He had the art of wasting time brought to a fine point. He could sit for hours polishing some part of his saddlery (that it was his batman’s business to attend to), or spend the afternoon piercing fresh holes in a strap he never intended to use, piercing them beautifully, with the care of a diamond cutter at the most delicate work, polishing them afterwards with sand-paper. He loved polishing as few housemaids do. The matter of getting a rhino-hide sjambok ebony black would happily occupy him for many days, or cleaning a pipe that he never smoked—anything that was futile and foolish and useless and that some one else could have done better!
He also liked to make little pottering things with carpenters’ tools. After studying for the army he had, it appeared, taken a course at one of the big technical training colleges in London, and had there chosen to learn carpentering. No doubt I am snobbish, but I could never quite understand what a gentleman wanted with a knowledge of carpentering. Probably Maurice took it up to avoid being obliged to study something that would make a demand on his brain. He was always very careful not to overstrain his brain in any way. However, the result of this special branch of instruction was that he could make nice little boxes that would not quite close, and wooden pegs that wouldn’t stay in the dagga walls, and other things that no one had any earthly use for.
Once, it is true, he made a beautiful little tea-table, a thing we much required, for furniture was still almost unobtainable in the wilds as we were, and the drawing-room was but scantily furnished. But when the table was finished he spoilt it by painting it a diabolical pink that made it get up and smite in the eye everything in the room, including the walls which were lined with scarlet twill. The thing was impossible. The colour of a stuffed wolfs tongue! But do you think he would change it? No. He would have it no other colour, and he forced it through the drawing-room door, tearing the limbo and smashing up pots of ferns, and planting it in the middle of the room, left it there whether I liked it or not. I dispensed tea from it to my visitors and let them gauge my taste by it if they liked. What did it matter?
When all his possessions had been picked over and polished and he could for the moment find nothing sufficiently futile to do, he would get a pack of cards and play patience, or amuse himself with a chess-board. He never touched a book or a pen, or took the slightest interest in the profession into which he had been pitch-forked over the heads of better warn, by a Government whose kindly idea at that time was to do well by the men who had first come into the country. He appeared to have no use whatever for his head: but his long, womanish, restless hands were everlastingly occupied.
His favourite seat was a packing case under a big thorn tree—not too far from his bedroom door; and there day after day he murdered time.
If he had possessed the easy-going, warm-hearted, beauty-loving Bohemian temperament that usually accompanies a lazy nature, much could have been forgiven him. A gipsy’s heart and a poet’s dreams would have gone very far towards compensating to me, at least, for idleness and incompetence. But Maurice had no more poetry in him than a packing-case. And if his soul had ever given birth to dreams he had long since drowned them in whiskey. So far from being easy-going he was extremely cantankerous to every one under him. The servants detested him, and his men only tolerated him because he left them to their own devices. As for loving beauty; he never raised his eyes to the hills except to curse them for cutting him off from civilisation. He infinitely preferred to see his own cigarette smoke than to watch the pansy-coloured shadows flocking across the plains at eventide. A sunset left him cold; he never saw a dawn.
If any one thinks I sat down meekly to this life, and to this man they gravely err. I am not of the meek of the earth. Irish-Americans rarely are. Moreover, a meek woman in the household of Maurice Stair would have been extremely out of place. He would have calmly proceeded to wipe his boots on her.
I was consumed with shame for this man. I looked upon him as a cheat; and I knew the humiliation and shame of a woman whose husband was defrauding his employers. I had been long enough in the country to know how hard the real men, who had ideals, worked for the country and for themselves. I knew that there were a hundred things Maurice could have done to improve his men, the camp, and the general state of affairs. But he preferred to let Sergeant Locke earn his salary for him, while he sat under a thorn tree and polished a strap; and I, his wife, shared the salary!
At first, having learnt something of his arrogant, stubborn nature, I tried to beguile him from his ways with soft and even flattering words. I painted to him, with a daring impressionist hand, the future that ought to be his, clothing it in mists of scarlet and gold.
“Grind away at your profession,” I invoked him, “and show them you’re too good for this little hole. Have your men in such a state of efficiency that the fame of them will reach Buluwayo. Improve the camp. Get after the kaffirs and make them work at this place so hard that the next time the C.O. is here he will cast an envious eye on it for one of his pets, and you’ll be moved on somewhere else. Having shown your stamina they won’t dare to push you in the background again. They’ll have to give you something better.”