Chapter XI: Part 11

"It's true," said Margaret. "So I 've got to go away from here. They won't have me at the Sanatorium any longer and the police are watching to see if Kamis comes anywhere near me and to catch him if he does. You must warn him to keep right away, Paul. He mustn't send any messages, even."

"I will tell him," said Paul. "But--you are going away? To England?"

"Perhaps," replied Margaret. "I expect I shall have to now. They tell me that people won't let me live in South Africa any more. I 'm a sort of leper, and I must keep my distance from healthy people. So we shan't see each other again after a few more days. Are you sorry, Paul?"

He reddened boyishly and fidgeted.

"Oh, it is best for you to go," he answered, uncomfortably.

"Paul! But why?"

"It 's--it 's not your place," he said, facing the difficulty of putting an elusive thought into words. "This country--people don't know what 's good and what 's bad--and there isn't enough people. Not like London. You should go to London again. Kamis was telling me--theaters and streets and pictures to see, and people everywhere. He says one end of London is just like you and the other end is like that Bailey. That is where you should go--London, not here. I will go to London soon, too."

"I see," said Margaret. "I was afraid at first that you were sick of me too, Paul. I needn't have been afraid of that, need I? Wouldn't it be fine if we could meet in London?"

"We can," said Paul seriously. "I have got a hundred and three pounds, and I will go."

"That's a good deal," said Margaret.

"It's a lot," he agreed. "My father gave it to me the other day, all tied up tight in a little dirty bundle, and there was my mother's marriage lines in it too. He said he didn't mean me to have those but the money was for me. It was on the table in the morning and he rolled it over to me and said: 'Here, Paul. Take this and don't bring any more of your tramps in the house.' That was because I brought that Bailey here, you know. So now--soon--I will go to London and Paris and make models there. Kamis says--"

"What?" asked Margaret.

"He says I will think my eyes have gone mad at first when I see London. He says that coming to Waterloo Station will be like dying and waking in another world. But he says too--blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God even in Waterloo Station."

"He ought to go back himself," said Margaret, with conviction. "He 's wasted here."

"Will you see him before you go?" asked Paul.

"No," said Margaret. "No; I daren't. Tell him, Paul, please, that I 'd like to see him ever so much, but that it 's too dangerous. Say I wish him well with all my heart, and that I hope most earnestly that he won't let himself be caught."

"He won't," said Paul, with confidence. "But I 'll tell him."

"And say," continued Margaret--"say he 's not to feel sorry about what has happened to me. Tell him I 'm still proud that I was his friend, and that all this row is worth it. Can you remember all that?"

Paul nodded. "I can remember," he assured her. "It is--it is so fine to hear, for me, too. I won't forget anything."

"Please don't, if you can help it. I want him to have that message," said Margaret. "And now, Paul, I 'll have to say good-by to you, because I shan't come here again."

Paul stood upright as she rose. His slow smile was very friendly.

"It doesn't matter," he said. "You are going to London, and soon I shall see you there."

"I wonder," she said, giving him her hand. "I 'll write you my address and send it you before I leave, Paul."

"I should find you anyhow," he assured her confidently.

Mrs. du Preez, also, had to be taken leave of, and shed a tear or so at the last. In her, a strong emotion found a safety valve in ferocity.

"As for that Jakes woman," she said, in conclusion, "you tell her from me, Miss Harding--from _me_, mind,--that it wouldn't cost me any pain to hand her a slap acrost the mug."

Margaret went homeward through the late light dreamily. Far away, blurred by the sun's horizontal rays, the figure of the trooper occupied the empty distance, no larger than an ant against the flushed sky. Peace and melancholy were in the mood of the hour, a cue to lead her thoughts towards sadness. It caused her to realize that she would not leave it all without a sense of loss. She would miss its immensity, its effect of setting one at large on an earth without trimmings under a heaven without clouds, to make the most of one's own humanity. It would be a thing she had known in part, but which henceforth she would never know even as she herself was known. She could never now find the word that expressed its wonder and its appeal.

Mr. Samson was on the stoep as she went up the steps to enter the Sanatorium. He put down his paper and toddled forward to open the door for her, anxiously punctilious.

"Ford was down for tea," he said. "Askin' for you, he was."

"Oh, was he?" replied Margaret inanely, and went in.

At supper that evening in the farmhouse kitchen, Christian du Preez, glancing up from the food which occupied him, observed by a certain frowning deliberation on Paul's face, that his son was about to deliver himself in speech.

"Well, what is it, Paul?" he inquired encouragingly.

Paul looked up with a faint surprise at having his purpose thus forecasted.

"That money," he said doubtfully.

"Oh." The Boer glanced uneasily at his wife, who laid down her knife and fork and began to listen with startled interest.

"That 's all right," said Christian. "Do what you like with it. Go to the dorp and spend it; it 's yours. Now eat your supper."

"I am going to London," said Paul then, seriously, and having got it off his mind, said, heard and done with, he resumed his meal with an appetite.

"London," echoed the Boer. "London?" exclaimed Mrs. du Preez.

"Yes," said Paul. "To make models. Here there is nobody to see them."

"He is gone mad," said the Boer with conviction. "He has been queer for a long time and now he is mad. Paul, you are mad."

