"Kiss me, Maurice--take me," I cried in a whispering voice. But something in me was dying a little death--hope, youth, love, all were pa.s.sing. I saw like a drowning woman all the glory of life depart. And in that moment I realised a terrible thing. All was in vain. I could never love my husband. Something in his touch, in his nearness, in the scent of his hair as he bent over me, sent an agony of revulsion shuddering through me, as though some spider of which I had a peculiar fear and horror was creeping over me. I knew not whether it was of the flesh or of the soul, or a terrible mingling of both. I only knew that this piercing agony of the Magdalene who loves not where she gives would always be mine to suffer as the wife of Maurice Stair. One other thing I knew, too: I should not long be able to sustain that agony; it would kill me. Almost I believed myself dying then. My limbs turned to stone, my veins seemed filled with lead. He might have been showering his pa.s.sionate kisses on a marble image.

Perhaps no other woman in the world would have been affected in that terrible way by his personality: perhaps no other man in the world would have inspired such a feeling in me. That it should be so was my tragedy--and his!

"Why are you so white?" he cried between his blazing kisses. "So white--like a snowdrop? Open your eyes, Deirdre--let me see love in them."

"No--no," I cried, resolute to drown, to die. I wound my stone arms round his neck and drew him close to my cold face. But I dared not open my eyes for fear he should see the dying gestures of my soul.

Then a strange thing happened. He leaned over me once more and put one more kiss like a coal of fire on my lips, then drew gently away from my arms. There was a jingle of spurs, the tread of heavily booted feet, and presently the sound of a galloping horse. I lay very still where he had left me, my eyes still closed, my leaden arms where they had fallen at my sides, the words of reprieve ringing like little bells in my brain:

"I am not worthy--first I will earn this gift of you. Good-bye."

If my soul (which was Anthony Kinsella's) sang a chant of praise because of respite, that other physical me (which was Maurice Stair's) had heaviness and sorrow because of the knowledge that the battle was all to fight again, the agony to re-endure.

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO.

WHAT THE HILLS HID.

"Life is not a speculation. It is a sacrament. Its ideal is love.

Its purification is sacrifice."

"Death is a great price to pay for a red rose. But love is better than life."

Brown cotton stockings from Salzar's General Stores fell into holes before one had worn them twice: yet they cost four and sixpence a pair!

Almost as much as spun silk ones at home, I reflected, as I sat mending mine under the thorn tree. But was it possible that I had ever worn silk ones? Could it be true that I had once worn diamonds on my garters, and done many other absurd things! Had I really ever been Deirdre Saurin, the petted and pampered and bejewelled heiress who had announced to her mother, showering laughter:

"Life shall never make a tragedy of me!"

I smiled a little idle smile, that at least was free of regret, for the petted and bejewelled part of the story; but I could find it in my heart to sigh for the girl who came to Fort George and was scratched by all the cats, and scratched them cheerfully back. I should like to have been that girl again, for half an hour, just to see how it felt to be care-free and _insouciant_, with the whole beautiful world made expressly for one!

"Give me again all that was there, Give me the sun that shone--"

Ah, that hurt! Better leave that--think of something else quickly. How far off those days were! And the people in them all pa.s.sed away or pa.s.sed on! Judy in Australia, happy with her cad. Mrs Rookwood settled in Johannesburg--George had got rich in the mining world and was now a king of finance, and she a leader of society. Elizabeth Marriott was still in England with her boy; gold had been discovered on her property in Matabeleland, and a brother had come out to look after it for her until the boy was old enough to come into his own. Other Fort Georgites were scattered far and wide. I heard sometimes from Colonel Blow, in Buluwayo, and Gerry Deshon at Umtali; but people in Africa are always too busy with the interesting people round them to have much time for remembering those who have pa.s.sed on elsewhere. Annabel Cleeve's husband had died in England a few months after their marriage, and left her a rich widow. Mrs Valetta was still living in Mgatweli.

I had never been to call on her, for I made few calls except the official ones required of me. Even if I had not heard that she was too ill to receive visitors, I could not suppose her anxious to renew so painful an acquaintance as ours had been. She had never been well since the Fort George days, they said. Fever! Malarial fever covers a mult.i.tude of ills in Rhodesia. Would she get better when--Ah! that hurt--think of something else quick!

But I could not think of _anything else_ for long. Back, back, my thoughts came always to _that_ as my eyes went always back to the hills.

Maurice had been gone a week. No news yet. But sometimes when all was still I seemed to hear the beating of horse's feet over the soft veldt gra.s.s.

I missed Makupi's red blanket against the blaze of the zinias, where he was wont to sit, expelling the melancholy of his soul with the throb of his weird _tom-tom_, and hiding in his heart through all these months a secret that changed the face of life for three people!

Down in the camp a trooper, sitting outside his hut, was at the same business as myself--darning his foot-wear--and save for his idle song there was no other sound to break the hot, tranquil silence of the afternoon. Along the town road a boy with a letter held aloft in a cleft stick was approaching, with the peculiar rhythmical motion affected by letter-carriers. Everything was very still. The world had a pregnant, brooding look to me.

The boy with the letter had reached the camp and given his letter to the trooper, and the trooper had given it back, pointing to me. Carefully the boy replaced it in his stick, as though he had still many miles to go, and resuming his rhythmical step came up the winding path to me.

