“And a lady, good God!—I mean it is unbelievable; but where is your driver? Do you mean to say, Madam, that you have been here alone in that cart all the evening?”
Madam! That was funny, though I did not much care about being taken for a madam. But of course he could see nothing of my face through my thick veil.
“Yes,” I said. “The driver gave me my choice between being shut into the stable with the mules or staying out here in the cart alone. I preferred this.”
“The infernal scoundrel! The—” His mouth shut, he hastily swallowed something, doubtless more profanity. “The scoundrel!” he repeated.
“The river is full. He said we could not cross to-night.”
“That is true, but his business was to make fires here and guard you. This is one of the most dangerous places in Africa. I cannot think, Madam, how you came to be on such a journey alone and unprotected. Some one is gravely to blame.”
“No, indeed,” I faltered. “No one is to blame but myself. I insisted on taking this journey against all advice. If the lions had eaten me it would have been my own fault.”
I don’t know what was the matter with me, but suddenly the remembrance of all my terrors overwhelmed me and I began to cry. I never thought I could have been so utterly silly and ridiculous, but the cause was something that I had no control over, something quite outside myself; it may have been the reaction of suddenly feeling so safe after all my misery, or that his voice was the kind of voice that stirs one up to doing things one didn’t intend to do; really I don’t know. Only, I cried quite foolishly and brokenly for a few moments like a child, and he took hold of my hands and patted them and said ever so kindly:
“There, there—don’t cry, for Heaven’s sake don’t cry—it’s all right now—you’re quite safe—I’ll take care of you. And I’ll hammer that, brute within an inch of his life to-morrow morning,” he added savagely.
He made me sit on his rug by the fire, while he went over to the cart and hauled out mail-bags and cushions and rugs, all bundled up together, and dragged them over by the fire, and in two minutes had a most delightful sort of lounge-seat ready for me. I never thought other people’s letters and parcels could be so comfortable and useful.