"Am I?" asked Paul respectfully, and continued to eat.

His father and mother had much to say, agitatedly, angrily, persuasively, but people were always saying things to him that had no real meaning. It was ridiculous, for instance, that the Boer should call him a dumb fool because at the close of a lecture he should ask for more coffee. He wasn't dumb and didn't believe he was a fool. People were n't fools because they went to London; on the contrary, they had to be rather clever and enterprising to get there at all. And at the back of his mind dwelt the thing he could not hope to convey and did not attempt to--a sense he had, which warmed and uplifted him, of nearing a goal after doubt and difficulty, the Pisgah exaltation and tenderness, the confidence that to him and to the work which his hands should perform, Canaan was reserved, virgin and welcoming. It was a strength he had in secret, and the Boer knew himself baffled when after an hour of exhortation to be sane and explanatory and obedient and comprehensible, he looked up and said, very thoughtfully:

"In London, people pay a shilling to look at clays, father."

*CHAPTER XVII*

Ford's return to normal existence coincided with the arrival of mail-morning, when the breakfast menu was varied by home letters heaped upon the plates. Mrs. Jakes had one of her own this morning and was very conscious of it, affecting to find her correspondent's caligraphy hard to read. Old Mr. Samson had his usual pile and greeted him from behind a litter of torn wrappers and envelopes.

"Hullo, Ford," he cried, "up on your pins, again? Feelin' pretty bobbish--what?"

"Nice way you 've got of putting it," replied Ford, taking his seat before the three letters on his plate. "I 'm all right, though. You seem fairly well supplied with reading-matter this morning."

"The usual, the usual," said Mr. Samson airily. "People gone to the country; got time to write, don't you know. Here 's a feller tells me that the foxes down his way are simply rotten with mange."

"Awful," said Ford, glancing at the first of his own letters. "And here 's a feller tells _me_ that he 's sent in the enclosed account nine times and must press for a cheque without delay. What 's the country coming to? Eh?"

"You be blowed," retorted Mr. Samson, and fell again to his reading.

From behind the urn Mrs. Jakes made noises indicative of lady-like exasperation.

"The way some people write, you 'd never believe they 'd been educated and finished regardless of expense," she declared. "There 's a word here--she 's telling me about a lady I used to know in Town--and whether she suffers from her children (though I never knew she was married) or from a chaplain, I can't make out. Can you see what it is, Mr. Ford? There, where I 'm pointing?"

"Oh, yes," said Ford. "It 's worse than you think, Mrs. Jakes. It 's chilblains."

"O-oh." Mrs. Jakes was enlightened. "Why, of course. I remember now. Even when she was a girl at school, she used to suffer dreadfully from them. I thought she couldn't have been married, with such feet. But is n't it a dreadful way to write?"

She would have indulged them with further information regarding the lady who suffered, but Margaret's entrance drove her back behind the breastwork of the urn. She distrusted her own correctness when the girl's eyes were on her, and her sure belief that Margaret had revealed herself as anything but correct by every standard which Mrs. Jakes could apply, failed to reassure her.

"Good morning, Miss Harding," she said frostily. "You will take coffee?"

"Good morning," replied Margaret, passing to her place at the table. "Yes, it is lovely."

"Er--the coffee?" asked Mrs. Jakes, suspicious and uncomprehending.

"Oh, coffee. Yes, please," said Margaret. "I thought you said something about the weather."

Ford grinned at the letter he was reading and greeted her quietly.

"Glad you 're better," she replied, not returning his smile, and turned at once to the letters which awaited her.

He was watching her while she sorted them, examining first the envelopes for indications of what they held. One seemed to puzzle her, and she took it up to decipher the postmark. Then she set it down and opened the fattest of all, a worthy, linen-enveloped affair, containing a couple of typewritten sheets as well as a short letter. She read it perfunctorily and looked through the business-like typescripts impatiently, folded them all up again and tucked them back into the linen envelope. Then followed the others, and the one with the smudged postmark last of all. She scrutinized the outside of this again before she opened it; it was not an English letter, but one from some unidentifiable postal district in South Africa. At last she opened it, and drew out the dashing black scrawl which it harbored. A glance at the end of the letter seemed to leave her in the dark, and Ford saw her delicate brows knit as she began to read.

He found himself becoming absorbed in the mere contemplation of her. He was aware of a character in her presence at once familiar to him by long study and intangible; it had the quality of bloom, that a touch destroys. She had hair that coiled upon her head and left its shape discernible, and beneath it a certain breadth and frankness of brow upon which the eyebrows were etched marvelously. She was like a lantern which softens and tempers the impetuous flame within it, and turns its ardor into radiance. The Kafir and the shame and the imprudence of that affair did not suffice to darken that light; at the most, they could but cause it to waver and make strange shadows for a moment, like the candle one carries, behind a guarding hand, through a windy corridor. It did not cool the strong flame that was the heart of the combination.

Suddenly Margaret laid the letter down. She put it back on her plate with an abrupt gesture and he noted that she had gone pale, and that her mouth was wry as though with a bitter taste. She even withdrew her fingers from the sheet with exactly the movement of one who has by accident set his hand on some unexpected piece of foulness.

