Part 3 (1/2)
”Not so good a breakfast as I got.”
”That is putting rather a low price on her life,” she rejoined; and a little smile of triumph gathered at her pink lips; lips a little like those Nelson loved not wisely yet not too well, if love is worth while at all.
”T didn't see where you were leading me,” he gasped, helplessly. ”I give up. I can't talk in your way.”
”What is my way?” she pleaded with a little wave of laughter in her eyes.
”Why, no frontal attacks--only flank movements, and getting round the kopjes, with an ambush in a drift here and there.”
”That sounds like Paul Kruger or General Joubert,” she cried in mock dismay. ”Isn't that what they are doing with Dr. Jameson, perhaps?”
His face clouded. Storm gathered slowly in his eyes, a grimness suddenly settled in his strong jaw. ”Yes,” he answered, presently, ”that's what they will be doing; and if I'm not mistaken they'll catch Jameson just as you caught me just now. They'll catch him at Doornkop or thereabouts, if I know myself--and Oom Paul.”
Her face flushed prettily with excitement. ”I want to hear all about this empire-making, or losing, affair; but there are other things to be settled first. There's my opera-cloak and the breakfast in the prima donna's boudoir, and--”
”But, how did you know it was Al'mah?” he asked blankly.
”Why, where else would my cloak be?” she inquired with a little laugh.
”Not at the costumier's or the cleaner's so soon. But, all this horrid flippancy aside, do you really think I should have talked like this, or been so exigent about the cloak, if I hadn't known everything; if I hadn't been to see Al'mah, and spent an hour with her and knew that she was recovering from that dreadful shock very quickly? But could you think me so inhuman and unwomanly as not to have asked about her?”
”I wouldn't be in a position to investigate much when you were talking--not critically,” he replied, boldly. ”I would only be thinking that everything you said was all right. It wouldn't occur to me to--”
She half closed her eyes, looking at him with languis.h.i.+ng humour. ”Now you must please remember that I am quite young, and may have my head turned, and--”
”It wouldn't alter my mind about you if you turned your head,” he broke in, gallantly, with a desperate attempt to take advantage of an opportunity, and try his hand at a game entirely new to him.
There was an instant's pause, in which she looked at him with what was half-a.s.sumed, half-natural shyness. His attempt to play with words was so full of nature, and had behind it such apparent admiration, that the unspoiled part of her was suddenly made self-conscious, however agreeably so. Then she said to him: ”I won't say you were brave last night--that doesn't touch the situation. It wasn't bravery, of course; it was splendid presence of mind which could only come to a man with great decision of character. I don't think the newspapers put it at all in the right way. It wasn't like saving a child from the top of a burning building, was it?”
”There was nothing in it at all where I was concerned,” he replied.
”I've been living a life for fifteen years where you had to move quick--by instinct, as it were. There's no virtue in it. I was just a little quicker than a thousand other men present, and I was nearer to the stage.”
”Not nearer than my father or Mr. Stafford.”
”They had a bigger shock than I had, I suppose. They got struck numb for a second. I'm a coa.r.s.er kind. I have seen lots of sickening things; and I suppose they don't stun me. We get callous, I fancy, we veld-rangers and adventurers.”
”You seem sensitive enough to fine emotions,” she said, almost shyly.
”You were completely absorbed, carried away, by Al'mah's singing last night. There wasn't a throb of music that escaped you, I should think.”
”Well, that's primary instinct. Music is for the most savage natures.
The boor that couldn't appreciate the Taj Mahal, or the sculpture of Michael Angelo, might be swept off his feet by the music of a master, though he couldn't understand its story. Besides, I've carried a banjo and a cornet to the ends of the earth with me. I saved my life with the cornet once. A lion got inside my zareba in Rhodesia. I hadn't my gun within reach, but I'd been playing the cornet, and just as he was crouching I blew a blast from it--one of those jarring discords of Wagner in the ”Gotterdammerung”--and he turned tail and got away into the bush with a howl. Hearing gets to be the most acute of all the senses with the pioneer. If you've ever been really dying of thirst, and have reached water again, its sounds become wonderful to you ever after that--the trickle of a creek, the wash of a wave on the sh.o.r.e, the drip on a tin roof, the drop over a fall, the swish of a rainstorm.
It's the same with birds and trees. And trees all make different sounds--that's the shape of the leaves. It's all music, too.”
Her breath came quickly with pleasure at the imagination and observation of his words. ”So it wasn't strange that you should be ravished by Al'mah's singing last night was it?” She looked at him keenly. ”Isn't it curious that such a marvellous gift should be given to a woman who in other respects--” she paused.
”Yes, I know what you mean. She's so untrained in lots of ways. That's what I was saying to Stafford a little while ago. They live in a world of their own, the stage people. There's always a kind of irresponsibility. The habit of letting themselves go in their art, I suppose, makes them, in real life, throw things down so hard when they don't like them. Living at high pressure is an art like music. It alters the whole equilibrium, I suppose. A woman like Al'mah would commit suicide, or kill a man, without realizing the true significance of it all.”
”Were you thinking that when you breakfasted with her?”