Chapter VIII
“Don’t you some times feel,” asked Margaret, “as though dullness had gone as far as it possibly can go, and something surprising simply must happen soon?”
Ford glanced cautiously about him before he answered.
“Lots of things might happen any minute to some of us,” he said. “You haven’t been ill enough to know, but we are n’t all keen for surprises.”
It was evening, and the big lamp that hung from the ceiling in the middle of the drawing-room breathed a faint fragrance of paraffin upon the inhabitants of the Sanatorium assembled beneath it. From the piano which stood against the wall, Mrs. Jakes had removed its usual load of photographs and ornamental pottery, and now, with her back to her fellow creatures, was playing the intermezzo from “Cavalleria Rusticana.” Her small hands moving upon the keys showed the red knuckles and uneven nails which had come to her since first she learned that composition within earshot of the diapason of trains passing by Clapham Junction, mightily challenging her laborious tinkle-tinkle, and with as little avail as now the night of the Karoo challenged it. Like her gloves and her company manners, it stood between her shrinking spirit and those poignant realities which might otherwise have overthrown her. So when she came to the end of it she turned back the pages of the score which was propped before her, and without glancing at the notes, played it through again.
“For instance,” whispered Ford, under cover of the music; “look at Jakes. He carries a catastrophe about with him, don’t you think?”
The doctor was ranging uneasily to and fro on the hearth-rug, where the years of his exile were recorded in patches worn bare by his feet. There was already a change to be remarked in him since Margaret had first made his acquaintance; some of his softness and appealing guiltiness was gone and he was a little more desperate and unresponsive. She had mentioned this once to Ford, who had frowned and replied, “Yes, he ’s showing the strain.” She looked at him now covertly. He was walking to and fro before the empty fireplace with quick, unequal steps and the fingers of one hand fidgeted about his mouth. His eyes, flickering back and forth, showed an almost frantic impatience; poor Mrs. Jakes’ melodious noises that smoothed balm upon her soul were evidently making havoc with his nerves. He seemed to have forgotten, in the stress of his misery, that others were present to see him and enter his disordered demeanor upon their lists of his shortcomings. As he faced towards her, Margaret saw the sideward sag of his mouth under his meager, fair mustache and the panic of his white eyeball upturned. His decent black clothes only accentuated the strangeness of him.
“He looks dreadful,” she said; “dreadful. Oughtn’t you to go to him—or something?”
“No use.” Ford shook his head. “I know. But I wish he ’d go to his study, all the same. If he stays here he may break down.”
“Why doesn’t he go?” asked Margaret.
“He can’t make up his mind. He ’s at that stage when to decide to do anything is an effort. And yet the chap ’s suffering for the only thing that will give his nerves relief. Can’t help pitying him, in spite of everything, when you see him like that.”
“Pitying him—yes,” agreed Margaret. Mrs. Jakes with her foot on the soft pedal, was beginning the intermezzo again for the fifth time and slurring it dreamily to accord with her brief mood of contentment and peace.
“You know,” Margaret went on, “it ’s awfully queer, really, that I should be in the same room with a man in that condition. Three months ago, I couldn’t have borne it. Except sometimes on the streets, I don’t think I ’d ever seen a drunken man. I must have changed since then in some way.”
“Learned something, perhaps,” suggested Ford. “But you were saying you found things dull. Well, it just struck me that you ’d only got to lift up your eyes to see the makings of a drama, and while you ’re looking on, your lungs are getting better. Aren’t you a bit hard to satisfy?”
“Am I? I wonder.” They were seated at opposite ends of a couch which faced them to the room, and the books which they had abandoned—loose-backed, much-handled novels from the doctor’s inelastic stock of literature—lay face down between them. Margaret looked across them at Ford with a smile; he had always a reasonable answer to her complainings.
“You don’t take enough stock in human nature,” he said seriously. “Too fastidious—that’s what you are, and it makes you miss a lot.”
“Perhaps you ’re right,” she answered. “I ’ve been thinking something of the kind myself. A letter I had—from a girl at home—put it in my mind. She writes me six sheets all about the most trivial and futile things you can imagine, but she speaks of them with bated breath, as it were. If only she were here instead of me, she ’d be simply thrilled. I wish you knew her.”
“I wish I did,” he said. “I ’ve always had an idea that the good Samaritan was a prying, inquisitive kind of chap, and that ’s really what made him cross the road to the other fellow. He wanted to know what was up, in the first place, and the rest followed.”
“Whereas—” prompted Margaret. “Go on. What ’s the moral?”
Ford laughed. “The moral is that there ’s plenty to see if you only look for it,” he answered.
“I ’ve seen one thing, at any rate, without looking for it, since I ’ve been here,” retorted Margaret. “Something you don’t know anything about, Mr. Ford.”
“What was that?” he demanded. “Nothing about Jakes, was it?”
“No; nothing about him.”
She hesitated. She had it in her mind to speak to him about the Kafir, Kamis, and share with him that mystery in return for the explanations which he could doubtless give of its less comprehensible features. But at that moment Mrs. Jakes ceased playing and began to put the score away.
“I ’ll tell you another time,” she promised, and picked up her book again.
The cessation of the music seemed to release Dr. Jakes from the spell which had been holding him. He stopped walking to and fro and strove to master himself for the necessary moment before his departure. He turned a writhen, twitching face on his wife.
