Part 13

"Then--" he rose, and in another pair of moments Margaret was outside the study door in the hall, where Mrs. Jakes, affecting to be concerned in the arrangement of the furniture, examined her in sidelong glances, to know whether she had used the weapon which the doctor's adventure had put into her hand. Apparently there was no convincing her that the girl's intentions were not hostile.

It did not simplify life for Margaret, this enmity of Mrs. Jakes. Lunch and breakfast under her pale, implacable eye, that glided upon everything but skipped Margaret with a noticeable avoidance, had become ordeals to be approached with trepidation. Talk, when there was anything to talk about, died still-born in that atmosphere of lofty displeasure. It was done with a certain deftness; Mrs. Jakes was incapable of anything crude or downright; and when it was necessary, in order that the state of affairs should not be conspicuous, she could smile towards the wall at the girl's back and spare her an empty word or so, in a way that was sometimes as galling as much more dexterous snubs that Margaret had seen administered. One can "field" a snub that conveys its purpose in its phrasing and return it with effect to the wicket; but there is nothing to be done with the bare word that just stops a gap from becoming noticeable.

Ford was waiting outside the front door when Margaret came out after exercising the virtue of forbearance throughout a meal for which she had had no appetite.

"What 's the row with Mrs. Jakes?" he asked, without wasting words on preamble.

"Oh, nothing," answered Margaret crossly. "You 'd better ask her if you want to know. I 'm not going to tell you anything."

"Well, don't, then. But you couldn't arrange a truce for meal-times, could you? It turns things sour--the way you two avoid looking at each other."

"I don't care," said Margaret. "It 's not my fault. I 've been as loyal as anybody--more loyal, I think, and certainly more helpful. I 've done simply everything she asked of me, and now she 's like this."

Ford gave her a whimsical look of question.

"Sure you haven't at some time done more than she asked you?" he inquired.

"Why?" Margaret was surprised. She laughed unwillingly. "Is it shrewdness or have you heard something?"

"I haven't heard a word," he assured her. "But is that it?"

"It 's just your natural cleverness, then? Wonderful," said Margaret. "You ought to go on the stage, really. Yes, that 's what it is--I suppose. And now d'you think she 'll see the reasonable view of it? Not she! I 'm a villain in skirts and if I won't stand it, she 'll ask the doctor to recommend a Sanatorium where I can be more comfortable. And just at this moment, I don't think I can stand much more of it."

"Eh?" Ford scowled disapprovingly. "That 's a rotten thing to say. You don't feel inclined to tell me about it?"

"I can't; I mustn't. That 's the worst of it," answered Margaret. "I can't tell you anything."

"At any rate," said Ford, "don't take it into your head to go away. This won't do you any harm in the end. You weren't thinking of it seriously, were you?"

"Wasn't I? I was, though. I hate all this."

Ford took a couple of steps toward the door and a couple back.

"It won't weigh with you," he said, "but I 'd be sorry if you went. _I_ would, personally--awfully sorry. But if you must go, you must. It 's a thing you can judge for yourself. Still, I 'd be sorry."

Margaret shrugged impatiently.

"Oh, I 'd be sorry, too. It 's been jolly, in a way, with you here, and all that. I 'd miss you, if you want to know. But--"

She stopped. Ford was looking at her very gravely.

"Don't go," he said, and put his thin, sun-browned hand upon her shoulder. "It 'll make things simpler for me if you say you won't. Things will arrange themselves, but even if they don't--don't go away."

"Simpler? How do you mean?"

"Just that," he answered. "If you stay, here we are--friends. We help each other out and talk and see each other and have time before us and there 's no need to say anything. And it's because a lunger like me must n't say anything till he sees whether he 's going to get well or--or stay here forever, that it 'll be simpler if you don't go. Do you see?"

His hand upon her shoulder was pleasant to feel; she liked the freedom he took--and gave--in resting it there; and his young, serious face, touched to delicacy by the disease that governed him, was patient and wise.

"It 's not because of that _that_ you mustn't say anything," she answered. "I did n't know--you 've given me no warning. What can I say?"

