Wild Honey: Stories of South Africa

Cynthia Stockley

"Wild Honey"

"Stories of South Africa"

Chapter One.

Wild Honey—Part I.

It was a six-mule mail-coach that bumped and banged along the rough highroad to Buluwayo, and Vivienne Carlton anathematised the fate that condemned her to travel by it. Cordially she detested the cheerful garrulity of certain of her fellow-passengers, quoting to herself Louis Vance’s satirical mot: “A pessimist is a person who has to live with optimists.” Gladly would she have slain the optimists with whom she was so tightly packed in the hooded body of the cart—for the term “coach” was merely a polite fiction: the affair was neither more nor less than a two-seated Cape cart, with the hood thrown back so that the mules might find the pulling easier and the passengers be more effectively grilled.

Two passengers shared the front seat with the driver. Miss Carlton was wedged in the back seat between a perspiring Cape Colonial and a tall lithe man with a deeply tanned complexion and careless light grey eyes, who was as taciturn as herself. No one looking at her sitting there so composedly, closely veiled and gloved, violet eyes quietly fixed on the horizon, her tall khaki-clad figure preserving in spite of its contiguity with strangers an air of dainty aloofness, would have guessed her frame of mind. Her companions had her marked down as an English girl whose beauty and breeding warranted her to put on as much “side” as she liked, and in this they were not very far from the truth. They were also certain that she was the daughter of a lord, and wondered how she came to be travelling alone. The Colonial and the man who came from Kimberley admired her madly without daring to address a word to her; the showy blonde who was going up to be a barmaid in Salisbury, would have given the necklace of diamonds she wore for its safety under her cotton blouse, to possess that aloof manner and gift of remaining silent without being offensive. Only the third man with his careless glance that took in every point of the changing scene of bush, and tree, and kop, had any notion of what was going on behind the composed lovely face of the girl next to him. And the reason he knew was that though he looked like a pirate or a Klondike miner, or anything that was reckless and disreputable he was really of the same world as herself, and could very well guess how the discomfort and hateful intimacy of coach-travelling outraged her. But even he was far from guessing at the hopeless fury, and bitter disdain of her surroundings and the world in general that was rankling in the heart so close to him that he could almost feel its beating.

Vivienne Carlton’s hand was against all men as she believed all women’s to be against her; but she had learned to conceal the fact well. Not by brandishing her scorn and detestation of it could she hope to get back her own from a world that had treated her badly. Two years of struggling for a living in the ranks of journalism had taught her nothing if it had not taught her this!

Ah! what a two years! Instead of enjoying the brilliant peace of the land about her, she was thinking of them now, turning her eyes inward to memories that were poisoning her life. Two years of outward kow-towing to those who had once kow-towed to her, of being cut and ignored by people who when she was heiress to great estates and an ancient name would have petted and fawned upon her, had not the natural haughtiness of her nature rebuffed them. They remembered those rebuffs when the tide of her family’s prosperity turned, and the great law case that had dragged on wearily for many months came to an end with the verdict that disinherited her father and gave to an Australian cad all that Vivienne had been taught from her birth to consider irrefragably hers. Well had her haughtiness been remembered against her in that hour! It seemed as though all fashionable society had been poised expectant, stones and javelins in hand, waiting for the fall of the house of Giffard-Carlton. Sir Gerald, her gentle, chivalrous father, had not long survived the loss of his title and position, but Vivienne and her mother of the same spirit, proud and defiant in adversity, bore the brunt of society’s malignant glee with unbowed heads, contemptuously refusing the charity of the usurper, and the humiliating favours of so-called friends. They were obliged to step down from their high places, but they did it with dignity, and might with dignity have retired into obscurity and been forgotten by society, like many another before them, but for the fact that of all her gifts the only one Vivienne could turn to account was the gift of description and charming phrase which soon gave her a place and a living in the world of journalism. And in that connection she came into constant touch with the world of society. For she had been obliged of course to begin at the very beginning, penny-a-lining reports of balls and receptions, descriptions of weddings and the gowns of débutantes. It was at such work that so much that was wounding and embittering had come her way. Many a cruel insult had she been obliged to swallow for her guinea a column. Many an old score cherished by les nouveaux riches against the house of Giffard-Carlton had been paid into the account of the lady journalist! And the result of it all was a nature incalculably embittered and corroded. Though she was only twenty-two, Vivienne did not feel like a girl any longer, but she still looked like a girl, and a very charming one at that. The fact was one she meant to use as a weapon in her reprisals against a world that had mishandled her. Her gift of writing was a weapon that enabled her to beat a living for herself and her mother out of life, but her beauty was a far more potent one, and she meant to use it to the hilt as a means of getting back her own from society. This work she had come out to Africa to do for the Daily Flag—a series of articles descriptive of the life, inhabitants, and prospects of Cecil Rhodes’s country—would, she hoped, prove to be a means to a very special end. If her articles made a big hit she would not have to go back to describing ball gowns. But she did not mean to return to journalism at all if she could help it. There were plenty of millionaires in Africa—and she had plenty to give in exchange for the millions of one of them—youth, beauty, birth, breeding, an intimate knowledge of the social world! There was only one thing he must not ask of her, and that was a heart. She might be tempted to reveal to him what she carried instead—a husk with a little brown dust in it, like a rotten nut! To cry to him as Baudelaire cried in his bitterness:

