"I knew I 'd strike it lucky one of these days," was Mr. Bailey's reflection, as he composed himself to slumber. "With two or three more like her – I 'll be a millionaire yet."
The stars watched his upturned face as he slept with a still scrutiny that must have detected aught in its unconscious frankness that could redeem it or suggest that once it had possessed the image of God. He slept as peacefully, as devotedly, as a baby, confiding his defenselessness to the night with no tremors or uncertainty. He left unguarded the revelations of his loose and feeble face that the mild stars searched, always with their stare of stagnant surprise.
In the farmhouse, there was yet a light in the windows when dawn paled the eastward heaven. Christian du Preez slept in his bed unquietly, with clenched hands outstretched over the empty place beside him, and in another room Paul had transferred himself from waking dreams to a dream-world. Tiptoeing here and there in the house, Mrs. du Preez had gathered together the meager handful of gear that was to go with her; she had shaken out a skirt that she treasured and made ready a hat that smelt of camphor. Her money, in sovereigns, made a hard and heavy knob in a knotted napkin. All was gathered and ready for the journey and yet the light shone in the window of the parlor where she sat through the hours. Her hands were in her lap and there were no tears in her eyes – it was beyond tears. She was taking leave of her furniture.
She saw her husband at breakfast, facing him across the table with a preoccupied expression that he took for sullenness. She did not see the grimness of his countenance nor mark his eye upon her; she was thinking in soreness of heart of six rosewood chairs, upholstered in velvet, a rosewood table, a sofa, and the rest of it – the profit of her marriage, her sheet-anchor and her prop. She felt as though she had given her life for them.
Christian rode away with his back to the sun, with no word spoken between them, and as his pony broke into a lope – the Boer half-trot, half-canter, – he caught and subdued an impulse to look back at the house. Even if he had looked, he would hardly have seen the cautious reconnoiter of Boy Bailey's head around the corner of it, as that camp-follower of fortune made sure of his departure. Thrashings Mr. Bailey could make light of, but the Boer's threat of shooting had stuck in his mind. He rested on his hands and knees and stuck his chin close to the ground in prudent care as he peered about the corner of the house to see the owner of the rifle make a safe offing.
Even when the Boer had dwindled from sight, swallowed up by the invisible inequalities of the ground that seemed as flat as a table, he avoided to show himself in the open. He lurked under the walls of kraals, frightening farm Kafirs who came upon him suddenly and finally made a sudden appearance before Paul at the back of the house.
"I won't waste words on you," he said to the boy. "I 've got something better to do, thank God. But I 'm told you have a message for me."
"Two messages," said Paul.
"One 'll do," replied Boy Bailey. "I don't want to hear you talking. I 've been insulted here and I 'm not done with you yet. Mind that. So hand over what you 've got for me and be done with it – d'you hear?"
"Here it is." Paul put his hand into the loose bosom of his shirt and drew out a small paper packet. He held it out to Boy Bailey.
"That!" Boy Bailey trembled as he seized it, with a frightful sense of disappointment. He had seen the money as gold, a brimming double handful of minted gold, with gold's comforting substance and weight. The packet he took into his hand was no fatter than a fat letter and held no coin.
He rent the covering apart and stared doubtfully at the little wad of notes it contained, sober-colored paper money of the Bank of Africa. It had never occurred to him that the Kafir, Kamis, would have his riches in so uninspiring a shape. Two notes of twenty pounds each and one of ten and all three of them creased and dirty. No chink, no weight to drag at his pocket and keep him in mind of it, none of the pomp and panoply of riches.
"Why – why," he stammered. "I told him – cash down. Damn the dirty Kafir swindler, what does he call this?"
"Blackmail, I think he said," replied Paul. "That was the other message. If you don't do what you said you 'd do, you 'll go to
tronk
(jail) for it, and I am to be a witness. That 's if he does n't kill you himself – like I told him he 'd better do."
Boy Bailey arrived by degrees at sufficient composure to pocket the notes, thrusting them deep for greater security and patting them through the cloth.
