Wild Honey Part 22

No game was ever yet worth a rap.

For a rational man to play; Into which no accident or mishap Could possibly find a way.

It was on the evening of the following day that he came upon the convoy of waggons outspanned a few miles beyond Christmas Pa.s.s--a romantic spot with a backing of velvet mountains, a foreground of rolling plain, and a three-quarter moon like a crushed pearl hanging over all. Evening fires were alight, there was clank of pan and pannikin, and pleasant savoury odours pervaded the air. Little groups of men lay upon the ground--many of them had tramped all day and were weary. Women were unpacking provision baskets and children pranced happily about the fires.

In all, about forty people were travelling together down to the coast with the idea of getting away for a time from a country which during the last year had suffered the double mischance of war and cattle pest.

Some of the travellers were ruined farmers, others were miners whose machinery and property had been destroyed by the natives. There were men too, who, having been wounded in the fighting, were going down to Durban or the Cape to recruit. Several families were leaving the country altogether, disheartened by the disasters they had suffered.

The war was over, but on account of the existing danger of small parties being attacked by still revengeful natives, the Government had placed this convoy of waggons, with drivers and boys at the disposal of such people as were anxious to get away. The regular mail service not yet having been resumed, Bettington, in a great hurry to reach Johannesburg, had been thankful, like many another, to avail himself of this opportunity to get down-country.

He picked his way through the camp, stopping only to inquire as to the whereabouts of his boy and McKinnon's waggon; greeting an acquaintance or two; and refusing a pressing invitation to sup at the waggon of the "wounded bunch," one of whom, an American surgeon on crutches with a bullet lodged in his hip bone, was a very good friend of his.

Bettington had not joined any mess coming down from Salisbury, for he was a fellow of moods and tenses, and constant companions.h.i.+p bored him.

Times were when he liked his society high, and times were when he preferred it low, but always he chose to seek and cull it for himself, and for that which was thrust upon him he had no use. He rather estranged people by giving the impression that he believed the world made for the special benefit of Bettington, and nothing in it quite too good for Bettington; but this arrogance of character was more a.s.sumed than real; for he had discovered that it rid him of society he did not need, and insured him against intrusion when he wanted to work, or in those dark hours which came to him as to the most self-satisfied of us when he was face to face with the fact that Bettington was no very great chalks after all, and not within a thousand miles of the fine fellow he set out to be originally.

It cannot be pretended, however, that he was suffering from any such mood at this time. Quite the reverse. A man who has potted his lion overnight owns a little secret fountain of vainglory to drink at that will keep him from being thirsty for some time.

He was hungry, however, and hot, and slightly footsore, for he had handed over his borrowed horse to Randal's messenger and thereafter tramped some miles of bad road with the thermometer at something over a hundred and ten.

As he approached his waggon, he became aware of a woman's slight graceful figure sitting on a box not far off, with a little child playing at her knees. Her profile etched against the firelight, was one which, though he had only seen it once, he very well remembered. From the shadows came forth his servant, a meek-eyed Makalika scoundrel, anxious to see how his baas would take the information that a lady and her "bebe" were in part possession of his waggon.

"_That's_ all right, Bat," said Bettington trying to keep an inflection of n.o.bility out of his voice. "Camp my things out under that tree over there, and get me a towel. Which way is the river?" (No outspan is ever very far away from a river.)

"Just over there, my baas."

"Have my supper ready when I come back. I suppose you got some fresh meat and bread in the town?"

"No, my baas," was the modest reply.

"What? The d.i.c.kens take you--"

"I didn't know when my baas would be back, my baas."

"Oh! Hel--p! Get out some bully beef then, you--you idiot!"

Bettington gulped down worse things, wondering gloomily how he was going to suppress the expression of his real opinion of Bat during the rest of the journey, for the boy was a most particular fool and the bane of his life.

Moreover, on returning from his dip with the appet.i.te of a wolf gnawing his vitals, he found that though his blankets had been perfunctorily unrolled under the specified tree, of supper there was no sign. His box of provisions had not been got off the waggon, and there was not so much as a tin of bully in sight!

"Bat!--you--you _bat_!" he roared in a terrible voice. But Bat was _non est_. Wise for once, he had melted away into the night.

"Of all the miserable!" Bettington was obliged to put his pipe into his mouth and bite on that. Bitterly he thought of that invitation to supper recently refused and by now probably a dead letter.

"My Inkosisan wants to speak to the baas," a voice so gentle and modest that it might have been Bat's own, spoke at his elbow. It was in fact another of the afflicted Makalika race who stood waving an apologetic hand in the direction of the lady by the waggon. As Bettington moved towards her, she rose from her box and addressed him in a charming but distressed voice.

"I can't tell you how awfully sorry I am, but it appears that I have got your box of provisions."

"Don't mention it," said Bettington, mechanically polite.

"Mine has evidently been put on to some other waggon by mistake, and I was actually just about to eat your things for my supper." She motioned to where on another packing-case set out with white enamel plates some slices of bully beef had been arranged with a tomato salad.

She looked young and slight in the firelight, and her hair was bronzier than ever. Bettington put on his most velvety manners.

"And I hope you still will. I'm delighted that the things have been of any use, though I'm afraid the box contains only the most ordinary kind of junk."

"Not at all--it is full of good things. I had my lunch and breakfast out of it to-day--it never occurred to me for a moment until I heard your boy questioning mine about your box--then I casually glanced at the lid--and to my horror, the name Bettington!"

"I am sorry my name should so unpleasantly inspire you," he deplored.

"Oh, of course--I didn't mean--I--"

"The only possible amends I can make is to go at once and look for your box while you finish your supper."

"Oh, but I couldn't--I am so ashamed. First, it appears, I deprive you of your tent--and now of your food."

"I a.s.sure you I have never used the tent in my life. I always prefer to sleep out in the open. As for the food, it makes no odds at all, please believe me."

"But your boy ran away when he could not find your box. You will have no supper!--You _must_ share mine," she proffered shyly. He gave a surrept.i.tious glance at the wafery slices of beef and tomatoes, then answered with alacrity:

"Not at all, not at all. I wasn't going to have any supper anyway.

I'm--I'm not hungry."

He had in fact decided that this was no time to put on exhibition the wolf that raged within him. And his manners being persuasive as well as pretty, he eventually convinced the lady of his sincerity, and she sat down to finish her supper alone while he departed with the air of a man with a mission--which was exactly what he was.

Straight as a homing pigeon he headed for the waggon of the wounded warriors. Most of them had already turned in, but the American surgeon, resting near the remains of a good meal, hailed him blithely:

"Hullo, Bet!"

"For the love of Michael Angelo give me a drink, and a wedge of bread and bully," said the hapless Bet. "And send your animal of a Makalika to search every waggon until he finds Mrs Stannard's box of provisions.

When found, deliver to me."

Later, his inner man replenished, he returned to McKinnon's waggon with the air of a conqueror and the recovered box of provisions.

"Well! we've got it, Mrs Stannard!"

She looked up at him with such surprise that he wondered at first whether she had never expected to see it again. Then the truth occurred to him.

"I beg your pardon. But I was in Randal and Hallam's the day you came in to do your shopping. You wouldn't of course have noticed me," (the expectant pause he made here was almost imperceptible), "but I was impertinent enough to inquire your name."

"And you recognised me again?"

"There are some faces one never forgets," he said quietly, but effectively. Looking up into his eyes, she saw there something which she had seen in the eyes of men before that night; and which always roused in her a longing to rub their noses in the dust.

"Let us hope they are not all crowned with hats," she said laughingly.

"Memory might be over-crowded."

He was delighted with her. To be witty as well as pretty! That made the game worth the heat and toil of the chase! Thus they stood, the rose-lights from the fires about them, the great crushed pearl above them; taking each other's measure, marking down each other's weaknesses, and each secretly registering a vow to the other's undoing. But they parted with the pleasant conventional phrases under which both good and bad intentions are so subtly concealed.

She breakfasted within sight the next morning, but he did not go near her, being content after having exchanged a morning greeting, to sit under his tree and reflect upon the ten good days to come. She made a charming picture in her dark short skirt, white blouse, and the rather rakish Panama he remembered so well as a feature of their first encounter in Randal's _winkel_. She had brightened up wonderfully since then, he thought. Perhaps the relief of leaving all her domestic troubles behind her had something to do with it, but certainly disillusion had done no harm to her complexion so far, nor worry spoiled the fine line of her cheek and chin. Her looks had an edge to them that appealed to the connoisseur in him. It was not so much that she was pretty, as that she had good lines and that her clear pallor, the tilt of her head, and her dainty walk, carried an air of race and insolence with them; both things that meant something to a man like Bettington who admired the quality of insolence in women almost more than anything-- probably because he knew how unworthy he was of anything but their insolent toleration.