“My heart?—the beasts have eaten it!”

She had little fear of being unable to gain her end. Many men had proposed to her since she became simple Miss Carlton, but none of them had been able to offer enough in exchange for the rotten nut. The man destined to receive that precious gift must be very rich indeed, must have enough to buy back what the world had robbed her of—place, and power to put her foot on the necks of those who had humiliated her. There were many such in Africa. Even during her short stay in Cape Town, she had met one who showed himself as heartily disposed as he was well-equipped to shoulder his side of the bargain. Only for a foolish and incomprehensible shrinking on her part at the last moment, she would now have been engaged to marry Wolfe Montague, one of Johannesberg’s great financial kings.

However! She was to see him again in a month or two in Rhodesia and doubtless by that time she would be rid of all foolish prejudices. This charming coach journey was one of the things that would help her to come to a propitious decision! At the thought, she gave a little cynical laugh that made her companions stare, wondering what she found in the scenery to amuse her.

Indeed, nothing less amusing than this journey could be imagined. Day after day of weary crawling across a landscape that changed unceasingly in outline, though never in detail. Always the undulating grassy slopes dotted with bush, the eternal kopje ahead, and the eternal kopje left behind. There was something terrible about the brooding loneliness, the eloquent stillness, the great unending sameness of it all.

They had been travelling for four nights and days and must continue for a good many more yet before the end was reached—sometimes putting up for a night at a rough wayside hotel, more often just outspanning beside a mule stable during the darkest hours and sleeping as best they could in the cramped cart, with rugs and mail-bags as a common couch. Vivienne had never imagined such physical discomfort possible, and though her body was too strong to suffer by it, her mind was sick, and her whole being revolted at the sordidness of it all. Sleeping side by side with strange men, and a common woman, wedged against them, listening to their snores! Wakening in the morning to the intimacy of their unkempt faces! Eating and drinking in their company, listening to their eternal talk!

Thank Heaven! to-night at least was to be spent at a hotel. Even the others who were seasoned coach-travellers congratulated themselves on that fact, not so much because there would be beds to sleep in, as because an obvious storm was brewing. The sunlight had gone suddenly, and black clouds, lined with pallid green, were grouping in the west, taking the form of a great monster with brooding wings. Now and then a quiver of lightning passed across the sky, and a large drop of rain splashed down into the coach.

On rounding a kopje, they came suddenly upon Palapye, the native village where the night was to be spent. It was the kraal of Khama, king of the Bechuana tribe—hundreds of straw thatched huts sprawling up a hill and across the plain!

Vivienne, since she left Pretoria, had seen many such “hotels” as the one by which the coach now drew up: a square wattle-and-daub affair with a number of smaller huts scattered around it. Painfully she clambered down, and with the others followed the worn woman who kept the place to one of these small huts which were the guest rooms. For once there were enough to go round, and no one was obliged to share. That was something to be thankful for in an odious world!