"Oh, you told him that, did you?" he said. "And you call yourself a white man, do you? Murder, is it? You look out, young feller. You don't know the risks you 're running. I 'm not a man that forgets."
But Paul was not daunted. He watched the battered face that threatened him with an expression which the other did not understand. There was a curious warm interest in it that might have flattered a man less bare of illusions as to his appearance.
"I suppose you 've never seen a black eye before, you gaping moon-calf," he cried irritably. "What are you staring like that for?"
Paul smiled. "I would give you a shilling again to let me make a model of you," he answered. "I 'd give you two shillings."
Boy Bailey swore viciously and swung on his heel. He was stung at last and he had no answer. He made haste to get around the corner and away from eyes that would keep the memory of him as he appeared to Paul.
It was more than an hour later that Mrs. du Preez discovered him, squatting under the spikes of a dusty aloe, humped like a brooding vulture and grieving over that last affront. He lifted mournful eyes to her as she stood before him.
"Bailey," she said breathlessly. "I hunted everywhere for you. I thought you 'd gone without me."
She was ready for the long flight on foot. All that she had in the way of best clothes was on her body, everything she could not bring herself to leave. The seemliness of Sunday was embodied in her cloth coat and skirt, her cream silk bosom and its brooches, the architectural elaborateness of her hat. She stood in the merciless sun in all her finery, with sweat on her forehead and a small bundle in each hand.
"You 're coming, then?" he asked stupidly.
She stamped her foot impatiently. "Of course I 'm coming," she said. "Don't go into all that again, Bailey. D' you think I 'd stop with him now, after – after everything?"
She was holding desperately to her resolution, eager to be off before the six rosewood chairs, the table and the sofa should overcome her and make good their claim to her.
"What 's those?" Bailey nodded at the bundles torpidly.
"Oh," she was burning to be moving, to be committed, to see her boats flaming and smoking behind her. "This is grub, Bailey. We 'll want grub, won't we? And this is my things."
"The – er – money, I suppose, an' all that?"
"Yes, yes. Oh, do come on, Bailey. The money 's all here. Everything 's here. You carry the grub an' let 's be going."
"The grub, eh?" Mr. Bailey rose grunting to his feet. "You 'd rather – well, all right."
None viewed that elopement to mark how Mrs. du Preez slipped her free hand under Bailey's arm and went forth at his side in the bravery she had donned as though to bring grace to the occasion. Paul was down at the dam with sheep, and before he returned the brown distances of the Karoo had enveloped them and its levels had risen behind them to blot out the dishonored roof of the house.
At the hour of the midday meal, Paul ate alone, contentedly and unperturbed by his mother's absence. For all he knew she had one of her weeping fits upstairs in her bedroom, and he was careful to make no noise.
CHAPTER XII
Margaret entered the drawing-room rather late for tea and Mrs. Jakes accordingly acknowledged her arrival with an extra stoniness of regard. In his place by the window, Ford turned from his abstracted contemplation of the hot monotony without and sent her a discreet and private smile across the tea-table. Mrs. Jakes, noting it and the girl's response, tightened her mouth unpleasantly as the suspicion recurred to her that there was "something between" Mr. Ford and Miss Harding. More than once of late she had noticed that their intercourse had warmed to the stage when the common forms of expression need to be helped out by a code of sympathetic looks and gestures. She addressed the girl in her thinnest tones of extreme formality.
"I thought perhaps you were n't coming in," she said. "I 'm afraid the tea 's not very hot now."
"I 'll ring," said Mr. Samson, diligently handing a chair.
"Please don't," said Margaret, taking it. "I don't mind at all. Don't bother, anybody."
"I forget if you take sugar, Miss Harding," said Mrs. Jakes, pouring negligently from the pot. Ford grinned and turned quickly to the window again.
"No sugar, thanks," answered Margaret agreeably; "and no milk and no tea."
