Blue Aloes Part 37

It was all very subtle. Sarle never suspected what was going on, so cool and sweet she looked under her shady hat, so unfailing was her composure. He was accustomed to the dry and biting flavour of Kenna's speech, and paid no great heed to it. He believed himself listening to the witty reminiscences of two people with many friends and interests in common, and nothing in the girl's manner as she lied and fenced and swiftly covered up mistakes with jests and laughter betrayed the agony of baiting she was enduring. Kenna was a friend he would have trusted with everything he had in the world; but he was aware of a twist in that friend's nature which made him look at women with sardonic eyes.

It had not always been so. Some woman had given that cruel twist to a loyal and trusting nature; some loved hand had dealt the wound that festered in Ronald Kenna's heart; and Sarle, because he guessed this, forgave his friend much. But he would never have forgiven had he known what was pa.s.sing there under his very eyes. The woman he loved was on the rack, and he never guessed it because she smiled instead of crying out.

And it was all to suffer again that evening. April knew that, as she dressed herself carefully for dinner. There was no mistaking Kenna's pressing request that they should be allowed to come to her table.

Sarle had not had time to ask for himself alone. Kenna had forestalled him, and there was double craft in the action: he meant to keep his eye, or rather his claw, on her, while preventing her from being alone with Sarle. If she was in the fray to protect Sarle from the pain of finding her out, he was in it to protect Sarle from her. The situation might have been funny if it had not been grim. She could have laughed at it but for her fear of Kenna, but for an old man's pain and misery, but that the whole miserable structure of deceit rested on a girl's drowned body.

She put on a black gown. It seemed only fitting to absent herself awhile from the felicity of colour. Besides, all her joy in clothes had gone. How gladly would she now have donned her own shabby garments, if with them could have returned the old peace of mind! But even the plain little demi-toilette of black chiffon was peerlessly cut, and her whiteness glowed like a pearl through its filmy darkness.

There was no way of dressing her hair that would hide the white feather on her forehead, and after trying once or twice she left it. It looked very remarkable, that touch of age above her young, flower-like face.

She could not altogether hate it, for it was a scar won bravely enough, and in desperate battle. Africa had not taken long to put its mark on her!

The men were waiting for her in the lounge; Sarle looking radiantly happy because he was sure of the society of the two people he cared for most in the world; Kenna with a fresh device to try her composure.

"I want to see if you can remember the ingredients of that c.o.c.ktail I introduced to you at the 'Carlton' on a certain memorable evening when we escaped from Aunt Grizel," he said gaily. She looked at him reflectively. "As I've just been telling Sarle, you learned the recipe by heart, and swore that from henceforth you would use no other."

"Ah, yes," she drawled slowly. "But you take no account of time and my 'Winter-garment of Repentance.' I am a very different girl to the one you knew two years ago."

"I realize that, of course." He grinned with delight at her point. It seemed to him possible that the evening might be even more entertaining than the afternoon.

"_This_ girl never drinks c.o.c.ktails," she finished quaintly, and he liked her more and more.

Many glances followed them as they pa.s.sed down the long room, full of rose-shaded candles and the heavy scent of flowers. Pretty women are not scarce in Cape Town, especially at the season when all Johannesburg crowds to the sea, but there was a haunting, almost tragic loveliness about April that night that set her apart from the other women, and drew every eye. Sarle felt his pulses thrill with the pride that stirs every man when the seal of public admiration is set upon the woman he loves. As he looked at her across the table he suddenly recalled some little verses he had found scrawled in Kenna's writing on an old book once when they were away together on the veld:

My love she is a lady fair, A lady fair and fine; She is to eat the rarest meat And drink the reddest wine.

Her jewelled foot shall tread the ground Like a feather on the air; Oh! and brighter than the sunset The frocks my love shall wear!

If she be loyal men shall know What beauty gilds my pride; If she be false the more glad I, For the world is always wide.

Poor Kenna! She had been false: that was why he had sought the wide world of the veld and renounced women. Sarle, certain of the innate truth and loyalty of the girl opposite him as of her pearl-like outer beauty, could pity his friend's fate from the bottom of his soul. But being a man, he did not linger too long with pity; hope is always a pleasanter companion, and hope was burning in him like a blue flame: the hope that within an hour or two he would hold this radiant girl in his arms and touch her lips. He thought of the garden outside, full of shadows and scented starlight, and looking at the curve of her lips, his eyes darkened, and strange bells rang in his ears. She had eluded him for many nights, although she knew he loved her. He had kissed her fingers and the palm of her hand, but tonight out in the starlit garden he meant to kiss her lips. The resolve was iron in him. He hardly heard what the other two were saying. He was living in a world of his own. April, weary of Kenna's cruel heckling, turned to him for a moment's relief, and what she saw in his eyes was wine and oil for her weariness, but it made her afraid, not only because of the perilous longing in her to give him all he asked, but because Kenna sat alert as a lynx for even a smile she might cast that way. It was very certain that no opportunity would be given them for being a moment together; and divining something of Sarle's resolute temper, she could not help miserably wondering what would happen when it came to a tussle of will between the two men.

