Part 6 (2/2)
”Nice lovely shad! Nice lovely shad!”
Two water-carts, clanking along in opposite directions, left a dark track behind them on the dusty road, sending up a heavy odour of wet earth which the girl snuffed up as though she had some transportingly sweet perfume at her delicate nostrils.
”I'm sure there is no smell in the world like the smell of wet Africa,”
she cried softly to herself, laughing a little. Her eyes took on a misty look that made them like lilac with the dew on it.
Her black hair, which branched out on either side of her forehead, had a trick of spraying little veils of itself over her eyes and almost touching her cheek-bones, which were pitched high in her face, giving it an extraordinarily subtle look.
She was amazingly attractive in a glowing ardent fas.h.i.+on that paled the other women in the street and made men step to the edge of the pavement to stare at her.
She looked at them, too, through the spraying veils of her hair, but her face remained perfectly composed under the swathes of white chiffon which she wore flung back over her wide hat, brought down at the sides and twisted round her throat, with two long flying ends.
The big Zulu boy between the shafts, running noiselessly except for the pat of his bare feet and the ”Tch-k, tch-k, tch-k” of the seed bangles round his ankles, became conscious that his fare was creating interest.
He began to put on airs, giving little shouts of glorification, taking leaps in the air and tilting the shafts of the rickshaw backwards to the discomfort of its occupant.
She leaned forward, and in a low voice spoke a few edged words in Zulu that made him change his manners and give a glance of astonishment behind him, crying:
”_Aa-h! Yeh--boo Inkosizaan!_” behaving himself thereafter with decorum, for it was a disconcerting thing that an _Inkosizaan_ who had come straight off the mail-steamer at the Point should speak words of reproof to him in his own language.
Presently he came to the foot of the Berea Hill, which is long and sloping, causing him to slacken pace and draw deep breaths.
A tram-car dashed past them going down-hill, while another climbed laboriously up, both open to the breeze and full of people. The road began to be edged with fenced and hedged-in gardens, the houses standing afar and almost hidden by shrubs and greenery.
The girl spoke to the rickshaw-puller once more.
”The _Inkos_ at the Point told you where to go. Do you know the house?”
He answered yes, but that it was still afar off--right at the top of the Berea.
She leaned back again content. It delighted her to be alone like this.
It was quite an adventure, and an unexpected one. A malicious, mischievous smile flashed across her face as she sat thinking of the annoyance of the _Inkos_ left behind at the docks. He had been furious when he found no closed carriage waiting for them.
There was one on the quay, but it was not theirs, and on approaching it and finding out his mistake, he stood stammering with anger. But she had flashed into a waiting rickshaw, knowing very well that he could not force her to get out and go back to the s.h.i.+p without making a scene.
Nothing would induce him to make a scene and attract the attention of people to himself. He had indeed told her in a low voice to get out and come back with him to wait for a carriage, but she merely made a mouth and looked appealingly at him, saying:
”Oh Luce! It will be so lovely in a rickshaw. I have never ridden in one like this yet.”
”Well, ride to the devil,” he had amiably responded, and turned his back on her. She had called out after him, in an entrancingly sweet voice:
”Yes, I know, Luce; but what is the address?”
”It was a shame,” she said to herself now, still smiling; ”but really I don't often vex him!”
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