Flower o' the Peach
- -
- 100%
- +
Fat Mary eyed her acutely while she stood in thought.
"He say don't tell nobody," she remarked casually. "I say no fear – me! I don't tell. Missis like that Kafir plenty?"
"Mary," said Margaret. "You can go now. I shan't want you."
"All a-right," replied Fat Mary willingly, and took herself off forthwith. She had her own uses for a present of spare time at this season.
Margaret put the red flowers down as the door closed behind Fat Mary, and set herself before the mirror. There was still that haze between her thoughts and the realities about her, a drifting cloudiness that sometimes obscured them all together, and sometimes broke and let matters appear.
She noted in the mirror the strange, familiar specter of her own face, and saw that the hectic was strong and high on either cheek. Then the aloe plumes plucked at her thoughts, and the haze closed about her again, leaving her blind in a deep and aimless preoccupation in which her thoughts were no more than a pulse, repeating itself to no end. Ford's declaration and his manner of making it; the Punchinello countenance of the trooper, bestially insinuating; Mrs. Jakes eating soup at Mr. Samson; – these came and went in the dreadful arena of her mind and made a changing spectacle that baffled the march of the clock-hands.
She did not know how long she had been sitting when a rattle at the window surprised her into looking up. She stared absently at the blind till it came again. It had the sound of some one throwing earth from below. She rose and went across and looked out.
It had not touched her nerves at all; it was not the kind of thing which could frighten her. The window was raised at the bottom and she kneeled on the floor and put her head, cloudily haloed with her loose hair, out to the star-tempered dark.
A whisper from below, where the whisperer stood invisible in the shadow at the foot of the wall, hailed her at once.
"Miss Harding," it said. "Miss Harding. I 'm here, directly below you."
She could see nothing.
"Who is it?" she asked.
"Hush." She had spoken in her ordinary tones. "Not so loud. It 's dangerous."
"Who is it?" she asked again, subduing her voice.
"Why – Kamis, of course." The answer came in a tone of surprise. "You expected me, did n't you? Your light was burning."
"Expected you? No," said Margaret "I didn't expect you; you ought n't to have come."
"But – " the voice was protesting; "my message. It was on the paper around the aloe plumes. I particularly told the fat Kafir woman to give you that, and she promised. If your light was burning, I 'd throw something up at your window, and if not, I 'd go away. That was it."
The night breeze came in at the tail of his words with a dry rustling of the dead vines.
"There was no paper," said Margaret.
The Kafir below uttered an angry exclamation which she did not catch.
"If only you don't mind," he said, then. "I got Paul's message from you and I had to try and see you."
"Yes," said Margaret. She could not see him at all; under the lee of the house the night was black, though at a hundred paces off she could make out the lie of the ground in the starlight. His whispering voice was akin to the night.
"Then you don't mind?" he urged.
"I don't mind, of course," said Margaret. "But it 's too risky."
Further along the stoep there was a dim warmish glow through the red curtains of the study and a leak of faint light under the closed front door. The house was loopholed for unfriendly eyes and ears. There was no security under that masked battery for their privacy. At any moment Mrs. Jakes might prick up her ears and stand intent and triumphant to hear their strained whispers in cautious interchange. Margaret shrank from the thought of it.
"I only want a word," answered Kamis from the darkness. "I may not see you again. You won't let me drop without a word – after everything?"
Margaret hesitated. "Some one may pick up that paper and read your message and watch to see what happens. I couldn't bear any more trouble about it."
There was a pause.
"No," agreed Kamis, then. "No – of course. I didn't think of that. I 'll say good-by now, then."
Margaret strained to see him, but the night hid him securely.
"Wait!" she called carefully. "I don't want you to go away like that; it 's simply that this is too risky." She paused. "I 'd better come down to you," she said.
She could not tell what he answered, whether joy or demurral, for she drew her head in at once, and then opened the door and went out to the corridor.
It was good to be doing something, and to have to do with one whose sympathies were not strained. She went lightly and noiselessly down the wide stairs, and recognized again, with a smile, the secret aspect of the hall in the dark hours. There was a thread of light under the door of Dr. Jakes' study, and within that locked room the dutiful small clock was still ticking off the moments as stolidly as though all moments were of the same value. The outer door was closed with a mighty lock and a great iron key, and opened with a clang that should have brought Dr. Jakes forth to inquire. But he did not come, and she went unopposed out to the stoep under the metallic rustle of its dead vines.