After she had washed some of the dust from her face and hands and removed a great deal more from her dark curly hair, which she wore boy-fashion—short, and parted on one side—Vivienne went and sat by her hut door to get a little air. The storm had not yet broken, and with the thermometer at anything over a hundred, the heat was almost unbearable. Immediately, she became aware of another woman, sitting in the doorway of a hut opposite—a stone-still woman, whose face, shadowed by a dark print sunbonnet was pallid as a bone, with sunken eyes staring absorbedly before her into nothingness. In the listless hands hanging over her knees, she held a child’s little torn shabby straw hat.

After one glance, Vivienne in spite of the heat felt a shiver creep over her, and presently in the silence, knowledge came to her that she was in the presence of tragedy. Something terrible was going on behind those fixed, absorbed eyes, some sorrow too deep for words was brooding with bowed head in the mind of that silent watcher. The girl felt the heart quiver in her breast—that heart she supposed the beasts had eaten! And she longed to put out a hand or speak a word of comfort to the woman. But she had lost the habit of saying sympathetic things and it is one that cannot be regained in a moment. The best she could do was to quietly withdraw from the presence of grief, and stay in the back of her hut until the hotel-woman came to call her for dinner.

In the square hut, the other passengers were gathered round the usual meal: goat chops, potatoes, a steaming dish of green mealies boiled on the cob. Vivienne took her place with her habitual aloof composure, paying little attention to the general conversation until a question addressed by the barmaid to the hotel-keeper roused her interest.

“In the name of goodness, what’s wrong with that woman I saw sitting inside one of the huts?”

The hotel-keeper made a hopeless gesture with her shoulders.

“Ach! Don’t ask me, it’s too awful! Her kindt is lost in the bush.”

“My God!” said the Kimberley man abruptly, and his mealie cob fell into his plate.

“Yes,” continued the woman. “Only three and a half years old, and one minute playing round the waggon in the sight of her pa and ma, and the next minute... gone! That was four days ago, and they never seen her since.” She added in a low voice, “Nor never will!”

“But what happened?” stammered Vivienne startled out of her reserve.

“Goodness knows, Miss... She just wandered out of sight behind a bush, I suppose, and then—all bushes look alike! You can get lost in three minutes on the veld. Just think of that arme kind tumbling along, falling, and sobbing, and wondering why her ma didn’t come. And they hunting like mad things for her! The father’s gone cracked as a Hottentot, and still goes on hunting; but she can’t stand on her feet any more, and they brought her in here to-day for me to mind.”

Vivienne thought it the most appalling thing she had ever heard. Her soul was sick within her. She could eat nothing. She would have left the hut, but the storm had broken with a roar and a flash, and outside the rain was swishing down. She was obliged to sit still and hear more of this story which paralysed her with terror and pity. A love of little children is a very inconvenient possession for a woman who means to beat the world at its own heartless game!

“They found the kid’s hat next day, more than twenty miles from where they lost her. Think of it! A child of that age wandering twenty miles!”

“She ran of course,” said the light-eyed man briefly. “They always run.”

“Or perhaps... you never know... a Hon—”

“Oh, don’t!” Vivienne cried out suddenly, and put her hand over her eyes. The others stared at her moodily, and the subject dropped. But presently the Kimberley man asked the Colonial if he had ever heard of the fellow who was lost from the Pioneer Column?

“Ya!” said the Colonial. “Seen him often in Buluwayo. He’s got a queer look in his eye and I don’t wonder. Forty days before he found the Column again—long after they had given him up. And he could never tell a thing he did in those forty days.”

“They never can. A fellow I knew in the B.B.P. got lost out from Tuli one time. And when they found him again, all his front teeth were gone. He couldn’t remember how it happened. But of course it was lying on the ground gnawing roots did it.”

The barmaid leaned on her elbows, eagerly interested; but Vivienne, white-lipped, listened because she must.

“The great thing is not to lose your head,” said the Kimberley man, pleasantly conversational. “I’ve known lots of fellows who’ve been lost, and they all agree that the first instinct when you realise you’re lost is to start running. Just run and run till you drop. Then the madness gets you, and you begin to tear off your clothes and pitch them in every direction as you run. Nearly every fellow ever found after being lost is stark naked—begging your pardon, Miss,” he added as his eye fell upon Vivienne. She took no notice. The rain had stopped, and she fled before she should hear more horrors.