"Say you won't go," he begged. "Say you won't act on any decision you 've made at present. And then we can go on--me lecturing you, and you flouting me, till--till I can say things--till I 'm free to say what I like to anybody."

She smiled rather nervously. "If I agree now," she answered, "it will look as if--" she paused; the thing was difficult to put in its nicety. But he was quick in the uptake.

"It won't," he said. "I 'm not such a bounder as that."

"But I 'd rather be here than take my chance among other people," she went on. "I suppose I can stand Mrs. Jakes if I give my mind to it, particularly if you 'll see me through."

"I 'll do what I can," he promised. "You 'll do it, then? You'll stay?"

"I suppose so," said Margaret. His hand for a moment was heavier on her shoulder; she felt as though she had been slapped on the back, with the unceremoniousness of a good friend; and then he loosed her.

"Good of you," he answered shortly.

Both were weighted by the handicap of their race; they had been, as it were, trapped into a certain depth of emotion and self-revelation, and both found a difficulty in stepping down again to the safe levels of commonplace intercourse. Ford shoved both hands into his pockets and half-turned from her.

"Well--doing anything this afternoon?" he inquired in his tersest manner.

"Yes," said Margaret, whom the position could amuse.

"What?"

"Oh--going yachting," she retorted.

He sniffed and nodded. "I 'm going to paint," he announced. "So long."

Margaret smiled at his back as he went, and its extravagant slouch of indifference and ease. She knew he would not look round; once his mood was defined, it was reliable entirely; but she felt she would have forgiven him if he had. The last word in such a matter as this is always capable of expansion, and probably some such notion was in the mind of the oracle who first pronounced that to women the last word is dear.

He was still at his easel when she set forth to keep her appointment under the dam wall, working on his helpless canvas with an intensity that spared not a look as she went by on the parched grass below the stoep. It was a low easel, and he sat on a stool and spread his legs to each side of it, like a fighter crouched over an adversary, and his thumb was busy smudging among masses of pigment. Margaret could see the canvas as a faintly shining insurrection of colors which suggested that he had broken an egg upon it. A score of times in the past weeks those cryptic messes had irritated her or showed themselves as a weakness in their author. The domineering thumb and the shock tactics of the palette knife had supplied her with themes for ridicule, and the fact that the creature could not paint and yet would paint and refused all instruction had put the seal of bitterness on many a day of weary irritation. But suddenly his incompetence and his industry, and even the unlovely fruit of their union--the canvases that he signed large with his name and hung unframed upon the walls of his room--were endearing; they were laughable only as a little child is laughable, things to smile at and to prize.

Her smiling and thoughtful mood went with her across the grass and dust and around the curved shoulder of the dam wall, where Kamis, obedient to Paul's signal, sat in the shade and awaited her. At her coming he sprang up eagerly with his face alight. His tweed clothes were, if anything, shabbier than before, but it seemed that no usage could subdue them to congruity with the broad black face and its liberal smile.

"This is great luck," he said. "I half expected you 'd find it too hot for you. Are you all right again after that night?"

Margaret seated herself on the slope of the wall and rested with one elbow on the freshness of its water-fed grass.

"Quite all right," she assured him. "Dr. Jakes has done everything that needed to be done. But I didn't thank you half enough for what you did."

He smiled and murmured deprecatingly and found himself a place to sit on at the foot of the wall, with legs crossed and his back to the sun. Leaning forward a little in this posture, with his drooping hat-brim shadowing him, it was almost possible for Margaret to avoid seeing the blunt negro features for which she had come to feel something akin to dread; they affected her in the same way that darkness with people moving in it will affect some children.

"I saw Paul's signal," said Kamis. "We have an understanding, you know. He hangs a handkerchief in his window when he wants me and when you want me he hangs two. It shows as far as one can see the window; all the others are just black squares, and his has a white dash in it. That 's rather how I see Paul, you know. Other people are just blanks, but he means something--to me, at any rate. By the way, before I forget--did you want me for anything in particular?"

