Evening is a pleasant time in Natal, and the Portals' moonlit gardens and lawns and long verandahs lent themselves agreeably to strolling people, tired of the clang and glare of the day. With someone always at the piano to sprinkle the still air with melody, it was pleasant to saunter, the dew in your hair and all the sounds of the night-things about you, while you talked with someone whose interest interested you, or gossiped of life as it could, or would, or might be, or of "Home," meaning England, which through the glamour of an African night seems the moon of all men's Desire. There are more intense sudden joys in Life than these, but few more poignantly sweet.
To be Mrs. Portal's friend was to share her friends, to know them, to gossip with them, to criticise and be in turn criticised by them. Sport, books, music, pictures, people—all that goes to the making of life worth the living, came under discussion; and in Africa, where everyone is using every sense of mind and body, living and feeling every moment of life, there are always new things to be said on these subjects—or perhaps only things that are so many centuries old that they sound new. Truth, after all, is older than the everlasting hills.
Naturally, there was never much grouping. General conversation has more than a liability to platitude, or, at best, to flippancy, and the finest talking is never done in groups, but tête-à-tête. Indeed, it is on record by a thinker of some importance that the best things men say are said to women who probably don't understand them:
"To the women who didn't know why
(And now we know they could never know why)
And did not understand."
That is as may be. Remains the fact that the best talkers (apart, of course, from orators, politicians, and professional diners-out) do not talk for a crowd, and the most potent phrases and epigrams—when epigrams are not vieux jeu—are made for one, or at the most, two listeners.
Poppy's ears took in many pretty and many witty things.
Bill Portal was a blithe soul, overflowing with gay parables and maxims for the unwise, whom he claimed to be the salt of the earth.
Abinger was epigrammatic, sardonic, and satanic, and he never asked for more than one listener—a woman for preference, as she would certainly repeat what he said—and there were other reasons. But the women of the Portals' circle recognised a serpent when they met him, however leafy the garden, and always preferred to listen to his wisdom in twos and threes. With Poppy he never encompassed any talk at all, unless she felt Clem strong at her back. He smiled at this: the smile of the waiting man to whom everything cometh at last.
Nick Capron never graced the assemblies with his handsome dissipated presence. His lust was for poker and his fellow-men—which meant the Club and small hours. He was never even known to fetch his wife. But many a man was pleased and honoured to do his duty for him. Sometimes she stayed all night with her friend Clem. Sometimes Carson took her home in a rickshaw.
The women with attentive husbands pitied her amongst themselves; but she gave no sign of discontent, and they never ventured to offer sympathy. Invariably she looked wonderfully beautiful—and, therefore, it was not necessary for her to exert herself to much conversation. Since Poppy's soft thrush-note had first been heard in Clem Portal's verandah, Mrs. Capron's laugh had been silent: though it was a pretty laugh, too. But her smile was as alluring as the sound of a silvery brooklet, and sometimes the sympathetic wives trembled when they saw their husbands lingering near her—not to talk, but to look. She sat so fearlessly under bright light, and looked so flawlessly good. It was, indeed, a comfort to remember that she was as good as she looked, or she would not be Mrs. Portal's closest friend. It was remembered, too, that she had never tried to beguile any woman's man away from her.