Later in the day when the men were gone and we were resting in the cool, pretty drawing-room, I broached the subject of the future to. Judy.
“What is there I can do?” I asked. “I want to stay in this country. What can I do to earn my living here?”
“Earn your living, Deirdre? My dear girl, what on earth are you talking about? If you really wish to stay in this country you must live with me, of course. Dick especially wished it. But I can’t think why you should want to stay here. I certainly shall not, if I can strike a good bargain with some one for the property here, and sell Dick’s farms and claims in Matabeleland.”
“Oh, Judy! you surely wouldn’t sell the Matabeleland property that Dick practically paid for with his life?”
She stood looking at me in surprise so plainly mingled with resentment that I swallowed indignation and addressed her with all the gentleness I could at the moment command.
“You know Dick had set his heart on that country. He was full of plans for turning his property there into a beautiful heritage for Dickie and at the same time helping on Mr Rhodes’s great scheme of Empire by developing the land to the utmost. Dear Judy, I implore you to keep that for the boy.”
She turned away from me, answering peevishly:
“That is all very well, Deirdre. But what kind of life is this for a woman? I have, with what Dick settled on me and his insurance, four hundred a year. With that and what the property realises I could be quite snug and comfy in London; but here it is nothing at all; one is poor on it. Besides, what is there to keep one in a place like this?”
Strange that the remembrance of that peaceful dusty grave in the sunlight was not enough to keep her! That any one would rather be snug and comfy in London than live in this wide, open land where you had but to go to your window to see plain and sky touching on the horizon! Ah! well, what was the use of trying to make her feel what she could never feel? I returned drearily to the subject of my own future.
“But what is there I can do, Judy? I can not and will not live on you. How can I earn a living?”