There was something pathetic in his prompt obedience. He shifted ground at once like a child that is snubbed.
"It was in Capetown," he said; "when I landed from the boat. There was trouble on the boat, too; it was full of South Africans, and I had to have my meals alone and only use the deck at certain hours. I could n't even put my name down for a sovereign in the subscription they raised for the ship's band; the others wouldn't have it. I only got rid of that sovereign on the last evening, when the leader of the band came to me as I walked up and down on the boat deck. He passed me once or twice before he stopped to speak to me—making sure that nobody was looking. 'Hurry up!' he said, in a whisper. 'Where 's the quid you was going to subscribe?' 'Say Sir!' I said—for the fun of the thing. He couldn't manage it for fully a minute; his share of it wasn't more than half-a-crown. I went on walking and left him where I stood, but as I came back again he was ready for me. 'No offense, sir,' he said, quite clearly. I gave him the money and passed on. But he was still there when I turned again, and ever so anxious to put himself right with his conscience. 'D'you know what I 'd do with you niggers if I had my way?' he began, still in a large hoarse whisper, like air escaping from a pipe. 'I 'd 'ave you back into slavery, I would. I 'd sell the lot of you.' I laughed. 'You couldn't buy many of us with that sovereign!' I told him. Really, I rather liked that man."
"There are men like that," said Margaret thoughtfully. "And women, too."
"Yes, aren't there?" he agreed quickly. "But I 'd rather—it 's a pity you should know it. However, you wanted to hear about Capetown."
The afternoon was waning; the Kafir, with his hat at the back of his head and the rim of its brim framing his patient face, was set against a skyful of melting color. Even in face of those two attentive hearers, he sat as though in an immense and significant isolation, imposing himself upon them by virtue of his strong aloofness. Margaret was conscious of a great gulf set between them, an unbridgable hiatus of spirit and purpose. The man saw the life of the world not from above or below but as through a barred window, from a room in which he was prisoned and solitary.
He was entirely matter-of-fact as he told of his troubles and difficulties when he landed in Capetown; he spoke of them as things accepted, calling for no comment. On the steamer from England he had been told of the then recent experiences of a concert party of American negroes who visited Africa and had been obliged to sleep in the streets, but the tale had the sound of a smoking-room ingenuity and had not daunted him. But it was true for all that and he ran full-tilt into the application of it, when nightfall of the day of his arrival found him still seeking vainly for a lodging. He had money in plenty, but neither money nor fair words availed to bribe an innkeeper into granting him a bed.
"But I saw a lot of Capetown," he said. "I walked that afternoon and evening full twenty miles—once all the way out to Sea Point and back again. And I was perhaps a little discouraged: there were so many difficulties I hadn't expected. I knew quite well before I left England that I should have difficulties with the whites, but I hadn't allowed for practically the same difficulties with the blacks. There was a place behind the railway station, a tumble-down house in which about a dozen Kafirs were living, and I tried that. They fetched a policeman who ordered me away, and I had to go. You see, they could n't make head or tail of me; I was much too unusual for them to keep company with. So about midnight I found myself walking down towards the jetty at the foot of Adderly Street. You don't know Capetown, I suppose? The jetty sticks out into the bay; it 's no great use except for a few boats to land and at night it serves the purpose of the Thames Embankment for men who have nowhere else to go. I was very tired by then. As I passed the Van Riebeck statue, a woman spoke to me."
He hesitated, examining Margaret's listening face, doubtfully.
"I understand," she said. "Go on. A white woman, was it?"
"Yes, a white woman," he replied with the first touch of bitterness she had seen in him. "A poor devil who had fallen so far that she had lost even the scruples of her trade. I heard her coughing in the shadow when she was some distance from me, and saw her come out into the lamplight still breathless, with the shadows making a ruin of her poor painted face. But she had herself in hand; she was game. At the moment I was near enough, she smiled—I suppose the last thing they forget is how to smile. 'Koos!' she called to me, softly. 'Koos!' 'Koos' is the Taal for cousin, you know; it 's a sort of familiar address. I couldn't pass her without a word, so I stopped. 'You ought to see to that cough,' I told her. She was horribly surprised, of course, and I rather think she started to bolt, but her cough stopped her. It was a bad case, that—a very bad case, and of course she wasn't sufficiently clad or nourished. I advised her to get home to bed, and she leaned against the wall wiping her eyes with the corner of her handkerchief wrapped round her finger so as not to smudge the paint, and stared at me with a sort of surrender. I got her to believe at last that I was what I said—a doctor—"