“Well,” she put her hand on his arm, “perhaps”—and gave his arm the faintest pressure—“it’s not upstairs, it’s only in the hall—perhaps you’d get me my cape. Hanging up.”
He came back with it and she bent her small head while he dropped it on her shoulders. Then, very stiff, he offered her his arm. She bowed sweetly to the people on the verandah while he just covered a yawn, and they went down the steps together.
“Vous avez voo ça!” said the American Woman.
“He is not a man,” said the Two Topknots, “he is an ox. I say to my sister in the morning and at night when we are in bed, I tell her—No man is he, but an ox!”
Wheeling, tumbling, swooping, the laughter of the Honeymoon Couple dashed against the glass of the verandah.
The sun was still high. Every leaf, every flower in the garden lay open, motionless, as if exhausted, and a sweet, rich, rank smell filled the quivering air. Out of the thick, fleshy leaves of a cactus there rose an aloe stem loaded with pale flowers that looked as though they had been cut out of butter; light flashed upon the lifted spears of the palms; over a bed of scarlet waxen flowers some big black insects “zoom-zoomed”; a great, gaudy creeper, orange splashed with jet, sprawled against a wall.
“I don’t need my cape after all,” said she. “It’s really too warm.” So he took it off and carried it over his arm. “Let us go down this path here. I feel so well to-day—marvellously better. Good heavens—look at those children! And to think it’s November!”
In a corner of the garden there were two brimming tubs of water. Three little girls, having thoughtfully taken off their drawers and hung them on a bush, their skirts clasped to their waists, were standing in the tubs and tramping up and down. They screamed, their hair fell over their faces, they splashed one another. But suddenly, the smallest, who had a tub to herself, glanced up and saw who was looking. For a moment she seemed overcome with terror, then clumsily she struggled and strained out of her tub, and still holding her clothes above her waist. “The Englishman! The Englishman!” she shrieked and fled away to hide. Shrieking and screaming, the other two followed her. In a moment they were gone; in a moment there was nothing but the two brimming tubs and their little drawers on the bush.
“How—very—extraordinary!” said she. “What made them so frightened? Surely they were much too young to . . .” She looked up at him. She thought he looked pale—but wonderfully handsome with that great tropical tree behind him with its long, spiked thorns.
For a moment he did not answer. Then he met her glance, and smiling his slow smile, “Très rum!” said he.