Sarle looked from one to the other contentedly. For once his far-seeing veld eyes played him false.
"I am so glad you two are friends," he said. Then, addressing April, "Odd that we shouldn't have discovered it before, for, you know, Kenna is my best friend, as well as my ranching partner."
PART III
They sat talking for close on two hours, and at the end of that time April rose with a laugh on her lips and many a light and airy reason why she could not stay. It was too hot, she must rest a little, she had unpacking to do. Even after rising from her chair she lingered as if regretful to go, but they could not persuade her to stay and have tea with them. Presently she sauntered off slowly, leaving a promise that she would dine with them that evening. She did not know why she promised. As she walked away, sauntering, because her feet seemed as lead-laden as her heart, she told herself that it would be better to go and dine with the sharks in Table Bay than sit down again with Ronald Kenna. In her room she lay exhausted and very still for a long time, with the feeling that she had escaped from a red-hot gridiron. She looked in her mirror on entering, expecting to see a vision of Medusa, hair hanging in streaks, eyes distraught, and deep ruts in the cheeks; but her face was charming and composed, and a fixed smile curved her mouth. She shuddered at her own image.
"Lies deform and obscure the soul," she thought, "yet my face bears no mark of the lies I have told this afternoon, nor the hell my spirit has passed through!"
Only when she removed her hat something strange arrested her attention, something that might have been a feather or a flake of snow lying on her luminous black hair just where it grew low in a widow's peak at the centre of her forehead. She made to brush it lightly away, but it stayed, for it was not a feather at all, but a lock of her own hair that had turned white. A little gift from Ronald Kenna!
He had played with her as a cat plays with a mouse before killing it. True, he had not killed her, nor (which would have been the same thing) exposed her mercilessly before Vereker Sarle's eyes. But he had made her pay for his clemency. Probably the cleverness with which she slipped out of the corners into which she was hedged, her skill in darting from under his menacing paw, roused his admiration as well as his sporting instinct. It must have been a great game for him, but hers were the breathless emotions of the helpless mouse whose heart goes pit-a-pat in the fear of being gobbled up the next moment.
It was all very subtle. Sarle never suspected what was going on, so cool and sweet she looked under her shady hat, so unfailing was her composure. He was accustomed to the dry and biting flavour of Kenna's speech, and paid no great heed to it. He believed himself listening to the witty reminiscences of two people with many friends and interests in common, and nothing in the girl's manner as she lied and fenced and swiftly covered up mistakes with jests and laughter betrayed the agony of baiting she was enduring. Kenna was a friend he would have trusted with everything he had in the world; but he was aware of a twist in that friend's nature which made him look at women with sardonic eyes. It had not always been so. Some woman had given that cruel twist to a loyal and trusting nature; some loved hand had dealt the wound that festered in Ronald Kenna's heart; and Sarle, because he guessed this, forgave his friend much. But he would never have forgiven had he known what was passing there under his very eyes. The woman he loved was on the rack, and he never guessed it because she smiled instead of crying out.
And it was all to suffer again that evening. April knew that, as she dressed herself carefully for dinner. There was no mistaking Kenna's pressing request that they should be allowed to come to her table. Sarle had not had time to ask for himself alone. Kenna had forestalled him, and there was double craft in the action: he meant to keep his eye, or rather his claw, on her, while preventing her from being alone with Sarle. If she was in the fray to protect Sarle from the pain of finding her out, he was in it to protect Sarle from her. The situation might have been funny if it had not been grim. She could have laughed at it but for her fear of Kenna, but for an old man's pain and misery, but that the whole miserable structure of deceit rested on a girl's drowned body.
She put on a black gown. It seemed only fitting to absent herself awhile from the felicity of colour. Besides, all her joy in clothes had gone. How gladly would she now have donned her own shabby garments, if with them could have returned the old peace of mind! But even the plain little demi-toilette of black chiffon was peerlessly cut, and her whiteness glowed like a pearl through its filmy darkness. There was no way of dressing her hair that would hide the white feather on her forehead, and after trying once or twice she left it. It looked very remarkable, that touch of age above her young, flower-like face. She could not altogether hate it, for it was a scar won bravely enough, and in desperate battle. Africa had not taken long to put its mark on her!