"Oh, all right, then, let's have ours," she said, and sitting at the head of her table held the loaf of home-made brown bread firmly to her breast, carving hefty slices and passing them on the point of the knife to belle Helène, who jammed them from a tin. Customs were simple and the fare frugal at Ho-la-lé-la. There were only two teaspoons between six, as Ghostie had the other two in her bedroom. The jam unfortunately gave out before the globe-trotters got theirs, but there was some good dripping—if they had only happened to like dripping. They seemed pained before the end of the meal, and one was heard to murmur to the other as they went out:
"Would you believe that her father was a clergyman? Bread and dripping! and jam scratched out of a tin! This comes of living in the wilds of Africa, I suppose. An entire loss of culture!"
The daughter of the clergyman must have surprised them a good deal by her unexpected spurt of holiness in refusing to sell pictures on a Sunday. They wound up their old taxi and went away very much annoyed at having come so far for nothing.
"Whose then is the Babylonian litter with trappings of scarlet and gold?" asked Clive, as the Ford rattled off. "You don't mean to say you fellows came in a thing like that?"
They denied it until seventy times seven. The grey torpedo was Sarle's. Kenna was of opinion that the owners of the crimson caravan must be Johannesburgers, and "dripping with it."
"Not Johannesburgers," disputed Clive, with a wry lip. "No; they're too exclusive for that."
Something must have gone very wrong indeed with the atmosphere for Clive to start sneering. In truth some jangling element unnatural to the sweet accord of Ho-la-lé-la had been introduced, and did not leave with the strangers.
They settled down to smoke in the studio, but there was more smoke about than tranquillity. Sarle seemed distrait. Belle Helène sometimes cast an uneasy glance at April, who, still very pale, sat by herself on the lounge. Only Clive and Kenna talked racily, but in jerks, of cattle, fruit-blight, mules, and white ants. But presently all subjects of conversation seemed to peter out, leaving a dark pool of silence to form between them in the room. Kenna it was who threw the stone disturbing those still waters.
"Has any one told you, Miss Connal, about the girl who committed suicide on the Clarendon Castle?"
For a full moment not a word was spoken. Sarle, staring, made a movement with his hand over his mat of hair. April's lids fell over her eyes as though afflicted by a deadly weariness. Clive changed her cigarette from one corner of her mouth to the other before answering briefly: