Wild Honey Part 2

"Now," said he, speaking roughly and emphatically as if to a child with no intelligence. "What you want is _sleep_. Go and get up into that waggon tent, and _sleep_, do you understand? No use turning in on the ground for we're going to _trek_ in an hour. Get off with you now, and sleep till you burst." His tone was the tone of a born bully, but the girl did not resent it. She climbed on to the waggon-brake as easily as if she had been doing so all her life. A rude, but not unclean mattress surged up to meet her, and she sank into it and slept.

The waggon was moving when she awoke, a delicious slow movement which softly swung the mattress suspended on a wooden frame across the tent, from side to side, and was accompanied by strainings and rumblings, musical creakings as of a s.h.i.+p at sea, but without any of the malaise incidental to s.h.i.+ps, for the level of the mattress was always maintained. When the wheels jolted over stones, Vivienne got no more discomfort of it than a bird snug in its nest. From the horseshoe opening of the tent, she could see a light haze of dust rising perpetually from under the wheels, and through it, the landscape rolling out and retreating in changing panorama. Everything was wonderfully peaceful. Sometimes she could hear far ahead the crack of a whip, and a long-drawn-out native cry; then the waggon would lumber more hurriedly through the dust for a while, only to return to the slow even movement of serenely pacing oxen.

Lying idly against her pillow, she watched the sun fall swiftly behind a kop, and the whole land become suffused with orange-coloured light.

Then the silver-green of bush and tree turned black and kopjes were etched in India ink against the tinted skies.

Her eyes wandered round the tent in which she was lying. There was hardly anything in it except the bed, but from the hoops supporting the canvas various odds and ends of things were hanging; a lantern, a cheap clock, a small tin-bound square of mirror, several coa.r.s.e canvas bags, evidently stuffed with clothes.

"I suppose they belong to the man who found me," she thought, and instantly recalled the coa.r.s.e thick-lipped face, the peculiar sneering way his mouth drew up at one side under the ragged dark moustache, the sharp half-closed eyes. She recalled too his brutal way of speaking to her. No one had ever spoken to Vivienne Carlton in such a fas.h.i.+on, and it had impressed itself on her memory. In fact, it was the only thing that stood out since she knew she had lost herself by the pool. The rest was darkness.

"_Hi! Young fellah_!"

Her memory began from those words! But why "young fellah?" She had understanding now to marvel at such an address. Was it because of her short hair? The idea inspired her to kneel up on the bed and reach for the tin-backed mirror. She peeped in and, at the sight she met there, almost reeled backwards out of the waggon. A face which under dirt and tan was darker than a Hindoo's, scratched cheeks, sunken eyes, lips that were dried and cracked. A mop of short curly hair full of dust and bits of gra.s.s and dried leaves! A neck that was burnt almost black right down to where it met the ragged s.h.i.+rt collar. She could not even be sure that the eyes were her own, so deep were they in her head.

The shock sent her back to her pillow, and she lay there a long time very still. But her mind was clear enough now to realise why the man had mistaken her for a "young fellow." She was a tall, athletic girl whose love of outdoor exercises had conformed her figure to a boyish flexibility and litheness rather than feminine plumpness. Moreover, such superfluous flesh as she had once possessed was now gone. The veld had turned her into a lanky, dirty, hungry-looking lout of a boy. She could not help laughing, but a moment later her face grew stern to consternation. The feeling of safety engendered by being once more in touch with people was dispersing the terror of the veld, but another horror now took its place! Her beauty was gone! The one great wand she possessed, the pivot round which all her plans revolved. It would take months to get back her complexion and contours--if she ever got them back!

She stared at her dark hands, blistered and torn, with black rims to them.

"How awful if this ever gets known!"

So far, the world with all its cruelty and malice had never been able to touch her spotless reputation, or Mrs Grundy heave a brick at her for outraged conventions. But now? If this became known? Lost on the veld! Picked up by a strange man, kept in a waggon, travelling alone with him on the veld! What t.i.t-bits to be rolled round the tongues of her enemies!