"No tea?" Mrs. Jakes raised her eyebrows in severe surprise and looked up. The movement sufficed to divert the stream from the tea-pot so that it flowed abundantly on the hand which held the cup and splashed thence into the sugar basin. She sat the pot down sharply and reached for her handkerchief with a smothered ejaculation of annoyance.
"Oh, I 'm sorry," said Margaret. "But how lucky you didn't keep it hot for me. You might have been scalded, might n't you?"
"Thank you," replied Mrs. Jakes, with all the dignity she could summon while she mopped at her sleeve. "Thank you; I am not hurt."
That was the second time Margaret had turned her own guns, her own little improvised pop-guns of ineffectual enmity, back upon her; and she did not quite understand how it was done. The first time had been when she had pretended not to hear a remark Margaret had addressed to her. The girl had crossed the room and joined Dr. Jakes in his hearth-rug exile, and Mr. Samson had stared while Ford laughed silently but visibly. Mrs. Jakes had not understood the implication of it; she was only aware, reddening and resentful, that Margaret had scored in some subtle fashion.
The hatred of Mrs. Jakes was a cue to consistency of action no less plain than her love. "I like people to know their own minds," was one of her self-revelations, and she believed that worthy people, decent people, good people were those who saw their way clear under all circumstances of friendship and hostility and were prepared to strike and maintain a due attitude upon any encounter. Her friends were those who indulged her the forms of courtesy and consideration; her enemies those who opposed her or were rude to her. To her friends she returned their indulgence in kind; her enemies she pursued at each meeting and behind their backs with an implacable tenacity of hate. One conceives that in the case of such lives as hers, only those survive whose feebleness is supplemented by claws. Take away their genuine capacity for making themselves disagreeable at will, and they would be trodden under and extinguished. Mrs. Jakes' girlhood was illuminated by the example of an aunt, who lived for fourteen years with only a thin wall between her and a person with whom she was not on speaking terms. The aunt had known her own mind with such a blinding clearness that she was able to sit with folded hands, listening through the wall to the sounds of a raving husband murdering her enemy, and no impulse to cry for help had arisen to dim the crystal of that knowledge. "She was a bad one at forgiving, was your Aunt Mercy," Mrs. Jakes had been told, always with a suggestion in the speaker's voice that there was something admirable in such inflexibility. Primitive passions, the lusts of skin-clad ancestors, fortified the anemia of the life from which she was sprung. Marriage by capture would have shocked her deeply, but she would not have been the worse squaw.
She dropped into a desultory conversation with Mr. Samson, with occasional side-references to Dr. Jakes, and managed at the same time to keep an eye on the other two. Margaret had walked across to Ford, and was sitting at his side on the window-ledge; he had a three-days-old copy of the
Dopfontein Courant
, in which the scanty news of the district was printed in English and Dutch and they were looking it over together. Ford held the paper and Margaret leaned against his arm to share it; the intimacy of their attitude was disagreeable to Mrs. Jakes. An alliance between the two of them would be altogether too strong for her, and besides, it was warfare as she understood it to destroy the foe's supports whenever possible.
"Nothing in the rag, I suppose, Ford?" asked Mr. Samson, in his high, intolerant voice.
"Not a thing," answered Ford, "unless you 're interested in the price of wools."
"Grease wool per pound," suggested Margaret. "Guess how much that is, Mr. Samson."
"It ought to be cheap," said Mr. Samson. "It sounds beastly."
"Well, then, how 's this?" Margaret craned across Ford's shoulder and read: "'Mr. Ben Bongers of Tomtown, the well-known billiard-marker, underwent last week the sad experience of being kicked at the hands of Mr. Jacobus Van Dam's
quaai
cock. Legal proceedings are pending.' There now. But does anybody know what kicked him?"
"Cock ostrich," rumbled Dr. Jakes from the back of the room. "
Quaai
– that means bad-tempered."
"You see," said Ford, "ostriches are common hereabouts. They say cock and ostrich is understood. What would they call a barn-door cock, though?"
"A poultry," said Mr. Samson. "But we must watch for those legal proceedings; they ought to be good."