She went on with her breakfast quietly enough, but she did not look at her letters again. They were perhaps the first letters in years to come to the Sanatorium and be dismissed with a single perusal.

"Fog in London," said Mr. Samson, suddenly. "Feller writes as though it was the plague. _He_ does n't know what it is to have too much bally sun."

The glare that shone through the window returned his glance unwinking.

"Fog?" responded Mrs. Jakes, alertly. "That is bad. Such dreadful things happen in fogs. I remember a lady at Home, who was divorced afterwards, who lost her way in a fog and didn't get home for two days, and even then she had somebody else's umbrella and could no more remember where she 'd got it than fly. And she was so confused and upset that all she could say to her husband was: 'Ed,'--his name was Edwin--'Ed, did you remember to have your hair cut?'"

"Had he remembered?" demanded Mr. Samson.

"I think not," replied Mrs. Jakes. "What with the worry, and the things the servant said, I don't believe he 'd thought of it. He always did wear it rather long."

"Think of that," said Mr. Samson, with solemn surprise.

Margaret finished her breakfast in silence and then gathered up her letters. Ford thought that as she picked up the sheet which had distressed her, she glanced involuntarily at him. But the look conveyed nothing and she departed in silence. He was careful not to follow her too soon.

It was not difficult to find her. For some two hours after breakfast was over, the only part of the Sanatorium which it was possible to inhabit with comfort was the stoep. The other rooms were given over to Fat Mary and her colleagues for the daily ceremony known as "doing the rooms," a festival involving excursions and alarms, skylarking, breakages and fights. To seek seclusion in the drawing-room, for example, was to be subjected to a cinematograph impression of surprised and shocked black faces peering round the door and vanishing, to scuffling noises on the mat and finally to hints from Mrs. Jakes herself: "_Would_ you mind the girls just sweeping round your feet? They 're rather behindhand this morning."

Margaret had betaken herself and her chair to the extreme end of the stoep, beyond the radius of Ford's art and Mr. Samson's meditations. Her letters were in her lap, but she was not looking at them. She was gazing straight before her at the emptiness which stretched out endlessly, affording no perch for the eye to rest on, an everlasting enigma to baffle sore minds.

Ford was innocent of stratagem in his manner of approach.

"I say," he said, and she looked up listlessly. "I say--I 'm sorry. Can't we make it up?"

"All right," she answered.

He looked at her closely.

"But is it all right?" he persisted. "You 're hurt about something; I can see you are; so it 's not all right yet. Look here, Miss Harding: you were wrong about what I was thinking."

"Oh no." Margaret shifted in her chair with a tired impatience. "I wasn't wrong," she answered. "I could see; and I think you should n't go back on it now. The least you can do is stand by your beliefs. You won't find yourself alone. I had a letter from some one this morning who would back you up to the last drop of his blood, I 'm sure."

"Who 's that?"

"I don't know," she answered. "It 's my first anonymous letter. Somebody has heard about me and therefore writes. He thinks just as you do. Would you like to see it?"

She handed him the bold, crowded scrawl and sat back while he leaned on the rail to read it.

At the second sentence in the letter he looked up sharply and restrained an ejaculation. She was not looking at him, but a tinge of pink had risen in her quiet face.

It was an anonymous letter of the most villainous kind. Something like horror possessed him as he realized that her grave eyes had perused its gleeful and elaborate offense. The abominable thing was a vileness fished from the pit of a serious and blackguard mind. It had the baseness of ordure, and a sort of frivolity that transcended commonplace evil.

"I say," he cried, before the end of the ingenious thing was reached. "You have n't read this through?"

"Not quite," she answered.

"I--I should think not."

With quick nervous jerks of his fingers which betrayed the hot anger he felt, he tore the letter into strips and the strips again into smaller fragments, and strewed them forth upon the stiff dead shrubs below.

"It's getting about, you see," said Margaret, with a sigh. "I suppose, before I manage to get away, I shall be accustomed to things of that kind."

"But this is awful," cried Ford. "I can't bear this. You, of all people, to have to go through all that this means and threatens--it 's awful. Miss Harding, let me apologize, let me grovel, let me do anything that 'll give you the feeling that I 'm with you in this. You can't face it alone--you simply can't. I'm sorry enough to--to kick myself. Can't you let me stand in with you?"

He stopped helplessly before Margaret's languid calm. She was not in the least stirred by his appeal. She lay back in her chair listlessly, and only withdrew her eyes from the veld to look at him as he ceased to speak.

"Oh, it doesn't matter," she said indifferently. "It's a silly business. Don't worry about it, please."

"But--" began Ford, and stopped. "You mean--you won't have me with you, anyhow?" he asked. "What you thought I thought, upstairs--you can't forget that? Is that it?"

She smiled slowly, and he stared at her in dismay. Nothing could have expressed so clearly as that faint smile her immunity from the passion that stirred in him.

"Perhaps it 's that," she answered, always in the same indifferent, low voice. "I 'm not thinking more about it than I can help."

"I didn't think any harm of you," Ford protested earnestly, leaning forward from his perch on the rail and striving to compel her to look at him. "We 've been good friends, and you might have trusted me not to think evil of you. I simply didn't understand--nothing else. You can't seriously be offended because you imagined that I was thinking certain thoughts. It isn't fair."

