Chapter XII: Part 12

The room was oppressively hot with a sickening closeness in its atmosphere and a war of smells pervading it. The desk had whisky bottles, several of them, all partly filled, standing about its surface, with a water jug, a syphon and some glasses. Papers and a book or two had their place there also, and liquor had been spilt on them and a tumbler was standing on the yellow cover of a copy of "Mr. Barnes of New York." A collar and a tie lay on the floor in the middle of the room and near them was a glass which had fallen and escaped breakage. Dr. Jakes was in the padded patient's chair; it had its back to the window, and at first Ford had imagined with surprise that the room was empty. He looked round wonderingly, till his eyes lighted on the top of the doctor's blond, childish head, showing round the chair.

Dr. Jakes had an attitude of extreme relaxation. He had slipped forward on the smooth leather seat till his head lay on one of the arms and his face was upturned to the smirched ceiling. His feet were drawn in and his knees protruded; his hands hung emptily beside him. The soot of the lamp had snowed on him copiously, dotting his face with black spots till he seemed to have broken out in some monstrous plague-rash. His lips were parted under his fair mustache, and the eyes were closed tight as if in determination not to see the ruin and dishonor of his life. He offered the spectacle of a man securely entrenched against all possible duties and needs, safe through the night against any attack on his peace and repose.

"Jakes," cried Ford urgently, in his ear, and shook him as vigorously as he could. "Jakes, you hog. Wake up, will you."

The doctor's head waggled loosely to the shaking and settled again to its former place. It was infuriating to see it rock like that, as though there were nothing stiffer than wool in the neck, and yet preserve its deep tranquillity. Ford looked down and swore. There was no help here.

He unlocked the door and threw it open. In the hall the Kafir and the policeman were as he had left them.

"Come in here," he ordered briefly.

The Kafir came, with the trooper and the revolver close at his back. The latter's eye made notes of the room, the glasses, the doctor, all the consistent details; and he smiled.

"You 're a doctor," said Ford to the Kafir. "Can you do anything with this?"

"This" was Dr. Jakes. Kamis made an inspection of him and lifted one of the tight eyelids.

"I can make him conscious," he answered, "and sober in a desperate sort of fashion. But he won't be fit for anything. You mustn't trust him."

"Will he be able to doctor Miss Harding?" demanded Ford.

"No," answered Kamis emphatically. "He won't."

"Then," said Ford, "what the deuce are we to do?"

The Kafir was still giving attention to Dr. Jakes, and was unbuttoning the neck of his shirt. He looked up.

"If you would let me see her," he suggested, "I 've no doubt I could do what is necessary for her."

Ford ran his fingers through his short stiff hair in perplexity.

"I don't see what else there is to do," he said, frowning.

The trooper had not yet spoken since he had entered the room. He and his revolver had had no share in events. He had been a part of the background, like the bottles and the soot, forgotten and discounted. Not even his prisoner, whose life hung on the pressure of his trigger-finger, had spent a glance on him. But at Ford's reply to the suggestion of the Kafir he restored himself to a central place in the drama.

"There will be none of that," he remarked in his drawling nasal voice.

Both turned towards him, the Kafir to meet the pistol-barrel pointing at his chest. The trooper's mouth was twisted to a smile, and his Punchinello face was mocking and servile at once.

"None of what?" demanded Ford.

"None of your taking this nigger into women's bedrooms. He 's my prisoner."

"I 'll take all responsibility," said Ford impatiently.

The trooper's smile was open now. He had Ford summed up for such another as Margaret, a person who held lax views in regard to Kafirs and white women. Such a person was not to be feared in South Africa.

"No," he said. "Can't allow that. It isn't done. This nigger 'll stay with me."

"Look here," said Ford angrily. "I tell you--"

"You look here," retorted the other. "Look at this, will you?" He balanced the big revolver in his fist. "That Kafir tries to get up those stairs, and I 'll drill a hole in him you could put your fist in. Understand?"

He nodded at Ford with a sort of geniality more inflexibly hostile than any scowls.

Ford would have answered forcibly enough, but from the doorway came a wail, and he looked up to see Mrs. Jakes standing there, with a hand on each doorpost and her small face, which he knew as the shopwindow of the less endearing virtues, convulsed with a passion of alarm and horror. At her cry, they all started round towards her, with the single exception of Dr. Jakes, who lay in his chair with his face in that direction already, and was not stirred at all by her appearance on the scene that had created itself around him.

"O-o-oh," she cried. "Eustace--after all I 've done; after all these years. Why didn't you lock the door, Eustace? And what will become of us now? O-oh, Mr. Ford, I begged you to go to bed. And the Kafir to see it, and all. The disgrace--o-o-h."

The tears ran openly down her face; they made her seem suddenly younger and more human than Ford had known her to be.

"Oh, come in, Mrs. Jakes," he begged. "Come in; it 's--it 's all right."

"All right," repeated Mrs. Jakes. "But--everybody will know, soon, and how can I hold up my head? I 've been so careful; I 've watched all the time--and I 've prayed--"

She bowed her face and wept aloud, with horrible sobs.

Ford was at the end of his wits. While he pitied Mrs. Jakes, Margaret might be dying in her room, under the bland and interested eyes of Fat Mary. He turned swiftly to the Kafir.

"Could you prescribe if I told you what she looked like?" he asked, in a half-whisper. "Could you do anything in that way?"

"Perhaps." The Kafir was quick to understand. Even in the urgency of the time, Ford was thankful that he had to deal with a man who understood readily and replied at once, a man like himself.