“You played it again and again,” he said, with a sort of dull resentment.
Mrs. Jakes looked up at him swiftly, with fear in her eyes.
“Don’t you like it, Eustace?” she asked.
He only stared without answering, and she went on speaking hurriedly to cover him.
“It always seems to me such a sweet piece,” she said. “So haunting. Don’t you think so, Miss Harding? I ’ve always liked it. I remember there was a tea-room in Oxford Street where they used to have a band in the afternoons—just fiddles and a piano—and they used to play it there. Many ’s the time I ’ve dropped in for a cup of tea when I was shopping—not for the tea but just to sit and listen. Their tea wasn’t good, for the matter of that, but lots of people went, all the same. Tyler’s, was the name, I remember now. Do you know Tyler’s, Miss Harding?”
She was making it easy for the doctor to get away, after his custom, but either the enterprise of making a move was too difficult for him or else an unusual perversity possessed him. At any rate, he did not go. He stood listening with an owlish intentness to her nervous babble.
“I know Tyler’s very well,” answered Margaret, coming to her aid. “Jolly useful place it is, too. But I don’t remember the band.”
“I used to go to the Queen’s Hall,” put in Dr. Jakes hoarsely. “Monday afternoons, when I could get away. And afterwards, have dinner in Soho.”
From the window, where Mr. Samson lay in an armchair in apparent torpor, came a wheeze, and the single word, “Simpson’s.”
Margaret laughed. “How sumptuous,” she said. “Now, Mr. Ford, you tell us where you used to go.”
“Club,” answered Ford, promptly. “I had to have something for my subscription, you know, so I went there and read the papers.”
Mrs. Jakes was watching her husband anxiously, while Ford and Margaret took up the burden of inconsequent talk and made a screen of trivialities for her. But to-night Dr. Jakes needed expression as much as whisky; there was the hopeless, ineffectual anger of a baited animal in his stare as he faced them.
“Why aren’t any of you looking at me?” he said suddenly.
None answered; only Mr. Samson sat up on his creaking armchair of basketwork with an amazed, “Eh? What ’s that?” Margaret stared helplessly and Mrs. Jakes, white-faced and tense, murmured imploringly, “Eustace.”
“Dodging with your eyes and babbling about tea-shops,” said the doctor hotly. “You think, because a man ’s a bit—”
“Eustace,” cried Mrs. Jakes, clasping her hands. “Eustace dear.”
It was wonderful to notice how her habit of tone held good in that peril which whitened her face and made her tremble from head to foot as she stood. From her voice alone, one would have implied no more than some playful extravagance on the doctor’s part; she still hoped that it could be carried off on the plane of small affairs.
“You would go out without a proper hat on, Jakes,” said Ford suddenly. “Feel stuffy in the head, don’t you?”
“What do you mean—stuffy?” demanded Jakes.
But already the vigor that had spurred him to a demonstration was exhausted and the need for alcohol, the burning physical famine for nerve-reinforcement, had him in its grip.
“Stuffy?” repeated Ford, watching him closely. “Oh, you know what I mean. I ’ve seen chaps like it heaps of times after a day in the sun; they get the queerest fancies. You really ought to get a proper hat, though.”
Mrs. Jakes took him by the arm persuasively. “Don’t you think you ’d better lie down for a bit, Eustace—in the study?”
“In the study?” He blinked twice or thrice painfully, and made an endeavor to smile. “Yes, perhaps. This—er—stuffy feeling, you know—yes.”
His wife’s arm steered him to the door, and once out of the room he dropped it and fairly bolted across the echoing hall to his refuge. In the drawing-room they heard his eager feet and the slam of the door that shut him in to his miserable deliverance from pain, and the double snap of the key that locked out the world and its censorious eyes.
“You—you just managed it,” said Margaret to Ford. The queer inconsequent business had left her rather breathless. “But wasn’t it horrible?”
“Some day we shan’t be able to talk him down, and then it ’ll be worse,” answered Ford soberly. “That ’ll be the end for Mrs. Jakes’ home. But you played up all right, you know. You did the decent thing, and in just the right way. And I was glad, because, you know, I ’ve never been quite sure how you ’d shape.”
“You thought I ’d scream for help, I suppose,” suggested Margaret.
“No,” he replied slowly. “But I often wondered whether, when the time came, you ’d go to your room or stay and lend a hand. Not that you wouldn’t be quite right to stand out, for it ’s a foul business, all this, and there ’s nothing pretty in it. Still, taking sides is a sign of life in one’s body—and I ’m glad.”
“That’s all right, then,” said Margaret. “And it ’s enough about me for the present, too. You said that some day it won’t be possible any more to talk him down. Did you mean—some day soon?”
“Goodness knows,” said Ford. He leaned back and turned his head to look over the back of the couch at Mr. Samson. “Samson,” he called.
“Yes; what?”
“That was bad, eh! What’s the meaning of it?”
Mr. Samson blew out his breath windily and uncrossed his thin legs. “Don’t care to go into it before Miss Harding,” he said pointedly.
“Oh, bother,” exclaimed Margaret. “Don’t you think I want to know too?”
