Part 6 (1/2)

”Bless the child,” laughed Lilith, ”there were about half a hundred he's.”

”No, there was only one. Who is he? What is he?”

”I don't know,” replied Lilith, affecting ignorance no longer.

”You don't know? After three weeks on board s.h.i.+p together? Three whole weeks of s.h.i.+p life, and you have the face to tell me you don't know anything about him. After the way in which you said good-bye to each other, too? Oh, I saw.”

”Well, I don't know.”

”Or care?”

”Chaff away, if it's any fun to you,” answered Lilith quite serenely, as the trio rippled into peals of laughter.

”I liked the man, liked to talk to him on board--you are welcome to the admission--but all I know is that he is going to Johannesburg. We may never see each other again.”

”These English Johnnies who come out here, and whom one knows nothing about, are now and again slippery fish,” gruffly spoke the brown-faced one. ”Watch it, Lilith.”

”I thought this one looked as if he might be interesting,” said another of the blue-eyed girls. ”Pity he wasn't staying a day or two. We might have got him out to the house and seen what he was made of.”

”Watch it,” repeated George sententiously. ”Watch it, Lilith.”

Meanwhile, the object of this discussion--and warning--having resignedly ”pa.s.sed” the Customs at the dock gates, was spinning townwards in one of the innumerable hansoms. Sizing up the South African metropolis, it gave him the idea of a mud city, just dumped down wet and left to dry in the sun. Its general aspect suggested the vagaries of some sportive t.i.tan, who, from the summit of the lofty rock wall behind it, had amused himself, out of office hours, by chucking down chunks of clay of all sorts and sizes, trying how near he could ”lob” them into the position of streets and squares.

At that time the railway line ended at Kimberley--the distance thence to Johannesburg, close upon three hundred miles, had to be done by stage.

It occurred to Laurence that, having a couple of hours to spare, he had better look up the coach-agent and secure a seat by wire.

The agent was not in his office. Laurence Stanninghame, however, who knew the ways of similar countries, albeit a new arrival in this, inquired for that functionary's favourite bar. The reply was prompt and accurate withal. In a few minutes, seated on stools facing each other, he and the object of his search were transacting business.

The latter did not seem entirely satisfactory. The agent could not say when the earliest chance might occur by regular coach. He might have to wait at Kimberley--well, it might be for days, or it might be for ever.

On the other hand, he might not even have to wait at all. He could not tell. Even the people at the other end could not say for certain.

Laurence began to lose patience.

”See here,” he said somewhat testily. ”I haven't been long in your country, but that's about the only reply I've been able to meet with to any question yet. Tell me, as a matter of curiosity, is there any one thing you are ever certain of out here? Just one.”

The agent looked at him with faint amazement.

”There is one,” he said; ”just one.”

”Well--and that?”

”Death. That's always a dead cert. Let's liquor. Put a name to it, skipper.”

The special train consisted of a mail van and a first-cla.s.s carriage.

There being only three or four other travellers each had a compartment to himself, an arrangement which met with Laurence Stanninghame's unfeigned approval. He did not want to talk--especially in a clattering, dusty railway carriage. At intervals the pa.s.sengers foregathered for meals at some wayside buffet or accommodation house,--meals whose quality was in inverse ratio to the exuberance of the prices charged therefor,--then each would return to his own box and smoke and read and sleep away the little matter of seven hundred miles.