"Let me pass, Mrs. Jakes," he said, and made for the stairs.

As soon as he had gone, the trooper advanced to the desk and laid hands on a bottle and a glass. He mixed himself a satisfactory tumbler and turned to Mrs. Jakes.

"The ladies, God bless 'em," he said piously, and drank.

Kamis, looking on mutely, saw the little woman blink at her tears and try to smile.

"Don't mention it," she murmured.

She came into the room and examined Dr. Jakes, bending over him to scan his tranquil countenance. There was nothing in her aspect of wrath or rancor; she was still submissive to the fate that stood at the levers of her being and switched her arbitrarily from respectability to ruin. She seemed merely to make sure of features in his condition which she recognized without disgust or shame.

"Would you please just help me?" she asked, looking up at the policeman, very politely, with her hands on the doctor's shoulders.

"Charmed," declared the policeman, with an equal courtesy, and aided her to raise the drunken and unconscious man to a more seemly position in his chair. It was seemlier because his head hung forward, and he looked more as if he were dead and less as if he were drunk.

"Thank you," she said, when it was done. "It is--it is quite a fine night, is it not? The stars are beautiful. There is whisky on the desk--very good whisky, I believe. Won't you help yourself?"

"You 're very good," said the trooper, cordially, and helped himself.

Ford came shortly. He ignored Mrs. Jakes and the trooper entirely and spoke to the Kafir only. His manner made a privacy from which the others were excluded.

"I say," he said, with a manner of trouble. "She 's still in a faint. Very white, not breathing much, and rather cold. She looks bad."

The Kafir nodded. "You could n't take her temperature, of course," he said. "There hadn't been any fresh hemorrhage?"

"No," replied Ford. "I asked Fat Mary. She was there, and she said there 'd been no blood. I say--is it very dangerous?"

He was a layman; flesh and blood--blood particularly--were beyond his science and within the reach only of his pity and his fear. He had stood by Margaret's bed and looked down on her; he had bent his ear to her lips to make sure that she breathed and that her white immobility was not death. His hand had felt her forehead and been chilled by the cold of it; and he had tried inexpertly to find her pulse and failed. Fat Mary, holding a candle, had illuminated his researches, grinning the while, and had answered his questions humorously, till she realized that she was in some danger of being assaulted; and then she had lied.

He made his appeal to the Kafir as to a man of his own kind.

"I 'm afraid it 's not much use," he said--"what I can tell you, I mean. But do you think there 's much danger?"

Kamis shook his head. "There should n't be," he answered. "I wish I could see her. Cold, was she? Yes; temperature subnormal. I could cup,--but you could n't. Do you think you could make a hypodermic injection, if I showed you how?"

"I could do any blessed thing," declared Ford, fervently.

"Digitalin and adrenalin," mused Kamis. "He won't have those, though. Do you know if he 's got any ergotin?"

"He has," replied Ford. "He shoved some into me. Mrs. Jakes--ergotin? where is it?"

Mrs. Jakes was leaning on the back of the chair which contained the doctor. She had recovered from the emotion which had convulsed and unbalanced her at the discovery of the study's open door. She looked up now languidly, in imitation of Margaret's manner when she was not pleased with matters.

"Really, you must ask the doctor," she said. "I couldn't think of--ah--disposing of such things."

Kamis had not waited to hear her out. Already he was overhauling the drawers of the desk for the syringe. Ford aided him.

"Is this it?" he asked, at the second drawer he opened.

"Thank God," ejaculated Kamis. He could not help sending a glance of triumph at Mrs. Jakes.

"Now attend to me," he said to Ford. "First I 'll show you how to inject it. Give me your arm; can you stand a prick?"

"Go ahead," said Ford; "slowly, so that I can watch."

"Take a pinch of skin like this," directed the Kafir, closing his forefinger and thumb on a piece of Ford's forearm. "See? Then, with the syringe in your hand, like this, push the needle in--like this. See?"

"I see."

"Well, now do it to me. Here 's the place."

The arm he bared was black brown, full and muscular. Ford took the syringe and pinched the smooth warm skin.

"In with it," urged the Kafir. "Don't be afraid, man. Now press the plunger down with your forefinger. See? Go on, can't you? You mustn't mess the business upstairs. Do it again."

"That 's enough," said Ford.

Drops of blood issued from the puncture as he withdrew the needle, and he shivered involuntarily. It had been horrible to press the point home into that smooth and rounded arm; his own had not bled.

"Mind now," warned the Kafir. "You must run it well in. And now about the drug."

He was minute in his instructions and careful to avoid technical phrases and terms of art. He took the syringe and cleaned and charged and gave it to Ford.

"Don't funk it," was his final injunction. "This is nothing. There may be worse for you to do yet."

"I won't funk it," promised Ford. "But--" he appealed to the Kafir with a shrug of deprecation--"but isn't it a crazy business?"

It was like a swiftly-changing dream to him. The hot and dirty room, with the Kafir busy and thoughtful, the malevolent trooper and his revolver, the sprawl of the doctor and his slumberous calm and Mrs. Jakes groping through the minutes for a cue to salvation, were unconvincing even when his eyes dwelt on them. They had not the savor of reality. Six paces away was the hall, severe and grand, with its open door making it a neighbor of the darkness and the stars. Then came the vacant stairs and the long lifeless corridors running between the closed doors of rooms, and the light leaking out from under the door of Margaret's chamber. Through such a variety one moves in dreams, where things have lost or changed their values and nothing is solid or immediate, and death is not troublous nor life significant.

