She left them and they stood staring at the bed with its white counterpane. It was so simple and dainty, so obviously a girl’s bed. Talfourd threw himself on the sofa.
“H’m!” said Carden. “I suppose I’ve got to camp on the floor? It won’t be the first time anyway.”
In the meantime he poured out water in the white enamel bowl and got rid of some of the dust under which he was hidden. Afterwards he wiped up with his handkerchief the splashes he had made, and left everything as dainty as before.
“Be careful to leave the wash-hand stand as you find it Talfourd,” he said, with something very like command in his voice. But there was no response from the weary Talfourd who was sleeping like a child. Carden smiled and looked about him for wherewith to do his hair, but when he saw the little wooden brush and white bone comb he made shift to groom his back head with the flat of his hand, after which he carefully hid the brush and comb on the principle that what was too good for him was certainly too good for Talfourd. He had discarded his tie in the heat of the day, and several buttons of his thin silk shirt were undone exposing a tanned, muscular throat; he carefully fastened them up, and though they came undone again a moment or two later he did not notice it so concentrated was he on his thoughts, whistling softly under his breath while he moved about the room. When he had quite finished he roused Talfourd, told him to get a bustle on him, and opening the door went back to the living-room.
Candles had been lighted, and the table laid with a spotless white cloth, cups and saucers, tin plates, bone knives and forks, and a large loaf of the brown meal bread known as simmels broot. A fine savoury smell of riet buck crisping and singeing on red embers came from outside where Swartz and Grietje, now reinforced by the old Kaffir who had been picking up mis, were officiating over the fire. Carden sat down by the open window, and presently a door from another part of the house opened and the girl came in, carrying a pot of coffee. She had taken off her cappie and by the flickering candlelight Carden saw the smoky black hair growing above her brows like the glossy spread wings of a raven; the bar of golden freckles that lay across her nose; her silky curved mouth; dewy, mist-coloured eyes that like all eyes that have looked long on great spaces were full of dreams of forests and rivers, and seemed to reflect the shadows of far blue mountains. God had been good to her. She was lovely as a flower.
She sat down on the other side of the table and she and Carden looked at each other. The pupils of the man’s eyes expanded, giving a curious intensity to his glance, and something in hers seemed to leap out like a swift radiant spirit to him and become his. She gave a deep sigh and her lids closed, as though some living vital thing gone out of her, she were dead, or asleep. For an instant she stayed so, then rose quietly and went out of the room. Carden breathing heavily like a man who has been running, and with a rushing sound in his ears, heard her speaking to the servants at the fire, and a moment later Talfourd came in with the bustle he had been told to acquire.
The girl sat with them at dinner, serving them daintily to the luscious venison, and cutting big slices of the simmels broot that tasted like wheat with the heat of the sun still in it. Later she poured them out cups of the coffee whose beans had so lately been roasted over Grietje’s fire. She had little strong hands burnt a pale brown by the sun.
Afterwards the two men walked up and down smoking in the moonlight that was bright as daylight only softer and more tender. It transformed the walls of the mean farmhouse so that they seemed to be made of alabaster with the shadowy branches of the lonely tree etched in ebony upon them. In the distance the broken-down kraal looked a gracious ruin. A little wind had risen and drifting wraiths of cloud gave the impression that the moon was racing across the sky with one lone silver star following her deathlessly. When they came back to the verandah they found the girl sitting on the wooden bench, and with her permission they sat beside her.
“By Jove! What a night!” said Talfourd, and feeling well after a rest and an excellent meal began in a very fine tenor voice to sing:
Have you forgotten, love, so soon,
that night, that lovely night of June,
When down the tide so idly dreaming,
we floated where the moon lay gleaming?
My heart was weary and oppressed,
by some sweet longing unconfessed,
When like an answer to my sighing,
your hand in mine was gently lying.