But that night she could not sleep for thinking of the lost little child, and its desolate mother. The storm commenced again, and raged round the hut. Lightning streaked through the canvas windows and rain lashed the earth. She was still wide-eyed on a tear-wet pillow when the hotel-keeper banged the door to say that the coach would start in twenty minutes.

The first thing she noticed as they clambered to their places was that the light-eyed man was missing. She was far too distant to make any remark, but the others with a kind of road-fellowship that surprised her refused to let the coach start until some explanation was forthcoming. The driver, a ferocious looking half-caste, scowled at them.

“Ach! He’s gone off on some business of his own if you want to know... and coming on by de next coach. Now will you stop wasting de Company’s time and let me drive my mules?”

So on they went through the fresh dawn. The rain-washed land gave up a delicious perfume of drenched leaves and growing things, and a scent of mimosa blew like a caress against the cheeks of the weary travellers. The sky was a bride in shroudy veils of pale pink that warmed to rose, until the great spiked sun shot up from behind the horizon, and took her in a glittering embrace. Then brazen day was on them once more.

They slept in the coach that night, and got little ease of it. All were thankful enough when next mid-day found them outspanned for an hour or two beside a mule stable. The driver made a fire, and the passengers unpacked their baskets. Vivienne was sick to death of tinned food, but glad to accept a cup of tea made in the kettle. Afterwards she strolled away to an open pool not far off, while the others snatched the chance of an hour’s sleep in the shadow of the stable.

The little pool or “pan” of water lay glittering in the sunshine and she sat beside it under a tree shaped like a candelabra with great scarlet and yellow flowers rising in flames from its branches. She was too careful of her complexion to attempt to wash in such torrid heat, but she did not mind her hands getting slightly sunburnt for the pleasure of laving them in the tepid water. Presently a charming little creature of the squirrel tribe came out of a bush and looked at her with bright eyes. She took a pellet of chocolate from inside her camera case and held it out invitingly, but the tiny creature backed a little, then sat up on its hind legs and cocked its head at her. She took out her camera and tried to snap it, but it ran again just at the critical moment. The same thing happened two or three times, until she got a good picture. Then she tried once more to beguile it with the chocolate. But whenever she got close, it bounded away. At last, she gave up, and was suddenly astonished to find how far she had come from her pool. Glittering there through the trees it appeared to be quite a quarter of a mile away. Yet that seemed scarcely possible.

“How silly of me!” she murmured. “This is just the way people get lost I expect,” and at the thought she noticed a distinct inclination in her feet to hurry, but did not permit them any such foolishness.

“Don’t be silly,” she repeated to herself. “What are you afraid of? There is the pool straight in front of you, and as soon as you reach it you will see the coach.”

So she forced herself to walk calmly, and all the time she marvelled at the distance she had come just in those few little short runs after the squirrel. And when she got to the pool there was no sign of the coach!

“This is too fantastic!” she exclaimed, and laughed aloud. But her laugh had such a strange sound that she thought it was some one else’s and turned round violently to see who was there. Then she drew nearer the pool, and saw that the tree growing by it was a smaller one than the one she had sat under, and had fewer flowers. At last she realised it was a different pool. But there was no other in sight! Her heart came up into her throat.

“I must go back the way I came,” she told herself steadily. “When I get to where I first saw this pool I shall not be far off the original one. It was probably behind my back all the time, and if I had turned round I should have seen it!”

So with her nerves well in hand she began to walk back the way she had come. She could not keep quite straight, on account of the trees dotted about everywhere, each the exact image of the other, and she kept turning round because for some reason she could not bear to lose sight of one pool before she regained the other. Suddenly far off she spied the gleam of water through trees, and at once she frankly hurried, telling herself she had been away long enough from the coach and that the driver would be waiting to start. Her last few steps were very swift. She was breathing quite heavily when she reached the pool and glanced round keenly for the coach. It was gone! What was more the stable was gone too! She gave a wild cry. Her knees weakened under her and she found herself sitting down.

