“I shall have robbed you then after all?” she said sadly.
“No, only paid for our happiness. Everything has to be paid for, dear. We are lucky if we can pay with anything so cheap as money! Do you care?”
“No, no, if you do not. I care for nothing except to be sure that I can repay you for all I—”
He kissed away the rest with kisses that were as fierce and tender and cruel as Africa herself. “Oh! yes, you can repay me, be very sure of that. But it must be now. Now! You must come with me this very night.”
“To-night?” she faltered, trembling a little.
“Yes, to-night. I’m never going to let you go again. Brunton has the power to marry us, and I know he will do it after these people are all gone, if I put the case to him. My waggons are lying all ready a few miles from here. They’ve been ready for days, waiting for me to be well enough to start. Will you come?”
She thought for an instant of what the world would say, the big world across the sea, and this little portion of it in Buluwayo; the mocking smiles and innuendoes of the women, the men’s amazement—but only for an instant, then found herself smiling; that side of life was finished with now, a higher, fuller life waiting for her.
“Yes, Kerry,” she said simply, “I will follow you to the end of the world and the end of life.”
De Windt was no man of half actions. Within half an hour, Brunton had been beguiled into consent and Mrs Brunton let into the secret. A long residence had bestowed upon the latter a taste for romance and a heart prepared for anything in the shape of adventure that came along. She threw herself rapturously into the preparations for an after-midnight marriage, and sent her own maid for enough things from Vivienne’s hotel to make up a hasty travelling trousseau; the remaining luggage was to be sent for the next day. One or two very favoured guests being intimate friends of de Windt’s were let into the secret and allowed to stay, the rest went home all unsuspecting and never knew the news until next morning.
The amazing thing was that Montague was one of those who stayed. Vivienne had accomplished a short interview with him, and returned him those things which were his with a brief résumé of the situation. To do him justice, he took it like a man, as well he might, when he was like to come out of the affair richer by several hundreds of thousands. For de Windt would accept no other solution of the money tangle than that Montague take possession of the farm and all its treasures. In return, he accepted the loan of Montague’s carriage in which to carry Vivienne away to her new life.