It is true that an official inquiry had been made after Maurice Stair’s report, but nothing further had transpired and the matter left for a time had been gradually put aside in a country full of new interests and new men. It is not much use being a dead man, or a missing man, in Rhodesia, or any other country for that matter.
“To us the absent are the dead;
The dead to us must absent be.”
The living have the best of it. The dead and the missing are soon forgotten, except by the few who loved them personally.
I felt that if I could have gone out into the wild places penetrating the great Somabula Forest and searching all along the thickly bushed banks of the Shangani I should have found some trace, some news, something to break the aching, mysterious silence, and confirm me in my belief that Anthony was still alive somewhere. But across Africa’s rolling leagues of bush and rocks and empty, rugged, burning land no one can travel without the accessories that only money can buy. Bitterly I regretted my stolen thousands, and bitterly hated the old solicitor Morton, whom we had so well and so unwisely trusted.
Poor Aunt Betty too had been badly hit over his defalcation, losing not only her private fortune but the money she had made at sculpture in years of hard work. Nevertheless, she had written and urged me to come back to Paris and share with her all she had. But I steadfastly resisted her urgent letters. I could not go if I would. Stronger bonds held me fast in Africa than ever Betty van Alen’s love could forge. I had to stay with Judy and Dick’s boy as long as I could be of use to them. They had just claims. But even when the day came that they no longer wanted me I should not leave Africa. The witch had dug her claw in deep. I could not go if I would.
As it was I cost Judy nothing. For clothes and the necessities of life, which since I lost my income had become luxuries, I parted one by one with my jewels, sending them down to Durban to be sold.
And so the months slipped by, until a year had gone since the night I kissed Anthony Kinsella goodbye. Of all the old Fort George friends there was only one left in my life—Maurice Stair. The rest were scattered far and wide in Matabeleland, and the different camps and townships springing up in every part of the country.
That is the way in Africa. People come into your life, live in almost family intimacy with you, learn (very often) the very inmost secrets of your heart, share joys and sorrows with you, then pass on and are lost to you for ever. Only here and there you grasp a hand that you can hold over hills and seas, though darkness hide you from one another and leagues divide, until the end.
Of the Salisbury women I had known in Fort George: Anna Cleeve had married her rich man and left Africa: Mrs Skeffington-Smythe was still, to the fore in Salisbury and might always be found where scandals were rifest and the battle of the tongues wagged hottest: but she did not much afflict Kentucky Hills with her presence.