Fat Mary was resting in Margaret's armchair when he pushed open the door and came in, carrying the syringe carefully with its point in the air. She rose hastily, fearful of a rebuke.

"Miss Harding wake up yet?" Ford asked her.

"No. Missis sleep all-a-time," replied Fat Mary. "She plenty quiet, all-'e-same dead."

"Shut up," ordered Ford, in a harsh whisper. "You're a fool."

Fat Mary sniffed in cautious defiance and muttered in Kafir. Since her duties had lain about Margaret's person, she had become unused to being called a fool. She pouted unpleasantly and stood watching unhelpfully as Ford went to the bedside.

The blood had been washed away and there was nothing now to suggest violence or brutality. The girl lay on her back in the utter vacancy of unconsciousness; the face had been wiped clean of all expression and left blank and void. Mrs. Jakes had known enough to remove the pillows, which were in the chair Fat Mary had selected for her ease, and the head lay back on the level sheet with the brown hair tumbled to each side of it. Ford, looking down on her, was startled by a likeness to a recumbent stone figure he had seen in some church, with the marble drapery falling to either side of it as now the bedclothes fell over Margaret Harding. It needed only the crossed arms and the kneeling angel to complete the resemblance. The idea was hateful to him, and he made haste to get to the work he had to do in order to break away from it.

The sleeve of the nightgown had soft lace at the wrist and a band of lace inserted higher up; softness and delicacy surrounded her and made his task the harder. The forearm, when he had stripped the sleeve back, was cool and silk-smooth to his touch, slender and shining. His fingers almost circled its girth; it was strangely feminine and disturbing. A blue vein was distinct in the curve of the elbow, and others branched at the wrist where his finger could find no pulse.

Fat Mary forgot her indignation in her curiosity, and came tiptoeing across the floor, holding a candle to light him, and stood at his shoulder to watch. Her big ridiculous face was gleeful as he took up the syringe; she knew a joke when she saw one.

Ford pinched the white skin with thumb and forefinger as he had been bidden and touched it with the point of the needle. The point slipped and was reluctant to enter; he had to take hold firmly and thrust it, like a man sewing leather. The girl's hand twitched slightly and fell open again and was passive. He felt sickish and feeble and had to knit himself to run the needle in deep and depress the plunger that deposited the drug in the arm. Over his shoulder Fat Mary watched avidly and grinned.

He drew the sleeve down again and laid the arm back in its place. He passed a hand absently over his forehead and found it damp with strange sweat, and he was conscious of being weary in every limb as though he had concluded some extreme physical effort. He looked carefully at the unconscious girl, seeking for signs and indices which he should report to Kamis. The likeness of the marble figure did not recur to him; his thoughts were laborious and slow.

He woke Mr. Samson on his way downstairs, invading his room without knocking and shaking him by the shoulder. Mr. Samson snorted and thrust up a bewildered face to the light of the candle. His white mustache, which in the daytime cocked debonair points to port and starboard, hung down about his mouth and made him commonplace.

"What the devil 's up?" he gasped, staring wildly. "Oh, it 's you, Ford."

"Get up," said Ford. "There 's the deuce to pay. That Kafir 's arrested--Kamis, you know; Miss Harding 's had a bad hemorrhage and Jakes is dead drunk. I want you to go to Du Preez's and send a messenger for another doctor. Hurry, will you?"

"My sainted aunt," exclaimed Mr. Samson, in amazement. "You don't say. I 'll be with you in a jiffy, Ford. Don't you wait."

He threw a leg over the edge of the bed, revealing pyjamas strikingly striped, and Ford left him to improvise a toilet unwatched.

The trooper was talking to Mrs. Jakes in the study when Ford returned there. He had relieved himself of his hat, and his big head, on which the hair was scant, was naked to the lamp. He had found himself a chair at the back of the desk, and reclined in it spaciously, with his half-empty tumbler at his elbow. The Kafir still stood where Ford had left him, his eyes roving gravely over the room and its contents. The trooper looked up as Ford came in, lifting his saturnine and aggressive features with a smile. He had drunk several glasses in a quick succession and was already thawed and voluble.

"Well," he said loudly. "How's interestin' patient? 'S well 's can be expected--what? Didn't express wish to thank med'cal adviser in person, I s'pose?"

Ford bent a hard look on him.

"I 'll attend to you in good time," he said, with meaning. "For the present you can shut up."

He turned at once to the Kafir and began to tell him what he had seen and done, while the other steered him with brief questions. The trooper gazed at them with a fixed eye.

"Shup," he said, to Mrs. Jakes. "Says I can shup--for the present. Supposin' I don't shup, though."

He drank, with a manner of confirming by that action a portentous resolution, and sat for some minutes grave and meditative, with his bitter, thin mouth sucked in. He never laid down the big revolver which he held. Its short, businesslike barrel rested on the blue cloth of his knee, and the blued metal reflected the light dully from its surfaces.

"Is it dangerous?" Ford was asking. "From what I can tell you, do you think there 's any real danger? She looks--she looks deadly."

"Yes, she would," replied the Kafir thoughtfully. "I think I 've got an idea how things stand. As long as that unconsciousness lasts, there 'll be no more hemorrhage, and there 's the ergotin too. If there 's nothing else, I don't see that it should be serious--more serious, that is, than hemorrhages always are."

"You really think so?" asked Ford. "I wish you could see her for yourself, and make certain. Perhaps presently that swine with the revolver will be drunk enough to go to sleep or something, and we might manage it."

