The Claw Part 8

Mrs Valetta in her role of chaperon languorously introduced the Salisburian side of the court to me. Between that and the Fort George side was evidently a great gulf fixed. I did not, however, think any of the men on the _chic_ side desperately engaging. There was an ancient doctor with baggy cheeks and the leer of a malicious wild goat in his left eye; a sepulchral-looking parson; a man with a beard, whose first cousin was a duke, but who wore dirty hands and an unspeakable s.h.i.+rt without a coat, and several boys of sorts (all scions, it transpired, of n.o.ble houses). But I never take the slightest notice of boys or beards.

The men on the court were better; a big, grave man with a frolicking laugh--Colonel Blow, the Magistrate; the Mining Commissioner, a sleek, fair man; a rather handsome, chivalrous-looking young fellow called Maurice Stair; and a man with turquoises set in his ears, and blue eyes that compelled me to look his way the moment I reached the court, and then to drop my lids with the old, strange weighted sensation on them.

I did not look his way again until, all introductions over I was seated, when I put on my most cynical expression and let him see that I was not observing him, but the game.

He was not as tall as any of the others if you came to measure by inches, but his figure had a strong, careless air, and the distinction of his head appeared to give him an advantage of about thirty inches over every other man in sight. His hair was certainly getting thin, and I was delighted to observe it. It was really impossible to bother for a moment about a man who had such hair. The black hank of it hanging down was not beautiful. He looked about forty, too. Still, he couldn't have been that: no man who was old could have gone after the b.a.l.l.s as he did.

When I watched him I remembered the Bible words, "Like a swift s.h.i.+p upon the waters." Of course, I knew all about sculpture, having lived with it and been brought up to it, so to speak, and I could not help knowing that only a beautifully built man could move like that. I could not help knowing it, but it did not interest me; in fact, it bored me, and I looked away from his careless glance when it came my way as carelessly as ever he looked in his life.

Presently the sett finished and the players came briskly towards the Salisburian side. But they were skilfully intercepted by Miss Cleeve and Mrs Skeffington-Smythe, who chose this moment to arrive most gloriously arrayed.

"Yes, but why have you got on your best stars and stripes this afternoon?" the baggy doctor loudly demanded of them. He was evidently a person who said what he liked to every one. They turned away from him, disdaining to answer; but _I_ knew why they were so glorious.

Miss Cleeve made haste to walk off with Colonel Blow to the end of the court, where there was a rustic seat evidently belonging to John Dewar and his sons, for their names were printed everywhere in black letters over the packing-case wood of which it was composed.

Mrs Skeffington-Smythe who had halted the blue-eyed man was reproaching him plaintively because he had not been to call on her since his return.

"But I haven't had a minute since I got back," he protested.

"You've had time to call on Mrs Valetta. Why couldn't you have found a moment to come and see Anna and me?"

Mrs Valetta turned and bit at her:

"Kim and I have known each other for many years,--

"Old friends are best-- Old loves, old books, old songs."

She broke off the quotation at that, smiling a little acrid smile.

These things did not interest me in the least. I merely felt that I detested Mrs Valetta and Mrs Skeffington-Smythe, and most of all the detestable man they were squabbling so crudely about. Mrs Valetta had returned to her business of introducing to me a large _queue_ of freshly arrived men. She presented each with a brief biographical note, regardless of the protests of the victim.

"This is our disreputable postmaster, Mr Mark Bleksley. Plays the banjo divinely, but steals our letters."

"Oh! I say--"

"Mr Maurice Stair--quite eligible--five hundred a year--a.s.sistant Native Commissioner, and not bad-looking."

"Handsome, Mrs Valetta--"

"These are Hunloke and Dennison. They keep a shop and rob us shamefully. Mr Hunloke is an American lawyer by profession, but he finds that overcharging us for bully beef pays better than law, and gives him more time for picnics."

"I could take action on those statements. They are scandalous and libellous."

"As for Tommy Dennison--"

"Please don't rob me of my good name, Mrs Valetta. It's all I have left. I'm as eligible as Stair, anyway."

"No, Tommy. You are a younger son--and you have a past. Every one says you have."

"Yes, but it's past."

"This is our only real Earl--Lord Gerald Deshon--Irish, penniless, and raving mad. You are a great friend of Miss Saurin's brother, aren't you, Gerry?"

"Yes, but I object to that biography. If you will listen to me, Miss Saurin--"

I did listen, but they all talked together, surrounding me and making a great deal of noise and saying the silliest, wildest things about themselves and each other; and a few yards away was that hateful voice, low and level, with the disturbing crake in it that suggested power and the habit of issuing orders. Whatsoever his orders were to Mrs Skeffington-Smythe she was evidently disinclined to carry them out.

"Nonsense!" she was protesting. "Let us go and talk to Anna. Don't you think it is time you made up your quarrel with her? What did you fall out about, by the way?"

"You are mistaken. I'm sure Miss Cleeve has no quarrel with me."

Mrs Skeffington-Smythe laughed gaily.

"You're a fraud, Kim. Every woman has a quarrel with you."

I hadn't the faintest desire to hear these enigmatical sayings, but they all talked at the top of their voices, brandis.h.i.+ng each others' affairs.

It appeared to be true that no one's secrets were their own in this hateful country.

