“Come along with me!”
“Come with you? I’ll see you up a gum tree first.”
“Very well. You can take what’s coming to you here instead if you prefer it.”
“What do you mean?” Roper’s face was belligerent but he began to back. The other’s eyes, suddenly grown very steel-coloured, had taken a kind of measuring glance into them.
“Just this, that you don’t surely suppose you’re going to be let off for your infernal cheek of the past ten days?—and all the annoyance you have caused this gentleman here?” (He slightly indicated Vivienne.)
“Gentleman!” sniggered Roper, but got no further, for his mouth was stopped in a very rude and unkind manner. Vivienne’s heart gave a leap at the sound of the blow. Never before had she seen a man thrashed, nor any kind of brute violence used by one man to another. A month or two back, the very idea of such a thing would have made her sick, probably have caused her to faint. It is certain that she would, out of very hatred of violence, have sided with the aggressed, whatever his crime, against the aggressor. It showed how Africa had steeled her nerves and readjusted her sense of values that she could sit through the scientific and very thorough punching to which the transport driver was treated, without turning a hair.
Afterwards, Roper’s boys, with a jubilation of manner never before observed in them, removed their master to the shade of his waggon and administered whiskey, while the man Kerry went away to wash his hands and make a quick change. The post-cart driver, a swarthy half-Dutch colonial, who talked the most extraordinary language Vivienne had ever heard, beguiled the tedium of waiting with anecdotes of Roper’s past.
“Maar! it was lekker to see dat slegte skepsel get it good and red! Ach! sis ja, he’s de worst stinkhond on dis road. I knowed him well daar bij de Kaap. Ja wat! he done ten years mealie-meal pap on de Cape Town breakwater already for I.D.B., and another five years in de Bloemfontein tronk for half murdering an arme kind of a Hottentot girl. He hit her on de head with a klip, wat! Allemagtie! sis, yes, he’s a vaabond. I seen him do some dirty jobs between here and Mafeking. Verneuking de Kaffirs and hammering his boys for niks nie. Ek seh ver jou, dere isn’t nothing what dat verdomde bliksem wouldn’t do!”
Vivienne could well believe it. Such of the narrative as was comprehensible to her made her more deeply realise what her danger had been and how much she owed to the protection of Kerry. Her heart glowed with a warmth and gratitude she had never expected to feel again for anyone as she saw him returning, fresh from his dip and change, nonchalant as ever.
“Oh, how good you’ve been to me! What should I have done if you had not come!” she cried, and put out her hands to his in a gesture as charming as it was spontaneous.