The Kafir shook his head.

"If it were necessary, the revolver wouldn't stop me," he said. "But as it is--"

"What?"

"Oh, do you think it would make things better for Miss Harding if you took me into her bedroom? You see what has happened already, because she has spoken to me from time to time. How would this sound, when it was dished up for circulation in the dorps?"

Ford frowned unhappily. He did not want to meet the mournful eyes in the black face.

"You think," he began hesitatingly--"you think it--er--it wouldn't do?"

"You were here when the other story came out," retorted Kamis. "Can you remember what you thought then?"

"Oh, I was a fool of course," said Ford; "but, confound it, I did n't think any harm."

"Didn't you? But what did everybody think? Isn't it true that as a result of all that was said and thought Miss Harding has to risk her life by returning to England?"

"No, it wouldn't do, I suppose," said Ford. "Between us we 've made it a pretty tough business for her. We 're brutes."

The thick negro lips parted in a smile that was not humorous.

"At a little distance," said Kamis, "say, from the other side of the color line, you certainly make a poor appearance."

Mr. Samson made his entry with an air of coming to set things right or know the reason.

"Well, I 'll be hanged," he exclaimed in the doorway, making a sharp inspection of the scene.

He had got together quite a plausible equivalent for his daily personality, and had not omitted to make his mustache recognizable with pomade. A Newmarket coat concealed most of his deficiencies; his monocle made the rest of them insignificant.

Mrs. Jakes sighed and fidgeted.

"Oh, Mr. Samson," she said. "What can I say to you?"

"Say 'good-morning,'" suggested Mr. Samson, with his eye on Jakes. "Better send for the 'boys' to carry him up to bed, to begin with--what? Well, Ford, here I am, ready and waiting. This the fellow, eh?"

His arrogant gaze rested on the Kafir intolerantly.

"This is Kamis," said Ford. "Dr. Kamis, of London, by the way. He is treating Miss Harding at present."

"Eh?" Mr. Samson turned on him abruptly. "You 've taken him up there, to her room?"

"No," said Ford. "Not yet."

"See you don't, then," said Mr. Samson strongly. "What you thinkin' about, Ford? And look here, what 's your name!"--to the Kafir. "You speak English, don't you? Well, I don't want to hurt your feelin's, you know, but you 've got to understand quite plainly--"

Kamis interrupted him suavely.

"You need n't trouble," he said. "I quite agree with you. I was just telling Mr. Ford the same thing."

"Were you, by Jove," snorted Mr. Samson, entirely unappeased. "Pity you didn't come to the same conclusion a month ago. You may be a doctor and all that; I 've no means of disprovin' what you say; but in so far as you compromised little Miss Harding, you 're a black cad. Just think that over, will you? Now, Ford, what d'you want me to do?"

There was power of a sort in Mr. Samson, the power of unalterable conviction and complete sincerity. In his Newmarket coat and checked cloth cap he thrust himself with fluency into the scene and made himself its master. He gave an impression of din, of shouting and tumult; he made himself into a clamorous crowd. Mrs. Jakes trembled under his glance and the trooper blinked servilely. Ford, concerned chiefly to have a messenger despatched without delay, bowed to the storm and gave him his instructions without protest.

"Mind, now," stipulated Mr. Samson, ere he departed on his errand; "no takin' the nigger upstairs, Ford. There 's a decency in these affairs."

The trooper nodded solemnly to the departing flap of the Newmarket tails, making their exit with a Newmarket _aplomb_.

"Noble ol' buck," he observed, approvingly. "Goo' style. Gift o' the gab. Here 's luck to him."

He gulped noisily in his glass, spilling the liquor on his tunic as he drank.

"Knows nigger when he sees 'im," he said. "Frien' o' yours?"

"Mr. Samson," replied Mrs. Jakes seriously, "is a very old friend."

"Goblessim," said the trooper. "Less 'ave anurr."

Kamis and Ford regarded one another as Mr. Samson left them and both were a little embarrassed. Plain speaking is always a brutality, since it sets every man on his defense.

"I 'm sorry there was a fuss," said Ford uncomfortably. "Old Samson 's such a beggar to make rows."

"He was right," said Kamis; "perfectly right. Only--I didn't need to be told. I 've been cursing myself ever since I heard that the thing had come out. It 's my fault altogether--and I knew it long before the row happened, and I let it go on."

Ford nodded with his eyes on the ground.

"You could hardly--order her off," he said.

"That wasn't it," answered Kamis. "Man, I was as lonely as a man on a raft, and I jumped at the chance of her company now and again. I sacrificed her, I tell you. Don't try to make excuses for me. I won't have them. Go up and see how she is. What are we talking here for?"

"God knows," said Ford drearily. "What else 'is there to do? We 've both wronged her, haven't we?"

There was no change in Margaret; she was as he had left her, pallid and motionless, a temptation to death.

Fat Mary was asleep in the armchair, gross and disgustful, and he woke her with the heel of his slipper on her big splay foot. She squeaked and came to life angrily and reported no movement from Margaret. He had an impulse to hit her, she was so obviously prepared to say anything he seemed to require and she was so little like a woman. It was impossible in reason and sentiment to connect her with the still, fragile form on the bed, and he had to exercise an actual and conscious restraint to refrain from an openhanded smack on her bulging and fatuous countenance. He could only call her wounding names, and he did so. She drooped her lower lip at him piteously and again he yearned to punch her.

