see her! I do not know what name she has given here. Baird—Fabian——”
The nun stopped her again. “We have a Mrs. Baird here; is it she whom you wish to see?”
“Yes,” said Felicity. Now she swayed a little where she stood.
“Then sit down,” said the nun again. “I will go and ask the Mother Superior and, if she agrees, Mrs. Baird will be fetched to you.”
She went quietly out of the room. Felicity sat down. She shut her eyes. Her thoughts were not ordered at all. They hurried and leapt and paused and leapt forward again through her heart. Dick and Dick’s love for her, the coming of Ann, herself lying in that high, white bed hating Ann. Oh, it was so horribly true—she had hated Ann. And then Dick again and Africa and short visits home. Ann growing. Ann’s antagonistic eyes studying her. Mark Heron; the lines of coffee trees. Dolores! Herself, kneeling beside Dick, his white, still face on the pillow. The passionate remorse of her heart! Things said and felt and done. All her life dancing, slipping past, behind her shut eyes, and always Ann’s face. Ann, who was hers, whom she had never loved.
The door opened presently and Mother Superior came into the room. She looked at Felicity sitting there; she had time to look for a second or two before Felicity stirred and opened her eyes and looked up at her.
“You want to see Ann Baird?” she said softly.
Felicity stood up. “I am her mother,” she explained. “My name now is Cole—Mrs. Cole; if you tell her, she will know. I have been dining at the Consulate. Mr. Anderson told me Ann was here. He did not of course know that in his story I should recognise my daughter. He told me that she was going to join your Sisterhood. We did not know where she was or anything about her. And to-morrow the boat goes on to England. I could not go without trying to see her.”
Mother Superior’s kind, grave eyes watched her. “Here Ann has found peace,” she said. “You are not angry or upset at her joining us, are you?”
“No, oh, no,” said Felicity. “I have no right to be anything like that. All my life I have failed Ann. I want——”
Mother Superior put out her hands. “Hush,” she said. “I understand. I will fetch her for you.”
And once again Felicity was alone. She stood now waiting, tense and expectant. She had said, “I want——”
But what was it she really did want? Why had she come? What should she say to Ann, or Ann to her?
Ann could not have been in bed, or undressed even. It seemed only a few minutes before the door opened again and she had come into the room, closing it behind her. She stood with her back to it. Tall and straight and antagonistic. Still antagonistic.
“Why have you come?” she asked. “What do you want?”
“Ann, oh, Ann!” Felicity stammered into speech; she held out her hands. “I—I’m so desperately sorry.”
“For what?” asked Ann. There was no relenting in her voice.
“For everything,” said Felicity. “It has been so much my fault.”
“Isn’t it a little late for all this?” said Ann. She moved forward and stood by the table. She was very close to Felicity, and the wall between them was not visible to human eyes. “How exactly did you hear about my being here?” she asked. “And what did you hear?”
Catching her breath a little, Felicity told her. The tune the gramophone had been playing came jazzing back across her mind as she spoke. “Dolores was dancing,” she said. “You know she has married Philip Plumer—they are so happy together. I was sitting out, watching them, smiling at their happiness. Mr. Anderson was talking to me. He was telling me how you had been to see him earlier in the day. He thought it would mean nothing to me—just a faintly tragic story. He did not know. Ann, it was ghastly; as though the whole world shut about me with sudden blackness, and in the blackness, everywhere, your face as a child. That time you came back to me. Oh, Ann, how was I to know the agony in your mind? I thought you strange, terrifying almost. And to-night—I can’t explain it, but all the strangeness, the antagonism has dropped out of my heart. I want to go on my knees to that little waif of a ghost that was you, and take you into my arms and hide your face against my shoulder, and shield you from fear and regret.”
Her voice died away, the silence was so heavy. She looked up at Ann. But Ann was not looking at her.
“So Dolores was dancing,” said Ann softly as though speaking to herself. “It did not hurt her for very long.”
“She does not know.” Felicity tried to explain. “We none of us knew where you were, Ann. Dolores has spoken of you very often, but she thought your utter silence meant you were still angry with her; she felt she had no right to thrust herself upon you—till you yourself forgave.”
“I have forgiven,” said Ann. She straightened herself a little. “As I came into the room just now and saw you, mother, I must admit that all the old rancour gathered about my heart. But in reality it is no longer there. I have found God; nothing else matters.”
“You—you are going to be happy here?” whispered Felicity. “Oh, Ann, if I could think that! You have had so little happiness in your life.”
“Then comfort your heart, mother,” said Ann; she put out her hand for a minute and laid it in Felicity’s. “Here I have found happiness. In a week’s time I shall be admitted into the Sisterhood. We live and work out here. I shall never see England again, or you, or Dolores, or the memories that hurt. I shall lay them aside as I lay aside these clothes, and in service I shall find peace, and in the love of God, contentment.”
She turned to the door. “Tell it to Dolores as I have told it to you,” she said softly. “Her feet have danced across my dead dreams and have no further power to hurt.”
“If you had really forgiven,” said Felicity, “you would not send a message like that to Dolores. Her happiness would not hurt you.”
For a second Ann paused. Her back was to Felicity, so that no one saw her face or the conflict that raged across her soul. Then she turned back quickly, and now her eyes were gentle.
“I have forgiven,” she said softly. “Her happiness does not hurt. Dear, light dancing Dolores—give her my love. Tell her that all the past is dead and that I know and understand that it was not her fault.”
The little soft-voiced nun led Felicity down the passage again and opened the outer door for her. Dr. Cole sprang out of the carriage to welcome her.
“Well,” he said, “is it all right? Is the formidable female really installed in there?”
Felicity stood looking back at the high wall. Words she had very often heard in church, and paid but scant attention to, seemed to be written above the little shut door: “The peace of God which passeth all understanding.”
Ann’s eyes, as they had smiled their last message to her, had been full of peace.
“Yes,” she answered softly, and felt a little of the outer fringe of Ann’s calmness enfold her as she spoke. “Ann is in there.”
She got into the carriage beside him, and the driver with many guttural noises stirred the tired horses to life again.
“Do I drive to the boat now?” he asked, grinning back at them.
“Yes, go on now back to the boat,” said Dr. Cole, and slid his hand into Felicity’s and drew her into the shelter of his arms. He gathered she did not want him or anyone else intruding for the moment into her thoughts about Ann.
“The peace of God which passeth all understanding.”
We go through life, hurling ourselves first against this barrier and then against that, fighting, struggling, praying for happiness which we feel is ours by right.
Looking back on Felicity’s story, reading it, I realise that I, alas, have made of her a figure that can move no one’s sympathy or affections.
I have shown her perhaps too utterly undraped by the veil of polite fiction which covers most of the secret places of our lives. Think of her as kindly as you can.
“Not till the fire is dying in the grate
> Look we for any kinship with the stars.”
Love and hate, laughter and tears, selfishness and sacrifice—all these things in our lives have power to hurt, and all the time, deep within the heart of each of us, lies this peace, which in the end shall bring us rest.