“Yes, and they adore you, too. I’d like to know who doesn’t,” she said so unexpectedly that I was quite overwhelmed. Of course I was frightfully pleased at such a remark coming from her so warmly and spontaneously, and I really could not help believing that they did like me a little better than in the beginning of laager; but of course it was absurd to talk of any one adoring me. It was only necessary to watch the faces of the Salisbury women when I was in their vicinity to see how cordially I was detested by them at least. As soon as we arrived they had ensconced themselves under the shadiest bunch of trees (not too far from the commissariat department) and were ordering Monty Skeffington-Smythe and another man about like dogs, to look for cushions and rugs and make them comfortable in the shade. They still clung together, but not from love, I think. I never saw three women more ennuié with each other. They were absolutely drooping with boredom, and I believe the only active feeling any of them possessed was dislike of me. It was really a wonder that they had found the energy to come to the picnic, but the Fort George women laughingly and perhaps a little maliciously suggested that their probable reason for coming was that they thought it the easiest and simplest way of securing an excellent Christmas dinner without any personal exertion. Adriana had for sometime past been professing herself to be precariously ill. The mysterious malady she was suffering from did not affect her appetite or prevent her from looking extremely robust; and rumour unkindly put it that she was in reality jibbing at last at having to do simply everything for three well-grown, able-bodied women who were perfectly capable of looking after themselves. However, she had recovered her health and strength for that day at least, and was at the moment assisting Monty Skeffington-Smythe and the Doctor to carry coffee and roaster-cookies to the languid party under the trees.
“What are you going to do, Miss Saurin?” Mrs Rookwood asked me in her wistful way. Now that laager was over she had grown very tragic about the eyes again, and her mirthless laugh with its defiant note began to be frequently heard. She always stayed as near me as possible, perhaps because I made it my business to repay in kind everything in the shape of a snub that came her way.
The Fort George women it is true were always kind to her, and forgot her sins in the remembrance of all her kindness and humble helpfulness to them and the children. The intimacy of laager life had broken down barriers that would otherwise never have been overcome. Moreover, the objectionable Mr Geach had been so extremely obliging as to break his neck somewhere in the Cape Colony, so that as soon as George came back from the front all would be well with the Rookwoods. But the Salisburyites showed by the expression of their noses that they considered the air more than ever polluted when “the Geach person” was anywhere near.
“I’m going to fix up Mrs Marriott under that tree with books and cushions, and then I suppose we’d better help get the dinner ready.”
“Well, let me help, won’t you?” she begged.
“Of course.”
Mrs Marriott had really become most alarmingly fragile of late. She had grown amazingly young and pretty, it is true, but her clear skin looked almost too transparent, and there were big dark shadows under her eyes that threw them up and made them look perfectly lovely—but shadows are shadows, and the fact remains that however becoming, they are not at all necessary to health. Secretly I was anxious about her; but no one else seemed to have noticed any change except the wonderful one in her spirits and looks. To-day, it might have been the consciousness that she was looking extremely pretty in a white dress Mrs Rookwood had made for her, but she was actually humming a little tune, and she remonstrated laughingly when I insisted that she should rest out of the heat and not think of coming to help get the dinner.
“You’re just trying to make a molly-coddle of me,” she said, “and yourself so indispensable that I shan’t be able to do without you ever again. I know your little arts.”
However, she was finally beguiled to do as I told her, and when she was comfortably fixed up Mrs Rookwood and I waited on her with breakfast—a cup of delicious coffee, and a hot buttered rusk.
Afterwards enormous preparations for dinner began to go forward. The hour of three thirty in the afternoon having been fixed upon, such boys as were available were inspanned to the task of collecting fuel and making big fires at a certain distance from the camp on account of the smoke. Others were set to work to scoop out ant-heaps and turn them into red-hot ovens for the reception of pastry and roast meats. These impromptu Dutch ovens turn out wonderfully light bread and are splendid for pastry.