There was no change to report to Kamis, who nodded at his account and spoke a perfunctory, "All right. Thanks." The trooper sat in a daze, scowling at his boots; Mrs. Jakes was lost in thought; the doctor had not moved. Ford fidgeted to and fro between the desk and the door for a while and finally went out to the stoep and walked to and fro along its length, trying to realize and to feel what was happening.

He knew that he was not appreciating the matter as a whole. He was like a man dully afflicted, to whom momentary details are present and apparent, while the sum of his trouble is uncomprehended. He could dislike the apprehensive and timidly presumptuous face of the trooper, pity Mrs. Jakes, distaste Mr. Samson's forceful loudness, smell the foulness of the study and wonder at the Kafir; but the looming essential fact that Margaret lay in a swoon on her bed, lacking the aid due to her and in danger of death in a dozen forms--that had been vague and diffused in his understanding. He had not known it passionately, poignantly, in its full dreadfulness.

He told himself the facts carefully, going over them with a patient emphasis to point them at himself.

"Margaret may die; it 's very likely she will, with only a fool like me to see how she looks. I never called her Margaret till to-day--but it 's yesterday now. And here 's this damned story about her, which every one knows wrongly and adds lies to when he tells it. It would look queer on the stage--Kamis doctoring her like this. But the point is--she may die."

The sky was full of stars, white and soft and misty, like tearful eyes, and the Southern Cross, in which he had never been able to detect anything like a cross, rode high. He could not hold his thoughts from wandering to it and the absurdity of calling a mere blotch like that a cross. Heaps of other stars that did make crosses--neat and obvious ones. The sky was full of crosses, for that matter. Astronomers were asses, all of them. But the point was, Margaret might die.

"That you, Ford?"

Mr. Samson was coming up the steps and with him were Christian du Preez and his wife.

"These good people are anxious to help," explained Mr. Samson. "Very good of 'em--what? And young Paul 's gone off on a little stallion to send Dr. Van Coller. Turned out at the word like a fire engine and was off like winkin'. Never saw anything smarter. If the doctor 's half as smart he 'll be here in four hours."

"That's good," said Ford.

"And Mrs. du Preez 'll stay with Miss Harding an' do what she can," said Mr. Samson.

"I 'll do any blessed thing," declared Mrs. du Preez with energy.

Mr. Samson stood aside to let his companions enter the house before him. He whispered with buoyant force to Ford.

"A chaperon to the rescue," he said. "We 've got a chaperon, and the rest follows. You see if it don't."

There was a brief interview between Mrs. du Preez and the Kafir under the eyes of the tall Boer. Mr. Samson had already informed them of the situation in the study, and they were not taken by surprise, and the Kafir fell in adroitly with the tone they took. Ford thought that Mrs. du Preez displayed a curious timidity before the negro, a conspicuous improvement on her usual perky cocksureness.

"Just let me know if there is any change," Kamis said to her. "That is all. If she recovers consciousness, for instance, come to me at once."

"I will," answered Mrs. du Preez, with subdued fervor.

There seemed nothing left for Ford to do. Mrs. du Preez departed to her watch, and it was at least satisfactory to know that Fat Mary would now have to deal with one who would beat her on the first occasion without compunction. Mr. Samson and the Boer departed to the drawing-room in search of a breathable air, and after an awkward while Ford followed them thither.

"Ah!" exclaimed Mr. Samson, as he appeared. "Here you are. You 'd better try and snooze, Ford. Been up all night, haven't you?"

"Pretty nearly," admitted Ford. "I couldn't sleep, though."

"You try," recommended Mr. Samson urgently. "Lie down on the couch and have a shot. You 're done up; you 're not yourself. What d' you think, Du Preez? He was nearly takin' that nigger up to Miss Harding's room. What d' you think of that, eh?"

He was sitting on the music stool, an urbane and adequate presence.

The Boer shook his head. "That would be bad," he said seriously. "He is a good nigger--_ya_! But better she should die."

Ford laughed wearily as he sat down. "That was his idea," he said.

He leaned back to listen to their talk. Sleep, he felt, was far from him. Margaret might die--that had to be kept in mind. He heard them discuss the Kafir stupidly, ridiculously. It was pothouse talk, the chatter of companionable fools, frothing round and round their topic. Their minds were rigid like a pair of stiffened corpses set facing one another; they never reached an imaginative hand towards the wonder and pity of the matter. And Margaret--the beautiful name that it was--Margaret might die.

Half an hour later, Mr. Samson slewed his monocle towards him.

"Sleepin' after all," he remarked. "Poor devil--no vitality. Not like you an' me, Du Preez--what?"

Ford knew he had slept when the Boer woke him in the broad daylight.

"The doctor is here," said Christian. "He says it is all right. He says--she has been done right with. She will not die."

"Thank God," said Ford.

Mr. Samson was in the room. The daylight showed the incompleteness of his toilet; he was a mere imitation of his true self. His triumphant smile failed to redeem him. The bald truth was--he was not dressed.

"Everything 's as right as rain," he declared, wagging his tousled white head. "Sit where you are, my boy; there 's nothing for you to do. Dr. Van Coller had an infernal thing he calls a motor-bicycle, and it brought him the twenty-two miles in fifty minutes. Makes a noise like a traction engine and stinks like the dickens. Got an engine of sorts, you know, and goes like anything. But the point is, Miss Harding 's going on like a house on fire. Your nigger-man and you did just the right thing, it appears."

"Where is he?" asked Ford.

"The nigger-man?"

Mr. Samson and the Boer exchanged glances.