Mrs. Jakes had listened in silence, but now an idea occurred to her.
"There 's nothing about that woman in Capetown this week?" she asked, and smiled meaningly as she caught Margaret's eye.
"No," said Ford. "I was looking for that, but there 's nothing."
"What woman was that?" inquired Margaret.
"Oh, a rotten business. A woman married a Kafir parson – a white woman. There 's been a bit of a row about it."
"Oh," said Margaret, understanding Mrs. Jakes' smile. "I didn't see the paper last week."
She looked at Mrs. Jakes with interest. Evidently the little woman saw the matter of Kamis, and Margaret's familiar acquaintance with him, as a secret with which she could be cowed, a piece of dark knowledge that would be held against her as a weapon of final resort. The fact did more than all Kamis' warnings and Boy Bailey's threats to enlighten her as to the African view of a white woman who had relations, any relations but those of employer and servant, with a black man. Not only would a woman in such a case expose herself to the brutal scandal that flourishes in the atmosphere of bars where Boy Baileys frame the conventions that society endorses, but she would be damned in the eyes of all the Mrs. Jakes in the country. They would tar and feather her with their contumely and bury her beneath their disgust.
She returned Mrs. Jakes' smile till that lady looked away with a long-drawn sniff of defiance.
"But why a row?" asked Margaret. "If she was satisfied, what was there to make a row about?"
She really wanted to hear what two sane and average men would adduce in support of Mrs. Jakes' views.
Old Mr. Samson shook his head rebukingly.
"Men and women ain't on their own in this world," he said seriously. "They 've got to think of the rest of the crowd. We 're all in the same boat out here – white people holdin' up the credit of the race. Can't afford to have deserters goin' over to the other camp, don't y' know. Even supposin' – I say,
supposin'
– there was nothing else to prevent a white girl from taking on a nigger, it's lowerin' the flag – what?"
"A woman like that deserves to be horsewhipped," cried Mrs. Jakes, with sudden vigor. "To go and marry a
Kafir
– the vile creature."
"This is very interesting," said Margaret. "Do you mean the Kafir is vile, Mrs. Jakes, or the woman?"
"I mean both," retorted Mrs. Jakes. "In this country we know what such creatures are. A respectable woman does n't let a Kafir come near her if she can help it. She never speaks to them except to give them their orders. And as to – to marrying them, or being friendly with them – why, she 'd sooner die."
Margaret had started a subject which no South African can exhaust. They discuss it with heat, with philosophic impartiality, with ethnological and eugenic inexactitudes, and sometimes with bloodshed; but they never wear it out.
"You see, Miss Harding, there are other reasons against it," Mr. Samson struck in again. "There 's the general feelin' on the subject and you can't ignore that. One woman mustn't do what a million other women feel to be vile. It 's makin' an attack on decency – that 's what it comes to. A woman might feel a call in the spirit to marry a monkey. It might suit her all right – might be the best thing she could do, so far as a woman of that sort was concerned; but it would n't be playin' the game. It wouldn't be cricket."
He shook his spirited white head with a frown.
"I see," said Margaret. "But there 's one other point. I only want to know, you know."
"Naturally," agreed Mr. Samson. "What's the point?"
"Well, there are about ten times as many black people as white in this country. What about their sense of decency? Doesn't that suffer a little by this – this trades-union of the whites? That woman in Capetown has all the whites against her and all the blacks for her – I suppose. There 's a majority in her favor, at any rate."
"Hold on," cried Mr. Samson. "You can't count the Kafirs like that, you know. They 're not in it. We 're talking about white people. The whole point is that Kafirs
are n't
whites. A white woman belongs to her own people and must stand by their way of lookin' at things. If we take Kafir opinion, we 'll be chuckin' clothes next and goin' in for polygamy."
"Would we?" said Margaret. "I wonder. D'you think it will come to that when the Kafirs are all as civilized as we are and the color line is gone?"
"The color line will never go," replied Mr. Samson, solemnly. "You might as well talk of breakin' down the line between men and beasts."