Margaret shook her head. "I wanted to talk," she said; "and to make that police matter clear to you."

"Oh, that." He looked up. "Thank you."

"Do you know of a Mr. Van Zyl, a police-officer?" she asked him. "He thinks you are guilty of sedition among the natives. I suppose it 's nonsense, but he means to arrest you, and I thought you 'd better know."

"It 's awfully good of you to bother about it," he answered. "I 'll take care he doesn't lay hands on me. But it is nonsense, certainly, and anybody but he would know it. He 's been scouring the kraals in the south for me and giving the natives a tremendous idea of my importance. They were nervous enough of me before, but now--"

He shrugged his shoulders disgustedly, but still smiled.

"That is what he said--they 're uneasy," agreed Margaret. "But why are they? You see, I know scarcely more of you than Mr. Van Zyl. What is it that troubles them about you?"

"Oh," the Kafir deliberated. "It's simple enough, really. You see," he explained, "the fact is, I 'm out of order. I don't belong in the scheme of things as the natives and Mr. Van Zyl know it. These Kafirs are the most confirmed conservatives in the world, and when they see a man like themselves who can't exist without clothes and a roof to sleep under, who can't walk without boots or talk their language and is unaccountable generally, they smell witchcraft at once. Besides, it has got about that I 'm Kamis, and they know very well that Kamis was hanged about twenty years ago and his son taken away and eaten by the soldiers. So it's pretty plain to them that something is wrong somewhere. Do you see?"

"Still"--Margaret was thoughtful--"Mr. Van Zyl is n't an ignorant savage."

"No," agreed Kamis. "He isn't that. For dealing with Kafirs, he 's probably the best man you could find; the natives trust him and depend on him and when they 're in trouble they go to him and he gives them the help they want. When they misbehave, he 's on hand to deal with them in the fashion they understand and probably prefer. And the reason is, Miss Harding--the reason is, he 's got a Kafir mind. He was born among them and nursed by them; he speaks as a Kafir, understands as a Kafir and thinks as a Kafir, and he 'll never become a European and put away Kafir things. They 've made him, and at the best he 's an ambassador for the Kafirs among the whites. That 's how they master their masters. Oh, they 've got power, the Kafirs have, and a better power than their hocus-pocus of witchcraft."

The afternoon was stored with the day's accumulated heat and the cool of the grass beneath and the freshness of the water, out of sight beyond the wall but diffusing itself like an odor in the air, combined to contrast the spot in which they talked with the dazed sun-beaten land about them and gave to both a sense of privacy and isolation. The Kafir's words stirred a fresh curiosity in Margaret.

"He thinks you are making the natives dangerous," she said. "I don't believe that, of course, but what are you doing?"

"What am I doing?"

The black face was lifted to hers steadily and regarded her for a space of moments without replying. Nothing mild or subtle could find expression in its rude shaping of feature; the taciturnity of the Karoo itself governed it.

"What am I doing?" repeated Kamis. He dropped his eyes and his hands plucked at the grass absently. "Well, I 'm looking for a life for myself."

Margaret waited for him to continue but he was silent, plucking the grass shoots and shredding them in his fingers.

"A life," she prompted. "Yes; tell me."

Kamis finished with the grass in his hand and threw it with an abrupt gesture from him.

"I 'll tell you if you like," he said, as though suppressing a feeling of reluctance. "It isn't anything wonderful; still--. You know already how I began; Paul told me how you learnt that; and you can see where I 've got to with my education and my degree and my profession and all that. I 'm back where I came from, and besides what I 've learned, I 've got a burden of civilized habits and weaknesses that keep me tied by the leg. I need friendship and company and equality with people about me, just as you do, and I 'm apt to find myself rather forlorn and lost without them. In England, I had those things--I had some of them, at any rate; but what was there for a black doctor to do, do you think, among all those people who look on even a white foreigner as rather a curiosity?"

"Wasn't there anything?" Margaret was watching the nervous play of his gesticulating hands, so oddly emphasizing his pleasant English voice.

