Yvonne was in great distress. She could not defy him openly, and yet she knew that no power on earth would prevent her from doing Joyce her little deeds of mercy.
She looked at him piteously for a moment, and then sank by his chair and clasped his knees. “I can’t do what you want, Everard,” she cried. “We were such friends in days past—And when I met him again, he looked so broken and lonely—I could n’t in my heart let him go—and having given him my friendship, I can’t be so cruel as to take it from him now. I can’t feel what you do about the disgrace. I haven’t the capacity perhaps. And I promised his dead mother to be kind to him. ====== I did indeed. “I can’t do what you want, Everard,” she cried. “We were such friends in days past—And when I met him again, he looked so broken and lonely—I could n’t in my heart let him go—and having given him my friendship, I can’t be so cruel as to take it from him now. I can’t feel what you do about the disgrace. I haven’t the capacity perhaps. And I promised his dead mother to be kind to him. === I did indeed, Everard, friendship, I can’t be so cruel as to take it from him now. I can’t feel what you do about the disgrace. I haven’t the capacity perhaps. And I promised his dead mother to be kind to him. I did indeed. “I can’t do what you want, Everard,” she cried. “We were such friends in days past—And when I met him again, he looked so broken and lonely—I could n’t in my heart let him go—and having given him my friendship, I can’t be so cruel as to take it from him now. I can’t feel what you do about the disgrace. I haven’t the capacity perhaps. And I promised his dead mother to be kind to him. I did indeed, Everard—and a promise like that I must keep.”
He put her not unkindly from him and, rising to his feet, took two or three turns about the room. Stopping, he said:—
“Why did you not tell me of this promise before?”
“I was afraid to vex you,” said Yvonne.
“You have vexed me much more by deceiving me,” he replied.
But there the matter had to end. He could not bid her break her word, nor would he allow himself to yield to a tempting sophistry that women’s ante-nuptial promises were annulled by marriage. To regain his good graces, however, Yvonne pledged herself never to intercede with him on Joyce’s behalf in the future—in fact to preserve an absolute silence concerning the black sheep and his doings.
This settled, she drove him over to Bickerton in her pony carriage. And the even tenor of her life went on.
It was many weeks before the letters arrived at the farm in South Africa. The monthly ox-waggons that came from the nearest post-town brought them, together with the usual load of farm and household requisites, tinned provisions, and liquors. Day after day, Joyce had stood by the prickly-pear hedge on the rise behind the house, looking over the dreary plain, in wistful watch for the specks on the horizon that alone connected him with civilisation. They arrived at night—a blustering August night, with frost in the air, and a cloudless sky in which the Southern Cross gleamed. Before waiting to help unload and outspan the teams, he rushed into the house with the meagre post-bundle. It contained a few colonial newspapers, some letters for Wilson, the farmer who was away, and the two letters from Fulminster. The rough table, on which he sorted them by the light of a flaring chimneyless lamp, was drawn up to the bedside of Noakes.