"I 'm not offended," she answered.

"Hurt, then," he substituted. "Anything you please."

He stepped down from his seat and walked a few paces away, with his hands deeply sunk in his pockets, and then walked back again.

"I say," he said abruptly; "it 's a question of what I think of you, it seems. Let me tell you what I do think."

Margaret turned her face towards him. He was frowning heavily, with an appearance of injury and annoyance. He spoke in curt jets.

"It 's only since I 've known you that I 've really worried over being a lunger," he said. "The Army--I could stand that. But seeing you and talking to you, and knowing I 'd no right to say a word--no right to try and lead things that way, even, for your sake as much as mine--it 's been hard. Because--this is what I do think--it 's seemed to me that you were worth more than everything else. I 'd have given the world to tell you so, and ask you--well, you know what I mean."

Margaret was not so steeped in sorrows but she could mark this evasion of a plain statement with amusement.

Ford, staring at her intently, clicked with impatience.

"Well, then," he said in the tone of one who is goaded to extreme lengths; "well then, Miss--er--Margaret--" he paused, seemingly struck by a pleasant flavor in the name as he spoke it--"Margaret," he repeated, less urgently; "I 'm hanged if I know how to say it, but--I love you."

There was an appreciable interval while they remained gazing at each other, he breathless and discomposed, she grave and unresponding.

"Do you?" she said at last. "But--"

"I do," he urged. "On my soul, I do. Margaret, it 's true. I 've been--loving--you for a long time. I thought perhaps you might care a little, too, sometimes, and I 'd have told you if it was n't for this chest of mine. That 's what I meant when you said you were going away and I asked you to stay. I thought you understood then."

"I did understand," she replied, and sat thoughtful.

She wondered vaguely at the apathy that mastered her and would not suffer her to feel even a thrill. Some virtue had departed out of her and drawn with it the whole liveliness of her mind and spirit, so that what remained was mere deadness. She knew, in some subconscious and uninspiring manner, that Ford was what he had always been, with passion added to him; he was waiting in a tension of suspense for her to answer, with his thin face eager and glowing. It should have moved her with compassion and liking for the stubborn, faithful, upright soul she knew him to be. But the letter, the confident approaches of the Punchinello policeman, and even Mrs. Jakes' ill-restrained joy in bidding her leave the place, had been so many blows upon her function of susceptibility. The accumulation of them had a little stunned her, and she was not yet restored.

Ford saw her lips hesitate before she spoke, and his heart beat more quickly.

She looked up at him uncertainly and made a movement with her shoulders like a shrug.

"Oh, I can't," she said suddenly. "No, I can't. It 's no use; you must leave me alone, please."

His look of sheer amazement, of pain and bewilderment, returned to her later. It was as though he had been struck in the face by some one he counted on as a friend. He stood for an instant rooted.

"Sorry," he said, then. "I might have seen I was worrying you. Sorry."

His retreating feet sounded softly on the flags of the stoep, and she sank back in her chair, wondering wearily at the event and its inconsequent conclusion, with her eyes resting on the wide invitation of the veld.

"Am I going to be ill?" was the thought that came to her relief. "Am I going to be ill? I 'm not really like this."

The ordeal of lunch had to be faced; she could not eat, but still less could she face the prospect of Mrs. Jakes with a tray. Afterwards, there was the dreary labor of writing letters to go before her to England and make ready the way for her return. There would have to be explanations of some kind, and it was a sure thing that her explanations would fail to satisfy a number of people who would consider themselves entitled to comment on her movements. There would have to be some mystery about it, at the best. For the present, she could not screw herself up to the task of composing euphemisms. "Expect me home by the boat after next. I will tell you why when I see you"; that had to suffice for the legal uncle, his lawful wife, the philosophic aunt and all the rest.

Then came tea and afterwards dinner; the day dragged like a sick snake. Dr. Jakes made mournful eyes at her and talked feverishly to cover his nervousness and compunction, and now and again he looked down the table at his wife and Mr. Samson with furtive malevolence. Afterwards, in the drawing-room, Mrs. Jakes, having made an inspection of the doctor, played the intermezzo from "Cavalleria Rusticana" five times, and Ford and Samson spent the evening over a chessboard. Margaret, on the couch, found herself coming to the surface of the present again and again from depths of heavy and turgid thought, to find the intermezzo still limping along and Mr. Samson still apostrophizing his men in an undertone ("Take his bally bishop, old girl; help yourself. No, come back--he 'll have you with that knight"). It was interminable, a pocket eternity.

Then the view of the stairs sloping up to the dimness above and the cool air of the hall upon her neck and face, and the sourness of Mrs. Jakes trying to give her "good night" the intonation of an insult--these intruded abruptly upon her straying faculties, and she came a little dazed into the light of the candles in her own room, where her eyes fell first on the breadth of Fat Mary's back, as that handmaid stood at the window with the blind in her hand and peered forth into the dark. As she turned, Margaret gained an impression that the stout woman's interest in something below was interrupted by her entrance.

