Near the window looking forth across the kraals, Margaret Harding, the subject of Mrs. du Preez's comments, had the gaunt Boer for a companion. This was her visit of ceremony, her "return call"; two or three earlier visits, mere incidents of morning walks, when she had stopped to talk to Paul and been surprised and captured by Paul's mother, were understood not to count, and the Recording Angel would omit them from his notes. Mrs. du Preez had taken the initiative in due order by appearing at the Sanatorium one afternoon at tea-time; she had asked Dr. Jakes if he had "a mouth on him" and Margaret if there were many people in town. The next step in the transaction was for Margaret to put on a real frock and a real hat, and take herself and her card-case through the white, scornful sunshine to the farm; and behold! by virtue of this solemnity, two women marooned at the heart of an ocean of sun-swamped desert had license to distinguish one another from common objects of the country side.
Even Mrs. Jakes, whose attitude towards Mrs. du Preez was one of disapproval tempered by dread, could see no alternative to this course. She shook her head at Margaret's amusement.
"This is not London, of course," she said reasonably. "I know that. But, my dear, we 're Christian people—even here."
At Margaret's side, the tall Boer, Christian du Preez, leaned against the wall and regarded her with shy, intent eyes that were oddly like Paul's. There was lacking in him that aloof and almost reverent quality of the boy which made him seem as though he regarded all things with an equal wonder and an equal kinship; he was altogether harder and more immediately forceful, a figure at home in his narrow world; but the relationship between him and his son was obvious. Margaret had only to glance across the room to where Paul sat by the door, following the trickle of conversation around the room from face to face with his eyes, to see the resemblance. What was common to them both was a certain shadowy reserve, a character of relationship to the dumbness and significance of the Karoo, and something else which had the gloom of melancholy and the power of pride. In each of them the Boer, the world's disinherited son, was salient.
Mrs. du Preez had secured his presence to grace the occasion after some resistance on his part, for he entered the parlor seldom and was not at his ease there. Its atmosphere of indoor formality daunted and oppressed him, and he felt coarse and earth-stained under the eyes of the serene young men who watched him from their plush and fret-work frames. He had nothing to set against their sleek beauty and their calm sophistication but his fathom and odd inches of lean, slow-moving strength, his eyes of patient expectancy and the wild beard that redeemed his countenance from mildness. He had come under protest and for the sake of peace, and sat scowling in a chair, raw with shyness and irritation, in the dreadful interval between the completion of Mrs. du Preez's preparations and the arrival of the guests, while in face of him "yours blithely, Boy Bailey," set him a hopeless example of iron-clad complacency.
Then came Margaret and Mrs. Jakes, and at the first sign of them he was screened as in a cloud by the welcome of Mrs. du Preez. Their step upon the threshold was her cue for a cordiality of greeting that filled the room and overflowed into the passage in a rapid crescendo of compliment, inquiries as to health, laughter and mere bustle; it was like the entrance of two star performers supported by a full chorus and corps de ballet.
"So here you are, the two of you," was her style. "On time to a tick, too! Come right in, Miss Harding, and look out for that step—it 's a terror. A death-trap, I call it! And you, Mrs. Jakes. I won't say I 'm glad to see you, 'cause you 'll believe that without me telling you. You found it pretty hot walking, I know; we 're all pretty warm members in this community, aren't we? Sit down, sit down; no extra charge for sitting down, y'know. And now, how are you? Sitting up and taking nourishment, eh? That's the style!"
Margaret was aware, across her shoulder, of a gloomy male presence inhabiting the background.
"Let me introduce my husband," said Mrs. du Preez, following her glance. "Christian, this is Miss Harding. And now, Mrs. Jakes, let you an' me have a sit-down over here. You first—age before innocence, y'know. And how 's the poor old doctor?"
"Thank you," said Mrs. Jakes firmly, "he is quite well."