Chapter Twenty Eight.
The King and the Age.
“Do try and be serious a little while if you can, Nidia, if only that I have something very serious to say to you.”
“Drive ahead, then, Govvie. I promise not even to laugh.”
Susie Bateman looked at the girl as she sat there, with hands clasped together and downcast eyes, striving to look the very picture of be-lectured demureness, and tried to feel angry with her. Yet, somehow, she could not—no, not even when she thought to detect a suspicious heave of the shoulders which denoted a powerful fund of compressed laughter. With the absent object of her intended “straight talk” she felt venomously savage. With this one—no, she could not.
“Well, what I want to say is this,” she went on. “Nidia, is it fair to encourage that man as you do?”
“Which man? There are so many men. Do I encourage them?”
“Oh, child, don’t be so wildly exasperating. You know perfectly well who I mean.”
Then Nidia lifted her eyes with a gleam of delightful mischief in them.
“I have a notion you are ungrammatical, Govvie. I am almost sure you ought to have said ‘whom I mean.’ Well, we won’t be particular about that. But, as my American adorer, ‘Major’ Shackleton, would say, ‘Oh, do drive on,’ By the way, is he the man I am encouraging?”
What was to be done with such a girl as this? But Susie Bateman was not to be put off.
“You know perfectly well that I mean John Ames.”
“Oh! Now you’re talking, as my ‘Major’ aforesaid would rejoin. And so I encourage John Ames, do I? Poor fellow! he seems to need it.”
There was an unconscious softness wherewith these words were uttered. It drove the other frantic, “Need it indeed! On the contrary, what he needs is discouragement, and plenty of it. Well, he gets it from me, at any rate.”
“Oh yes, he does,” came the softly spoken interpolation.
“Well, but, Nidia, how much further is this thing to go? Why, the man comes here and talks to you as if you belonged to him; has a sort of taken-possession-of-you way about him that it’s high time to put an end to.”
“And if he had not ‘taken possession’ of me in that ghastly place on the Umgwane, and kept it ever since, where would I be now?” came the placid rejoinder.
“Yes, I know. That is where the mischief came in. It was partly my fault for ever encouraging the man’s acquaintance. I might have known he would be dangerous. There is that about him so different to the general run of them that would make him that way to one like yourself, Nidia. Yes; I blame myself.”
“Yes; he is different to the general ruck, isn’t he?” rejoined Nidia, with a softness in her wide-opened eyes that rather intensified than diminished the bitterness of her friend and mentor.
“Well, at any rate he is nobody in particular,” flashed out the latter, “and probably hasn’t got a shilling to his name; and now I hear he has resigned his appointment”—again that provoking smile, “Once for all, Nidia; do you intend to marry him?”
“Marry who? John Ames?”
“Yes,” with a snap.
“He hasn’t asked me.”
The innocent artlessness of the tone, the look of absolute and childlike simplicity in the blue eyes as the answer came tranquilly forth, would have sent a bystander into convulsions. It sent Mrs Bateman out of the room in a whirlwind of wrath. After her went the offender.
“Don’t get mad, Susie. I can’t help being a tease, can I? I was built that way. Come along out, and we’ll drop in on some other frightened and beleaguered female, and swap camp and laager gossip.”
But the other refused. She was seriously put out, she said, and never felt less like going anywhere. So Nidia, who understood her—at times, somewhat crusty—friend thoroughly, and managed her accordingly, put on her hat and went alone.
To do her justice, Mrs Bateman, from her point of view, was not without cause for concern. Nidia’s father—she had lost her mother—was the senior partner of an exceedingly wealthy firm of shipowners, and had certainly a more brilliant future planned for his only and idolised daughter than an alliance with a penniless nobody; for so, with a certain spiteful emphasis, Mrs Bateman delighted to designate the object of her abhorrence. The girl had been allowed to accompany her only after long and much-expressed opposition on the paternal side, and now she felt simply weighted down with responsibility. And this was the way in which she had fulfilled her trust!