"Well, evolution did break it down," said Margaret. "Think, Mr. Samson. There will come a day when we shall travel on flying machines, and all have lungs like drums. We shall live in cities of glazed brick beside running streams of disinfectant. There will be no poverty and no crime and no dirt, and only one language. Where will the Kafirs be then? Still in huts on the Karoo being kept in their place?"
"I 'm not a prophet," said Mr. Samson. "I don't know where they 'll be. It won't bother me when that time comes. I 'll be learning the harp."
"There 'll be a statue in one of those glazed-brick cities to the woman in Capetown," Margaret went on.
"It 'll be inscribed in letters of gold – 'To – (whatever her name was): She felt the future in her bones.'"
Mr. Samson blew noisily. "Evolution 's not in my line," he said. "It 's all very well to drag in Darwin and all that but black and white don't mix and you can't get away from that."
"I should think not, indeed." Mrs. Jakes corroborated him with a shrug. She had found herself intrigued by the glazed-brick cities, and shook them from her as she remembered that she was not "friends" with their inventor.
But Margaret was keen on her theory and would not abandon it for a fly-blown aphorism.
"You 'd never have been satisfied with that woman," she said. "Supposing she had n't married the Kafir? Supposing that being fond of him and believing in him, she had bowed down to your terrible decency and not married? You 'd still have been down on her for liking him, and she 'd have been persecuted if she spoke to him or let him be friendly with her. Is n't that so?"
Mr. Samson pursed his lips and bristled his white mustache up under his nose.
"Yes," he said. "That is so. I won't pretend I 've got any use for women who go in for Kafirs."
"Nobody has." Mrs. Jakes came in again at the tail of his reply with all the confidence of a faithful interpreter.
Margaret, marking her righteous severity, had an impulse to stun them both with a full confession. She found in herself an increasing capacity for being irritated by Mrs. Jakes, and had a vision of her, flattened beyond recovery, by the revelation. She repressed the impulse because the vision went on to give her a glimpse of the tragedy that would close the matter.
Ford had not yet spoken. He sat beside her, listening. Across the room, Dr. Jakes was listening also. She put the question to him.
"What do you think, Dr. Jakes?" she asked.
"Eh?" He started at the sound of his name and put up an uncertain hand to straighten his spectacles.
"About all this – about the general principle of it?" she particularized.
"Oh, well." He hesitated and cleared his throat. There was a fine clear-cut idea floating somewhere in his mind, but he could not bring it into focus with his thoughts.
"It's simply that – Kafirs are Kafirs," he said dully. Mrs. Jakes interposed a warm, "Certainly," and further disordered him. He gave her a long and gloomy look and tried to go on. "When they are – further advanced, that will be the time to – to think about inter-marriage, and all that. Now – well, you can see what they are."
He wiped his forehead nervously with his handkerchief, and Ford entered the conversation.
"Jakes has got it," he said. "Intermarriage may come – perhaps; but at present every marriage of a white person with a Kafir means a loss. It's a sacrifice of a civilized unit. D' you see, Miss Harding? You 've got to reckon not only what that woman in Capetown does but what she doesn't do as well. She might have been the mother of men and women. Well, now she 'll bear children to be outcasts. She ought to have waited a couple of hundred years."
"Perhaps she was in a hurry," answered Margaret. "But there 's the other question – what if she hadn't married?"
"Oh," said Ford. "In point of reason and all that, she 'd have been right enough. But people are n't reasonable. Look at Samson – and look at me."
"You mean – you 've 'no use' for her?"
"It's prejudice," he answered. "It's anything you like. But the plain fact is, I 'd probably admire such a woman if I met her in a book; but as flesh and blood, I decline the introduction. Does that shock you?"
Margaret smiled rather wryly. "Yes," she said. "It does, rather."
He turned towards her, humorous and whimsical, but at that moment Dr. Jakes made a movement doorward and Mrs. Jakes began her usual brisk fire of small-talk to cover his retreat.