"Look here," said Mr. Samson; "Du Preez and I had an understanding about it, but don't let it go any further. You see, after all that has happened, we could n't let the chap go to gaol. No sense in that. So the bobby being as drunk as David's sow, I had a word with him. I told him I didn't retract anything, but we were all open to make mistakes, and--to cut it short--he 'd better get away while he had the chance."

"Yes," said Ford. "Did he?"

"He didn't want to at first," replied Mr. Samson. "His idea was that he had to clear himself of the charge on which he was arrested. Sedition, you know. All rot, of course, but that was his idea. So I promised to write to old Bill Winter--feller that owes me money--he 's governor of the Cape, or something, and put it to him straight."

"He will write to him and say it is lies," said the Boer. "He knows him."

"Know him," cried Mr. Samson. "Never paid me a bet he lost, confound him. Regular old welcher, Bill is. Van Coller chipped in too--treated him like an equal. And in the end he went. Van Coller says he 'd like to have had his medical education. I say, what 's that?"

A sudden noise had interrupted him, a sharp report from somewhere within the house. The Boer nodded slowly, and made for the door.

"That policeman has shot somebody," he said.

Dr. Jakes waked to the morning light with a taste in his mouth which was none the more agreeable for being familiar. He opened his hot eyes to the strange disarray of his study, the open door and the somnolent form of the policeman, and sat up with a jerk, almost sober. He stared around him uncomprehending. The lamp burned yet, and the room was stiflingly hot; the curtains had not been put back and the air was heavy and foul. He got shakily to his feet and went towards the hall. His wife, with coffee cups on a tray, was coming down the stairs. She saw him and put the tray down on the table against the wall and went to him.

"Well, Eustace?" she said tonelessly. "What is it now?"

He cleared his burning throat. "Who opened the door?" he asked hoarsely.

She shook her head. "I don't know," she answered. "It does n't matter--we 're ruined at last. It 's come, Eustace."

He made strange grimaces in an endeavor to clear his mind and grasp what she was saying. She watched him unmoved, and went on to tell him, in short bald sentences of the night's events.

"Dr. Van Coller will be down presently," she concluded. "He 'll want to see you, but you can lock your door if you like. He 's seen me already."

He had her meaning at last. He blinked at her owlishly, incapable of expressing the half-thoughts that dodged in his drugged brain.

"Poor old Hester," he said, at last, and turned heavily back to his study.

Mrs. Jakes smiled in pity and despair, and took up her tray again. She thought she knew better than he how poor she was.

He slammed the door behind him, but he did not trouble to lock it. Something he had seen when he opened his eyes stuck in his mind, and he went staggeringly round the untidy desk, with its bottles and papers, to where the policeman sprawled in a chair with his Punchinello chin on his breast. His loose hands retained yet the big revolver.

"He 'll come to it too," was Dr. Jakes' thought as he looked down on him. He drew the weapon with precaution from the man's hand.

He stood an instant in thought, looking at its neat complication of mechanism and then raised it slowly till the small round of the muzzle returned his look. His face clenched in desperate resolution. But he did not pull the trigger. At the critical moment, his eye caught the lamp, burning brazenly on the wall. He went over and turned it out.

"Now," he said, and raised the revolver again.

*CHAPTER XIX*

Upon that surprising morning when Mr. Samson, taking his early constitutional, was a witness to the cloud that rode across the sun and presently let go its burden of wet to fall upon the startled earth in slashing, roaring sheets of rain, there stood luggage in the hall, strapped, locked, and ready for transport.

"Gad!" said Mr. Samson, breathless in the front door and backing from the splashes of wet that leaped on the railing of the stoep and drove inwards. "They 'll have a wet ride."

He flicked at spots of water on the glossy surface of his gray coat and watched the rain drive across and hide the Karoo like a steel-hued fog. The noise of it, after months of sun and stillness, was distracting; it threshed vehemently with uproar and power, in the extravagant fashion of those latitudes. It was the signal that the weather had broken, justifying at length Mrs. Jakes' conversational gambit.

She came from the breakfast-room while he watched, with the wind from the open door romping in her thin skirts, and stood beside him to look out. They exchanged good mornings.

"Is n't it wet?" said Mrs. Jakes resourcefully. "But I dare say it 's good for the country."

"Rather," agreed Mr. Samson. "It 'll be all green before you know it. But damp for the travelers--what?"

"They will have the hood on the cart," replied Mrs. Jakes.

She was not noticeably changed since the doctor's death, three weeks before. Her clothes had always been black, so that she was exempt from the gruesome demands of custom to advertise her loss in her garments. The long habit of shielding Jakes from open shame had become a part of her; so that instead of abandoning her lost position, she was already in the way of canonizing him. She made reverential references to his professional skill, to his goodness, his learning, his sacrifices to duty. She looked people steadily and defiantly in the eyes as she said so, and had her own way with them. The foundations were laid of a tradition which presented poor Jakes in a form he would never have recognized. He was in his place behind the barbed wire out on the veld, sharing the bed of little Eustace, heedless that there was building for him a mausoleum of good report and loyal praise.

"Hate to see luggage in a house," remarked Mr. Samson, as they passed the pile in the hall on their way to the breakfast-room. "Nothing upsets a house like luggage. Looks so bally unsettled, don't you know."

"Things _are_ a little unsettled," agreed Mrs. Jakes civilly. "What with the rain and everything, it doesn't seem like the same place, does it?"

