Blue Aloes Part 2

Little Bernard Quentin van Cannan lay there, sleeping too soon at the age of three and a half. Roddy p.r.o.nounced his brief but sufficiently eloquent epitaph.

"He was Coral's twin. A tarantula bit him--one of the awful big poisonous ones out of the aloe hedge."

The next cross registered the resting-place of Carol Quentin van Cannan--drowned a year back, at the age of nine. Christine's sad gaze travelled to the third and unmarked mound.

"Is that Sophy's grave?" she asked softly, for shrivelling on the lumps of earth lay a bunch of poppies that she had seen Roddy gathering the day before, and now remembered wondering where he had disappeared to afterward. Roddy did not answer. He was staring before him with manful eyes that winked rapidly but shed no tears. His lips were pursed up as if to whistle, yet made no sound. At the sight of him and the withered poppies in the place where never a flower of memory blossomed, hot tears surged to the girl's eyes. It was wistful to think of a child remembering when all others forgot.

"No one ever comes here but me," he said, at last.

Christine got rid of her tears by turning her back on him and pressing them away with her fingers, for she knew that emotion embarra.s.ses and pains children, and she wanted to help this small, brave man, not hurt him.

"You and I will come here often, Roddy. We will turn it into a garden, and make it blossom like the rose--shall we?"

"Yes, yes!" he cried eagerly. "'Blossom like the rose'--that comes out of the Bible! I have heard daddy read it. But we must not talk about it to mamma. It makes her too sad to come here, or even talk about it.

Mamma doesn't like sad things."

Suddenly, the strange quietude of the place was invaded by the sound of voices. They were far-off voices, but both the girl and the child started as though caught in some forbidden act, and instinctively took hands. A moment later they were hurrying away from the lonely spot, back by the way they had come. Half-way home they came upon Richard Saltire and the squad of Kafirs who carried his implements and liquids.

Theirs were the voices that had been heard. Work had begun on the territory so thickly sewn with p.r.i.c.kly-pears that lay between farm and cemetery.

Saltire, with sleeves rolled up, was operating with a syringe upon the trunk of a giant bush, but he turned round to throw a smile to Roddy.

"h.e.l.lo, Rod!"

"h.e.l.lo, d.i.c.k!" was the blithe response. "Gr-r-r! You giving it to that old bush?"

"Rather! He's getting it where the chicken got the ax. Like to have a go at him?"

"Oh--oh--yes!"

Roddy delightedly grasped the syringe, and was instructed how to fill and plunge it into the green, dropsical flesh of the plant. The Kafirs stood looking on with grave, imperturbable faces. Christine sat down on a rock and, from the rosy shadow of her parasol, observed the pair.

She was astonished at this revelation of intimacy. Saltire's satirical blue eyes were full of warm affection as he looked at the boy, and Roddy's manner toward him contained a loving familiarity and trust she had never seen him exhibit to any one. It was interesting, too, to watch the man's fine, capable hands manipulating his instruments and his quick eye searching each bush to select a vulnerable spot for the virus of death. His movements had the grace and energy of one whose every muscle is trained by service and in perfect condition. Only men who hail from cold climates retain this characteristic in Africa.

Those born in its disintegrating heats are usually overtaken in the early thirties by physical weariness or, as some choose to call it, "slackness" that only fine moral training can overcome.

He was good to look at, too, this man in spotless white clothes, the blueness of his eyes throwing up the clear tan of his face, his burnished hair lying close to his head. Christine thought rather sadly that the presence on the farm of any one so sane and fearless-looking would have been a great comfort to her, if only he had not been one of the people whose ways troubled her most.

It was with difficulty that she at last got Roddy away, he was so evidently under the forestry man's spell. Almost she felt that spell herself when he began talking to her, looking deep into her eyes while he explained his work; but suddenly it seemed to her that those blue eyes were explaining something quite different, and, flus.h.i.+ng furiously, she made haste to take Roddy's hand and end the interview by walking away.

There was considerable trouble during the afternoon with Rita and Coral. If Christine turned her back for a moment, they flew out into the suns.h.i.+ne, hatless, disporting themselves like baby ostriches.