"Nothing worth while. That 's another of my troubles, you see. They taught me and trimmed me till I could n't be content with occasional niggers at the docks suffering from belaying-pin on the brain. It was n't odd jobs I wanted, handed over to me to keep me happy; I wanted work. We niggers, we 're a strong lot and we can stand a deal of wear and tear, but we don't improve by standing idle. I wanted to come out of that glass case they kept me in, with tutors and an allowance from the Government and an official guardian and all that sort of thing, and make myself useful."

He paused. "You understand that, don't you?" he asked.

"Of course I do," replied Margaret. "If I could only come out too! But I 've got all those weaknesses of yours and this as well." Her hand rested on her chest and he nodded.

"You 're different," he said. "You must n't be worn and torn."

"Well, so you came out here?"

"It 's my country," he answered, and waved a hand at its barrenness. "It was my father's, a good deal of it, in another sense too. When I saw that living in England wasn't going to lead to anything, I thought of this. Somebody ought to doctor the poor beggars who live here and give them a lead towards a more comfortable existence, and I hoped I was the man to do it. I must have relations among them, too; that 's queer, is n't it? Aunts--my father had lots of wives--and lashings of cousins. I thought the steamer was bringing me out to them and I had a great idea of a welcome and all that; but I 'm no nearer it now than I was when I started. If ever I seem too grateful to you for your acquaintance, Miss Harding--if I seem too humble to be pleasant when I thank you for letting me talk to you--just remember I know that over there my poor black aunts are slaving like cattle and my uncles are driving them, and when I come they dodge among the huts and maneuver to get behind me with a club."

"No," answered Margaret slowly. "I 'll remind you instead of all you 're doing while I do nothing."

He shook his head. "I know what you do to me," he said. "And I can't let you pity me. It was n't for want of warnings I came out here. I even had a letter from the Colonial Secretary. And I must tell you about the remonstrances of my guardian."

He laughed, with one of those quick transitions of mood which characterize the negro temperament. It jarred a little on Margaret.

"He was the dearest old thing," he went on. "He 's one of the greatest living authorities on the Bantu tongues--those are the real old negro languages, I believe--and he was out here once in his wild youth. The Colonial Office appointed him to take charge of me and he used to come down to the schools where I was and give me a sovereign. He 'd have made a capital uncle. He had a face like a beefy rose, one of those big flabby ones that tumble to pieces when you pick them--all pink and round and clean, with kind, silly blue eyes behind gold spectacles. I had to get his consent before I could move, and I went to see him in a little room at the British and Foreign Bible Society's place in Queen Victoria Street, where they grow the rarer kinds of Bible under glass in holes in the wall; you know. He was correcting the proofs of a gospel in some Central African dialect and he had smudges of ink round his mouth. Sucking the wrong end of the pen, I suppose. He really was rather like a comic-paper professor, but as kind as could be. I sat down in the chair opposite to him, with the desk between us, and he heard what I 'd got to say, wiping his pen and sucking it while I told him. I fancy I began by being eloquent, but I soon stopped that. He 's good form to the finger-tips and he looked so pained. So I cut it short and told him what I wanted to do and why. And when I 'd finished, he gave me a solemn warning. I must do what seemed right to me, he said; he wouldn't take the responsibility of standing in my way; but there were grave dangers. He had known young men, promising young men, talented young men--all negroes, of course--who had returned to Africa after imbibing and accepting the principles of our civilization. They, it was true, were West Africans, but my danger was the same. They had left England in clothes, with a provision of soap in their trunks, and the result of their return to their own place was--they had lapsed! They had discontinued the clothes and forsworn the soap. 'One of them,' he said, 'presented a particularly sad example. He whom we had known and respected as David Livingstone Smith became the leader of a faction or party whose activities necessitated the despatch of a punitive expedition. Under a name which, being interpreted, signifies "The Scornful," he presided over the defeat and massacre of that armed force.' And he went on warning me against becoming an independent monarch and forcing an alliance on Great Britain by means of an ingenious war. He seemed relieved when I assured him that I had no ambition to sit in the seat of the Scornful."