“Well, then,” said Mr. Samson, with careful deliberation, “since you ask me, I ‘d say it was a touch of the horrors casting its shadow before. He doesn’t exactly see things, y’ know, but that ’s what ’s coming. Next thing he knows, he ’ll see snakes or cuttle-fish or rats all round the room and he ’ll—he ’ll gibber. Sorry, Miss Harding, but you wanted to know.”
“But—but—” Margaret stared aghast at the feeble, urbane old man asprawl in the wicker chair, who spoke with genial authority on these matters of shadowy horror. “But how can you possibly know all this?”
Mr. Samson smiled. He considered it fitting and rather endearing that a young woman should be ignorant of such things and easily shocked when they were revealed.
“Seen it all before, my dear young lady,” he assured her. “It ’s natural you should be surprised, but it’s not so uncommon as you think. Why, I remember, once, in ’87, a feller gettin’ out of a cab because he said there was a bally great python there—a feller I knew; a member of Parliament.”
Margaret looked at Ford, who nodded.
“He knows all right,” he said, quietly. “But I don’t think you need be nervous. When it comes to that, we ’ll have to do something.”
“I ’m not nervous—not in that way, at least,” said Margaret. “Only—must it come to that? Isn’t there anything that can be done?”
“If we got a doctor here, the chances are he ’d report the matter to the authorities,” said Ford. “This place is licensed or certified or something, and that would be the end of it. And then, even if there wasn’t that, it isn’t easy to put the matter to Mrs. Jakes.”
“I—I suppose not,” agreed Margaret thoughtfully. “Still, if you decided it was necessary—you and Mr. Samson—I ’d be willing to help as far as I could. I wouldn’t like to see Mrs. Jakes suffer for lack of anything I could do.”
“That’s good of you,” answered Ford. “I mean—good of you, really. We won’t leave you out of it when the time comes, because we shall need you.”
“Always knew Miss Harding was a sportsman,” came unexpectedly from Mr. Samson in the rear. And then the handle of the door, which was loose and arbitrary in its workings, rattled warningly and Mrs. Jakes re-appeared.
She made a compunctious mouth, and expressed with headshakes a sense that all was not well, though perfectly natural and proper, with the doctor. Her eyes seemed rather to dwell on Margaret as she gave her bulletin.
“Mr. Ford was perfectly right about the hat,” she said. “Perfectly right. He ought to have one of those white ones with a pugaree. He never was really strong, you know, and the sun goes to his head at once. But what can I do? He simply won’t listen to me when I tell him we ought to go Home. The number of times I ’ve said to him, ‘Eustace, give it up; it ’s killing you, Eustace,’—you wouldn’t believe. But he ’s lying down now, and I think he ’ll be better presently.”
Mr. Samson spoke again from the background. He didn’t believe in hitting a man when he was down, Mr. Samson didn’t.
“Better have that pith helmet of mine,” he suggested. “That ’s the thing for him, Mrs. Jakes. No sense in losin’ time while you ’re writin’ to hatters—what?”
“You ’re very good, Mr. Samson,” answered Mrs. Jakes, gratefully, pausing by the piano. “I ’ll mention it to the doctor in the morning; I ’m sure he ’ll be most obliged. He ’s—he ’s greatly troubled, in case any of you should feel—well—annoyed, you know, at anything he said.”
“Poor Dr. Jakes,” said Margaret. “Of course not,” chorused the others. “Don’t know what he means,” added Mr. Samson.
Mrs. Jakes looked from one to another, collecting their responses and reassuring herself.
“He ’ll be so glad,” she said. “And now, I wonder—would you mind if I just played the intermezzo a little again?”
The easy gradual cadences of the music resumed its government of the room as Mrs. Jakes called up images of less poignant days to aid her in her extremity, sitting under the lamplight very upright and little upon the pedestal stool. For the others also, those too familiar strains induced a mood of reflection, and Margaret fell back on a word of Ford’s that had grappled at her mind and fallen away again. His mention of the need of a doctor and the difficulty of obtaining one who could be relied upon to keep a shut mouth concerning Dr. Jakes’ affairs returned to her, and brought with it the figure of Kamis, mute, inglorious, with his London diploma, wasting his skill and knowledge literally on the desert air. While Mrs. Jakes, quite involuntarily, recalled the flavor of the music-master of years ago, who played of nights a violin in the orchestra of the Putney Hippodrome and carried a Bohemian glamour about him on his daily rounds, Margaret’s mind was astray in the paths of the Karoo where wandered under the stars, unaccountable and heartrending, a healer clothed with the flesh and skin of tragedy. She remembered him as she had seen him, below the dam wall, with Paul hanging on his words and the humble clay gathering shape under his hands, lifting his blunt negro face to her and speaking in deliberate, schooled English of how it fared in Africa with a black man who was not a savage. He had thanked her then very movingly for merely hearing him and being touched by the pity and strangeness of his fate, and had promised to come to her whenever she should signify a wish to speak with him again. The wish was not wanting, but the opportunity had failed, and since then the only token of him had been the scarlet aloe plumes, fruit of the desert gathered in loneliness, which he had conveyed to her by the hands of Fat Mary. Like himself, they came to her unexpected and unexplained, and she had had them only long enough to know they existed.