Fat Mary had been another of Margaret's disappointments since the exposure. The Kafir woman's manner to her had undergone a notable change. There was no longer the touch of reverence and gentleness with which she had tended Margaret at first, which had made endearing all her huge incompetence and playfulness. There had succeeded to it a manner of familiarity which manifested itself chiefly in the roughness of her handling. Margaret was being called upon to pay the penalty which the African native exacts from the European who encroaches upon the aloofness of the colored peoples.

Fat Mary grinned as Margaret came through the door.

"Mo' stink," she observed, cheerfully, and pointed to the dressing-table.

Margaret's eyes followed the big black finger to where a bunch of aloe plumes lay between the candles on the white cloth, brilliantly red. The sight of them startled the girl sharply. She went across and raised them.

"Where did they come from?" she asked quickly.

"That Kafir," grinned Fat Mary. "Missis's Kafir, he bring 'im."

"What did he say? Did he give any message?"

"No," replied Fat Mary. "Jus' stink-flowers, an' give me Scotchman."

"Scotchman" is Kafir slang for a florin; it has for an origin a myth reflecting on the probity of a great race. But Margaret did not inquire; she was pondering a possible significance in this gift of bitter blooms.

Fat Mary eyed her acutely while she stood in thought.

"He say don't tell nobody," she remarked casually. "I say no fear--me! I don't tell. Missis like that Kafir plenty?"

"Mary," said Margaret. "You can go now. I shan't want you."

"All a-right," replied Fat Mary willingly, and took herself off forthwith. She had her own uses for a present of spare time at this season.

Margaret put the red flowers down as the door closed behind Fat Mary, and set herself before the mirror. There was still that haze between her thoughts and the realities about her, a drifting cloudiness that sometimes obscured them all together, and sometimes broke and let matters appear.

She noted in the mirror the strange, familiar specter of her own face, and saw that the hectic was strong and high on either cheek. Then the aloe plumes plucked at her thoughts, and the haze closed about her again, leaving her blind in a deep and aimless preoccupation in which her thoughts were no more than a pulse, repeating itself to no end. Ford's declaration and his manner of making it; the Punchinello countenance of the trooper, bestially insinuating; Mrs. Jakes eating soup at Mr. Samson;--these came and went in the dreadful arena of her mind and made a changing spectacle that baffled the march of the clock-hands.

She did not know how long she had been sitting when a rattle at the window surprised her into looking up. She stared absently at the blind till it came again. It had the sound of some one throwing earth from below. She rose and went across and looked out.

It had not touched her nerves at all; it was not the kind of thing which could frighten her. The window was raised at the bottom and she kneeled on the floor and put her head, cloudily haloed with her loose hair, out to the star-tempered dark.

A whisper from below, where the whisperer stood invisible in the shadow at the foot of the wall, hailed her at once.

"Miss Harding," it said. "Miss Harding. I 'm here, directly below you."

She could see nothing.

"Who is it?" she asked.

"Hush." She had spoken in her ordinary tones. "Not so loud. It 's dangerous."

"Who is it?" she asked again, subduing her voice.

"Why--Kamis, of course." The answer came in a tone of surprise. "You expected me, did n't you? Your light was burning."

"Expected you? No," said Margaret "I didn't expect you; you ought n't to have come."

"But--" the voice was protesting; "my message. It was on the paper around the aloe plumes. I particularly told the fat Kafir woman to give you that, and she promised. If your light was burning, I 'd throw something up at your window, and if not, I 'd go away. That was it."

The night breeze came in at the tail of his words with a dry rustling of the dead vines.

"There was no paper," said Margaret.

The Kafir below uttered an angry exclamation which she did not catch.

"If only you don't mind," he said, then. "I got Paul's message from you and I had to try and see you."

"Yes," said Margaret. She could not see him at all; under the lee of the house the night was black, though at a hundred paces off she could make out the lie of the ground in the starlight. His whispering voice was akin to the night.

"Then you don't mind?" he urged.

"I don't mind, of course," said Margaret. "But it 's too risky."

Further along the stoep there was a dim warmish glow through the red curtains of the study and a leak of faint light under the closed front door. The house was loopholed for unfriendly eyes and ears. There was no security under that masked battery for their privacy. At any moment Mrs. Jakes might prick up her ears and stand intent and triumphant to hear their strained whispers in cautious interchange. Margaret shrank from the thought of it.

"I only want a word," answered Kamis from the darkness. "I may not see you again. You won't let me drop without a word--after everything?"

Margaret hesitated. "Some one may pick up that paper and read your message and watch to see what happens. I couldn't bear any more trouble about it."

There was a pause.

"No," agreed Kamis, then. "No--of course. I didn't think of that. I 'll say good-by now, then."

Margaret strained to see him, but the night hid him securely.

"Wait!" she called carefully. "I don't want you to go away like that; it 's simply that this is too risky." She paused. "I 'd better come down to you," she said.

She could not tell what he answered, whether joy or demurral, for she drew her head in at once, and then opened the door and went out to the corridor.

It was good to be doing something, and to have to do with one whose sympathies were not strained. She went lightly and noiselessly down the wide stairs, and recognized again, with a smile, the secret aspect of the hall in the dark hours. There was a thread of light under the door of Dr. Jakes' study, and within that locked room the dutiful small clock was still ticking off the moments as stolidly as though all moments were of the same value. The outer door was closed with a mighty lock and a great iron key, and opened with a clang that should have brought Dr. Jakes forth to inquire. But he did not come, and she went unopposed out to the stoep under the metallic rustle of its dead vines.

