Chapter Twenty.
What a Vulture Told.
“As I came thro’ the Desert thus it was—
As I came thro’ the Desert.”
For a reason that had to do with my intense love for animals I had steadfastly refused to have any pets, though I had been offered an adorable Irish terrier puppy, a tame meerkat and a baby monkey.
But one day, Major Ringe, the magistrate, a big, fair man of forty with innocent eyes, lank limbs, and a reputation in the Gunners for valour second to none, brought me a pretty little white kitten that I could not resist.
It had china-blue eyes and other traces of Persian ancestry, but its chief charm was its lovely fluffy playfulness, and soft snowballiness. It seemed to me I had never had anything so sweet and wonderful in my life since the day Anthony Kinsella left me. It was like a little blue and white cloud dropped from the skies: it brought back dreams.
We called it Snowie, and from the first Maurice seemed as fond of it as I, and insisted that Major Ringe had meant it for him also. I was only too willing to share it with him if he really cared, but I was always a little nervous for fear that in some sudden gust of rage he might give the little trustful thing a bang. But at other times, when I saw him fondling it with real tenderness in his eyes, I reproached myself, and a piercing thought darted into my mind.
What if I am ginning against him? What if in my selfishness and pride I am wickedly unjust to him? Perhaps if he had a child to love—he would be different!
Yet when I thought of a child of mine—with Maurice’s eyes and Maurice’s ways—I turned sick and faint, and I flung the thought out. But it came back and back, roosting in my mind, pecking at my heart like a little black vulture.
I let him have the kitten to himself when he wanted it, and he would take it away to his room. We got into the way of keeping it in turn to spend the night with us. But it always preferred me. It would escape from him whenever it could and come scampering back across the yard to me; and he following it in a rage, would grab it up roughly, accusing me of feeding it in the night to make it like me best!
The nights I had Snowie I slept well, dreaming I had a child with Anthony Kinsella’s blue eyes, nestling at my heart. I often woke crooning to it as my old Irish nurse used to croon to me:
“Hush-a, Hush-a, Hush-a, m’babee.”
But on the nights that I had no kitten to nestle against my throat, the little black vulture kept me company, staying with me unweariedly, plucking at my heart, asking little terrible questions to which I had no answer.
“Do you think Maurice Stair also croons over dream children?—does he give them the eyes of his love?—have they little hands that fondle him?”
“You have tried beguiling, and flattering, and scorn, and hate—is there nothing else left to try?”
“Is a man’s soul nothing?—what of the little smouldering spark down below, under the mud and weights—is it still there?—or have you put it out?”
“Who are you to keep yourself so aloof and proud?—do you think women have not sacrificed themselves before to-day—better, nobler women than you?”
“Yes—but for love—for love—for love!” I cried, and wept till dawn.
One night it was raining terribly when Maurice got up to leave the drawing-room and go across to his hut. Lightning was streaking between the trees, and great crashes of thunder seemed to fall bodily from the skies and explode like tons of dynamite amongst the kopjes, echoing and detonating through the land.
It was Maurice’s night for the kitten, but she didn’t want to go. She tried hard to get away to me, but he tucked her into the pocket of his mackintosh, and only the top of her little fluffy face was to be seen gazing at me with appealing blue eyes.
“Let her stay for a little while, Maurice,” I said, “just till the storm goes off a little. I’ll bring her over to your door later. She’s afraid of the storm.”
“Nonsense: the storm won’t hurt her. Get back into my pocket, you little devil.”
But the little devil only mewed the louder, and tried the harder to escape, gazing at me imploringly. I turned away with my eyes full of tears. She was so like a child asking to be left with its mother. I knew, too, that I had a wretched night before me with a black companion. I should have been glad of the little furry thing snuggling against me. But it was Maurice’s turn.
“Good-night!” I said abruptly. “I shall stay here till the storm goes down. I’m afraid of the lightning in the trees.”
He said good-night, and went out into the storm, his mackintosh buttoned round him, lantern in hand. I stood watching in the door, and heard him stumbling against tree trunks and swearing, until he found his hut. Then the door banged, and light gleamed through his canvas windows.
Presently when the lightning was not quite so vivid, I wrapped myself up, and locking the drawing-room door beat my way across the compound to my own hut. Though the journey was only a matter of a few seconds I was wet to the skin when I arrived, and hastily throwing off my clothes slipped into bed. As I put out my light I thought I heard Snowie mewing again. I was very tired, and, contrary to my expectation, fell asleep very quickly. Perhaps the vulture was tired out too.