Her promise to Kamis to keep her acquaintance with him a secret had withheld her so far from sharing the matter with Ford, though she told herself more than once that in his particular case the promise could not apply. With him she was sure there could be no risk; he would take his stand on the clear facts of the situation and be free from the first from the silly violence of thought which complicates the racial question in South Africa. She had even pictured to herself his reception of the news, when he received it, say, across the top of his little easel; he would pause, the palette knife between his fingers, and frown consideringly at the sticky mess before him on the canvas. His lean, sober, courageous face would give no index to the direction of his mind; he would put it to the test of his queer, sententious logic with all due deliberation, till at last he would look up decidedly and commit himself to the reasonable and human attitude of mind. “As I see it,” he would probably begin; or “Well, the position ’s pretty clear, I think. It ’s like this.” And then he would state the matter with all his harsh, youthful wisdom, tempered a little by natural kindliness and gentleness of heart. And all would be well, with a confidant gained into the bargain. But, nevertheless, he had not yet been told.
Mrs. Jakes was perfunctory, that evening with her good nights; with all her efforts to appear at ease the best she could do was to appear a little absent-minded. She gave Margaret her breakfast smile instead of her farewell one and stared at her curiously as she stood aside to let the girl pass up-stairs. She had the air of passing her in review.
It seemed to Margaret that she had been asleep for many hours when she was awakened and found the night still dark about her. Some blurred fragments of a dream still clung to her and dulled her wits; she had watched again the passing before the stoep of Van Zyl’s captives and seen their dragging feet lift the dust and the hopelessness of their white eyes. But with them, the mounted men seemed to ride to the accompaniment of hoofs clattering as they do not clatter on the dry earth of the Karoo; they clicked insistently like a cab horse trotting smartly on wood pavement, and then, when that had barely headed off her thoughts and let her glimpse a far vista of long evening streets, populous with traffic, she was awake and sitting up in her bed, and the noise was Mrs. Jakes standing in the half-open door and tapping on the panels to wake her. She carried a candle which showed her face in an unsteady, upward illumination and filled it unfamiliarly with shadows.
“What is it?” called Margaret. “Come in, Mrs. Jakes. Is there anything wrong?”
Mrs. Jakes entered and closed the door behind her. She was fully dressed still, even to the garnet brooch she wore of evenings, which she had once purchased from a countess at a bazaar. Stranger far, she wore an embarrassed, confidential little smile as though some one had turned a laugh against her. She came to Margaret’s bedside and stood there with her candle.
“My dear,” she said; “I know it’s very awkward, but I feel I can trust you. We are friends, aren’t we?”
“Yes,” said Margaret, staring at her. “But what is it?”
“Well,” said Mrs. Jakes, very deliberately, and still with the same little smile, “it ’s an awkward thing, but I want you to help me. I don’t care to ask Mr. Samson or Mr. Ford, because they might not understand. So, as we ’re friends—”
“Is anybody dead?” demanded Margaret.
Mrs. Jakes made a shocked face. “Dead. No. My dear, if that was it, you may be sure I should n’t trouble you. No, nobody ’s dead; it ’s nothing of that kind at all. I only just want a little help, and I thought—”
“You ’re making me nervous,” said Margaret. “I ’ll help if I can, but do say what it is.”
Mrs. Jakes’ smile wavered; she did not find it easy to say what it was. She put her candle down upon a chair, to speak without the strain of light on her face.
“It’s the doctor,” she said. “He’s had a—a fit, my dear. He thought a little fresh air would do him good and he went out. And the fact is, I can’t quite manage to get him in by myself.”
“Eh?” Margaret stared. “Where is he?” she asked.
“He got as far as the road and then he fell,” said Mrs. Jakes. “I wouldn’t dream of troubling you, my dear, but I ’m—I ’m rather tired to-night and I really couldn’t manage by myself. And then I remembered we were friends.”
“Not till then?” asked Margaret. “You don’t care to wake Mr. Ford? He wouldn’t misunderstand.”
“Oh, no—please,” begged Mrs. Jakes, terrified. “No, please. I ’d rather manage alone, somehow—I would, really.”
“You can’t do that,” said Margaret, decidedly. She sat a space of moments in thought. The doctor’s fit did not deceive her at all; she knew that for one of the euphemisms that made Mrs. Jakes’ life livable to her. He was drunk and incapable upon the road before the house, and Mrs. Jakes, helpless and frightened, had waked her in the middle of the night to help bring the drunken man in and hide him.
“I ’ll help you,” she said suddenly. “Don’t you worry any more, Mrs. Jakes; we ’ll manage it somehow. Let me get some things on and we ’ll go out.”
“It ’s very kind of you, my dear,” said Mrs. Jakes humbly. “You ’ll put some warm things on, won’t you? The doctor would never forgive me if I let you catch cold.”
Margaret was fumbling for her stockings.
“I ’m not very strong, you know,” she suggested. “I ’ll do all I can, but hadn’t we better call Fat Mary? She ’s strong enough for anything.”
“Fat Mary! A Kafir!” Mrs. Jakes forgot her caution and for the moment was shrill with protest. “Why—why, the doctor would never hold up his head again. It wouldn’t do at all; I simply couldn’t think of it.”
“Oh, well. As you like; I did n’t know. Here ’s me, anyhow; and awfully willing to be useful.”
