"Oh, I can't," she said suddenly. "No, I can't. It 's no use; you must leave me alone, please."
His look of sheer amazement, of pain and bewilderment, returned to her later. It was as though he had been struck in the face by some one he counted on as a friend. He stood for an instant rooted.
"Sorry," he said, then. "I might have seen I was worrying you. Sorry."
His retreating feet sounded softly on the flags of the stoep, and she sank back in her chair, wondering wearily at the event and its inconsequent conclusion, with her eyes resting on the wide invitation of the veld.
"Am I going to be ill?" was the thought that came to her relief. "Am I going to be ill? I 'm not really like this."
The ordeal of lunch had to be faced; she could not eat, but still less could she face the prospect of Mrs. Jakes with a tray. Afterwards, there was the dreary labor of writing letters to go before her to England and make ready the way for her return. There would have to be explanations of some kind, and it was a sure thing that her explanations would fail to satisfy a number of people who would consider themselves entitled to comment on her movements. There would have to be some mystery about it, at the best. For the present, she could not screw herself up to the task of composing euphemisms. "Expect me home by the boat after next. I will tell you why when I see you"; that had to suffice for the legal uncle, his lawful wife, the philosophic aunt and all the rest.
Then came tea and afterwards dinner; the day dragged like a sick snake. Dr. Jakes made mournful eyes at her and talked feverishly to cover his nervousness and compunction, and now and again he looked down the table at his wife and Mr. Samson with furtive malevolence. Afterwards, in the drawing-room, Mrs. Jakes, having made an inspection of the doctor, played the intermezzo from "Cavalleria Rusticana" five times, and Ford and Samson spent the evening over a chessboard. Margaret, on the couch, found herself coming to the surface of the present again and again from depths of heavy and turgid thought, to find the intermezzo still limping along and Mr. Samson still apostrophizing his men in an undertone ("Take his bally bishop, old girl; help yourself. No, come back—he 'll have you with that knight"). It was interminable, a pocket eternity.
Then the view of the stairs sloping up to the dimness above and the cool air of the hall upon her neck and face, and the sourness of Mrs. Jakes trying to give her "good night" the intonation of an insult—these intruded abruptly upon her straying faculties, and she came a little dazed into the light of the candles in her own room, where her eyes fell first on the breadth of Fat Mary's back, as that handmaid stood at the window with the blind in her hand and peered forth into the dark. As she turned, Margaret gained an impression that the stout woman's interest in something below was interrupted by her entrance.
Fat Mary had been another of Margaret's disappointments since the exposure. The Kafir woman's manner to her had undergone a notable change. There was no longer the touch of reverence and gentleness with which she had tended Margaret at first, which had made endearing all her huge incompetence and playfulness. There had succeeded to it a manner of familiarity which manifested itself chiefly in the roughness of her handling. Margaret was being called upon to pay the penalty which the African native exacts from the European who encroaches upon the aloofness of the colored peoples.
Fat Mary grinned as Margaret came through the door.