How careless people are about what they say of others: I mused. Small wonder one’s secrets are not one’s own in a land where a reputation can be damned on the highroad for all the world to hear!
I had heard a man’s honour—all that was worth keeping in this sad old world—dispensed with, in a few cynical but strangely convincing words. How cruel life was! How tragic! I shivered and wished Maurice would come.
I could see the backs of the two men now as they rode blithely upon their way, having saddened me with the sordid tale of a man’s secret sins that were no secret! the story of some poor fellow’s stumbling journey down hill instead of up! Men were very pitiless in their judgments I thought. Perhaps the other man was not so despicable after all. But secret drinking, cowardice! Those were terrible sins—none more revolting to a woman’s mind—and not straight; the hardest thing one man can say of another! Surely there had been no such man in Port George!—I had never heard of one, and I had heard most things in that tragic little town.—I could think of no one whom such condemnation, fitted. Monty Skeffington-Smythe perhaps?—but no; his faults were open and above-board for all the world to see—nothing hidden there, not even his preference for laager in time of war! Anyway it was no business of mine—I ought to have been ashamed to be speculating about it even, and I was. But why did Maurice stay so long? What could be keeping him?
Some one who played sick rather than go into Matabeleland—But they were all so keen.—all except baggy old Dr Abingdon. Ah! now I knew whose voice that was—Dr Abingdon’s of course—the blasé old doctor with his goat-like leer, and his pretentions that fear kept him from Matabeleland, when as we had found out afterwards he had absolutely begged to go, and been refused on account of his gout—the dear old doctor! His value had been only too well proved in the hospital work he had done later—in the big fights he had put up for men’s lives, and won out, when every one else despaired... I had heard of his recent arrival in Salisbury, and was hoping to see him before I left.
With the knowledge that it was he who had been speaking, my curiosity was once more aroused by the words I had heard. Against my will my mind persistently went back again to the subject. Who of all his patients in Port George had a sprained arm. Ah!—suddenly I remembered!
Afterwards, all the words I had heard floating so idly on the clear air came back one by one, like little birds of ill-omen, to roost in my memory and sing in my ears. It seemed that my brain had taken down everything in shorthand—there was nothing in that brief conversation that I had forgotten!
When Maurice climbed in beside me and took the reins from my hands he exclaimed at their coldness.
“Good Lord! you’re frozen,” he said. “Why, it isn’t cold!”
As he turned towards me I caught from his lips that faint sickly odour of spirits I had long ago learnt to associate with African scenery.
“I am not cold,” I said in a voice that in spite of my striving must have given some sign of the inquietude of my soul, for he gave me a curious glance as the horses lunged forward.