But Mrs. Jakes had been startled in earnest. While Margaret completed a sketchy toilet she stood murmuring: “A Kafir! Why, the very idea—it would break the doctor’s heart.”
With her dressing-gown held close about her, Margaret went down-stairs by the side of Mrs. Jakes and her candle, with the abrupt shadows prancing before them on wall and ceiling like derisive spectators of their enterprise. But there was no sense of adventure in it; somehow the matter had ranged itself prosaically and Mrs. Jakes, prim and controlled, managed to throw over it the commonplace hue of an undertaking which is adequately chaperoned. The big hall, solemn and reserved, had no significant emptiness, and from the study there was audible the ticking of some stolid little clock.
The front door of the house was open, and a faint wind entered by it and made Margaret shiver; it showed them a slice of night framed between its posts and two misty still stars like vacant eyes.
“It ’s not far,” said Mrs. Jakes, on the stoep, and then the faint wind rustled for a moment in the dead vines and the candle-flame swooped and went out.
“You haven’t matches, my dear?” enquired Mrs. Jakes, patiently. “No? But we ’ll want a light. I could fetch a lantern if you wouldn’t mind waiting. I think I know where it is.”
“All right,” agreed Margaret. “I don’t mind.”
It was the first thrill of the business, to be left alone while Mrs. Jakes tracked that lantern to its hiding-place. Margaret slowly descended the steps from the stoep and sat down on the lowest of them to look at the night. There was a touch of chill in it, and she gathered herself up closely, with her hands clasped around her knees. The wide sleeves of the dressing-gown fell back and left her arms bare to the elbow and the recurring wind, like a cold breath, touched her on the chest where the loose robe parted. The immensity of the night, veiling with emptiness unimaginable bare miles, awed her like a great presence; there was no illumination, or none but the faintest, making darkness only apparent, from the heavenful of pale blurred stars that hung over her. Behind her, the house with those it held was dumb; it was the Karoo that was vocal. As she sat, a score of voices pressed upon her ears. She heard chirpings and little furtive cries, the far hoot of some bold bird and by and by the heartbroken wailing of a jackal. She seemed to sit at the edge of a great arena of unguessed and unsuspected destinies, fighting their way to their fulfilment in the hours of darkness. And then suddenly, she was aware of a noise recurring regularly, a civilized and familiar noise, the sound of footsteps, of somebody walking on the earth near at hand.
She heard it before she recognized it for what it was, and she was not alarmed. The footsteps came close before she spoke.
“Is anybody there, please?” she called.
The answer came at once. “Yes,” it said.
“Who is it?” she asked again, and in answer to her question, the night-walker loomed into her view and stood before her.
She rose to her feet with a little breathless laugh, for she recognized him.
“Oh, it ’s you,” she exclaimed. “Mr. Kamis, isn’t it? But what are you doing here at this time of night?”
It was not light enough to see his face; she had recognized him by the figure and attitude; and she was glad. She was aware then that she rather dreaded the negro face of him.
“What are you doing, rather?” he asked. “Does anybody know you ’re out here like this? Is it part of some silly treatment, or what?”
“I ’m waiting for Mrs. Jakes,” said Margaret. “She ’s coming with a lantern in a minute or two and you ’ll have to go. It’s all right, though; I shan’t take any harm.”
“I hope not.” He was plainly dissatisfied, and it was very strange to catch the professional restraint in his voice. “Your being here—if I may ask—hasn’t got anything to do with a very drunk man lying in the road over there?”
“You ’ve seen him, then?” asked Margaret. “It is just drunkenness, of course?”
He nodded. “But why—?” he began again.
“That’s Dr. Jakes,” explained Margaret. “And I ’m going to help Mrs. Jakes to fetch him in, quietly, so that nobody will know. So you see why you must keep very quiet and slip away before she sees you—don’t you?”
There was a pause before he answered.
“But, good Lord,” he burst out. “This is—this is damnable. You can’t have a hand in this kind of thing; it ’s impossible. What on earth are these people thinking of? You mustn’t let them drag you into beastliness of this kind.”
“Wait,” said Margaret. “Don’t be so furious. Nobody is dragging me into anything, and I don’t think I ‘m a very draggable person, anyhow. I ’d only to be a little shocked once or twice and I should never have heard of this. I ’m doing it because—well, because I want to be useful and Mrs. Jakes came to me and asked, ‘Was I her friend?’ That isn’t very clear to you, perhaps, but there it is.”
“Useful.” He repeated the word scornfully. “Useful—yes. But do you mean that this is the only use they can find for you?”
“I ’m an invalid,” said Margaret placidly. “A crock, you know. I ’ve got to take what chances I can find of doing things. But it ’s no use explaining such a thing as this. If you ’re not going to understand and be sympathetic, don’t let ’s talk about it at all.”
He did not at once reply. She stood on the last step but one and looked down towards him where he stood like a part of the night, and though she could see of him only the shape, she showed to him as a tall slenderness, with the faint luminosity of bare arms and face and neck. He seemed to be staring at her very intently.
“Anyhow,” he said suddenly—“what is wanted principally is to bring him in. That is so, is n’t it? Well, I ’ll fetch him for you. Will you be satisfied with that?”
“No, you mustn’t,” said Margaret. “Mrs. Jakes wouldn’t allow it. Never mind why. She simply wouldn’t.”