I dreamed I saw Snowie backing away from the fangs of a wolf and crying piteously. I rushed to save her, but the wolf already had her, and was mauling the life out of her. Her screams were terrible—almost human! They woke me up. With a wet forehead I sat up in bed, listening. But I could hear nothing; only bursts of thunder, the whip of the rain on the trees, and the swish and ripple of little streams tearing down the sides of the hill. The storm had increased.
After awhile I lay down again, but I could sleep no more. The cries had been so real they haunted me. I considered the matter of going over to Maurice to see if all was well with the kitten. I had never entered his hut, only looked in the door daily, to see that it was kept clean by his boy. What excuse had I to knock at his door in the middle of the night? He would probably, and with every reason, be very indignant at being waked up. Nevertheless, I presently found myself on the floor groping for my slippers and feeling for my cloak.
When I opened the door a wild blast tore in, lifting my cloak to the roof, and in a moment the front of my night-gown was like a wet rag, and my body streaming with wet. It was no use attempting to take a light. I stumbled among the trees, in the thick darkness; blinding lightning flickered across my eyeballs like liquid fire, but it showed the way, and at last I reached the door I knew to be Maurice’s and battered on it. Silence!
“Maurice! Maurice!”
Silence again. Nothing but the flacking rain and pealing thunder. Within, all was darkness and silence; evidently Maurice was fast asleep, and Snowie too. My worry had been about nothing. How foolish to be so disturbed by a dream, I thought, as I beat my way back, and once more sought my bed. Still, I was glad I had gone and set my mind at rest.
By one of those extraordinary lapses of memory that sometimes occur, I woke in the morning with no recollection of the night’s adventure. I had slept it all away. The only thought in my mind as I jumped out of bed was that if I did not make double-quick time Maurice would be at the breakfast table before me, a thing I never allowed to happen since he had taken to rising for breakfast. I flew through my dressing, and was still five minutes to the good when I ran across the yard in the morning air of a world washed, and fresh, and glittering like crystal.
To my astonishment Maurice was not only at the table, but had finished his breakfast.
“But why so early?” I cried in surprise.
“I had a message from Ringe to say that he wants me at the court early.”
As he finished speaking Mango entered to say that Sergeant Locke was outside, wanting to speak to the master. Maurice rose hastily, putting his serviette to his lips, and as he did so I saw upon the back of his right hand three long deep scratches. In an instant he had whipped his hand into his pocket. He gave me a searching glance which I noticed but vaguely, for at that moment the whole of my last night’s dream and adventure in the rain had come flashing back, brought to memory by the sight of those deep new scratches on the back of his hand. While I sat thinking I heard Sergeant Locke’s voice saying:
“Major Ringe went off at four this morning, sir, with Mr Malcolm—they got news last night of a lion out at Intanga. As they rode by the camp the Major called me up to ask you to see about Masefield’s boy at the court this morning. It is the only case there is.”
“All right, Locke.”
Then how could Maurice have received a message from Ringe? Why had he got up so early and finished his breakfast before—What was that scratch?
As these questions flashed one after the other through my mind, I sprang up and ran to the door. He was just flicking the reins on his horse’s neck for it to start. He hardly ever wore gloves, but he had a pair on this morning, and the scratch was hidden.
“Maurice,” I cried out, “where is Snowie?”
He turned on his horse without stopping it and regarded me with surprised eyes.
“Snowie?”
“Yes—my kitten?”
“Why, haven’t you seen her around the place this morning? She was in the dining-room a few minutes ago.”
“Oh!” I cried, and my heart nearly burst with relief. I waved to him, gladness in my smile, and ran back into the dining-room calling the kitten. “Snowie—Snowie—Snow—ie.”
Later I went into the yard, and all round the huts, still calling. But she did not come running with her little tail erect and her little pink mouth open. There was no sign of her. I turned to the boys, but their faces were blank walls. No one had seen her that morning. I questioned Mango. He had not noticed her, he said. Doubtless if the Inkos said so, she must have been in the dining-room, but he had not happened to notice her.
The other boys seemed to be observing me closely, but when I returned their searching gaze they dropped their mysterious dark eyes to the ground, after the manner of kaffirs. None of them had seen Snowie since the evening before, when I had crossed to the drawing-room with her on my shoulder, after dinner.
Maurice came home very gay and hungry to lunch. He had easily disposed of the one case, he said; but he and Clarke, the magistrate’s clerk, had had a great morning hunting a wild-cat that had taken refuge under the courthouse, and refused to budge. It was imperative to get her as she had been after Clarke’s canaries.
“At last we smoked her out,” he related, “and she came for me like a red-hot devil. If I hadn’t put up my hand she’d have had my eyes out. Look what she did to me.”