He laughed again, looking up at Margaret with his white teeth flashing broadly.

"Yes," she said. "That was--funny."

Odd! It made her vaguely restive to hear the Kafir make play with the shortcomings of the white man. It touched a fund of compunction whose existence she had not suspected. Something racial in her composition, something partizan and unreasoning, lifted its obliterated head from the grave in which her training and the conscious leanings of her mind had buried it.

He had no thoughts of what it was that kept her from returning his smile. He imagined that his mission, his loneliness and his danger had touched her and made her grave.

"Well, you see how it all came about?" he went on. "It isn't really so extraordinary, is it? And I 'm not discouraged, Miss Harding. I shall find a way, sooner or later; they 're bound to get used to me in the end. In the meantime, Paul is teaching me Kafir, and there 's you. You make up to me for a lot."

"Do I?" Margaret roused herself and sat up, deliberately thrusting down out of her consciousness that instinctive element which bade her do injustice and withhold from the man before her his due of acknowledgment.

"Do I?" she said. "I 'd be glad if that were so."

He made to speak but stopped at her gesture.

"No," she said. "I _would_ be glad. It 's a wonderfully great thing you 've started to do, and you 're lucky to have it. You feel that, don't you?"

"Yes," he said thoughtfully. "Oh, yes."

She eyed him with a moment's hesitation, for he had not agreed with any alacrity, and a martyr who regards his stake with aversion is always disappointing.

"Oh, you 're sure to succeed," she said. "People who undertake things like this don't fail. And if, as you say, I 'm any kind of help to you, I 'm glad. I 'm awfully glad of it. It makes coming out here worth while, and I shall always be proud that I was your friend."

"Will you? Does it strike you like that?"

"Yes," said Margaret.

She was above him on the bank and he sat on the ground with his head at the level of her knees. His worn and shabby clothes, the patience of his face, and even the hands that lay empty in his lap, joined with his lowly posture to give him an aspect of humility. He was like a man acclimatized to oppression and ill fortune, accepting in a mild acquiescence, without question and without hope, the wrongs of a tyrannous destiny.

"I shall be proud," she repeated. "Always." She held forth her hand to him in token of that friendship, leaning down that he might take.

He did not do so at once. His eyes flashed to her with a startled glance, and he seemed at a loss. He lifted himself to his knees and put his own hand, large and fine for all the warm black of the back of it, the hand of a physician, refined to nice uses, under hers without clasping it. His movement had some of the timidity and slavishness of a dog unused to caresses; a dumb-brute gratitude was in his regard. He bent his black head humbly and printed a kiss upon her slender fingers.

It was a thing that exhausted the situation; Margaret, a little breathless and more than a little moved, met his gaze as he rose with a smile that was not clear of embarrassment. Neither knew what to say next; the kiss upon her hand had transformed their privacy into secrecy.

"My love is like a black, black rose."

It sounded above them, from the top of the dam wall, an outrageous bellow of melody that thrust itself obscenely between them and split them asunder with the riving force of a thunderbolt. Intolerably startled by the suddenness of it, Margaret nearly fell down the slope, and saving herself with her hands turned her face, whitened by the shock, towards the source of the noise. Another face met hers, parting the long grasses on the crown of the wall.

Her amazed and ambushed faculties saw it as a face only. It was attached to no visible body, solitarily self-sufficient in an unworthy miracle. It did not occur to her that the owner of it must be lying on his belly at the water's edge, and for the moment she was not equal to deducing that he must have heard, and possibly even seen, all that had passed. She saw merely a face projected over her, that grinned with a fixity that was not without an imbecile suggestion. It was old with a moldy and decayed quality, bunched into pouches between deep wrinkles, and yet weak and appealing. A wicked captive ape might show that mixture of gleeful sin and slavishness.

"Don't think I 'm not shocked, because I am," it uttered distinctly. "Kissing! _I_ saw you. An' if anybody had told me that a lady of your looks would take on a Kafir, I wouldn't ha' believed it."