Part 37 (1/2)
It was all very subtle. Sarle never suspected what was going on, so cool and sweet she looked under her shady hat, so unfailing was her composure. He was accustomed to the dry and biting flavour of Kenna's speech, and paid no great heed to it. He believed himself listening to the witty reminiscences of two people with many friends and interests in common, and nothing in the girl's manner as she lied and fenced and swiftly covered up mistakes with jests and laughter betrayed the agony of baiting she was enduring. Kenna was a friend he would have trusted with everything he had in the world; but he was aware of a twist in that friend's nature which made him look at women with sardonic eyes.
It had not always been so. Some woman had given that cruel twist to a loyal and trusting nature; some loved hand had dealt the wound that festered in Ronald Kenna's heart; and Sarle, because he guessed this, forgave his friend much. But he would never have forgiven had he known what was pa.s.sing there under his very eyes. The woman he loved was on the rack, and he never guessed it because she smiled instead of crying out.
And it was all to suffer again that evening. April knew that, as she dressed herself carefully for dinner. There was no mistaking Kenna's pressing request that they should be allowed to come to her table.
Sarle had not had time to ask for himself alone. Kenna had forestalled him, and there was double craft in the action: he meant to keep his eye, or rather his claw, on her, while preventing her from being alone with Sarle. If she was in the fray to protect Sarle from the pain of finding her out, he was in it to protect Sarle from her. The situation might have been funny if it had not been grim. She could have laughed at it but for her fear of Kenna, but for an old man's pain and misery, but that the whole miserable structure of deceit rested on a girl's drowned body.
She put on a black gown. It seemed only fitting to absent herself awhile from the felicity of colour. Besides, all her joy in clothes had gone. How gladly would she now have donned her own shabby garments, if with them could have returned the old peace of mind! But even the plain little demi-toilette of black chiffon was peerlessly cut, and her whiteness glowed like a pearl through its filmy darkness.
There was no way of dressing her hair that would hide the white feather on her forehead, and after trying once or twice she left it. It looked very remarkable, that touch of age above her young, flower-like face.
She could not altogether hate it, for it was a scar won bravely enough, and in desperate battle. Africa had not taken long to put its mark on her!
The men were waiting for her in the lounge; Sarle looking radiantly happy because he was sure of the society of the two people he cared for most in the world; Kenna with a fresh device to try her composure.
”I want to see if you can remember the ingredients of that c.o.c.ktail I introduced to you at the 'Carlton' on a certain memorable evening when we escaped from Aunt Grizel,” he said gaily. She looked at him reflectively. ”As I've just been telling Sarle, you learned the recipe by heart, and swore that from henceforth you would use no other.”
”Ah, yes,” she drawled slowly. ”But you take no account of time and my 'Winter-garment of Repentance.' I am a very different girl to the one you knew two years ago.”
”I realize that, of course.” He grinned with delight at her point. It seemed to him possible that the evening might be even more entertaining than the afternoon.
”_This_ girl never drinks c.o.c.ktails,” she finished quaintly, and he liked her more and more.
Many glances followed them as they pa.s.sed down the long room, full of rose-shaded candles and the heavy scent of flowers. Pretty women are not scarce in Cape Town, especially at the season when all Johannesburg crowds to the sea, but there was a haunting, almost tragic loveliness about April that night that set her apart from the other women, and drew every eye. Sarle felt his pulses thrill with the pride that stirs every man when the seal of public admiration is set upon the woman he loves. As he looked at her across the table he suddenly recalled some little verses he had found scrawled in Kenna's writing on an old book once when they were away together on the veld:
My love she is a lady fair, A lady fair and fine; She is to eat the rarest meat And drink the reddest wine.
Her jewelled foot shall tread the ground Like a feather on the air; Oh! and brighter than the sunset The frocks my love shall wear!
If she be loyal men shall know What beauty gilds my pride; If she be false the more glad I, For the world is always wide.
Poor Kenna! She had been false: that was why he had sought the wide world of the veld and renounced women. Sarle, certain of the innate truth and loyalty of the girl opposite him as of her pearl-like outer beauty, could pity his friend's fate from the bottom of his soul. But being a man, he did not linger too long with pity; hope is always a pleasanter companion, and hope was burning in him like a blue flame: the hope that within an hour or two he would hold this radiant girl in his arms and touch her lips. He thought of the garden outside, full of shadows and scented starlight, and looking at the curve of her lips, his eyes darkened, and strange bells rang in his ears. She had eluded him for many nights, although she knew he loved her. He had kissed her fingers and the palm of her hand, but tonight out in the starlit garden he meant to kiss her lips. The resolve was iron in him. He hardly heard what the other two were saying. He was living in a world of his own. April, weary of Kenna's cruel heckling, turned to him for a moment's relief, and what she saw in his eyes was wine and oil for her weariness, but it made her afraid, not only because of the perilous longing in her to give him all he asked, but because Kenna sat alert as a lynx for even a smile she might cast that way. It was very certain that no opportunity would be given them for being a moment together; and divining something of Sarle's resolute temper, she could not help miserably wondering what would happen when it came to a tussle of will between the two men.
However, even the careful plans of first-cla.s.s lynxes go awry sometimes. A waiter came to the table to say that Kenna was wanted on the telephone.
”Tell them I'm engaged,” was the curt answer.
”It's his Honour Judge Byng, sir,” said the waiter in an awed manner, ”and I have already told him you were at dinner. He says it is most important.”
Kenna glared at the man, then at his companions. The latter appeared placidly indifferent. April sipped her wine, and her eyes roamed round the room whilst she exchanged idle talk with Sarle. But the moment Kenna's back was turned indifference fell from them; they looked at each other eagerly like two school-children in a hurry to take advantage of the teacher's absence.
”Darn him!” muttered Sarle. ”I wish Byng would keep him all night.”
”He will be back directly,” she said breathlessly. Sarle glanced at the plates. They were only at the fish.
”He's got to finish his dinner, I suppose,” he said grudgingly. ”But can't we escape afterwards? I want to show you the garden.”
”He's sure to stay with us,” she answered tragically.
”Oh--but to Halifax with him!” began Sarle.
”I know, but we mustn't offend him,” she implored hastily. ”He . . .