However, even the careful plans of first-cla.s.s lynxes go awry sometimes. A waiter came to the table to say that Kenna was wanted on the telephone.

"Tell them I'm engaged," was the curt answer.

"It's his Honour Judge Byng, sir," said the waiter in an awed manner, "and I have already told him you were at dinner. He says it is most important."

Kenna glared at the man, then at his companions. The latter appeared placidly indifferent. April sipped her wine, and her eyes roamed round the room whilst she exchanged idle talk with Sarle. But the moment Kenna's back was turned indifference fell from them; they looked at each other eagerly like two school-children in a hurry to take advantage of the teacher's absence.

"Darn him!" muttered Sarle. "I wish Byng would keep him all night."

"He will be back directly," she said breathlessly. Sarle glanced at the plates. They were only at the fish.

"He's got to finish his dinner, I suppose," he said grudgingly. "But can't we escape afterwards? I want to show you the garden."

"He's sure to stay with us," she answered tragically.

"Oh--but to Halifax with him!" began Sarle.

"I know, but we mustn't offend him," she implored hastily. "He . . .

he's such a good fellow."

"Of course I realize he is an old friend of yours, and likes to be with you, and all that," Sarle conceded. "But so do I. I want to show you the garden . . . by myself." He looked pleadingly and intently into her eyes until her lids fell and a soft flush suffused her cheeks. His glance drank in every detail of her fresh, sweet beauty.

"What's that funny little patch of white on your hair?" he asked suddenly. "I have been puzzling about it all the evening. Is it a new fas.h.i.+on?" She shook her head.

"He's coming back." From where she sat she could see Kenna the moment he entered the room.

"Promise you will come to the garden," he urged.

"Yes," she said softly.

"No matter how long it takes to get rid of him?"

"Yes."

"Even if we have to pretend to say good-night? . . . I shall be waiting for you . . . you'll come?" She nodded; there was no time for more. Kenna was upon them, very cross at having his dinner interrupted, and with an eye c.o.c.ked searchingly upon April. But neither she nor Sarle gave any sign of what had pa.s.sed.

Later, when they were round their coffee in the lounge, the hall-porter brought her some letters on a salver. She saw Kenna looking at her satirically as she examined the superscriptions. All were addressed to Lady Diana Vernilands, and the problem of what she was to do about letters was one not yet considered.

"Don't let me keep you from your interesting correspondence," he remarked, and April started, to find that they were alone. Sarle had gone across to Leon to get some cigars.

"Oh, there's nothing that can't wait," she said hastily, and pushed them into her hand-bag.

"I agree"--he a.s.sumed a bright, conversational air--"that some things are even more interesting for being waited for; the explanation of your conduct, for instance!"

She looked at him steadily, though her heart was beating rapidly, for this moment had come upon her with sudden unexpectedness.

"You appear to suffer from curiosity?"

"Don't call it suffering." His tone was suave. "I am enjoying myself immensely."

"I shall try not to do anything to interfere with your amus.e.m.e.nt," she remarked, after a pause.

"That will be kind. The situation piques me. I should like to watch it to a finish without contributing to the _denouement_; unless"--he looked at her significantly--"I am obliged to."

"I cannot believe anything or any one could oblige you to be disagreeable, Sir Ronald," she jeered softly. He meditated with an air of gravity.

"There _are_ one or two things, though; friends.h.i.+p, for instance--I would do quite disagreeable things for the sake of a friend." She was silent.

"I might even vex a woman I admire as much as I do you, to save a friend from disaster."

Thus they sparred, the attention of each fixed on Sarle, so gay and debonair, buying cigars within a stone's throw of them. Having finished with Leon, he attempted to rejoin them, but the lounge was crowded, and at every few steps some old friend entangled him.

"There is nothing much to admire about me." In spite of herself a note of desolation crept into her voice. Kenna looked at her in surprise.

This was a new side to the adventuress!

"_Au contraire_. Apart from the inestimable gifts of youth and beauty the G.o.ds have bestowed, you possess a quality that would draw admiration from the most unwilling--courage."

She bowed mockingly. Sarle was escaping from his many friends at last and returning. Kenna rapped out what he had to say sharply, though his voice was low.