She was going swiftly, with her velvet-shod feet, to that distant part of it which was under the broad light of her window, when the Kafir appeared before her so suddenly that she almost ran into him.
"Oh." She uttered a little cry. "You startled me."
"I 'm sorry," he answered.
"You ought n't to be here," Margaret said, "because it 's dangerous. But I am glad to see you."
"That 's good of you," he said. "I got Paul's message. I had to come. I had to see you once more, and besides, he said you were – in trouble. About me?"
"Oh, yes," said Margaret. "No end of trouble, all about you. An anonymous letter, notice to quit, pity and smiles, two suitors, one with intentions which were strictly dishonorable, and so on. And the simple truth is, I don't care a bit."
"Oh, Lord!" said the Kafir.
They were standing close to the wall, immersed in its shadow and sheltered from the wind that sighed above them and beside them and made the vines vocal. Neither could see the other save as a shadowy presence.
"I don't care," said Margaret, "and I refuse to bother about it. I 've got to go, of course, and I don't like the feeling of being kicked out. That rankles a little bit, when I relax the strain of being superior and amused at their littleness. But as for the rest, I don't care."
"It's my fault," said the Kafir quietly. "It's all my fault. I knew all the time what the end of it would be; and I let it come. There 's something mean in a nigger, Miss Harding. I knew it was there well enough, and now it shows."
"Don't," said Margaret.
There fell a pause between them, and she could hear his breathing. She remembered the expression on Ford's face when he had questioned her as to whether she did not experience a repulsion at a Kafir's proximity to her, and tried now to find any such aversion in herself. They stood in an intimate nearness, so that she could not have moved from her place without touching him; but there was none. Whoever had it for a pedestal of well and truly laid local virtues, she had it not.
"This is good-by, of course," said the Kafir, in his pleasant low tones. "I 'll never see you again, but I 'll never forget how good and beautiful you were to me. I must n't keep you out here, or there are a hundred things I want to say to you; but that 's the chief thing. I 'll never forgive myself for what has happened, but I 'll never forget."
"There 's nothing you need blame yourself for," said Margaret eagerly. "It 's been worth while. It has, really. You 're somebody and you 're doing something great and real, while the people in here are just shams, like me. Oh," she cried softly; "if only there was something for me to do."
"For you," repeated the Kafir. "You must be – what you are; not spoil it by doing things."
"No," said Margaret. "No. That 's just chivalry and nonsense. I want something to do, something real. I want something that costs– I don't care what. Even this silly trouble I 'm in now is better than being a smiling goddess. I want – I want – "
Her mind moved stiffly and she could not seize the word she needed.
"It would be wasting you," Kamis was saying. "It would be throwing you away."
"I want to suffer," she said suddenly. "Yes – that 's what I want. You suffer – don't you? That woman in Capetown will have to suffer; everybody who really does things suffers for it; and I want to."
"Do you?" said Kamis, with a touch of awkwardness. "But – what woman in Capetown do you mean?"
"Oh, you must have heard," said Margaret impatiently. "She married a Kafir; it 's been in the papers."
"Yes," he said, "I remember now."
"I told them all, in here, a long time ago, that in some city of the future there would be a monument to her, with the inscription: 'She felt the future in her bones.' But while she lives they 'll make her suffer; they 'll never forgive her. I wish I could have met her before I go."
There was a brief pause. "Why?" asked Kamis then, in a low voice.
"Why? Because she 'd understand, of course. I 'd like to talk to her and tell her about you. Don't you see?" Margaret laughed a little. "I could tell her about it as though it were all quite natural and ordinary, and she 'd understand."
She heard the Kafir move but he did not reply at once.
"Perhaps she would," he said. "However, you 're not going to meet her, so it does n't matter."
"But," said Margaret, puzzled at the lack of responsiveness in his tone and words, "don't you think she was splendid? She must have known the price she would have to pay; but it didn't frighten her. Don't you think it was fine?"
"Well," Kamis answered guardedly; "I suppose she knew what she was about."
