Part 34 (1/2)
”What has made him change his mind about helping you into the Consular service, Maurice?” I asked, not without a shade of irony I must confess, for any one less adapted than Maurice to a profession in which high principles, tact, and good manners are essential qualifications it would have been hard to find, even in Africa, where budding diplomats do not grow on every bush.
”He hasn't changed his mind. I have changed mine about asking him, that's all. I know it would be no good, anyway.”
He got into the verandah hammock, which was also his bed, propped himself comfortably against a cus.h.i.+on, and lit a cigarette.
From my deck-chair I stared blankly at the surrounding horizon. To say that I was _agacee_ is to say nothing. Even in the face of his recently revealed duplicity I was unprepared for this cool jettisoning of the most solemn part of our compact. It left me breathless. I said at last:
”What is there to prevent you from leaving Africa without your uncle's consent? You are not an infant--”
”No; I wish I were. Life would be considerably simpler. But the fact is, my uncle is so kind as to pay me five hundred a year to stay out of England, and the country he specifies as my residence, being a nice long way off from him, is Africa. The moment I quit he'll stop payment, and I shall have nothing to live on but my lordly salary of twenty quid a month.”
What sinister meaning lurked in so strange an arrangement I shrank from asking, but I had an instinct to combat it--an instinct that was roused in me twenty times a day as my husband's character unfolded itself, and I saw upon what ign.o.ble props and bolsters his life was arranged; how slack were his moral muscles; how low his code of honour. Sometimes, when I realised these things, and that my lot was irrevocably cast for life companions.h.i.+p with a man who so deliberately outraged my ideals of what a man should be, and what life should mean, I felt like a trapped creature, and my instinct was to turn in bitter rage and rend the trap with teeth and nails. But what good in that? And what good in all my fine resolutions if they so quickly dissolved in the face of disaster?
I smothered down indignation and disdain, and used a gentleness with him that, knowing my own proud ardent heart, surprised myself. With burning cheeks I might presently have been heard pleading with him to throw off the five-hundred-pound yoke, and strike out on his own account.
”Surely the freedom of your soul is worth more than five hundred a year!” I cried. ”You detest your uncle, why take his money under such an ignominious condition? Fling his money into his teeth and take your life into your own hands. Africa is not the only country on the map.
There are still Europe, Asia, America, and Australia. Let us go to Canada and start a farm, open a shop, run a hotel--anything, anywhere.
I will help you at whatever you put your hand to, Maurice, and I don't care how poor we are. Only let us be honourable, and let us go away from Africa.”
And all the time my blood was leaping and my heart quivering at the thought of staying on in this land, behind whose silent hills and dense bush the fate of Anthony Kinsella still was hidden. To all my eloquence he puffed at his cigarette and returned a cool stare.
”Jack up five hundred a year and go and look for a chance living in some new country where I don't know the ropes? Not much, my dear girl! I know my own limitations, thanks, and how likely I'd be to make my fortune or even a bare living in Canada or anywhere else.”
”What of the n.o.ble career you were to carve out for yourself,” I flung at him, hoping that scorn might achieve what pleading and reasoning failed to do. But that stone broke no bones. He merely laughed and flung one back at me with a man's sure aim.
”Why should I bother about a career, since I am never to have any children to pa.s.s my glories on to?”
That sealed my lips from further retort. I sat still and stared silently at the pa.s.sionate blue of the skies, and the radiant sunlit plain. What was the use of struggling against the witch who had me in her toils and never meant to let me go?
”If she loves you, she will keep you, whether you will or no!” Anthony had prophesied on just such a blue-and-gold day, when life went sweetly with us. Well, if this was love, it was a strong, austere pa.s.sion, hard to distinguish from hate. Under its fierce cold caress I could truly cry with the words of the Hindoo woman to her faithless lord:
”Hadst thou not called it Love-- I had called it a drawn sword!”
A little way off a native boy, whom I had noticed about the place the last day or two, was sitting in the suns.h.i.+ne, with his back against a hut. He wore a brick-red blanket sewn with large blue beads, swathed round him rather gracefully, and a necklace of some wild beasts' teeth about his neck. He was better looking than the average kaffir--nose less flat, and lips less protruding; with a dreamy, moody air about him, and in his big dark eyes. He had a tiny kaffir instrument in his hands, upon which he was making a soft, sad, monotonous sound.
_Tom--brr--torn--brr--tom-tom-tom_--
Sometimes he would give a look, in which there seemed to be some significant wistfulness, towards the verandah where we sat.
”Yes, I've got a nice little soft billet in the Mounted Police,” pursued Maurice serenely. ”The powers that be thought it a pity for a happily married man like me, with an adoring wife, to have to be so much away from home as an N.C. must be, so they laid their heads together to see what they could do for you and me. The result is the offer of a sub-inspectors.h.i.+p in the Police, my service in the N.C. Department to count towards seniority. They've given me the camp at Mgatweli.”
Afterwards I learnt, as one learns everything in Rhodesia if one lives long enough, that the whole affair had been arranged weeks before, upon Maurice announcing the news of his approaching marriage. He had accepted the appointment quite a month before he told me anything about it.
But I soon learned that I must take falseness and double-dealing for granted.
Judy, too, was proving faithless to her promise. She had written to say that she had decided to take d.i.c.kie with her to Europe, where she was going to spend her honeymoon.
I rose wearily to go inside and find out what arrangements were being made for lunch, when I noticed that the boy with the music had left off playing. He put his piano in his hair and came up to the verandah. His eyes were fixed wistfully upon Maurice, who was apparently composing himself to sleep. In the Mashona tongue he made a soft little request:
”_Neega meena e'tambo Inkos_.”