I did not know the straggly writing upon the envelope, nor at first the signature at the foot of the brief note--_Annunciata Valetta_.

"_Will you come and see me. I am too ill to come to you. I have something to tell you_."

At last I realised that Nonie was short for so beautiful a name as Annunciata, and that it was the woman I had been thinking about who had written to me. It is strange how often these coincidences occur! While the boy sat patiently on his heels at the door I scribbled a note to say I would come.

I cannot tell what instinct made me beautifully arrange my hair, and put on my loveliest gown that night. I am very sure it was not vanity.

Many waters cannot drown love, but there are fires in life that can burn out of a woman the last root of vanity; and I had been through those flames. Some vague idea possessed me, perhaps, of hiding from the cynical eyes of Nonie Valetta the scars the furnace had left on me. I had always felt it to be due to Maurice, as well as myself, to cover up the hollowness of our life from curious eyes, and I think no one had ever suspected what we hid under our pleasant manner to each other in public. In the last few months, especially, I believe ours had been cited as a very happy marriage. But I feared the probing glance of Nonie Valetta.

I wore a white silk gown, and threw about my bare shoulders, for the night air was dewy, a long theatre-coat of black satin that was lovelier within than without, for it was lined with white satin, upon which had been embroidered, by subtle, Parisian fingers, great sprays of crimson roses. So skilfully had the work of lining been done that every time I took a step a big red rose would peep out somewhere, and if I put out my arms I seemed to shower roses. I had designed it myself in the blithe long ago. Betty used to call it my pa.s.sionate cloak.

After my marriage she had gone to our various homes and gathered up all my belongings--stacks of gowns, cloaks, kimonos, embroideries, and laces that I had forgotten I ever possessed; together with pictures, china, music, draperies, and curios; all the things I had collected in happy-go-careless days and thought little of, but which were now something in the nature of treasure trove. She had despatched them in case upon case, and they had arrived within the last few months. The huts were crammed with odd and lovely things, and I boasted a wardrobe the like of which no other woman in Rhodesia, perhaps in Africa, possessed. I had reason to be thankful that my taste had always run to the picturesque rather than to the _chic_. Most of my gowns and all of my wraps could never go out of fashion, for they had never been in it.

They would be useful and picturesque until they fell into shreds.

I went down through the zinias, which now I did not hate any longer.

Like the hills, they had become part of my life. I should take the memory of them to Australia with me, and wherever I went they would go too. In the moonlight their garishness was dulled to a uniformity of pallor. They looked like armies and armies of little dreary ghosts.

I did not have to ask the way to the big thatched house the Valettas had taken possession of. In a small town like Mgatweli one knows where every one lives even though one does not visit them.

As I came to the deep, chair-lined verandah a man with the air of one of Ouida's guardsmen threw away his cigarette and came forward looking at me curiously. He seemed surprised when I asked for Mrs Valetta.

"My wife? Yes, but she is ill," he answered hesitatingly, evidently knowing nothing of her note to me.

"I heard so, and have come to see her," I said. "She and I knew each other long ago in Fort George. I am Mrs Stair."

"Ah! Will you come in? I'll tell her."

He led the way into a sitting-room, and in the light gave me another enveloping stare full of the bold admiration men of a certain type imagine appeals to women, not knowing that really nice women very much resent being admired by the wrong men.

After one glance at him I turned away a little wearily. Early in a girl's life these handsome, dissolute faces have their own special _allure_. But I knew too much. Africa had educated me, and my mind asked for something more in a man's face now than much evil and a few charming possibilities for good.

Men who have reached the Rubicon boundary, which lies between thirty and forty, should have something more than possibilities stamped upon their faces.

"Is that Mrs Stair, Claude?" a very weary voice called from the next room; the weakness, the terrible slow la.s.situde of it horrified me.

"Is she so ill?" I asked in a low voice, after he had called back:

"(Yes: coming, dear.) It is only a matter of days with her now," he answered laconically.

And when I saw Nonie Valetta lying there, her pallid hands plucking at the blue and white stripes of her coverlet, I knew that he had spoken truth. Her hours were numbered. Pale as ashes, she lay there watching me with her strangely coloured eyes, the old weary bitter curve still on her lips. She too had eaten of the aloes of life.

I took her hand, and for a moment or two, as long as the nurse was in the room, we murmured the little conventional things that always lie ready on women's lips while the eyes are probing deep, deep for the unspoken things. But as soon as we were alone she smiled her twisted smile at me and said:

"I see why they call you Ghostie."

"It is very impertinent of them if they do," I responded, smiling a little too.

"But it is true. You are the ghost of your old self when you came to Africa. You were very lovely then. I knew the moment I saw you that my life was over." I felt myself paling.

"Do not speak of those days. That is past grief and pain. We are all much older and wiser now."

"You do not look a day older--only as though you had been burnt in a fire, and there is nothing but the white ashes of you left. Yet if anything you are more beautiful--there is something about you no man could resist--something _unwon_--they'll lay down their lives and burn in h.e.l.l for the unwon. I am glad Tony Kinsella cannot see you to-night looking like a white flame among red roses--What are all those red roses? Yes--I am glad he cannot see you to-night."