She gave a tone of mild complaint to her voice, exactly as though a disturbance in the order of her life were a thing to be avoided. It would not have been consistent with the figure of the late Jakes, as she was sedulous to present it, if she had admitted that the house and its routine, its purpose, its atmosphere, its memories, the stones in its walls and the tiles on its roof, were the objects of her living hate. She was already in negotiations for the sale of it and what she called "the connection," and had called Mr. Samson and Ford into consultation over correspondence with a doctor at Port Elizabeth, who wrote with a typewriter and was inquisitive about balance-sheets. Throughout the consequent discussions she maintained an air of gentle and patient regret, an attitude of resigned sentiment, the exact manner of a lady in a story who sells the home of her ancestors to a company promoter. Even her anxiety to sell Ford and Mr. Samson along with the house did not cause her to deflect for an instant from the course of speech and action she had selected. There were yet Penfolds in Putney and Clapham Junction, and when the sale was completed she would see them again and rejoin their congenial circle; but her joy at the prospect was private, her final and transcendent secret.

Nothing is more natural to man than to pose; by a posture, he can correct the crookedness of his nature and be for himself, and sometimes for others too, the thing he would be. It is the instinct towards protective coloring showing itself through broadcloth and bombazine.

Mr. Samson accepted his coffee and let his monocle fall into it, a sign that he was discomposed to an unusual degree. He sat wiping it and frowning.

"Did I tell you," he said suddenly, "that--er--that Kafir 's going to look in just before they start?"

Mrs. Jakes looked up sharply.

"You mean--that Kamis?" she demanded. "He 's coming _here_?"

"Ye-es," said Mr. Samson. "Just for a minute or two. Er--Ford knows about it."

"To see Miss Harding, I suppose?" inquired Mrs. Jakes, with a sniff.

"Yes," replied Mr. Samson again. "It isn't my idea of things, but then, things have turned out so dashed queer, don't you know. He wrote to ask if he might say good-by; very civil, reasonable kind of letter; Ford brought it to me an' asked my opinion. Couldn't overlook the fact that he had a hand in saving her life, you know. So on my advice, Ford wrote to the feller saying that if he 'd understand there was going to be no private interview, or anything of that kind, he could turn up at ten o'clock an' take his chance."

"But," said Mrs. Jakes hopefully, "supposing the police--

"Bless you, that 's all right," Mr. Samson assured her. "The police don't want to see him again. Seems that old Bill Winter--you know I wrote to him?--seems that old Bill went to work like the dashed old beaver he is, and had Van Zyl's head on a charger for his breakfast. The Kafir-man 's got a job of some sort, doctorin' niggers somewhere. The police never mention him any more."

"Well," said Mrs. Jakes, "I can't prevent you, of course, from bringing Kafirs here, Mr. Samson, but I 've got my feelings. When I think of poor Eustace, and that Kafir thrusting himself in--well, there!"

Mr. Samson drank deep of his coffee, trying vaguely to suggest in his manner of drinking profound sympathy with Mrs. Jakes and respect for what she sometimes called the departed. Also, the cup hid her from him.

It was strange how the presence of Margaret's luggage in the hall pervaded the house with a sense of impermanence and suspense. It gave even to the breakfast the flavor of the mouthful one snatches while turning over the baffling pages of the timetable. Ford, when he came in, was brusk and irresponsive, though he was not going anywhere, and Margaret's breakfast went upstairs on a tray. Kafir servants were giggling and whispering up and down stairs and were obviously interested in the leather trunks. A house with packed luggage in it has no character of a dwelling; it is only a stopping-place, a minister to transitory needs. As well have a coffin in the place as luggage ready for removal; between them, they comprise all that is removable in human kind.

"Well," said Mr. Samson to Ford, attempting conversation; "we 're goin' to have the place to ourselves again. Eh?"

"You seem pleased," replied Ford unamiably.

"I 'm bearin' up," said Mr. Samson. "You seem grieved, though."

"That," said Ford, with venom, "is because I 'm being bored."

"The deuce you are." Mr. Samson was annoyed. "I don't want to talk to you, you know. Sulk all you want to; doesn't affect me. But if you could substitute a winnin' smile for the look you 're wearin' at present, it would be more appetizin'."

"Er--the rain seems to be drawing-off, I think," remarked Mrs. Jakes, energetically. "It might be quite fine by-and-by. What do you think, Mr. Samson?"

Mr. Samson, ever obedient to her prompting, made an inspection of the prospect through the window. But his sense of injury was strong.

"There are things much more depressing than rain," he said, rancorously, and occupied himself pointedly with his food.

Ford made his apology as soon as they were free from Mrs. Jakes. She had much to do in the unseen organization of the departure, and apologized for leaving them to themselves. It was another adjunct of the luggage; not within the memory of man had inmates of the Sanatorium sat at table without Mrs. Jakes.

"Sorry," said Ford then, in a matter-of-fact way.

"Are you?" said Mr. Samson grudgingly. "All right."

And that closed the incident.

Soon after breakfast, when the stoep was still uninhabitable and the drawing-room unthinkable and the hall uncongenial, Margaret came downstairs, unfamiliar in clothes which the Sanatorium had not seen before. Mrs. Jakes made mental notes of them, gazing with narrow eyes and lips moving in a soundless inventory. She came down smiling but uncertain.

"I didn't know it could rain," was her greeting. "Did you see the beginning of it? It was wonderful--like an eruption."

"I saw it," said Mr. Samson. "I got wet in it. It 'll be cool for your drive to the station, even if it 's a bit damp."

"There 's still half an hour to wait before the cart comes," said Margaret. "Where does one sit when it 's raining?"