"Then," persisted Margaret, "you don't think it was fine?"
She found his manner of speaking of the subject curiously reminiscent of Ford.
Kamis uttered an embarrassed laugh. "Well," he said, "I 'm afraid I 'm not very sympathetic. I suppose I 've lived too long among white people; my proper instincts have been perverted. But the fact is, I think that woman was – wrong."
"Oh," said Margaret. "Why?"
"There isn't any why," he answered. "It 's a matter of feeling, you know; not of reason. Really, it amounts to – it 's absurd, of course, but it 's practically negrophobia. You can't bring a black man up as a white man and then expect him to be entirely free from white prejudices. Can you?"
"But – " Margaret spoke in some bewilderment. "What's the use of being black," she demanded, "if you 've got all the snobbishness of the white? That 's the way Mr. Ford spoke about it. He said he could feel all that was fine in it, but he wouldn't speak to such a woman. I thought that was cruel."
"Oh, I don't know," said Kamis.
"Another time," said Margaret deliberately, "he asked me whether it didn't make my flesh creep to touch your hand."
"He thought it ought to?"
"Yes. But it doesn't," said Margaret. "How does your negrophobia face that fact? Doesn't it condemn me to the same shame as the woman in Capetown? Or does it make exceptions in the case of a particular negro?"
"I said I did n't reason about it," replied Kamis. "I told you what I felt. You asked me and I told you."
"I wish you hadn't," said Margaret. "I thought that you at any rate – "
She broke off at a quick movement he made. A sudden sense came to her that they two were no longer alone, and, with a stiffening of alarm, she turned abruptly to see what had disturbed him. Even as she turned, she lifted her hand to her bosom with a premonition of imminent disaster.
At the head of the steps that led down to the garden, and in the dim light of the half-open front door, a figure had appeared. It came deliberately towards them, with one hand lifted holding something.
"Hands up, you boy!" it said. "Up, now, or I 'll – "
By the door, the face was visible, the unhappy, greedy, Punchinello features that Margaret knew as those of the policeman. Its hard eyes rested on the pair of them over the raised revolver that threatened the Kafir.
The driving mists returned to beat her back from the spectacle; she was helpless and weak. Warmth filled her throat, chokingly; an acrid taste was in her mouth. She took two groping steps forward and fell on the flags at the policeman's feet and lay there.
From a window over their heads, there came the gurgle of Fat Mary's rich mirth.
CHAPTER XVIII
It was the scream of Mrs. Jakes that woke Ford, when, hearing unaccountable noises and attributing them to the doctor, she went to the hall and was startled to see in the doorway the figure of the Kafir, with his hands raised strangely over his head, as though he were suspended by the wrists from the arch, and behind him the shadowy policeman, with his revolver protruded forward into the light. She caught at her heart and screamed.
Ford found himself awake, leaning up on one elbow, with the echo of her scream yet in his ears, and listening intently. He could not be certain what he had heard, for now the house was still again; and it might have been some mere incident of Jakes' transit from the study to his bed, into which it was better not to inquire. But some quality in the cry had conveyed to him, in the instant of his waking, an impression of sudden terror which he could not dismiss, and he continued to listen, frowning into the dark.
His room was over the stoep, but at some distance from the front door, and for a while he heard nothing. Then, as his ears became attuned to the night's acoustics, he was aware that somewhere there were voices, the blurred and indistinguishable murmur of people talking. They were hardly audible at all; not a word transpired; he knew scarcely more than that the stillness of the night was infringed. His curiosity quickened, and to feed it there sounded the step of a booted foot that fell with a metallic clink, the unmistakable ring of a spur. Ford sat upright.
A couple of moments later, some one spoke distinctly.
"Keep those hands up," Ford heard, in a quick nasal tone; "or I 'll blow your head off."
Ford thrust the bedclothes from his knees and got out of bed. He lifted the lower edge of the blind and leaned forth from the open window. Below him the stone stoep ran to right and left like a gray path, and a little way along it the light in the hall, issuing from the open door, cut across it and showed the head of the wide steps. Beyond the light, a group of dark figures were engaged with something. As he looked, the group began to move, and he saw that Mrs. Jakes came to the side of the door and stood back to give passage to four shuffling Kafirs bearing the stretcher which was part of the house's equipment. There was somebody on the stretcher, as might have been seen from the laborious gait of the bearers, but the thing had a hood that withheld the face of the occupant as they passed in, with Mrs. Jakes at their heels.