He held out for my inspection the hand with the long deep scratch I had seen at the breakfast table! I stared at it speechless. He withdrew it and proceeded with his lunch. Presently he related to me several bits of news he had heard in town that morning. He was, for him, extraordinarily talkative.
“And who do you think have just arrived here?—the Valettas. They’ve taken that big thatched place that Nathan, of the Royal Hotel, has just put up. Mrs Valetta is very sick—fever and complications—never been right since Fort George, Valetta says. He’s brought her here from their mine, to get some good nursing before he can take her home.”
I was silent as the dead.
“Valetta has struck it rich somewhere to the north of Buluwayo, and is going home to float a company as soon as his wife is well.”
“Maurice, Snowie cannot be found. We have searched everywhere for her.”
He put down his coffee cup.
“But that is strange! I tell you she was in the room here when you came in this morning. I had just given her a piece of bacon.”
I looked away from him. It was not good to watch his eyes when he was lying. It seemed to me that I saw something in them black and naked jibbering at me like a satyr.
“What made her cry out last night—in your hut?—”
“Last night?—in my hut? She didn’t stay with me, you know. The little brute was so ill-tempered and vixenish, and so determined not to stay, that I opened the door and threw her out about half an hour after I left you.”
“Into the storm?”
“Oh, the storm! Pooh! cats know how to look after themselves. She evidently did, for she was as lively as a cricket in here this morning. What are you worrying about, my dear girl? She’ll come sidling in when it pleases her. She’s gone off on a hunting trip like Ringe. All the cats in this country are more than half wild.”
I got up and left the table, my heart like a stone: not only for my little snowbally cat with her winning ways, but for myself. At that moment I terribly hated life.
“I’m going to ride out and see if Ringe got that lion,” he called after me. “Will you come?”
“No!”
I had planned to go ferning that afternoon to a creek near by. The ground of my grotto was all prepared for the new plants, but I could not bring myself to start. I kept wandering up the kopje side, and among the zinias. At last, as I came to the huts again, I heard the boys wrangling outside the kitchen.
Mango was a Zanzibar boy and always at variance with the Mashonas. Maurice’s servant, Sixpence, a shrewd-looking fellow of about seventeen, was squatting on his haunches opposite the door, fiercely and monotonously demanding soap; some clothes lay beside him on the ground. He must go to the river and wash, he announced. But Mango replied that all the washing was done the day before yesterday, and declined to hand out soap. Coffee was backing up Sixpence, and telling him that as the master’s boy he had a right to ask for what he wanted, and get it. Makupi, who in spite of curses and blows was quite one of the domestic staff, though he never did any work, was turning over the soiled linen with his foot when I came up.
“But it is not washing day, Sixpence,” I objected. He arose quickly and gathered up the things he proposed to wash, muttering imprecations on Makupi for spreading them out. He rolled them hastily, but a little too late, into a ball. I had seen what he wanted to wash—a suit of pale blue pyjamas with fresh stains of blood all over them.
“The master told me I must go and wash to-day,” he repeated sullenly.
“Give him soap, Mango,” I said dully and walked away. It was no use looking for Snowie any longer!
For three days I did not speak to Maurice. I saw to his house and food, but I would not sit at meals with him, and I would not speak to him. He bore all with a cheerful air. I often heard him whistling. On the third day he wrote a note and sent it to my hut by Sixpence:
Would I be so extremely kind and condescending as to grace his table that evening? A rather important man from Salisbury was in, and coming to dinner. Of course I was full of imaginary grievances against him (the writer) but perhaps for the sake of appearances I would be so exceedingly gracious as to forget them for an hour or two. He had not the slightest objection to my going back to my sulks afterwards.—Mine effusively, Maurice Stair.
I arranged a good menu with Mango, decorated the table, and was ready to receive his guest. Dinner passed as smoothly and pleasantly as a deep river may glide over dark unthinkable things.
Just as the boys were putting the dessert upon the table I felt something against my skirt. I pushed back my chair and looked down. Snowie had come home.
With a cry I caught her up and put her on the table before me. The next cry came from the guest.
“My God!—the fiend who did that ought to be—hanged!”
There was a silence that the kitten tried to break. She essayed to mew, almost as if she had something to tell; but no sound came from the broken jaws gummed together with matter and dried blood. One blue eye gazed dully round, the other was battered into her head like a crushed turquoise. Every paw but one was broken; they trailed behind her, and her body waggled strangely from an injured spine. I was afraid to take the little mangled body to my breast for fear of what fresh pain I might cause it. I thought I heard it moaning like a woman: yet its mouth did not move.
“Hanging would be too good for the brute—brandy, Stair—your wife is fainting.”