"I only wish there was some way we could get the papers regularly – such a lot of things seem to be happening just now," she prattled. "Some of the papers have cables from England and they are most interesting. That
Cape Times
you lent me, Mr. Samson – it had the names of the people at the Drawing-Room. Do you know, I 've often been to see the carriages drive up, and it 's just like reading about old friends. There was one old lady, rather fat, with a mole on her chin, who always went, and once we saw her drinking out of a flask in the carriage. My cousin William – William Penfold – nicknamed her the Duchess de Grundy, and when we asked a policeman about her, it turned out she really was a Duchess. Was n't that strange?"
Mr. Samson heard this recital with unusual attention.
"A flask?" he asked. "Leather-covered thing, big as a quart bottle? Fat old girl with an iron-gray mustache?"
"Why," cried Mrs. Jakes. "You 've seen her too."
Mr. Samson glared around him. "Seen her," he exclaimed. "Why, ma 'am, once – she would walk with the guns, confound her – once I put a charge of shot into her. And why I didn't give her the other barrel while I was about it, I 've never been able to imagine. Seen her, indeed. I 've seen her bounce like a bally india-rubber ball with a gunful of lead to help her along. Used to write to me, she did, whenever a pellet came to the surface and dropped out. I should just think I had seen her."
"Fancy," said Mrs. Jakes.
Mr. Samson did not go off forthwith, as his wont was. He showed a certain dexterity in contriving to keep Margaret in the room with himself till the others had gone. Then he closed the door and stood against it, smiling paternally but still with gallantry.
"I wanted just a word with you, if you 'll allow me," he said, with a hand to the point of his trim mustache. He was a beautifully complete thing as he stood with his back to the door, groomed to a hair, civilized to the eyebrows. He presented a perfected type of the utterly conventionalized, kindly and uncharitable gentleman of England.
"Oh, Mr. Samson, this is so sudden," said Margaret.
"What's that? Oh, you be – ashamed of yourself," he answered. "Tryin' to fascinate an old buffer like me. But, I say, Miss Harding, I wish you 'd just let me say something I 've got on my mind – and forgive beforehand anything that sounds like preaching. We old crocks – we 've got nothing to do but worry the youngsters, and we have to be indulged – what?"
"Go ahead," agreed Margaret. "But if you preach at me, after shooting a duchess, – I'll scream for help. What is it?"
"It's a small matter," said Mr. Samson. "I want you just to let us go on likin' and admirin' you, without afterthought or anything to spoil the effect. You're new out here, and of course you don't know and could n't know; you 're too fresh and too full of sweetness and innocence; but – well, it kind of jars to hear you standin' up for a woman like that woman in Capetown. You mean a lot to us, Miss Harding. We have n't got much here, you know; we had to leave what we had and run out here for our lives – run like bally rabbits when a terrier comes along. It 'ud be a kindness if you wouldn't – you know."
There was no mistaking the kindliness with which he smiled at her as he spoke. It was another warning, but conveyed differently from the others she had received. Mr. Samson managed to make his air of pleading for a matter of sentiment convincing.
"You – you 're awfully kind," she said.
"Not kind," he replied. "Oh no; it is n't that. It 's what I said. It 's us I 'm thinking of. You 've no idea of what you stand for. You 're home, and afternoons when one meets pretty girls who are all goin' to marry some bally cub, and restaurants full of nice women with jolly shoulders, and fields with tailor-made girls runnin' away from cows. You 're the whole show. But if you start educatin' us, though we 're an ignorant lot, we lose all that."
He looked at her with a trace of anxiety.
"It 's cheek, I know, puttin' it to you like this," he added. "But I 'm relyin' on your being a sportsman, Miss Harding."
"It is n't cheek," Margaret answered. "It's awfully good of you. I – I see what you mean, and I should be sorry if I – well, failed you."
He stood aside from the door at once, throwing it open as he did so.
"Sportsman to the bone," he said. "Bless your heart, did n't I know it. Though I could n't have blamed you if you 'd kicked at all this pow-wow from a venerable ruin old enough to be your grandfather."
Hand to mustac