“I know why,” he answered. “I ’ve come across all that before. But this Kafir has seen the state of that white man. That does n’t make any difference? No?”
Margaret had shaken her head. “I ’m awfully sorry,” she said. “I feel like a brute—but if you had seen her when I suggested getting help. It was the one thing that terrified her. You see, it ’s her I want to help, much more than Dr. Jakes, and she must have her way. So please don’t be hurt, will you?”
He laughed a little. “Oh, that doesn’t hurt me,” he said. “If it were you, it would be different, but Mrs. Jakes can’t help it. However—do you know where this man keeps his drugs?”
“In the study,” answered Margaret. “In there, on the left. But why?”
“I ’m a doctor too; you ’d forgotten that, had n’t you? If I had two or three things I could mix something that would sober him in a couple of minutes.”
“Really?” Margaret considered it for a minute, but even that would not do. She could not bring herself to brave Mrs. Jakes’ horror and sense of betrayal when she should see the deliverer who came out of the night. And, after all, it was she who had claimed Margaret’s help. “We’re friends, aren’t we?” she had asked, and the girl had answered “Yes.” It was not the part of a friend to press upon her a gift that tasted pungently of ruin and shame.
“No,” said Margaret. “Don’t offer any more help, please. It hurts to keep on refusing it. But it isn’t what Mrs. Jakes woke me up to beg of me and it isn’t what I got up from bed to grant her. Can’t you see what I mean? I ’ve told you all about it, and I ’m trusting you to understand.”
“I understand,” he answered. “But I hate to let you go down to that drunken beast. And suppose the pair of you can’t manage him—what will you do then? You ’ll have to get help somewhere, won’t you?”
“I suppose so,” said Margaret.
“Well, get me,” he urged, and came a pace nearer, so that only the width of the two bottom steps separated them and she could feel his breath upon the hands that hung clasped before her. “Let me help, if you need it,” he begged. “I ’ll wait, out of sight. Mrs. Jakes shan’t guess I ’m there. But I won’t be far, and if you just call quietly, I ’ll hear. It—it would be kind of you—merciful to let me bear just a hand. And if you don’t call, I ’ll not show myself. There can’t be any harm in that.”
“No,” agreed Margaret, uncertainly. “There can’t be any harm in that.”
She saw that he moved abruptly, and had an impression that he made some gesture almost of glee. But he thanked her in quiet tones for her grace of consent.
Mrs. Jakes, returning, found Margaret as she had left her. She had in her hand one of those stable lanterns which consist of a glass funnel protected by a wire cage, and she spilled its light about her feet as she went and walked in a shifting ring of light through a darkness made more opaque by the contrast. There was visible of her chiefly her worn elastic-sided boots as she came down the steps with the lantern swinging in her hand; and the little feet in those uncomely coverings were somehow appealing and pathetic.
“I found it in Fat Mary’s room,” she explained. “She nearly woke up when I was taking it.”
Margaret wondered whether Kamis were near enough to hear and acute enough to picture the tiptoe search for the lantern by the bedside of snoring Kafirs, the breathless halts when one stirred, the determination that carried the quest through, and the prosaic matter-of-factness of it all.
They stumbled their way arm in arm across the spit of patched grass that stood between the house and the road, and the lantern diffused about them a yellow haze. Then their feet recognized soft loose dust and they were on the road and moving along it.
“It is n’t far,” said Mrs. Jakes, in her flat quiet voice. “Be careful, my dear; there are sometimes snakes on the road at night.”
Dr. Jakes was apparent first as an indeterminate bulk against the dust that spread before them under the lantern. Mrs. Jakes saw him first.
“He has n’t moved,” she remarked. “I was rather afraid he might have. These fits, you know—he ’s had them before.”
She stood at his head, with the lantern held before her, like a sentinel at a lying-in-state, and the whole unloveliness of his slumbers was disclosed. He sprawled upon the road in his formal black clothes, with one arm outstretched and his face upturned to the grave innocence of the night. It had not the cast of repose; he seemed to have carried his torments with him to his couch of dust and to brood upon them under his mask of sleep. What was ghastly was the eyelids which were not fully shut down, but left bare a thin line of white eyeball under each, and touched the broken countenance with deathliness. His coat, crumpled about him and over him, gave an impression of a bloated and corpulent body, and he was stained from head to foot with dust.
Mrs. Jakes surveyed him without emotion.
“He ’s undone his collar, anyhow,” she remarked.
“Did n’t you do it?” asked Margaret, seeing the white ends that rose on each side of his chin.
“No; I forgot,” was the answer. “He can’t be very bad, since he did that.”
Margaret detected the hand of Kamis in this precaution. She said nothing, but stooped with Mrs. Jakes to try to rouse the doctor. The sickening reek of the man’s breath affronted her as she bent over him.
Mrs. Jakes shook him and called on him by name in a loud half-whisper, lowering her face close to his ear. She was persuasive, remonstrant; she had the manner of reasoning briskly with him and rousing him to better ways.
“Eustace, Eustace,” she called, hushing her tones as though the night and the desert were perilous with ears. “Come, Eustace; you can get up if you try. Make just one effort, now, and you ’ll be all right.”
The gurgle of his breath was the only answer.