“No—no; milk—bring warm milk for my baby—it has Anthony’s eyes—my poor little white baby—all broken—”
The moaning that did not come from Snowie filled the room.
“No use giving the poor little beggar milk, Mrs Stair—it is dying—better to put it out of its misery at once—drink this brandy, will you—got any poison in the house, Stair?”
“Yes.”
The man took the kitten from me and went from the room, and I followed; but as I passed Maurice Stair I whispered three words at him, with terrible eyes:
“Take it then!”
I had suffered too much.
As I entered my hut the silver travelling-clock that had come with me to Africa struck three clear notes from my dressing-table.
Of all the strange hours of my life it had knelled none more desperate than this! I came in with the dew of the night on my face, dust and dead leaves hanging to my white satin gown, some little stains of blood upon the bodice, an ashen-blue flower in my hand. My nails were full of earth. I had dug a grave with my hands for Snowie, and buried her among the zinias.
The hut seemed strange to me. I found myself looking round it as if I had never seen it before—or should never see it again. On the little altar the veilleuse flickered upwards to the silver crucifix; and from above, the Mother of Consolation regarded me with grave, sad eyes that made me afraid of my purpose. I turned away and opened a dispatch-box on my dressing-table, and took from it the revolver I had brought to Rhodesia.
One little bullet lay snug, waiting to be sent on its message.
I stared at it, pondering on the power of such a tiny thing to force open the great sealed gates of Death! So small and insignificant, yet with surer, swifter power than anything that lived or breathed to send one swiftly beyond the stars, beyond the dawn, beyond the eternal hills! I should know at last what fate was Anthony Kinsella’s—but I dared not look behind me to where the veilleuse gleamed on the drooping head of Christ who died for sinners.
A shadow fell across my hands as they mused upon the polished barrels, and in a moment the room seemed darker; the air grew bitter to breathe when I knew that Maurice Stair was sharing it with me. I looked in the mirror and saw his face.
“What do you want—murderer?”
“I want to die, Deirdre—I am not fit to live—kill me.”
“There is rat poison in the house,” I said, and saw my lips curving in the bitter gleaming smile of a Medusa as he blenched and shook under my words.
“My God!—you are cruel—crueller than death. It costs more to stand here and face you than to go and die like a rat in a hole. You are right, it is the only death I am fit for—but speak to me first, Deirdre—give me one kind word—just one word.”
“Words!—what do they do for you? A hundredth part of the words I have flung at you in my misery would have put manhood into a baboon, and driven a real man mad with shame—but you!”
“I know—I am a coward, a skunk, a liar, a drunkard. I will die to-night if it will please you.”
“Nothing you can do will please me.”
“My God.—let me tell you how it happened,—she scratched my hand trying to get away to you, and I went mad for a few moments—for a few moments I saw red—before God I did not know what I was doing—afterwards I saw her lying on the ground all battered to bits, and found the bloody boot-jack in my hand—”
“Ah!”
“Oh, God! don’t look at me like that—I never meant it, Deirdre—I swear I never meant it—I put her outside—she must have crept away into the bush to die.”
“She lay there three days suffering the hells of hunger and thirst and wounds—too broken to crawl home—while you whistled, and lied! Maurice Stair you are an unspeakable brute. Be very sure you will answer to God for this.”
I threw down my revolver, and turned on him the implacable Medusa face of the stone image in the mirror.
“If you are going to die to-night, then I will not. Your presence would poison the very valley of death for me.”
“You meant to die—you? Deirdre, have I brought you to such a pass? Forgive me—forgive me.” He grovelled on the floor clutching at my skirt, kissing my feet, but I thrust him away.
“Forgive me—I did not mean to do it—some madness entered into me—I loved the little thing, Deirdre—I loved it—I used to lie in the dark with it against my face, and think it was a little child—your child.”
Black vultures flew into the room then; the air was darkened with their wings. They filled the hut rustling and beating. They flapped about me, with cruel beaks plucking at my heart. Through the trailing of their dusky wings I saw the tortured face of the man on the floor. And across the room the great eyes of Mary accused not him, but me.
“Get up, Maurice,” I said to him at last. Now that I knew that the sweet rest and peace of death were not for me a great weariness crept over my spirit. “Get up! Do not kneel to me. You make me ashamed.”
“Give me another chance, Deirdre. May God curse and afflict me root and branch, if I do not change from what I am. Give me one more chance.”
I held out my hand to him, while the floor swayed under my feet.
“This is a deep, terrible pit—we are in—Maurice.” I stammered, hardly having strength to speak. “We must try and help each other—to climb out of it—together.”
Looking past him out through the open door, into the grey weeping morning I saw a vista of long weary years.