Part 43 (1/2)
He swallowed the bait, and her spirits revived. Emigration Jane, if not the rose, lived with it. Strictly speaking, they spent a pleasant Sunday, though when he found himself forgetting the absent one, he pulled himself sharply up. He saw her part of the way home; more she would not allow.
”And--and”--she whispered at their parting, her eyes avoiding his--”if she can't git out next Sunday--an' it's a chance whether she does, that Sister Tobias being such a watchful old cat--would you like to 'ave me meet you an' tell you all about 'er?”
W. Keyse a.s.sented, even eagerly, and so it began. Behold the poor deceiver drinking perilous joys, and learning to shudder at the thought of discovery. Think of her cheris.h.i.+ng his letters, those pa.s.sionate epistles addressed to the owner of the golden pigtail.
Think of her pouring out her poor full heart in those wildly-spelt missives that found their way to him, and be a little pitiful.
She did not thirst for that revenge now. But, oh! the day would come when he would find out and have his, in casting her off, with what contempt and loathing of her treachery she wept at night to picture. This feeling, that lifted you to Heaven one instant, and cast you down to h.e.l.l the next, was Love. Pa.s.sion for the man, not yearning for the hearth-place, and the sheltering roof, and the security of marriage.
She left off walking round the gaol--indeed, rather avoided the vicinity of the casket that for her had once held a treasure. What would the Slabberts think of his little Boer-wife that was to have been? What would he say and do when they let him out? She took to losing breath and colour at the sound of a heavy step behind her, and would shrink close to the martial figure of W. Keyse when any hulking form distantly resembling the Boer's loomed up in the distance.
Oh, shame on her, the doubly false! But--but--she had never been so orful 'appy. Oh, what a queer thing was Love! If only---- But never, never would he. She was mistaken.
There came a moment when W. Keyse swerved from the path of single-hearted devotion to the unseen but ever-present wearer of the golden pigtail.
As Christmas drew near, and Gueldersdorp, not yet sensible of the belly-pinch of famine, sought to relieve its tense muscles and weary brains by getting up an entertainment here and there, W. Keyse escorted his beloved--by proxy, as usual--to a Sunday smoking-concert, given in a cleared-out Army Service Stores shed, lent by Imperial Government to the promoters of the entertainment.
Oh, the first delicious sniff of an atmosphere tinged with paint and acetylene from the stage-battens and footlights, and so flavoured with crowded humanity as to be strongly reminiscent of the lower troop-deck in stormy weather, when all the ports are shut and all the hatches are battened down! The excess of brilliancy which must not stream from the windows had been boarded in, and a tarpaulin was drawn over the skylight, in case the gunners of Meisje should be tempted to rouse the monster from her Sabbath quiet, and send in a ninety-four-pound sh.e.l.l to break up an orgy of G.o.dless Englanders. But the stuffiness made it all the snugger.
You could fancy yourself in the pit of the Theayter of Varieties, 'Oxton, or perched up close to the blue starred ceiling-dome of the Pavilion, Mile End, on a Sat.u.r.day night, when every gentleman sits in s.h.i.+rt-sleeves, with his arm round the waist of a lady, and the f.a.ggots and sausage-rolls and stone-gingers are going off like smoke, and the orange-peel rains from the upper circle back-benches, and the nut-cracking runs up and down the packed rows like the snapping of the breech-bolts in the trenches when the fire is hottest....
Ah! that brought one back to Gueldersdorp at once.
Meanwhile, a pale green canvas railway-truck cover, marked in black, ”Light Goods--Destructible,” served as a drop-curtain. Another, upon which the interior of an impossible palace had been delineated in a bewildering perspective of red and blue and yellow paint-smudges, served as a general back-scene for the performance.
The orchestra piano had been wounded by sh.e.l.l-fire, and had a leg in splints. Many members of the crowded audience were in strapping and bandages. Drink did not flow plentifully, but there was something to wet your whistle with, and the tobacco-cloud that hung above the trestle-benches, packed with black and yellow faces, as well as brown and white, could almost have been cut with a knife.