But fortune seemed inclined to favour her to-day. Scarcely had Nidia been gone ten minutes, than there came a knock at the door of their diminutive abode. John Ames himself! Susie Bateman snorted like the metaphoric warhorse, for she scented battle. She was about to indulge this obnoxious person with a very considerable fragment of her mind. Nevertheless she welcomed him pleasantly—almost too pleasantly, thus overdoing the part. But she had no intention of sending him off at a tangent, as she knew full well would be the result of letting him know that Nidia was not in.
Observing him keenly, she noted the quick shade of disappointment as he became alive to the fact that the room was empty save for herself. She knew exactly what was passing in his mind, and found a cruel enjoyment in observing every sign of expectation evoked by this or that sound outside, for she had not told him that Nidia was out, and knew that he was still hoping she might only be in another room. At length he enquired.
“Miss Commerell has gone out,” she replied. “She went round to see some people; I didn’t even hear who they were. She won’t be back till lunch-time, if then; and perhaps it is just as well, Mr Ames, for I have been wanting to have a little quiet conversation with you. Now we can have it.”
“Yes?” he said enquiringly. But tranquil as the tone was, she had not failed to note the scarcely perceptible start of conscious dismay evoked by the announcement. Yet now it had come to the point, she for her part hardly knew how to begin, and he was not going to help her. Besides, his tranquil self-possession was somewhat disconcerting. However, she started in at it, characteristically, headlong.
“Now, you must not be angry with me, Mr Ames; but I want to talk to you as a woman of the world to a man of the world. In short, about Miss Commerell.”
“Such a subject cannot but be interesting, Mrs Bateman.”
“She is under my charge, you know.”
“Yes. You are to be congratulated on the delightful nature of such a charge.”
“But you admit that it is one which entails a grave responsibility?”
“The gravest responsibility,” he replied.
“Well, then, the gravity of that responsibility must be my excuse for what I am about to say. Don’t you think you come here rather often?”
She was exasperated by his imperturbability. She could see he meant fencing, wherefore she clubbed him without further preliminary.
“Do I?” he answered, in the same even tone.
She could hardly restrain her wrath, and her voice took a higher pitch.
“Do you?” she echoed somewhat stupidly, because fast losing her temper. “Well, when I tell you people are beginning to talk about it?”
“Yes; they would be sure to do that. You see, they have so little to talk about, all crowded up together here.”
She was taken wildly aback. The unparalleled impudence of the man, taking everything for granted in this way!
“Well, I can’t have Miss Commerell talked about, and I won’t. And that’s all about it.”
“Oh, it’s about Miss Commerell they are talking? I understood you to mean it was about my coming here.”
Then Mrs Bateman lost her temper, and, as women of her stamp usually do under such circumstances, she became rude.
“Bless the man, is he quite a fool?” she broke forth, fairly quivering with rage. “Don’t you, or won’t you, understand that you are the cause of getting Nidia talked about? You! And I won’t have it. Indeed, under the circumstances, your acquaintance with Miss Commerell had better cease. She is in my charge, remember.”
“Yes. But she is not a child. I should first like to hear Miss Commerell’s own views in the matter; indeed, shall do so before deciding on whether to fall in with yours or not, and so I tell you frankly, Mrs Bateman. Of course this is your house, and I need hardly say I shall visit it no more.”
“One moment. I have not quite done,” she went on, for he had risen to go. “Again you must forgive me for plain-speaking; but let me advise you, as a friend, to entertain no hopes that can only end in disappointment. You are probably aware that Miss Commerell’s father is a very wealthy man, and therefore you will not be surprised to learn that he has mapped out a brilliant future for his only daughter.”
The speaker was alive to the slight stirring of dismay that passed like a ripple over the countenance of her hearer. She knew him well enough to be sure that the bolt had gone home, and at heart secretly respected him. In making this statement she had thrown her king of trumps.
