Part 12 (1/2)
”Oh, don't we?” said the latter emphatically. ”You should just see the pile of men that came in to lunch here today--just to have a look at her. The story of her glory has gone forth. She came over to our table and asked if we minded if she sat with us, and then she wound her lovely manners all around mother so that mum thinks she's a dream and an angel. But _I_ don't cotton to her much, Gay--and I can feel she doesn't like me, either, though she was as sweet as honey. My dear, she will n.o.bble all our men--I feel it in my bones.”
”Let her,” said Gay listlessly.
”She even has old Lundi Druro crumpled up--what do you think of _that_?” Gay's charming face turned to a mask. ”That gives you an idea of her power,” continued Beryl dolorously, ”if she can keep Lundi Druro amused. She is sitting in the lounge with him now. They've been there ever since lunch, and he was to have gone out to his mine early this morning.”
Gay jumped up from her chair.
”Are you coming for that ride or not, Berlie? I'm sick of scorching indoors.” There were, indeed, two spots of flame in her cheeks.
”Oh, Gay, I can't; I am too G. I. for anything.” ”G. I.” is Rhodesian for ”gone in,” a common condition for both men and women and things in that sprightly land of nicknames and nick-phrases.
”I'm off, then,” said Gay hurriedly.
”Wait a minute--I'll come down with you!” said Beryl, and, rus.h.i.+ng to the mirror over the mantel, began to pat her pretty _cendre_ hair flat to her head, in unconscious imitation of Mrs. Hading's coiffure.
The two girls went downstairs together. Beryl's arm thrust through her friend's. Gay's horse stood at the side entrance, facing the staircase. She instinctively quickened her pace as they reached the lounge door, but, before she could pa.s.s, it opened, and Mrs. Hallett came out.
”Oh, I was just coming to look for you girls. Mrs. Scott is in from Umvuma, Gay, and dying to see you.”
Gay gave an inward groan. Mrs. Scott was an old friend of her dead mother's, and about the only woman in the world for whom the girl would have entered the lounge at that moment. As it was, she followed Beryl's mother swiftfoot through the swing door, very upright and smart in her glossy tan riding-boots, knee-breeches, and graceful long coat of soft tan linen. In the matter of riding-kit, Gay always went nap.
A ball or day gown she might wear until it fell off her back, but when it came to habits, she considered nothing too good or too recent for her.
For a moment, Marice Hading looked away from the man who sat opposite, amusing her with apt and cynical reflections on life in Rhodesia, and shot a soft, dark glance at the straight back of the girl in riding-kit. Her cleverly appraising eye took in, with the instantaneousness of photography, every detail of Gay's get-up, and her brain acknowledged that she had seldom seen a better one either in Central Park or Rotten Row. But no expression of any such opinion showed in her weary, disdainful eyes or found its way to her lips, for in the art of using language to conceal her thoughts, Marice Hading had few rivals. What she said to Druro, whose glance had also wandered that way, was:
”One cannot help noticing what a hard-riding, healthy-looking crowd the women of this country are.”
The words sounded like a simple, frank statement; but somehow they robbed Gay of some of the perfection of her young and charming ensemble, and made her one of a crowd in which her distinction was lost. Druro felt this vaguely without being able to tell exactly how it happened. He knew nothing of the subtleties of a woman's mind. He had thought that Gay looked rather splendidly young and sweet, and, because of it, a fresh pang shot through him at the remembrance of her scornful dismissal of him the night before. But, with Mrs. Hading's words, the impression pa.s.sed, and he got a quick vision of Gay as just an ordinary girl who had been extremely rude to him. This helped him to meet with equanimity the calm, clear glance she sent through him.
”Don't you know the little riding girl?” asked Mrs. Hading softly, but something in Druro's surprised expression made her cover the question with a faintly admiring remark: ”She's quite good-looking, I think.
Who is she?”
”The daughter of an old friend of mine--a Colonel Liscannon,” said Druro, speaking in a low voice and rapidly. He would have preferred not to discuss Gay at all, but his natural generosity impelled him to accord her such dignity and place as belonged to her and not to leave her where Mrs. Hading's words seemed to place her--just the other side of some fine, invisible line.
”Ah, one of the early pioneers? They were all by way of being captains and colonels, weren't they?” murmured Marice Hading, still weaving fine, invisible threads.
Druro frowned slightly. ”Colonel Liscannon is an old service-man----”
”May I beg for one of those delicious cigarettes you were smoking after lunch?” she said languidly. ”And do tell where to get some like them.
I find it so difficult to get anything at all smokable up here, except from your clubs.”
Thus, Colonel Liscannon and his daughter were gracefully consigned to the limbo of subjects not sufficiently interesting to hold the attention of Mrs. Hading. If she could not, by reason of Druro's natural chivalry, put Gay just over the wrong side of some subtle social line she had drawn, she could, at least, thrust her out of the conversation altogether and out of Druro's mind. This was always a pastime she found fascinating--pus.h.i.+ng someone out of a man's mind and taking the empty place herself--and one at which long practice had made her nearly perfect. So it is not astonis.h.i.+ng that she succeeded so well with Druro that, when Gay left her friends and slipped out to her waiting horse, he did not even notice her going. He was busy trying to persuade Mrs. Hading to come for a spin around the w.a.n.kelo kopje in his car, and he was not unsuccessful. Only, they went further than the kopje. About six miles out they got a glimpse of a solitary rider ahead, going like the wind. A cloud of soft, ashen dust rising from under the horse's heels floated back and settled like the gentle dew from heaven upon the car and its occupants. Druro was on the point of slackening speed, but Mrs. Hading's pencilled brows met in a line above her eyes, and one of her little white teeth showed in her underlip.
”Get past her, please,” she said coldly. ”I object to other people's dust.”
Druro was about to object in his turn, though, for a moment, he philandered with the delightful thought of getting even with Gay by covering her with dust and petrol fumes. Unfortunately, his gallant resistance to this pleasant temptation would never be known, for Gay suddenly and unexpectedly wheeled to the left and put her horse's head to the veld. The swift wheeling movement, with its attendant extra scuffling of dust, sent a further graceful contribution of fine dirt on to the occupants of the car. It would have been difficult to accuse Gay of doing it on purpose, however, for she appeared blandly unconscious of the neighbourhood of fellow beings. She gave a little flick of her whip, and away she went over a great burnt-out patch of veld, leaving the long, white, dusty road to those who had no choice but to take it.
Mrs. Hading did not love Gay Liscannon any better for her score, but she would have disliked her in any case. Because she was no longer young herself, youth drove at her heart like a poisoned dagger. One of the few keen pleasures she had left in life was to bare her foils to the attack of some inexperienced girl, to match her wit and art and beauty against a fresh cheek and ingenuous heart, and prove to the world that victory was still to her. But when she had done it, victory was dust in her palm and bitter in her mouth as dead-sea apples. For she knew that the wolf of middle age was at her door.
Marice Hading was one of those unhappy women who have drained to the dregs every cup of pleasure they can wrench from life and fled from the healing cup of pain. Now, with the chilly and uncompromising hand of forty clutching at her, pain was always with her--not enn.o.bling, chastening pain, but the pain of those who, having been overfull, must henceforth go empty.
Small wonder that, weary-eyed and dry-souled, she roamed the earth in feverish search of solace and refreshment. Her husband, a generous, affectionate man, condemned by her selfishness to a waste of arid years empty of wife-love or children, had died of overwork, dyspepsia, and general dissatisfaction some eight years before, leaving his widow with an income of two thousand pounds a year, a sum she found all too small for her requirements.