Part 27 (1/2)
”d.i.c.k!”
”Yes, every red cent! We don't have a bit of luck about the dibs, you and I. It turns out that he has only been keeping things going for the last year or so, by borrowing money on your securities; then just as things began to look too fishy, and discovery _had_ to come, he scooted with the fragments that remained--about twelve baskets full I _don't_ think, and Chancery Lane knows him no more. But wait till I get after him! Just wait till I have got things fixed up all right for Mrs Marriott, and you and Judy! I'll get after him! Not that I suppose I shall get much out of him, but still--”
The cold-blooded American who has been robbed of a dollar gleamed out of one of d.i.c.k's eyes and a red Indian raging for the scalp of his foe glared from the other.
”If he's got anything left he'll belch up all right when I get him!” he announced with the conviction of a Nemesis. Presently he regained calmness.
”You must come up and live with me and Judy,” he said. ”There are some catamarans of women in the world, Deirdre, and I believe you've been up against one or two, but they're not all like that. There are some jolly nice women in Salisbury, and we'll put the rest to the rightabout, and make them eat up their silly tales.”
”Dear d.i.c.k,” I said, ”it takes a real reformed rake like you to be truly generous. But I can't come to Salisbury.”
”Why not? It isn't like you to run away from the music.”
”I'm not going to. But I can't leave Fort George yet.”
He looked troubled and wistful, but asked me more questions. He was too much a believer it the family integrity. But after a day or two, most of which he spent with Gerry Deshon and Colonel Blow, for I was still much engaged at the hospital and had only the evenings for him, his troubled looks disappeared. Eventually, having planned with Mrs Marriott her secure future, he was ready to return to Salisbury.
”I shall have to get back, Deirdre; but you stay on here as long as you think fit, with Mrs Burney. Blow and Deshon will mind you for me; and when you're ready to come on to Salisbury send me a wire and I'll fetch you.”
A morning or two later I walked up and down with him in the early dawn, before the post-office, waiting for the mails to be put into the coach that was to carry him away. A few sard-coloured stars lingered regretfully in the pale sky. Not until his foot was on the step of the coach did he say the words I wished to hear from him, but would not ask for.
”Goldie--of course I've heard everything, all about it--it seems to be a queer tangle. If it were any other fellow I'd get after him--but Kinsella is straight--as straight a man as there is in Africa. If he has let you believe he is free, then you can take my oath he is.”
I could have kissed his feet for those words, and the way he spoke them--as though it was unquestionable that Anthony was still in the world. I could not speak, my heart was too full. I could only look at him gratefully through my tears. He patted me on the shoulder.
”Dear old girl, don't fret. He'll turn up.” I did not have time to fret: there was too much to do. Among other things I had Mrs Marriott to pack up and send away to her English home to those who would tend and love her and bring her safely through her coming trial. Her last words to me from the coach were:
”Deirdre, I _know_ I shall have a son to take up life where poor Rupert laid it down: and I think he can do it under no finer name than Anthony.”
”Thank you, dear,” I cried, ”and then you must come back here and give him his father's heritage. It's going to be a splendid heritage. d.i.c.k will see to that.”
A week later we packed off the little woman whose husband still lay unburied at Shangani. She was taking her small fatherless tribe to her people down-country, and was then coming back to earn her living by nursing. Saba Rookwood and her husband were travelling with the same waggons. They had been married that morning, and were going away for a time to return later and start farming and mining in the Buluwayo district.
In the evening, Gerry Deshon, Colonel Blow, and I rode to their first _outspan_, about twelve miles out from the town, and had supper with them--a sad, affectionate little farewell supper, sitting round an old black kettle that was propped up by two tall stones over the red embers of the wood and _mis_ fire.
If any one had told me a few months before that I would sit at a camp-fire, my eyes blurred with tears and my heart full of regrets at parting with a dowdy, worn-faced little colonial woman who understood nothing of life as I had known it; and another who had broken the moral code and transgressed against the tenets of my religion, I should have been both deeply offended and incredulous. Even if it could have been explained to me that I should love and reverence the first woman because the great forces of life--Love and Sorrow and Death--had touched and beautified her, revealing to all her strong heart, and courage, and a lovely belief in the mercy and wisdom of G.o.d, I should yet not entirely have understood; nor that I could honour the second because I saw in her a gentle, kind, and brave spirit, sweet in humiliation, and free of malice and the small sins that devour the souls of so many women.
Africa had taught me a few things.
I had come out to her stiff with the arrogance of youth and well-being, of pride that has never been a.s.sailed by suffering and disgrace; of rect.i.tude that has been untried by temptation; full of the disdainful virtue of one who has known only the bright, beflowered paths of life, and been well hedged and guarded from all that hurts and defiles. But she had opened eyes in my soul that had been blind before, and had shown me lives seared with pain and sin and scorched with the fires of pa.s.sion that were yet beautiful; of men who could fight down the beasts of temptation and conquer the devils of vice; of men who could forget self-interest to hold out a helping hand to the weak and the stumbling; of men who could die in lone, silent places so that others might live in safety and security; of women who could offer their all for the public good, and lose it with a smile on their lips.
These were things I had read of and heard of and dreamed of perhaps.
But in this fierce, sad land they happened. Africa had shown them to me happening in all their naked terror and beauty. In Europe I had known pictures, and sculpture, add music, in all their finished and accepted beauty. But here I had found the very elements of Art--deeds to inspire sculpture, and all the tragedy that a violin in the hands of a master tries to tell.
Riding home between the two men, along the dusty road, silver fretted now under the glancing stars and a moon that hung in the heavens like a great luminous pearl, I realised how changed I was, and how changed was life for me. I think then for the first time it dawned upon me that the claw of Africa was already deep in my heart, but that the throe it caused was not all of pain.
When we got back to the town we found that some waggons we had met on our way out had come in. They were drawn up in the front of one of the shops, and left standing there for the night, but a little of the unloading had been begun, and on one side of the road lay three enormous packing cases. We reined in for a moment to look at them, and read the address painted on each in large black letters. Afterwards we gazed at each other and exchanged sad ironical smiles. Mrs Marriott's _trousseau_ had arrived!
I think it was just three weeks afterwards that I heard of d.i.c.k's death.