It was a long, rambling programme, scrawled in huge, black-paint characters on a white planed board, hung where everyone could read it.
There were comic songs and Christy Minstrel choruses by people who had developed vocal talent for this occasion only, and a screaming display of conjuring tricks by an amateur of legerdemain who had forgotten the art, if ever he had mastered it. At every new mistake or blunder, and with each fresh change of expression on the entertainer's streaky face, conveying the idea of his being under the influence of a bad dream, and hoping to wake up in his own quarters by-and-by, to find that he had never really undertaken to make a pudding in a hat, and smash a gentleman's watch and produce it intact from some unexpected place of concealment, the spectators rocked and roared. Then there was a Pantomimic Interlude, with a great deal of genuine knockabout, and, the crowning item of the entertainment, a comic song and stump-speech, announced to be given by The Anonymous Mammoth Comique--an incognito not dimly suspected to conceal the ident.i.ty of the Chief himself, being delayed by the Mammoth's character top-hat--a fondly cherished property of the Stiggins brand--and the cabbage umbrella that went with it, having been accidentally left behind at the Mammoth's hotel, the Master of the Revels, still distinguished by the jib-sail collar and s.h.i.+ny burnt-cork complexion of the corner-man, was sent to the front to ask if any lady or gentleman in the audience would kindly oblige with a ten-minute turn?
”All right, Mister!”
A soiled cotton glove waved, a flowery hat nodded to the appeal from behind the acetylene footlights. The faces in the front rows of seats, pale and brick-dust, gingerbread and cigar-browned European, African countenances with rolling eyes and s.h.i.+ning teeth; and here and there the impa.s.sive, almond-eyed, yellow mask of the Asiatic, slewed round as Emigration Jane rose up in the place beside W. Keyse, a little pale, and with damp patches in the palms of the washed white cotton gloves, as she said: If the gentleman pleased, she could sing--just a little!
No, thank you! She wasn't afryde, not she; they was all friends there. And do 'er best she would. She took off the big flowery hat quite calmly, giving it to W. Keyse to keep. The panic came on later, when the Christy-minstrel-collared, burnt-corked Master of the Revels was gallantly helping her up the short side-ladder, and culminated when he retreated, and left her there, standing on the platform in the bewildering glare of the acetylene footlights, a little, rather slight and flat-chested figure of a girl, blue-eyed and yellow-haired, in a washed-out flowery ”blowse,”
and a ”voylet” delaine skirt that had lost its pristine beauty, and showed faded and shabby in the yellow gas-flare.
Oh! 'owever 'ad she dared? That dazzling sea of faces, with the eyes all fixed on her, was terrifying. A big lump grew in her throat, and the crowded benches tilted, and the flaming lights leaped to the roof as the helpless, timid tears welled into her blue eyes.
And then the miracle happened.
W. Keyse sat on a back-bench, the thin c.o.c.kney face a little raised above the others, because he had slipped a rolled-up overcoat under him, pretending that it was to get it out of the way, you understand. Always very sensitive about his shortness, W. Keyse. And she saw his face, as plain as you please, and with a look in the pale, eager eyes, that for once was for Emigration Jane, her very own self, and not for That There Other One. She knew in that moment of revelation that she had always been jealous. Oh, wasn't it strynge? Her heart surged out to W. Keyse across the gulf of crowded faces. And her eyes had in them, all at once, the look that is born of Love.
Ah! who can mistake it? It begets a solitude in a vast thronged a.s.semblage for you and for me. It sends its silent, wordless, eloquent message thrilling to the heart of the Beloved, and wins its pa.s.sionate answer back. Ah! who can err about the look of Love?
She drew a deep breath that was her longing sigh for him, infinitely dear, and never to belong to her, and began her song. She sang it quite simply and naturally, in an untutored but sweet and plaintive voice, and with the c.o.c.kney accent that spoke of home to nearly all that heard. And her eyes never moved from his face as she sang.