Part 13 (1/2)
This was cruel, but she knew that he was ”inciting her to riot,” and she replied: ”That's because you are so secluded--in your kindergarten for misfit statesmen. Abandon knowledge, all ye who enter there!”
It was the old flint and steel, but the sparks were not bright enough to light the tinder of emotion. She knew it, for he was cool and buoyant and really unconcerned, and she was feverish--and determined.
”You still make life worth living,” he answered, gaily.
”It is not an occupation I would choose,” she replied. ”It is sure to make one a host of enemies.”
”So many of us make our careers by accident,” he rejoined.
”Certainly I made mine not by design,” she replied instantly; and there was an undercurrent of meaning in it which he was not slow to notice; but he disregarded her first attempt to justify, however vaguely, her murderous treatment of him.
”But your career is not yet begun,” he remarked.
Her eyes flashed--was it anger, or pique, or hurt, or merely the fire of intellectual combat?
”I am married,” she said, defiantly, in direct retort.
”That is not a career--it is casual exploration in a dark continent,”
he rejoined.
”Come and say that to my husband,” she replied, boldly. Suddenly a thought lighted her eyes. ”Are you by any chance free to-morrow night to dine with us--quite, quite en famille' Rudyard will be glad to see you--and hear you,” she added, teasingly.
He was amused. He felt how much he had really piqued her and provoked her by showing her so plainly that she had lost every vestige of the ancient power over him; and he saw no reason why he should not spend an evening where she sparkled.
”I am free, and will come with pleasure,” he replied.
”That is delightful,” she rejoined, ”and please bring a box of bons mots with you. But you will come, then--?” She was going to add, ”Ian,”
but she paused.
”Yes, I'll come--Jasmine,” he answered, coolly, having read her hesitation aright.
She flushed, was embarra.s.sed and piqued, but with a smile and a nod she left him.
In her carriage, however, her breath came quick and fast, her tiny hand clenched, her face flushed, and there was a devastating fire in her eyes.
”He shall not treat me so. He shall show some feeling. He shall--he shall--he shall!” she gasped, angrily.
CHAPTER IX
THE APPIAN WAY
”Cape to Cairo be d.a.m.ned!”
The words were almost spat out. The man to whom they were addressed slowly drew himself up from a half-rec.u.mbent position in his desk-chair, from which he had been dreamily talking into the ceiling, as it were, while his visitor leaned against a row of bookshelves and beat the floor impatiently with his foot.
At the rude exclamation, Byng straightened himself, and looked fixedly at his visitor. He had been dreaming out loud again the dream which Rhodes had chanted in the ears of all those who shared with him the pioneer enterprises of South Africa. The outburst which had broken in on his monologue was so unexpected that for a moment he could scarcely realize the situation. It was not often, in these strenuous and perilous days--and for himself less often than ever before, so had London and London life worked upon him--that he, or those who shared with him the vast financial responsibilities of the Rand, indulged in dreams or prophecies; and he resented the contemptuous phrase just uttered, and the tone of the speaker even more.
Byng's blank amazement served only to incense his visitor further.