“Major Kinsella, if you do not find me a seat I shall faint, I am so hot and tired. Do let us go over and sit in the shade with Annabel. It is much cooler there.”
Major Kinsella was something of a tactician himself it appeared.
“I hope you can have Miss Saurin’s seat in a moment. I am just going to ask her to play with me against Blow and Miss Cleeve.”
“I play terribly,” I said coldly. But he blithely announced that they all did, and no one cared a button; the main thing was to annoy your opponents as much as possible. As that rather appealed to my frame of mind at the moment, I eventually allowed myself to be beguiled to the court, where another sett had just broken up, Major Kinsella shouting unceremoniously to the others as we walked:
“Blow, come on. You and Miss Cleeve against Miss Saurin and me.”
The game was not uninteresting. My partner, whom Colonel Blow addressed as Tony, did all the work and only left me the slow balls, which I gracefully missed. The rest of the time we talked: at least he did. Secretly I preserved a bleak manner. He could not fail to plainly understand. But as I did not wish the whole world to know that I even cared to be cold to him, I filled in any prominent gaps in the conversation with a soft little laugh that he knew perfectly well was not meant for him, but that seemed to vex Miss Cleeve very much. For some reason not very apparent she lost her temper early in the sett, and said quite crossly that if we did not pay more attention to the game it was not worth while going on. That was très drôle, considering that we were winning all the time! I thought so, and Major Kinsella said it, laughing gaily. Her only answer was to slam the balls into me as hard as she could, and as I was out of practice and she a remarkably good player we should have come off badly in the end if it had not been for my partner’s speed and skill. I did not like him in the least, but I had to admit he could play tennis like a fiend.
Later, we approached the tea-table, which was a large packing-case presided over by Mrs Brand, and covered with a beautifully embroidered tea-cloth belonging to the postmaster, who kept bragging about it, and saying that it was the nicest cloth in South Africa, and how he had haggled for it at Madeira until the coolie was black in the face, and got it for half price.
Several of the men who had returned from the wood hunt with a few sticks in each hand lay upon the ground in an exhausted condition. The rest of us sat in a wide circle round the packing-case, and the men who had no seats took up a Yogi attitude upon the ground. The tea had a smoky flavour, but somehow it was the nicest tea I had ever tasted, and the smell of the dying fire of wood branches was fragrant in the air, seeming to remind me of some old sweet dream, until, glancing up, I saw Major Kinsella breathing it in too, like some lovely perfume, while he looked at me with a curious smile in his eyes. I knew then that we were both remembering the same thing; not a dream at all, but a real memory strangely poignant.
The sun had fallen to the horizon line and lay there like a great golden ball, sending long rays of fire into our very faces.
In those last searching beams, playing upon us so mercilessly it was revealed to me for the first time that though all were cheerful and merry every face about me wore some trace of stress or storm. For the first time I observed that men whose laughter was blithe enough had haggard eyes; that jests came gaily from lips that fell into desperate lines a moment later. On faces that were like tanned masks there were marks that dissipation might have made, or careless sins, or I know not what mischance of Fate. The women under their heavy veils and pretty hats had, to my suddenly sharpened vision, a pathetic disillusioned look, and some were careworn, and in the eyes of some there was the fateful expression of the losing gambler. Anthony Kinsella’s dark countenance, too, was scored with deep lines between the eyes and about the mouth—hieroglyphics I had no gift to read, and his eyes were as inscrutable as the points of blue in his ears.