After one glance, Vivienne in spite of the heat felt a shiver creep over her, and presently in the silence, knowledge came to her that she was in the presence of tragedy. Something terrible was going on behind those fixed, absorbed eyes, some sorrow too deep for words was brooding with bowed head in the mind of that silent watcher. The girl felt the heart quiver in her breast—that heart she supposed the beasts had eaten! And she longed to put out a hand or speak a word of comfort to the woman. But she had lost the habit of saying sympathetic things and it is one that cannot be regained in a moment. The best she could do was to quietly withdraw from the presence of grief, and stay in the back of her hut until the hotel-woman came to call her for dinner.
In the square hut, the other passengers were gathered round the usual meal: goat chops, potatoes, a steaming dish of green mealies boiled on the cob. Vivienne took her place with her habitual aloof composure, paying little attention to the general conversation until a question addressed by the barmaid to the hotel-keeper roused her interest.
“In the name of goodness, what’s wrong with that woman I saw sitting inside one of the huts?”
The hotel-keeper made a hopeless gesture with her shoulders.
“Ach! Don’t ask me, it’s too awful! Her kindt is lost in the bush.”
“My God!” said the Kimberley man abruptly, and his mealie cob fell into his plate.
“Yes,” continued the woman. “Only three and a half years old, and one minute playing round the waggon in the sight of her pa and ma, and the next minute... gone! That was four days ago, and they never seen her since.” She added in a low voice, “Nor never will!”
“But what happened?” stammered Vivienne startled out of her reserve.
“Goodness knows, Miss... She just wandered out of sight behind a bush, I suppose, and then—all bushes look alike! You can get lost in three minutes on the veld. Just think of that arme kind tumbling along, falling, and sobbing, and wondering why her ma didn’t come. And they hunting like mad things for her! The father’s gone cracked as a Hottentot, and still goes on hunting; but she can’t stand on her feet any more, and they brought her in here to-day for me to mind.”
Vivienne thought it the most appalling thing she had ever heard. Her soul was sick within her. She could eat nothing. She would have left the hut, but the storm had broken with a roar and a flash, and outside the rain was swishing down. She was obliged to sit still and hear more of this story which paralysed her with terror and pity. A love of little children is a very inconvenient possession for a woman who means to beat the world at its own heartless game!