She was going swiftly, with her velvet-shod feet, to that distant part of it which was under the broad light of her window, when the Kafir appeared before her so suddenly that she almost ran into him.

"Oh." She uttered a little cry. "You startled me."

"I 'm sorry," he answered.

"You ought n't to be here," Margaret said, "because it 's dangerous. But I am glad to see you."

"That 's good of you," he said. "I got Paul's message. I had to come. I had to see you once more, and besides, he said you were--in trouble. About me?"

"Oh, yes," said Margaret. "No end of trouble, all about you. An anonymous letter, notice to quit, pity and smiles, two suitors, one with intentions which were strictly dishonorable, and so on. And the simple truth is, I don't care a bit."

"Oh, Lord!" said the Kafir.

They were standing close to the wall, immersed in its shadow and sheltered from the wind that sighed above them and beside them and made the vines vocal. Neither could see the other save as a shadowy presence.

"I don't care," said Margaret, "and I refuse to bother about it. I 've got to go, of course, and I don't like the feeling of being kicked out. That rankles a little bit, when I relax the strain of being superior and amused at their littleness. But as for the rest, I don't care."

"It's my fault," said the Kafir quietly. "It's all my fault. I knew all the time what the end of it would be; and I let it come. There 's something mean in a nigger, Miss Harding. I knew it was there well enough, and now it shows."

"Don't," said Margaret.

There fell a pause between them, and she could hear his breathing. She remembered the expression on Ford's face when he had questioned her as to whether she did not experience a repulsion at a Kafir's proximity to her, and tried now to find any such aversion in herself. They stood in an intimate nearness, so that she could not have moved from her place without touching him; but there was none. Whoever had it for a pedestal of well and truly laid local virtues, she had it not.

"This is good-by, of course," said the Kafir, in his pleasant low tones. "I 'll never see you again, but I 'll never forget how good and beautiful you were to me. I must n't keep you out here, or there are a hundred things I want to say to you; but that 's the chief thing. I 'll never forgive myself for what has happened, but I 'll never forget."

"There 's nothing you need blame yourself for," said Margaret eagerly. "It 's been worth while. It has, really. You 're somebody and you 're doing something great and real, while the people in here are just shams, like me. Oh," she cried softly; "if only there was something for me to _do_."

"For you," repeated the Kafir. "You must be--what you are; not spoil it by doing things."

"No," said Margaret. "No. That 's just chivalry and nonsense. I want something to do, something real. I want something that _costs_--I don't care what. Even this silly trouble I 'm in now is better than being a smiling goddess. I want--I want--"

Her mind moved stiffly and she could not seize the word she needed.

"It would be wasting you," Kamis was saying. "It would be throwing you away."

"I want to suffer," she said suddenly. "Yes--that 's what I want. You suffer--don't you? That woman in Capetown will have to suffer; everybody who really does things suffers for it; and I want to."

"Do you?" said Kamis, with a touch of awkwardness. "But--what woman in Capetown do you mean?"

"Oh, you must have heard," said Margaret impatiently. "She married a Kafir; it 's been in the papers."

"Yes," he said, "I remember now."

"I told them all, in here, a long time ago, that in some city of the future there would be a monument to her, with the inscription: 'She felt the future in her bones.' But while she lives they 'll make her suffer; they 'll never forgive her. I wish I could have met her before I go."

There was a brief pause. "Why?" asked Kamis then, in a low voice.

"Why? Because she 'd understand, of course. I 'd like to talk to her and tell her about you. Don't you see?" Margaret laughed a little. "I could tell her about it as though it were all quite natural and ordinary, and she 'd understand."

She heard the Kafir move but he did not reply at once.

"Perhaps she would," he said. "However, you 're not going to meet her, so it does n't matter."

"But," said Margaret, puzzled at the lack of responsiveness in his tone and words, "don't you think she was splendid? She must have known the price she would have to pay; but it didn't frighten her. Don't you think it was fine?"

"Well," Kamis answered guardedly; "I suppose she knew what she was about."

"Then," persisted Margaret, "you don't think it was fine?"

She found his manner of speaking of the subject curiously reminiscent of Ford.

Kamis uttered an embarrassed laugh. "Well," he said, "I 'm afraid I 'm not very sympathetic. I suppose I 've lived too long among white people; my proper instincts have been perverted. But the fact is, I think that woman was--wrong."

"Oh," said Margaret. "Why?"

"There isn't any why," he answered. "It 's a matter of feeling, you know; not of reason. Really, it amounts to--it 's absurd, of course, but it 's practically negrophobia. You can't bring a black man up as a white man and then expect him to be entirely free from white prejudices. Can you?"

"But--" Margaret spoke in some bewilderment. "What's the use of being black," she demanded, "if you 've got all the snobbishness of the white? That 's the way Mr. Ford spoke about it. He said he could feel all that was fine in it, but he wouldn't speak to such a woman. I thought that was cruel."

"Oh, I don't know," said Kamis.