Two other figures brought up the rear and likewise entered at the doorway and passed from sight. The first, as he became visible in the gloom beyond the light, was dimly grotesque; he seemed too tall and not humanly proportioned, a deformed and willowy giant. Once he was opposite the door, his height explained itself; he was walking with both arms extended to their full length above his head and his face bowed between them. Possibly because the attitude strained him, he went with a gait as marked as his posture, a measured and ceremonial step as though he were walking a slow minuet. The light met him as he turned in the doorway and Ford, staring in bewilderment, had a momentary impression that the face between the raised arms was black. He disappeared, with the last of the figures close behind him, and concerning this one there was no doubt whatever. It revealed itself as a trooper of the Mounted Police, belted and spurred, his "smasher" hat tilted forward over his brows, and a revolver held ready in his hand, covering the back of the man who walked before him.
"Here," ejaculated Ford, gazing at the empty stoep where the shadow-show had been, with an accent of dismay in his thoughts. The affair of Margaret and the Kafir leaped to his mind; all that had occurred below might be a new and poignant development in that bitter comedy, and but for a chance he might have missed it all.
He was quick to make a light and find his dressing-gown and a pair of slippers, and he was knotting the cord of the former as he passed out to the long corridor and went swiftly to the head of the stairs, where the lamp that should light Dr. Jakes to his bed was yet burning patiently.
The stretcher was already coming up the staircase and he paused and stood aside to make room for it. The four Kafirs were bringing it up head first, treading carefully and breathing harshly after the manner of the Kafir when he is conscious of eyes upon him. Behind them followed Mrs. Jakes, shepherding them up with hushing noises. A gray blanket covered the form in the stretcher with limp folds.
The Kafirs saw Ford first and acknowledged his presence with simultaneous grins. Then Mrs. Jakes saw him and made a noise like a startled moan, staring up with vexed, round eyes.
"Oh, Mr. Ford," she exclaimed faintly. "Please go back to bed. It 's – it 's three o'clock in the morning."
Beyond and below her was the hall, in which the lamp had now been turned up. Ford looked past her impassively, and took in the two men who waited there, the Kafir, with his raised arms – trembling now with the fatigue of keeping them up – and the saturnine policeman with his revolver. The stretcher had come abreast of him and he bent to look under the hood. The bearers halted complaisantly that he might see, shifting their grips on the poles and smiling uneasily.
Margaret's face had the quietude of heavy lids closed upon the eyes and features composed in unconsciousness. But the mouth was bloody, and there were stains of much blood, bright and dreadful, on the white linen at her throat. For all that Ford knew what it betokened, the sight gave him a shock; it looked like murder. They had broken her hair from its bonds in lifting her and placing her in the stretcher and now her head was pillowed on it and its disorder made her stranger.
Mrs. Jakes was babbling nervously at him.
"Mr. Ford, you really must n't. I wish you 'd go back to bed. I 'll tell you about it in the morning, if you 'll go now."
Ford motioned to the Kafirs to go on.
"Where's the doctor?" he demanded curtly.
"Oh," said Mrs. Jakes, "I 'll see to all that. Mr. Ford, it 's all right. You 're keeping me from putting her to bed by standing talking like this. Don't you believe me when I say it 's all right? Why are you looking at me like that?"
"Is he in the study?" asked Ford.
"Yes," replied Mrs. Jakes. "But I 'll tell him, Mr. Ford. I – I – promise I will, if only you 'll go back to bed now. I will really."
Ford glanced along the corridor where the Kafirs had halted again, awaiting instructions from Mrs. Jakes. There was a picture on the wall, entitled "Innocence" – early Victorian infant and kitten – and they were staring at it in reverent interest.
"Better see to Miss Harding," he said, and passed her and went down to the hall. She turned to see what he was going to do, in an agony of alertness to preserve the decency of the locked study door. But he went across to speak to the policeman, and she hurried after the Kafirs, to get the girl in bed and free herself to deal with the demand for the presence of the doctor.
