“Buluwayo.”
“Oh, indeed! We may run into your party then, for I’m bound there too.”
She knew that the coach from which she was lost must have reached Buluwayo long ago, even if they had delayed a day or two looking for her. But she did not say so. The hatefulness of the man made her wish to keep up as long as possible the fiction of friends close at hand.
“What’s your name?” was the next question. She told him, “Carlton,” and he repeated it contemptuously.
“A beastly swell, of course. I suppose you lost your eye-glass in the bush, hey? Well, Carlton, my fine fellah, just you understand this: If I’ve got to board and lodge you from here to Buluwayo or until your fine friends pick you up, I shall expect to be well paid for it; and don’t you forget it.”
“Of course you will be paid,” she said coldly. “But I must ask you in the meantime to treat me with a little civility—”
He stared at her with sullen eyes. “Civility be blowed! And don’t you give me any of your cheek, you young snook, else you’ll find yourself in the wrong box. Clear out now, I’ve had enough of you. You’re welcome to the waggon tent as I never use it,—but don’t you come near me again, except by special invitation.”
This was the unpropitious beginning of Miss Carlton’s new adventure. Often during the next two weeks she wondered whether she would not have been wiser to have stayed in the bush. The man Roper, as she discovered his name to be, was an insufferable brute, and she went in mortal terror of his ever finding out that she was a woman. He ill-treated his boys shamefully, thrashing them on the smallest provocation, and never spoke to Vivienne except in a bullying tone. What nationality he was she could not imagine. From his constant use of such colonialisms as Ach! and Hey! he might have been a South African, but his accent was distinctly English, and he scoffed equally at both British and Boer, and seemed to have the good qualities of neither.
The one thing to be earnestly thankful for was that he had such a dislike to her that she was rarely troubled by his society. He invariably took his mid-day meal alone, the greater part of the day being spent in sleep, for like most transport drivers he never slept during the night treks. The hour of danger for Vivienne was at the night outspan, for it was then that Roper usually sent her a gruff message to join him at the meal that was both supper and breakfast in one—afterwards the whole camp would sink into slumber until nearly mid-day, except Vivienne who invariably utilised this time to wash and tidy herself, though she never went far from the waggon, having a horror of once more losing herself.
Since she must see Roper then, evening was much the best time for the ordeal. Flickering firelight and the beams of a waning moon were less inimical than broad daylight to a rôle that became daily more difficult to play. For Vivienne was beginning to outgrow her disguise! True, few people would have recognised in the dirty, if healthy-looking young man in khaki, the erstwhile lovely débutante of a London Season, and more recently lady-correspondent of the Daily Flag. But life in the open with rest and food, were doing their work upon a healthy physique, and her beauty was rapidly returning. The heavy sunburn wearing off showed the skin beneath clear and tinted; her violet eyes had come out of retreat; her lips no longer cracked were a smooth and healthy red. Her hair, for the most part hidden under a primitive hat of plaited grass made for her by one of the umfans (Young native boys) curled and glistened in the sun as though it were alive. It was with increased anxiety that she looked every day into the tin-backed mirror.