Reproaches were received with trills of laughter, warnings of punishment with trusting, happy eyes.

When, at last, Christine had them safely absorbed in a table-game, it was to realize that Roddy had suddenly disappeared. Calling Meekie to take charge of the little girls, she hastened, with beating heart, in search of the boy. Instinct took her in the direction of the dam, and she caught him up just as he had reached its brink. He looked at her brightly, no sign of shamefacedness or sulkiness on him, but would give no further explanation than that he "only wanted to peep in."

"But, Roddy, how could you be so disobedient, dear? And you remember what your mother said this morning?"

"Yes, I remember; but I did not promise. If I had promised, I would not have gone."

"Well, will you promise me, darling?"

But at that he broke away from her and ran toward the house, singing, "Just a little peep-in--just a little peep-in."

She felt more than slightly dispirited. There were three bad nights behind her, and the day had been particularly tiring. Though young and energetic, and with an extraordinary sense of love and responsibility toward these naughty, attractive children, she wondered, for a weary moment, whether she could stand the racket. The work of governessing was new to her. Any work was new to her, and governessing in Africa is as different to governessing in England (which is bad enough) as plowing cultivated land is to opening up virgin soil. But life had unexpectedly laid the burden of work upon Christine Chaine, and having put her hand to the plow, she did not mean to turn back. Only, for once, she was glad when nightfall brought the hour when she could leave her charges for a while in someone else's care.

Once the children were safely in bed, it was Meekie's task to sit beside them until Christine had dined and rested, and chose to come to bed. Meekie belonged to the kraal people, but she had white blood in her, like so many natives, and spoke very good English.

That all the men on the farm should turn up to dinner that evening did not seem to Christine so much a cause for surprise as for contempt. In her short but not too happy experience of life, she had, like a certain great American philosopher, discovered that the game of life is not always "played square" when there is a woman in it. Of course, it was comprehensible that all men liked a good dinner, especially when it was not marred by hymns and long prayers, fervent to the point of fanaticism. Equally, of course, the pretty hostess, with a charming word of welcome for everyone, was an attraction in herself. But, somehow, it sickened the clear heart of Christine Chaine to see this jubilant gathering round a dinner table that was usually deserted, and from which the host had just departed, a sick and broken man. She thought the proceedings more worthy of a lot of heartless schoolboys delighting in a master's absence than of decent, honest men.

And whatever she thought of the Hollanders and colonials, whose traditions were unknown to her, it was certain that her scorn was redoubled for the one man she knew to be of her own cla.s.s and land.

Yet there he sat at the elbow of his hostess, calm and smiling, no whit removed from his usual self-contained and arrogant self. Christine gave him one long look that seemed to turn her violet eyes black; then she looked no more his way. She could not have told why she hated this action in him so bitterly. Perhaps she felt that he was worthy of higher things, but, if questioned, she would probably have laid it at the door of caste and country. All that she knew, for a poignant moment, was an intense longing to strike the smile from his lips with anything to hand--a wine-gla.s.s, a bowl, a knife.

Mercifully, the moment pa.s.sed, and all that most of them saw was a young girl who had come late to dinner--a girl with a rather radiant skin, purply black hair that branched away from her face as though with a life of its own, and violet eyes that, after one swordlike glance all round, were hidden under a line of heavy lashes. The black-velvet dinner gown she wore, simple to austerity, had just a faint rim of tulle at the edges against her skin. Only an artist or connoisseur would have observed the milkiness of that skin and the perfect lines under the sombre velvet. Small wonder that most eyes turned to the lady who tonight took the place of ceremony at the table, and who, as always, was arrayed in the delicate laces and pinkish tints that seemed to call to notice the gold of the hair, the rose of her cheek, and the golden-brown shadows of her eyes.

The little cloud of sadness and loss that hovered over her, yet never descended, was like the rain-cloud that sometimes threatens a June day.

It seemed everyone's business to drive that cloud away, and everyone but Christine applied themselves n.o.bly to the task. At the end of the long dinner, all were so properly employed in this manner that apparently no one noticed the departure of the silent, scornful-lipped governess, and she was able to make her exit without notice or remonstrance.