Mrs Valetta had broken up the crowd round me, ordering them to go and pick up sticks to boil the kettle for tea. They straggled away, complaining and abusing each other, to a patch of bush about five hundred yards from the court. The Earl was sent to Mrs Brand's hut to fetch the milk which had been forgotten. I now saw myself menaced by the approach of the beard, and the thought of flight occurred to me, but at that moment the argument between the man and Mrs Skeffington-Smythe ceased.

"Oh, very well, since you are so very insistent," she said crossly, and turning to me added sweetly, "Dear Miss Saurin, how is your poor nose?

This is Major Kinsella. He is dying to inquire after it."

If this was meant to cover us both with confusion it did not have the desired effect. At her words the smile suddenly left his face, and he bowed courteously; the steel-blue eyes looked into mine with a grave serenity. I could not but know that he was incapable of such gratuitous rudeness. Wherefore, instead of snubbing him, as I had intended to do, I bowed back to him and bestowed upon him the bright, cold smile of a frosty morning: I had the satisfaction of knowing that he recognised the quality of it, if Mrs Skeffington-Smythe did not. She changed her tactics.

"Major Kinsella, if you do not find me a seat I shall faint, I am so hot and tired. Do let us go over and sit in the shade with Annabel. It is much cooler there."

Major Kinsella was something of a tactician himself it appeared.

"I hope you can have Miss Saurin's seat in a moment. I am just going to ask her to play with me against Blow and Miss Cleeve."

"I play terribly," I said coldly. But he blithely announced that they all did, and no one cared a b.u.t.ton; the main thing was to annoy your opponents as much as possible. As that rather appealed to my frame of mind at the moment, I eventually allowed myself to be beguiled to the court, where another sett had just broken up, Major Kinsella shouting unceremoniously to the others as we walked:

"Blow, come on. You and Miss Cleeve against Miss Saurin and me."

The game was not uninteresting. My partner, whom Colonel Blow addressed as Tony, did all the work and only left me the slow b.a.l.l.s, which I gracefully missed. The rest of the time we talked: at least he did.

Secretly I preserved a bleak manner. He could not fail to plainly understand. But as I did not wish the whole world to know that I even cared to be cold to him, I filled in any prominent gaps in the conversation with a soft little laugh that he knew perfectly well was not meant for him, but that seemed to vex Miss Cleeve very much. For some reason not very apparent she lost her temper early in the sett, and said quite crossly that if we did not pay more attention to the game it was not worth while going on. That was _tres drole_, considering that we were winning all the time! I thought so, and Major Kinsella said it, laughing gaily. Her only answer was to slam the b.a.l.l.s into _me_ as hard as she could, and as I was out of practice and she a remarkably good player we should have come off badly in the end if it had not been for my partner's speed and skill. I did not like him in the least, but I had to admit he could play tennis like a fiend.

Later, we approached the tea-table, which was a large packing-case presided over by Mrs Brand, and covered with a beautifully embroidered tea-cloth belonging to the postmaster, who kept bragging about it, and saying that it was the nicest cloth in South Africa, and how he had haggled for it at Madeira until the coolie was black in the face, and got it for half price.

Several of the men who had returned from the wood hunt with a few sticks in each hand lay upon the ground in an exhausted condition. The rest of us sat in a wide circle round the packing-case, and the men who had no seats took up a Yogi att.i.tude upon the ground. The tea had a smoky flavour, but somehow it was the nicest tea I had ever tasted, and the smell of the dying fire of wood branches was fragrant in the air, seeming to remind me of some old sweet dream, until, glancing up, I saw Major Kinsella breathing it in too, like some lovely perfume, while he looked at me with a curious smile in his eyes. I knew then that we were both remembering the same thing; not a dream at all, but a real memory strangely poignant.

The sun had fallen to the horizon line and lay there like a great golden ball, sending long rays of fire into our very faces.

In those last searching beams, playing upon us so mercilessly it was revealed to me for the first time that though all were cheerful and merry every face about me wore some trace of stress or storm. For the first time I observed that men whose laughter was blithe enough had haggard eyes; that jests came gaily from lips that fell into desperate lines a moment later. On faces that were like tanned masks there were marks that dissipation might have made, or careless sins, or I know not what mischance of Fate. The women under their heavy veils and pretty hats had, to my suddenly sharpened vision, a pathetic disillusioned look, and some were careworn, and in the eyes of some there was the fateful expression of the losing gambler. Anthony Kinsella's dark countenance, too, was scored with deep lines between the eyes and about the mouth--hieroglyphics I had no gift to read, and his eyes were as inscrutable as the points of blue in his ears.

For the first time I forgot all the things that annoyed me in these people, and began to like them with pity in my heart.

Were these the claw-marks that the witch Africa put upon those who dwelt in her bosom? Were these the scars of her fierce embrace? Surely not.

Surely a witch's cypher would be finer, more subtle, something secret yet plain as the sunlight to those who could read. What was it? Where was it? I sought it in the faces round me, and after a time I believed I found it, in the _nil desperandum_ air that each flaunted like a flag.

It was Hope. G.o.d knows what they hoped for--each for something different perhaps--but that was what woke the jest upon their haggard lips and brightened their disillusioned eyes; that was the secret gift the witch put into their hearts, the masonic sign she wrote across their brows. Hope!