"Another time," said Margaret deliberately, "he asked me whether it didn't make my flesh creep to touch your hand."

"He thought it ought to?"

"Yes. But it doesn't," said Margaret. "How does your negrophobia face that fact? Doesn't it condemn me to the same shame as the woman in Capetown? Or does it make exceptions in the case of a particular negro?"

"I said I did n't reason about it," replied Kamis. "I told you what I felt. You asked me and I told you."

"I wish you hadn't," said Margaret. "I thought that you at any rate--"

She broke off at a quick movement he made. A sudden sense came to her that they two were no longer alone, and, with a stiffening of alarm, she turned abruptly to see what had disturbed him. Even as she turned, she lifted her hand to her bosom with a premonition of imminent disaster.

At the head of the steps that led down to the garden, and in the dim light of the half-open front door, a figure had appeared. It came deliberately towards them, with one hand lifted holding something.

"Hands up, you boy!" it said. "Up, now, or I 'll--"

By the door, the face was visible, the unhappy, greedy, Punchinello features that Margaret knew as those of the policeman. Its hard eyes rested on the pair of them over the raised revolver that threatened the Kafir.

The driving mists returned to beat her back from the spectacle; she was helpless and weak. Warmth filled her throat, chokingly; an acrid taste was in her mouth. She took two groping steps forward and fell on the flags at the policeman's feet and lay there.

From a window over their heads, there came the gurgle of Fat Mary's rich mirth.

*CHAPTER XVIII*

It was the scream of Mrs. Jakes that woke Ford, when, hearing unaccountable noises and attributing them to the doctor, she went to the hall and was startled to see in the doorway the figure of the Kafir, with his hands raised strangely over his head, as though he were suspended by the wrists from the arch, and behind him the shadowy policeman, with his revolver protruded forward into the light. She caught at her heart and screamed.

Ford found himself awake, leaning up on one elbow, with the echo of her scream yet in his ears, and listening intently. He could not be certain what he had heard, for now the house was still again; and it might have been some mere incident of Jakes' transit from the study to his bed, into which it was better not to inquire. But some quality in the cry had conveyed to him, in the instant of his waking, an impression of sudden terror which he could not dismiss, and he continued to listen, frowning into the dark.

His room was over the stoep, but at some distance from the front door, and for a while he heard nothing. Then, as his ears became attuned to the night's acoustics, he was aware that somewhere there were voices, the blurred and indistinguishable murmur of people talking. They were hardly audible at all; not a word transpired; he knew scarcely more than that the stillness of the night was infringed. His curiosity quickened, and to feed it there sounded the step of a booted foot that fell with a metallic clink, the unmistakable ring of a spur. Ford sat upright.

A couple of moments later, some one spoke distinctly.

"Keep those hands up," Ford heard, in a quick nasal tone; "or I 'll blow your head off."

Ford thrust the bedclothes from his knees and got out of bed. He lifted the lower edge of the blind and leaned forth from the open window. Below him the stone stoep ran to right and left like a gray path, and a little way along it the light in the hall, issuing from the open door, cut across it and showed the head of the wide steps. Beyond the light, a group of dark figures were engaged with something. As he looked, the group began to move, and he saw that Mrs. Jakes came to the side of the door and stood back to give passage to four shuffling Kafirs bearing the stretcher which was part of the house's equipment. There was somebody on the stretcher, as might have been seen from the laborious gait of the bearers, but the thing had a hood that withheld the face of the occupant as they passed in, with Mrs. Jakes at their heels.

Two other figures brought up the rear and likewise entered at the doorway and passed from sight. The first, as he became visible in the gloom beyond the light, was dimly grotesque; he seemed too tall and not humanly proportioned, a deformed and willowy giant. Once he was opposite the door, his height explained itself; he was walking with both arms extended to their full length above his head and his face bowed between them. Possibly because the attitude strained him, he went with a gait as marked as his posture, a measured and ceremonial step as though he were walking a slow minuet. The light met him as he turned in the doorway and Ford, staring in bewilderment, had a momentary impression that the face between the raised arms was black. He disappeared, with the last of the figures close behind him, and concerning this one there was no doubt whatever. It revealed itself as a trooper of the Mounted Police, belted and spurred, his "smasher" hat tilted forward over his brows, and a revolver held ready in his hand, covering the back of the man who walked before him.

"Here," ejaculated Ford, gazing at the empty stoep where the shadow-show had been, with an accent of dismay in his thoughts. The affair of Margaret and the Kafir leaped to his mind; all that had occurred below might be a new and poignant development in that bitter comedy, and but for a chance he might have missed it all.

He was quick to make a light and find his dressing-gown and a pair of slippers, and he was knotting the cord of the former as he passed out to the long corridor and went swiftly to the head of the stairs, where the lamp that should light Dr. Jakes to his bed was yet burning patiently.

The stretcher was already coming up the staircase and he paused and stood aside to make room for it. The four Kafirs were bringing it up head first, treading carefully and breathing harshly after the manner of the Kafir when he is conscious of eyes upon him. Behind them followed Mrs. Jakes, shepherding them up with hushing noises. A gray blanket covered the form in the stretcher with limp folds.