"It must never be known," she whispered to herself. "This man must go on believing me a boy. The whole business of my being lost must be kept dark, and I must get back to my world as soon as I can. I wonder if this man is bound for Rhodesia or going down-country!"

Ruefully, she examined her garments. Her riding-breeches and gaiters, though dirty and worn, would last a good while yet, but the soles of her boots were almost gone.

Daylight pa.s.sed, and was superseded by a great white moon that diffused mother-of-pearl light. Hour after hour the waggon rumbled forward, but at last the wheels creaked over gra.s.s and shrub and came to a stop.

There were native cries and shouts, the clatter of falling yokes, the low moo of tired oxen. Then newly lighted fires began to crackle and presently a ravis.h.i.+ng odour of meat grilling over embers came stealing into the waggon tent. A head showed at the opening.

"Well! how d'you feel now, hey?"

"Better, thank you," she answered politely. Her voice was a contralto and quite deep enough to pa.s.s for a boy's.

"Oh! better, thank you, hey?" he rudely mimicked. "Ready for a buck steak, I bet!"

She did not at all like this man's ways and manners, but it seemed politic at this time to disguise her feelings. For one thing, she was horribly hungry. For another, she realised that it was in his power to be intensely disagreeable if she offended him. Just how disagreeable a man with such a mouth could be she did not care to contemplate.

"I am certainly very hungry," she answered quietly.

"Come on down, then. You don't expect me to bring it to you, do you?"

"Of course not!" She made haste to descend, and take her place before the packing-case on which the supper was laid. She thought she had never tasted anything in her life so delicious as that chunk of antelope-steak, gritty with cinders, and flavoured with smoke. At the end of twenty minutes or so, the man remarked:

"Nothing wrong with your appet.i.te, I see, whatever the sun has done to your _kop_."

Vivienne did not know what a _kop_ was, but her guessing powers were unimpaired.

"I'm afraid my behaviour was rather strange when I first met you," she said stiffly. "My excuse must be that I am not accustomed to being lost, and the experience had--er--slightly unbalanced me."

"You were cracked as an over-ripe watermelon," he sneered, "and are still, for all I know." He lounged on his elbow, smoking a pipe of atrocious tobacco.

"At any rate I thank you for your hospitality," said she, longing to box his ears instead.

"Pugh! What I want to know is where you come from and whereabouts you left your party, hey?"

"My party?"

"Yes; the waggons you got lost from."

Something inspired her to leave it at that, and answer quietly:

"Our last stopping-place was Palapye."

"Palapye! Why, that's ten days' _trek_ from here."

"Oh, no," she said. "I was at Palapye three days ago--two days before I lost myself."

"Look here! Have you any idea of the date you got lost on, hey?" She made a rapid calculation.

"But of course, it was the twenty-first of November--yesterday."

"That's all right," he said grimly. "This is the thirtieth." She sat staring at him, lips apart.

"You were lost in the bush nine days, and this is the tenth. I thought as much when I saw you."

"Nine days!" she muttered. "Is it possible!"

Nine days,--alone on the veld--forever unaccounted for!--gone out of her life.

"Yes, nine days," he repeated grimly. "I suppose you got rid of most of your outfit--that's the usual game. I wonder you have on anything at all."

She wondered too, remembering the tales she had heard of lost people and thanked G.o.d for the unconscious feminine modesty that had remained to her even in madness and panic--restraining her from that last horror! A warmth crept into her face, but fortunately through the darkness of her skin the man could see nothing though he was studying her keenly.

"I had a camera--and a hat and coat," she muttered, trying to remember.

"_Ach_! Shut thinking about it or you'll go off your top again." She bit her lip at his rude tone, but it at least had the effect of bracing her.

"Where were you bound for, hey?"

"Buluwayo."

"Oh, indeed! We may run into your party then, for I'm bound there too."

She knew that the coach from which she was lost must have reached Buluwayo long ago, even if they had delayed a day or two looking for her. But she did not say so. The hatefulness of the man made her wish to keep up as long as possible the fiction of friends close at hand.

"What's your name?" was the next question. She told him, "Carlton," and he repeated it contemptuously.