"One doesn't," said Mr. Samson. "One stands about in draughts and one frets, one does."

"Come into the drawing-room," said Ford briefly.

Margaret looked at him with a smile for his seriousness and his manner of one who desires to get to business, but she yielded, and Mr. Samson ambled in their wake, never doubting that he was of their company. Ford, holding the door open for Margaret, surprised him with a forbidding scowl.

"We don't want _you_," he whispered fiercely, and shut the affronted and uncomprehending old gentleman out.

The drawing-room was forlorn and very shabby in the cold light of the rainy day and the tattoo of the rain-splashes on its window. Margaret went to the hearth where Dr. Jakes had been wont to expiate his crimes, and leaned her arm on the mantel, looking about the apartment.

"It 's queer," she said; "I shall miss this."

"Margaret," said Ford.

She turned to him, still smiling. She answered nothing, but waited for him to continue.

"I wanted to tell you something," he went on steadily. "You know I love you, don't you?"

"Yes," she answered slowly. "You--you said so."

"I said it because I do," he said. "Well, Dr. Van Coller was here yesterday, and when he had done with you, I had a word with him. I wanted to know if I could go Home too; so he came up to my room and made an examination of me, a careful one."

Margaret had ceased to smile. "Yes," she said. "Tell me: what did he say?"

"He said No," replied Ford. "I mustn't leave here. He was very clear about it. I 've got to stay."

The emphasis with which he spoke was merely to make her understand; he invited no pity for himself and felt none. He was merely giving information.

"But," said Margaret,--"never? It isn't as bad as _that_, is it?"

"He couldn't tell. He isn't really a lung man, you know. But it doesn't make any real difference, now you 're going. Two years or ten years or forever--you 'll be away among other people and I 'll be here and the gap between us will be wider every day. We 've been friends and I had hopes--nothing cures a chap of hoping, not even his lungs; but now I 've got to cure myself of it, because it's no use. I would n't have told you, Margaret--"

"Yes, you would," interrupted Margaret. "You wouldn't have let me go away without knowing, since you--you love me."

"That's it, exactly." He nodded; he had been making a point and she had seen it. "I felt you were entitled to know, but I can't say why. You understand, though, don't you?"

"Yes," she said. "I understand."

"I knew you would," he answered. "And you won't think I 'm whining. I 'm not. I 'm so thankful that we 've been together and understood each other and that I love you that I don't reckon myself a loser in the end. It 's all been pure gain to me. As long as I live I shall be better off for it; I shall live on it always and never let any of it go. If I never see you again, I shall still be to the good. But perhaps I shall. God knows."

"Oh, you will," cried Margaret. "You 're sure to."

He smiled suddenly. "That's what I tell myself. If I get all right, it 'll be the easiest thing in the world. I 'll come and call on you, wherever you happen to be, and send in my card. And if I 'm not going to get well, I shall have to know it sooner or later, and then, if you 'd let me, I 'd come just the same.

"I shouldn't expect anything," he added quickly. "Not a single thing. Don't be afraid of that. Just send in my card, as I said, and see you again and talk to you, and call you Margaret. I would n't cadge; you could trust me not to do that, at least."

"You must get well and then come," said the girl softly. "And if you call me Margaret, I will call you--"

She stopped. "I never heard your Christian name," she said.

"Just John," he answered, smiling. "John--not Jack or anything. I will come, you can be sure. Either free or a ticket-of-leave, I 'll come. And now, say good-by. I mustn't keep you any longer; I 've hurt old Samson's feelings as it is. Good-by, Margaret. You 'll get well in Switzerland, but you won't forget the Karoo, will you? Good-by."

"I won't forget anything," said Margaret, with eyes that were bright and tender. "Good-by. When your card comes in, I shall be ever so glad. Good-by."

There was a fidgety interval before the big cart drove up to the house, its wheels rending through the gritty mud and its horses steaming as though they had been boiled. Mr. Samson employed each interlude in the talk to glare at Ford in lofty offense; he seemed only to be waiting till this dull business of departure was concluded to call him to account. Mrs. du Preez, who had come across in the cart to bid Margaret farewell, was welcome as a diversion.

"Well, where 's the lucky one?" she cried. "Ah, Miss Harding, can't you smell London from here? If you could bottle that smell, with a drop o' fog, a drop o' dried fish and a drop o' Underground Railway to bring out the flavor, you 'd make a fortune, sellin' it to us poor Afrikanders. But you 'll be sniffin' it from the cask in three weeks from now. Lord, I wish it was me."

"You ought to make a trip," suggested Margaret.

"Christian don't think so," declared Mrs. du Preez, with her shrill laugh. "He knows I 'd stick where I touched like a fly in a jam-pot, and he 'd have to come and pull me out of it himself."

She took an occasion to drop a private whisper into Margaret's ear.

"Kamis is outside, waitin' to see you go. He 's talkin' to Paul."

The farewells accomplished themselves. That of Mrs. Jakes would have been particularly effective but for the destructive intrusion of Mrs. du Preez.

"Er--a pleasant voyage, Miss Harding," she said, in a thin voice. "I may be in London soon myself--at Putney. But I suppose we 're hardly likely to meet before you go abroad again."

"I wonder," said Margaret peaceably.

It was then that Mrs. du Preez struck in.

"Putney," she said, in a loud and callous voice, in itself sufficient to scrape Mrs. Jakes raw. "South the water, eh? But you can easy run up to London from there if Miss Harding sends for you, can't you?"