Part 13 (1/2)
Everyone agreed that Mrs. Hading must see both of these lovely places.
”I have to go to Selukine anyway, on business,” said Mrs. Hading, who had no idea of letting her plan to motor through that district in Druro's company be interfered with by picnics, ”so please let it be Sombwelo.”
”You can have my ranch there as a base of operations,” proffered Lundi, ”and make my boys do the work.”
They all applauded this except Gay, who submitted that a picnic was not a picnic unless conducted on alfresco lines, with all the cooking and eating done out of doors by the picnickers themselves. Druro understood that she objected to his ranch and was sorry he had spoken, especially as some of the others looked at her with understanding eyes also. However, she was outvoted, everyone crying that if she liked hard work and out-door cooking, and spiders and ants running over the table-cloth and mosquitoes biting her ankles, she could have them, but they would have the ranch. To Druro's surprise and relief, she laughed and gave in quite pleasantly. Being a man, he could not know that, at that very moment, she was dismally deciding that, considering all that had pa.s.sed, she could not possibly go to Druro's ranch.
”I shall have to be taken ill at the last moment,” she reflected, and could have wept, for she loved picnics, and Druro's ranch had a secret call for her heart. But she laughed instead, and helped, with a cheerful air, to draw up the lists of those who were to supply cars, chickens, cakes, crockery, and all the other incidentals that go to the making of a successful picnic. The tea-party had by this time become enlarged to the size of a reception, and with everybody talking and arguing at once, no one (except Gay) noticed that, after a little quiet conversation, Mrs. Hading and Druro withdrew and disappeared. It transpired later that they had ordered an early lunch and started for Selukine in the Argyle.
And that was only the beginning of it. In the week that followed, it became more usual to see Mrs. Hading in Lundi Druro's car than out of it.
Gay, staunch to her resolve, absented herself from the festivity at Sombwelo. It was no great exaggeration to plead that she was ill, for her spirit was sick if her body was not. But no one spared her the details of a successful and delightful day. It seemed that Druro had been a perfect host and Mrs. Hading a graceful and gracious guest.
And, from that time forward, never a day pa.s.sed in which the two did not spend some, at least, of its hours together. When Marice was not by Druro's side in the big red car, sometimes learning to drive, sometimes just tearing through the air, _en route_ to some mine or other which she wanted to see, they might be found in the ”Falcon”
lounge, playing bridge with another couple or just sitting alone, talking of London lamp-posts. Sometimes they played two-handed poker, for Marice not only sympathized but shared with Druro his pa.s.sion for cards. Perhaps this drew their hearts as well as their heads together.
At any rate, to lookers-on they seemed absorbed in one another.
Mrs. Hading essayed skilfully and very winningly to draw Gay into her intimate circle, and it vexed her to realize how she evaded her plans.
Berlie, she had already subjugated and made a tool of; but Gay stood aloof and would not be beguiled. While perfectly courteous to Mrs.
Hading and whole-heartedly admiring her beauty, she had yet distrusted and disliked her from the first. Now her dislike deepened, for she saw that the widow was harming Druro. She kept him from his work, and sympathized and pandered to the pa.s.sions that already too greatly obsessed him. There were always c.o.c.ktails and cards on the table before them. Druro was drawing closer round him the net of his weaknesses from which Gay had so longed to drag him forth. Between the latter and Lundi Druro there now existed a kind of armed peace which appeared to be based, on his side, in indifference, and, on hers, in pride. There was often open antagonism in their eyes as they faced each other. She despised him for lingering and lagging at the heels of pleasure, and he knew it. Sometimes, when he was not actively angry with her, he thought she had grown older and sadder in a short while, and wondered if she were having trouble about young Derry, who was up-country, or whether old Derek was going the pace more than usual at home. It must be these secret troubles, he thought, that had suddenly changed her from the laughing girl he knew into a rather beautiful but cold woman. Cold, yes, cold as the east wind! Sometimes her clear eyes chilled him like the air of a certain little cold hour of the dawn that he very much dreaded; it was a relief to turn away from them to the warm and subtle scents and frondlike ways of Marice Hading.
For weeks now, he had divided his time so carefully between Mrs. Hading and poker at the club, that there was nothing at all left for the Leopard mine. His partner, M. R. Guthrie, commonly known as ”Emma,”
sometimes came from the mine to look for him, pedalling moodily into w.a.n.keloon a bicycle, and always pedalling away more moodily than he came. He was a shrivelled-up American with a biting tongue, and the only man in the country from whom Druro would take back talk.
”What is this wine-woman-and-song stunt you are on now, Lundi?” he inquired, late one night, when he had cornered Druro in the club with a small but select poker-party of the hardest citizens in the country.
Druro gave him a dark glance.
”That's my business,” he said curtly.
”Have you any other business?” asked Emma bitterly. ”You don't happen to own a mine, I suppose?”
”What are mines compared to jack-pots?” inquired Druro gravely.
”Besides, what are you on that mine for, Emma? A decoration? Or do you think you are my wet-nurse? I don't remember engaging you in that capacity.”
Guthrie rose, offended.
”All right, my boy--go to blazes your own way!”
”I can get there without leading-strings, anyway,” Lundi retorted cheerfully.
”But not without ap.r.o.n-strings,” muttered his partner, departing on the faithful bicycle. ”I dunno what's come to the fellow!”
In truth, Druro hardly knew himself. A kind of fever had taken possession of him, a fever of unrest and discontent with himself and all things. He couldn't remember how it began or when, but it seemed to him that life, in one moment, from being interesting and vivid, had turned old and cold and tasted like a rotten apple in his mouth. And he did not care how many drinks he took to wash the flavour away. He knew that he was drinking too much and neglecting his work, and jeopardizing other people's money as well as his own by so doing, but his soul was filled with a bitter carelessness and indifference to these facts. He was anxious not to inquire too deeply within himself on the matter of what ailed him, being dimly aware of a something at the back of his mind that could inform him only too well. He wished to avoid all discussion with that something, sitting like a veiled, watching figure, waiting for some unoccupied hour. Up to now, he had been very successful in dodging the appointment, but he had premonition that he would be caught one of these days soon--in some little cold dawn-hour perhaps.
There came a day when Mrs. Hading decided to return the hospitality shown her in w.a.n.kelo by giving an entertainment of her own. She mentioned her intention lightly to Druro.
”I really must try and arrange to give a little jolly of my own in return for all the big jollies people here have given me.”
In reality, she had determined on something in the nature of ”a surprise to the natives” that would put all their little picnics and dinner-parties entirely in the shade, and duly impress not only w.a.n.kelo but Rhodesia and, incidentally, Lundi Druro. For, after several weeks of close intercourse with the latter, she had come to the conclusion that she might do very much worse than marry him. More, she actually desired to do so. The stimulus of his insouciant gaiety and originality, good looks and unfailingly good spirits had come to be a necessary part of her existence. She needed him now, like a bracing c.o.c.ktail she had grown used to taking so many times a day and could no longer do without. Besides, the Leopard was panning out well, at the rate of a thousand pounds sterling per month, and had the prospect of doing far better.