“It is very painful for me to be obliged to speak like this, Mr Ames,” she went on, deftly infusing a little less acerbity into her tone, “especially when I think of all you have done for Miss Commerell throughout a time of terrible danger. But as to this, you will certainly not find her people ungrateful; you may take my assurance as to that. Let me see. You have resigned your appointment, have you not? At least, so I have been told.”
She paused. She had thrown her ace.
John Ames, his face white to the lips with this culminating outrage, replied—
“Pardon me if I decline to discuss my own private affairs with anybody, Mrs Bateman. For the rest, there is a pitch of perfection in everything, even in the art of plain-speaking, and perfection in that art I must congratulate you on having attained. Good morning!”
He bowed and left the house, with, at any rate, all the honours of war on his side; and this she could not but recognise, feeling rather small and uncomfortable as she looked after his retreating figure. But she had thrown her ace of trumps, anyway.
“How will you face the parting of the ways?”
The Umlimo’s question came back to his mind as he walked away from the house in a very fury of turmoil. The Umlimo’s predictions seemed to fulfil themselves to the letter in every particular. In his then frame of mind John Ames found his thoughts reverting to that strange personality with a kind of fascination, of deepened sympathy. He himself began to feel the same hatred of his kind, the same intuition that even as the hand of everybody was against him, so should his hand be against everybody. It was significant that Nidia should have been out of the way. Could it be that she had deputed this cursed, parrot-faced, interfering woman to take up her part and so clear the ground for her? His part was played. He had been Nidia’s Providence during that perilous flight, but now his part was played. She had no longer any use for him. The “brilliant future mapped out for her”—the words seemed burnt into his brain—what part or lot had he in such, he a mere penniless nobody? And then all the outrageous insult conveyed by the woman’s words—a sort of patronising assurance that he would be compensated, yes, compensated—paid—why did she not call it? Faugh! It was sickening. Well, again, as the Umlimo had pronounced, it was the way of life. Black and bitter were his thoughts. All was dark—blankly dark. He knew not which way to turn. And at this juncture “The Major,” otherwise Shackleton, his ankle now restored sufficiently to enable its owner to hobble about, barred his material way with a pressing invitation to come round and lunch. Lunch, indeed! Mentally he consigned that estimable American to the devil, and, leaving him astonished, went on to his own quarters, like a wounded animal, to hide his pain and heartbreak alone. Besides, he was sick of the story of his own “heroism.” Damn such “heroism”! He thought of the luckless trooper who had been with them in their peril, probably conjured up by the sight of Shackleton, and envied him. Why had he not been the one to end his hopes and fears then in that swift and easy manner? That poor devil probably had plenty of life’s sweets in front of him. He had none. That was all over and done with.
He gained his quarters. The post had come in, and on his table lay a pile of official-looking letters, most of them addressed to him by his late official style. He glanced through them listlessly, one after another, and then—What was it that caused his hand to shake and the colour to leave his face, and started him bolt upright? He stared at the sheet again and again. Yes, there it was. He was not dreaming. The sheet of paper was material, substantial; the words on it, written in a somewhat flourishing, clerkly hand, were plain enough, and they were to the effect that there had been placed to his credit, and lay at his disposal, in the Standard Bank in Cape Town, the sum of twenty-five thousand pounds.
Twenty-five thousand pounds! At his disposal! Heavens, what did it mean? Some hoax? Some practical joke? Of course. But with the bank communication was an enclosure. This he opened with trembling fingers, and thus it ran—
“In carrying out my instructions, John Ames, as you have done to the very letter, you have rendered me a service beyond any money value. Go now and be happy with her whom you love, and this end the accompanying communication will materially further. Do not spoil your happiness by any cursed foolish pride, or insane ideas of being under an obligation, for this sum is less to me than a five-pound note would be to you probably at this moment”—again that well-nigh superhuman gift of forecast—“and take no more risks, but go in peace while you, or rather while ye, may—the road is still open—and by your lifelong happiness continue to justify the forecasts of:—
“Umlimo.”
This, then, was what meant the opening of the packet marked “B.”