The Kafirs saw Ford first and acknowledged his presence with simultaneous grins. Then Mrs. Jakes saw him and made a noise like a startled moan, staring up with vexed, round eyes.

"Oh, Mr. Ford," she exclaimed faintly. "Please go back to bed. It 's--it 's three o'clock in the morning."

Beyond and below her was the hall, in which the lamp had now been turned up. Ford looked past her impassively, and took in the two men who waited there, the Kafir, with his raised arms--trembling now with the fatigue of keeping them up--and the saturnine policeman with his revolver. The stretcher had come abreast of him and he bent to look under the hood. The bearers halted complaisantly that he might see, shifting their grips on the poles and smiling uneasily.

Margaret's face had the quietude of heavy lids closed upon the eyes and features composed in unconsciousness. But the mouth was bloody, and there were stains of much blood, bright and dreadful, on the white linen at her throat. For all that Ford knew what it betokened, the sight gave him a shock; it looked like murder. They had broken her hair from its bonds in lifting her and placing her in the stretcher and now her head was pillowed on it and its disorder made her stranger.

Mrs. Jakes was babbling nervously at him.

"Mr. Ford, you really must n't. I wish you 'd go back to bed. I 'll tell you about it in the morning, if you 'll go now."

Ford motioned to the Kafirs to go on.

"Where's the doctor?" he demanded curtly.

"Oh," said Mrs. Jakes, "I 'll see to all that. Mr. Ford, it 's _all right_. You 're keeping me from putting her to bed by standing talking like this. Don't you believe me when I say it 's all right? Why are you looking at me like that?"

"Is he in the study?" asked Ford.

"Yes," replied Mrs. Jakes. "But _I 'll_ tell him, Mr. Ford. I--I--promise I will, if only you 'll go back to bed now. I will really."

Ford glanced along the corridor where the Kafirs had halted again, awaiting instructions from Mrs. Jakes. There was a picture on the wall, entitled "Innocence"--early Victorian infant and kitten--and they were staring at it in reverent interest.

"Better see to Miss Harding," he said, and passed her and went down to the hall. She turned to see what he was going to do, in an agony of alertness to preserve the decency of the locked study door. But he went across to speak to the policeman, and she hurried after the Kafirs, to get the girl in bed and free herself to deal with the demand for the presence of the doctor.

The Kafir stood with his back to the wall, near the big front door, closer to which was the trooper, always with the revolver in his hand and a manner of watching eagerly for an occasion to use it. Ford went to them, knitting his brows at the spectacle. The prisoner saw him as a slim young man of a not unusual type in a dressing-gown, with short tumbled hair; the policeman, with a more specialized experience, took in the quality of his manner with a rapid glance and stiffened to uprightness. He knew the directness and aloofness that go to the making of that ripe fruit of our civilization, an officer of the army.

"Have n't you searched him for weapons?" demanded Ford.

"No," said the policeman, and added "sir," as an afterthought.

Ford stepped over to the Kafir and passed his hands down his sides and across his breast, feeling for any concealed dangers about his person.

"Nothing," he said. "You can handcuff him if you want to, but there 's no need to keep him with his hands up. It's torture--you hear?"

"Yes, sir," responded the policeman again. "Put them down," he bade his prisoner.

Kamis, with a sigh, lowered his hands, wincing at the stiffness of his cramped arms.

"Thank you," he said to Ford, in a low voice. "I 've had them up--it must be half an hour."

"Well, you 're all right now," responded Ford, with a nod.

He tried the study door but it was locked and there was no response to his knocks and his rattling of the handle.

"Jakes," he called, several times. "I say, you 're wanted. Jakes, d'you hear me?"

Kamis and the trooper watched him in silence, the latter with his bold, unhappy features set into something like a sneer. They saw him test the strength of the lock with a knee; it gave no sign of weakness and he stood considering on the mat. An idea came to him and he went briskly, with his long stride, to the front door.

"I say," called the Kafir as he went by.

Ford paused. "Well?"

"In case you can't rouse him," said the Kafir, "you might like to know that I am a doctor--M.B., London."

"Are you?" said Ford thoughtfully. "You're Kamis, are n't you?"

"Yes," answered the Kafir.

"I 'll let you know if there 's anything you can do,", said Ford.

The contrast between the Kafir's pleasant, English voice and his negro face was strange to him also. But stranger yet, he could not in the presence of the contemptuous policeman speak the thing that was in his mind and tell the Kafir that he was to blame for the whole business. The voice, the address, the manner of the man were those of his own class; it would have been like quarreling before servants.

"Thank you," said the Kafir, as Ford went out to the stoep.

The sill of the study window was only three feet above the ground, a square of dull light filtering through curtains that let nothing be seen from without of the interior of the room. Ford wasted no more time in knocking and calling; he drew off a slipper and using it as a hammer, smashed the glass of the window close to the catch. Half the pane went crashing at the first blow, and the window was open. He threw a leg over the sill and was in the room.

A bracket lamp was burning on the wall and shooting up a steady spire of smoke to the ceiling, where a thick black patch had assembled and was shedding flakes of smut on all below it. The slovenliness of the smoking lamp was suddenly an offense to him, and before he even looked round he went across and turned the flame lower. It seemed a thing to do before setting about the saving of Margaret's life.