“We ’ll have to lift him,” she said, staring across his body at Margaret.
“All right,” agreed the girl.
“Get hold of his right arm and I ’ll take his left,” directed Mrs. Jakes. “If we get him on his feet, perhaps he ’ll rouse. Are you ready?”
Margaret closed her lips and put forth the strength that she had, and between them they dragged him to a sitting posture, with his head hanging back and his heels furrowed deep in the dust.
“Now, if I can just get behind him,” panted Mrs. Jakes. “Don’t let go. That’s it. Now! Could you just help to lift him straight up?”
Margaret went quickly to her aid. It had become horrible. The gross carcass in their hands was inert like a flabby corpse, and its mere weight overtaxed them. They wrestled with it sobbingly, to the noise of their harsh breath and the shuffle of their straining feet on the grit of the road. Suddenly Margaret ceased her laboring and the doctor collapsed once more upon the ground.
“Why did you do that?” cried Mrs. Jakes. “He was nearly up.”
“It was my chest,” answered Margaret weakly. “It—it hurt.”
There was a warm feeling in her throat and a taste in her mouth which she knew of old. She found her handkerchief and dabbed with it at her lips. The feeble light of the lantern showed her the result—the red spots on the white cambric.
“It ’s just a strain,” said Mrs. Jakes, dully. “That ’s all. The doctor will see to it to-morrow. If you rest a moment, you ’ll be all right.” She hesitated, but her husband and her life’s credit lay upon the ground at her feet, and she could not weigh Margaret’s danger against those. “You wouldn’t leave me now, my dear?” she supplicated.
“No,” said the girl, after a moment’s pause. “I won’t leave you.”
“What ’s that?” cried Mrs. Jakes and put a quick frightened hand upon her arm. “Listen! Who is it?”
Steps, undisguised and clear, passed from the grass to the stone steps of the house and ascended, crossed the stoep and were lost to hearing in the doorway.
The two women waited, breathless. It sprang to Margaret’s mind that the lantern must have shown her clearly to Kamis, where he waited in the darkness, and he must have seen the climax of her efforts and her handkerchief at her lips, and gone forthwith to the study for the drugs which would put an end to the matter.
“Look,” whispered Mrs. Jakes. “Some one is striking matches—in the study.”
The window brightened and darkened again and then lit with a steady glow; the invader had found a candle. Mrs. Jakes dropped Margaret’s arm.
“I must see who it is,” she said. “Walking into people’s houses like this.”
Margaret held her back; she was starting forthwith to bring the majesty of her presence to bear on the unknown and possibly dangerous intruder. Mrs. Jakes had a house as well as a husband and could die at need for either.
“No, don’t go,” said Margaret. “I know who it is. It’s all right, if only you won’t be—well, silly about it.”
“Who is it, then?” demanded Mrs. Jakes.
Margaret felt feeble and unequal to the position. Her chest was painful, she was cold, and now there was about to be a delicate affair with Mrs. Jakes. She could have laughed at the growing complexity of things, but had the wit not to.
“It ’s a doctor,” she said; “a real London doctor. He was passing when you left me to get the lantern, and I wouldn’t let him stay because I thought you ’d be annoyed. He ’s gone into the house to—”
“Does he know?” whispered Mrs. Jakes, feverishly, thrusting close to her. “Does he know—about this?” Her downward-pointing finger indicated the slumbers of Dr. Jakes. “Say, can’t you—does he know?”
“He ’d seen him,” said Margaret. “I expect he loosened the collar—you know. He wanted to help but I wouldn’t let him.”
“Is he a friend of yours?” asked Mrs. Jakes again, still in the same agitated whisper.
“Yes,” answered Margaret. “He is. It ’s all right, really, if only you ’ll be sensible and not make a fuss. He ’ll help us and then he ’ll go away and he ’ll say nothing. You did n’t think I ’d do anything to hurt you, did you? Are n’t we friends?”
Mrs. Jakes stood silent; she asked no questions as to how a London doctor, a friend of Margaret’s, chanced to be walking upon the Karoo at night.
“Well,” she said at last, with a long sigh; “perhaps we might have needed some help, in any case.”
That was all she said, till the footsteps came again across the stoep and down the steps, more deliberately this time, as though something were being carried with precaution. Then they were noiseless for a minute or more on the grass, and at last the figure of Kamis came into the further edge of the lighted circle.
“I had to do it,” he said, before either of them could speak, and showed the graduated glass in his hand. “I saw you with your handkerchief.”
Margaret, with an instinct of apprehension, looked at Mrs. Jakes. At the first dim view of him, she had roused herself from her dejection, and put on her prim, social face to meet the London doctor effectively. Her little meaningless smile was bent for him; she would make a blameless and uneventful drawing-room of the August night and guard it against unseemly dramatics.
He turned from Margaret towards her and came further into the lamp-light, and she had a clear view of the black face and sorrowful, foolish negro features. She uttered a gasp that was like a low cry and stood aghast, staring.
“Madam,” began Kamis.
She shivered. “A Kafir,” she said. “The doctor will never forgive us.” And then, wheeling upon Margaret, “And I ’ll never forgive you. You said we were friends—and this is what you do to me.”
