One thing was certain; anything was better than stagnation in a swamp; so I made the swamp as untenantable as if it were infested with asps.
However, departure from the swamp meant departure also from tranquillity. With the mists of idleness and the green slime of sloth, peace also disappeared. It is true that Sergeant Locke came no more to the house with the reports; no longer paid the men and harangued them vainly for their sins; nor rode any more to the court-house to play deputy P.P. while his superior officer lay in bed; nor performed any more of the duties of that same superior officer. That was so much to the good. But for amendment Maurice took toll of me at home, retaliating with the malice of a small-minded woman, interfering in the affairs of the house, grumbling at the food, abusing the cook, and insulting me. Nothing pleased him. Though he was much more at the camp and court than he had ever been he also seemed to have more time to be at home, to fall upon the cook and kick the house boys, with the result that no sooner had I trained one servant to do his duties unsuperintended, than he ran away, and I had to begin the thankless task over again.
My husband was a bad person to keep house for at any time. One of those men who tells every one he doesn’t care what he eats so long as it is food; and then raises the roof if he has cold mutton daintily served with a salad for lunch, after having had it for dinner the night before.
“Damn it! is this goat going to last for ever?” he would cry outraged. “It must have been a blazing horse. Did you buy the whole four quarters in the name of God?”
My mornings were taken up with trying to manufacture new dishes, and teaching Mango, the cook, to manage the sparse material at his disposal, so that the result might spell variety in the menu.
I discovered that turning out charming suppers in a Paris studio was a very different matter to keeping house in a land where goat and “bully” were the foundations of life; fresh fruit and fish unheard-of things; and vegetables luxuries that had to be fetched on horseback from a coolie river-garden several miles away, and pleaded and bartered for at that.
Chickens, of which it took about half-a-dozen to make a meal, had also to be fetched from kaffir kraals, and eggs had to be ridden after (and sometimes run away from afterwards).
I found, as many a weary woman has found before me, that housekeeping is the most thankless, heart-breaking, soul-racking business in the world to those who have not been trained to it from their youth upwards. But I had to stick to my job. Maurice having been driven forth from his swamp into the wilds had come back with at least two of the qualities of the king of beasts: an enormous appetite, and a tendency to roar the house down. My plain duty was to appease him, and pray for further lion-like attributes to develop.
In a small way we were obliged to entertain. Maurice’s official position demanded as much, though it was an obligation he was very willing to shirk, preferring a quiet, swamp-like evening in his hut to the trouble of dressing for dinner and being polite to people for a few hours. But my plans for his redemption did not include any evenings off, and I asked the necessary people to dine whether he liked it or not. He had many ways of revenging himself on me for this. Sometimes he would absent himself at the last moment, leaving me to make what excuse I was able to the guests for the non-appearance of the host whom they had probably seen lounging in his hut door smoking, as they came up the road. At other times after I had made elaborate excuses he would appear in his white flannel trousers and shirt sleeves, and without any apology take his seat at the head of the table where his guests sat arrayed in the immaculate evening dress that people buried in the wilds love to assume, cherishing the custom of dressing for dinner as a symbol that they are not yet of the beasts of the field, though obliged to congregate with them. What these people thought of a host in dirty flannels facing a hostess decked in a Paris gown, décolletée et très chic (for if I could not alter my gowns with the skill of a couturière they at least still bore the cachet of Paris) I cannot say. But Rhodesians are a gay-hearted people and would always prefer to believe that you mean to amuse rather than insult them, and so, as a flowing brook passes over a jagged rock, the incident would be passed over and covered up with ripples.
As for me, I learned in time to manage my cheeks as well as my gowns, so that they no longer burned at such contretemps.