The Kafir stood with his back to the wall, near the big front door, closer to which was the trooper, always with the revolver in his hand and a manner of watching eagerly for an occasion to use it. Ford went to them, knitting his brows at the spectacle. The prisoner saw him as a slim young man of a not unusual type in a dressing-gown, with short tumbled hair; the policeman, with a more specialized experience, took in the quality of his manner with a rapid glance and stiffened to uprightness. He knew the directness and aloofness that go to the making of that ripe fruit of our civilization, an officer of the army.
"Have n't you searched him for weapons?" demanded Ford.
"No," said the policeman, and added "sir," as an afterthought.
Ford stepped over to the Kafir and passed his hands down his sides and across his breast, feeling for any concealed dangers about his person.
"Nothing," he said. "You can handcuff him if you want to, but there 's no need to keep him with his hands up. It's torture – you hear?"
"Yes, sir," responded the policeman again. "Put them down," he bade his prisoner.
Kamis, with a sigh, lowered his hands, wincing at the stiffness of his cramped arms.
"Thank you," he said to Ford, in a low voice. "I 've had them up – it must be half an hour."
"Well, you 're all right now," responded Ford, with a nod.
He tried the study door but it was locked and there was no response to his knocks and his rattling of the handle.
"Jakes," he called, several times. "I say, you 're wanted. Jakes, d'you hear me?"
Kamis and the trooper watched him in silence, the latter with his bold, unhappy features set into something like a sneer. They saw him test the strength of the lock with a knee; it gave no sign of weakness and he stood considering on the mat. An idea came to him and he went briskly, with his long stride, to the front door.
"I say," called the Kafir as he went by.
Ford paused. "Well?"
"In case you can't rouse him," said the Kafir, "you might like to know that I am a doctor – M.B., London."
"Are you?" said Ford thoughtfully. "You're Kamis, are n't you?"
"Yes," answered the Kafir.
"I 'll let you know if there 's anything you can do,", said Ford.
The contrast between the Kafir's pleasant, English voice and his negro face was strange to him also. But stranger yet, he could not in the presence of the contemptuous policeman speak the thing that was in his mind and tell the Kafir that he was to blame for the whole business. The voice, the address, the manner of the man were those of his own class; it would have been like quarreling before servants.
"Thank you," said the Kafir, as Ford went out to the stoep.
The sill of the study window was only three feet above the ground, a square of dull light filtering through curtains that let nothing be seen from without of the interior of the room. Ford wasted no more time in knocking and calling; he drew off a slipper and using it as a hammer, smashed the glass of the window close to the catch. Half the pane went crashing at the first blow, and the window was open. He threw a leg over the sill and was in the room.
A bracket lamp was burning on the wall and shooting up a steady spire of smoke to the ceiling, where a thick black patch had assembled and was shedding flakes of smut on all below it. The slovenliness of the smoking lamp was suddenly an offense to him, and before he even looked round he went across and turned the flame lower. It seemed a thing to do before setting about the saving of Margaret's life.
The room was oppressively hot with a sickening closeness in its atmosphere and a war of smells pervading it. The desk had whisky bottles, several of them, all partly filled, standing about its surface, with a water jug, a syphon and some glasses. Papers and a book or two had their place there also, and liquor had been spilt on them and a tumbler was standing on the yellow cover of a copy of "Mr. Barnes of New York." A collar and a tie lay on the floor in the middle of the room and near them was a glass which had fallen and escaped breakage. Dr. Jakes was in the padded patient's chair; it had its back to the window, and at first Ford had imagined with surprise that the room was empty. He looked round wonderingly, till his eyes lighted on the top of the doctor's blond, childish head, showing round the chair.
Dr. Jakes had an attitude of extreme relaxation. He had slipped forward on the smooth leather seat till his head lay on one of the arms and his face was upturned to the smirched ceiling. His feet were drawn in and his knees protruded; his hands hung emptily beside him. The soot of the lamp had snowed on him copiously, dotting his face with black spots till he seemed to have broken out in some monstrous plague-rash. His lips were parted under his fair mustache, and the eyes were closed tight as if in determination not to see the ruin and dishonor of his life. He offered the spectacle of a man securely entrenched against all possible duties and needs, safe through the night against any attack on his peace and repose.