“Mrs. Jakes,” implored Margaret. “You must be sensible. It ’s all right, really. This gentleman—”
“This gentleman,” Mrs. Jakes uttered a passionate spurt of laughter. “Do you mean this nigger? Gentleman, you call it? A London doctor? A friend of yours? A friend. Ha, ha!” She spun round again towards Kamis, waiting with the glass in his hand, the liquid in which shone greenish to the lamp. “Voetzaak!” she ordered, shrilly. “Hamba wena—ch’che. Skellum. Injah. Voetzaak!”
Kamis stood his ground. He cast a look at Margaret, past Mrs. Jakes, and spoke to her.
“Will she let me give him this?” he asked. “Tell her I am a doctor and this will bring him to very quickly. And then I ’ll go away at once and never say a word about it.”
“Don’t you dare touch him,” menaced Mrs. Jakes. “A filthy Kafir—I should think so, indeed.”
Kamis went on in the same steady tone. “If she won’t you must go in at once and send for another doctor to-morrow. This man ought to be reported.”
“You dare,” cried Mrs. Jakes. “You ’d report him—a Kafir.” She edged closer to the prostrate body of Dr. Jakes and stood beside it like a beast-mother at bay. “I ’ll have you locked up—walking into my husband’s study like that.”
“Mrs. Jakes.” Margaret tried once more. “Please listen. If you ’ll only let the doctor have this drink, he ’ll be able to walk. If you don’t, he ’ll have to stay here. I am your friend; I got up when you came to me and I said I wouldn’t leave you even when I hurt my chest. Doesn’t that prove that I am? I wouldn’t do you any harm or shame you before other people for anything. What will Dr. Jakes say if he finds out that you let me stay here pleading when I ought to be in bed? He ’s a doctor himself and he ’ll be awfully annoyed—after telling me I should get well, too. Aren’t you going to give him a chance—and me?”
Mrs. Jakes merely glared stonily.
“Come,” said Margaret. “Won’t you?”
Kamis uttered a smothered exclamation. “I won’t wait,” he said. “I ’ll count ten, slowly. Then Miss Harding must go in and I go away.”
“Oh, don’t begin that sort of thing,” cried Margaret. “Mrs. Jakes is going to be sensible. Aren’t you?”
There was no reply, only the stony and hostile stare of the little woman facing them and the gray image of disgrace.
“One,” counted Kamis clearly. “Two. Three.”
He counted with the stolid regularity of a clock; he made as though to overturn the glass and waste its contents in the dust as soon as he should have reached ten. “Ten,” he uttered, but held it safely still. “Well?”
Mrs. Jakes did not move for some moments. Then she sighed and, still without speaking, moved away from the slumbering doctor. She walked a dozen paces from the road and stood with her back to them.
With quick skilful movements, Kamis lifted the unconscious man’s head to the crook of his arm and the rim of the glass clicked on his teeth. Margaret walked after Mrs. Jakes.
“Come,” she said gently. “I don’t misunderstand. You trusted me or you would n’t have waked me. Everything will be all right soon and then you ’ll forgive me.”
“I won’t—never.”
Mrs. Jakes would not face her. She stood looking into the blackness, tense with enmity.
“Well, I hope you will,” said Margaret.
They heard grunts from the doctor and then quavering speech and one rich oath, and a noise of spitting. The Kafir approached them noiselessly from behind and paused at Margaret’s side.
“That’s done the trick,” he said; “and he doesn’t even know who gave him the draft. You ’ll go in now?”
“Yes,” said Margaret. “You have been good, though.”
Mrs. Jakes had returned to her husband; they were for the moment alone.
“I didn’t mean to force your hand,” he whispered. “But I had to. A doctor has duties.”
She gave him her hand. “There was something I wanted to tell you, but there ’s no time to explain now. Did you know you were wanted by the police?”
“Bless you, yes.” He smiled with a white flash of teeth. “Were you going to warn me? How kind! And now, in you go, and good night.”
Dr. Jakes was sitting up, spitting with vigor and astonishment. He had taken a heroic dose of hair-raising restoratives on the head of a poisonous amount of whisky, and his palate was a moldering ruin. But the clearness of his faculties left nothing to be desired.
“Who ’s that?” he demanded at sight of Margaret. “Miss Harding. How do you come to be out here at this time?”
“You should time your fits more decently, doctor,” answered Margaret coolly.
Mrs. Jakes hastened to explain more acceptably. “I was frightened, Eustace. You looked so bad—and these fits are terrible. So I asked Miss Harding if she wouldn’t come and help me.”
“A patient,” said the doctor. He turned over and rose stiffly to his feet, dust-stained all over. He stood before her awkwardly.
“I am unfortunate,” he said. “You are in my care and this is what happens. It is my misfortune—and my fault. You ’ll go back to bed now, Miss Harding, please.”
“Sure there ’s nothing more you want?” inquired Margaret.
“At once, please,” he repeated. “In the morning—but go at once now.”
On the stoep she paused to listen to them following after her and heard a portion of Mrs. Jakes’ excuses to her husband.
“You looked so dreadful, Eustace, and I was frightened. And then, you ’re so heavy, and I suppose I was tired, and to-night I couldn’t quite manage by myself, dear.”
Margaret passed in at the door in order to cough unheard, that nothing might be added to the tale of Mrs. Jakes’ delinquencies.