For a little while she walked up and down in the garden under the rays of a new and early-retiring slip of moon. Then, with a pain at her heart that she had hoped it was for ever out of the power of life to deal her, she retired to the nursery, relieved the coloured nurse from her watch, and went quietly to bed.

For fully an hour afterward she heard the echo of laughter and voices in the front veranda--sometimes the c.h.i.n.k of gla.s.ses. Later, Mrs. van Cannan sang and played waltz-music to them in the drawing-room. At last the men departed, one by one. Mrs. van Cannan was heard calling sharply for her night lemonade and someone to unlace her frock. Next, the servants shuffled softly homeward through the dusk. The old Cape cook, who had quarters somewhere near the kitchen, went the rounds, locking up. The clang of the iron bar falling into its bracket across the great front door echoed through the house. Then all was still.

In the sinister, brooding peace of the desert that ensued, the night noises presently began to make themselves heard.

A cricket somewhere in the house set up a sprightly cheeping. Far, far away, an animal wailed, and a jackal distressfully called to its mate.

Then something laughed terribly--rocking, hollow laughter--it might have been a hyena.

Christine Chaine was a Catholic. She crossed herself in the darkness and softly repeated some of the prayers whose cadences and n.o.ble phrases seem to hold power to hush the soul into peace. She hoped at this time they would hush her mind into sleep, but for a long while many impressions of the day haunted her. Sometimes she saw the twitching shoulders and tormented gaze of a sick man, then the smiling blond-and-pink beauty of a woman. Sometimes a pair of blue eyes, with riddles in them that she would not read, held her; then graves--graves in a long arid line. At last she slept, the sleep of weariness that mercifully falls upon the strong and healthy like a weight, blotting out consciousness.

Then--taps on the shutter, and words:

"_Mind the boy--take care of the boy!_"

They were soft taps and whispered words, but, like the torment of dropping water, they had their effect at last. The girl sat up in bed again, her fingers pressed to her temples, her eyes staring, listening, listening. Yes--they were the same eternal taps and words. With the dull desperation of fatigue, she got out of bed and approached the window.

"Who are you? What are you? Tell me what to do," she said quietly.

In the long silence that followed, there was only one answer--the subtle odour of rottenness stole into the room.

She never knew afterward what possessed her to take the course she did.

Probably if she had not gone to sleep in the strength and peace of prayers, and awakened with the protection of them woven about her, she would have taken no course at all. As it was, she knew she had got to do something to solve the mystery of this warning. It did not occur to her to get out of the window. The right thing seemed to be to make her way very quietly through the house, let herself out by the front door, and come round to the window where the warning thing waited. It would not hurt her, she knew. It was a hateful Thing, but that its intentions were benevolent was a conclusion that had forced itself upon her soul.

Groping for her dressing-gown, she found it and put it on without striking a light. And though she carried a box of matches in her hand, she believed she would not need them, for the way was perfectly simple and well known to her--a long pa.s.sage that led to the dining-room, at one end of which was the great, iron-barred front door.

Her feet and hands found the way quietly, and she reached the front door without incident, but when she felt for the great bar whose strident clanging in its bracket had been a last signal of night within the house, her hand encountered nothing. Wonderingly she slid her fingers up and down the polished oak. At last she realized that the bar hung loose; the door was merely on the latch. Someone beside herself who dwelt within the house had business without its portals that night and was still abroad!

For the first time, the girl's purpose faltered. A slow fear pierced her, and her feet refused to take her farther. The thought flashed into her mind that, if she pa.s.sed the door, she might find herself locked out, with the night--and she knew not what beside.

Even as she stood there hesitating, trying to collect her courage, a sound--the soft tread of a foot on gravel--told her that some other being was close by. There came the same stealthy tread in the porch.

Swiftly she shrank back into the embrasure of one of the long windows, thankful for the green blinds against which her dark dressing-gown would give no sign. With one full sleeve, she shrouded her face. She had suddenly become terribly aware of being nothing but a slight girl in a nightgown and wrap, with bare feet thrust into straw slippers.

She remembered stories she had heard of struggles in the darkness with powerful natives, and her heart turned to water.