Presently regaining her courage she got up and looked about her critically. It was then she saw that there was no candelabra tree by this pool. That shook her a little.

“Better call out,” was her next thought, and she followed it up by a shout that sounded absurdly like a baby crying from a pin-prick. She was reminded of the little lost child, and began to tremble in spite of herself. “I’ll get out into the open,” she thought. “There are too many trees here. They shut in my voice.”

She moved a little way off and called. Then again she walked on and called. Mechanically she found herself moving along, calling as she went. Her voice seemed to grow weaker every moment, but her steps grew quicker. At last, she began to run.

Something tickled her face, and lazily, for she was very tired, and there was a rushing noise in her ears, she put up her hand to brush the irritation away. Then her hand tickled too. She held it before her eyes and saw that it was covered with little black ants. At that, her aversion to creeping things galvanised her into movement, and she sprang up, frantically brushing scores of ants from her face and hands. It was then she realised that she had been lying face downwards on the ground. She must have fallen, and lain where she fell. How long ago that was she had no idea, but the sun was very low. She could see it in the reddened skies just behind some trees.

The next discovery she made was a still stranger one. When she set out on her journey she had been dressed in a suit of khaki-coloured duck, made in three pieces; a Norfolk coat, a short deerstalker skirt that could be unhooked and taken off like a modern riding-habit, and, underneath, a serviceable pair of riding-breeches of the same material. These were met at the knees by leather gaiters. Stout brown shoes, and a dark silk shirt completed the suit, the whole having been designed and beautifully made by a well-known man in Bond Street; for with her mental eyes fixed on millionaires, Miss Carlton had not thought it wise to be economical in the direction of clothes. She now discovered herself to be attired only in the silk shirt and riding-breeches. Her boots and gaiters were scratched and worn almost beyond recognition; her hat, coat, skirt, and camera were gone. She had absolutely no idea how she had lost them, but some faint notion of searching for them made her look in the direction of the sun to see how long it would be before she was left in the dark. Then she observed another amazing thing. Instead of disappearing the sun had actually risen above the trees, and was advancing into the sky. The world was full of surprises. It was morning!

She had spent a night alone on the veld then! It seemed strange that she could remember nothing about this, but somehow the fact did not worry her very much. She felt indeed extraordinarily calm and careless. A sense of lightness and freedom pervaded her. She would not have minded anything if only she had not been so horribly tired. Also hungry and thirsty.

She began to saunter forward in a casual sort of way, and presently noticed that the rushing sound grew louder, and was not in her head at all, but in the air. There was a river close at hand, and she was making straight for it! This pleased her greatly, and when she came in sight of it she laughed joyously. It was fringed with trees, thick and tall, and the banks were high, but she had no difficulty in clambering down into the riverbed which was wide as Piccadilly Circus, and mostly composed of pure white sand and flat rocks. The stream in the middle which made so much noise was comparatively shallow and she could easily have forded it. What she did, however, was to lie down flat beside it and drink long and deep. At the same time, she experienced the sensation of having performed this act before.

“But one always has that feeling every time one does anything new!” she thought. Her face reflected in the water looked very dark, and her hands were burnt almost black—covered with scratches too. That did not trouble her much. Her eye was ranging round the trees for something to eat. In a minute, she spied something yellow that might be fruit. While she was climbing up amongst the rough branches and foliage, adding considerably to her stock of scratches, she again had the sensation of having done this thing before. They were only sour plums, and she didn’t care much for sour things, but the peel was not bad. Later she found some wild apricots. There were also little flower bulbs sticking above the ground, with rushes attached to them, and of these she pulled a number. Some that had an oniony flavour she discarded, but others tasted as she knew they would, just like nuts. Munching placidly, she wandered on her way. The rushing sound of the river was pleasant company.

As she sauntered along, her glance struck something on the ground that was certainly foreign to the surroundings—nothing less than the remains of a large canvas sack. Having slept for many nights upon mail-bags, she was in a position to recognise one when she saw it, besides, round this one were scattered the remains of many letters, torn, ant-eaten, and rotted by rain. Musingly, she lifted up the tattered canvas and examined it. There were sharp teeth marks on it, and it had been ripped savagely open from end to end. Yet, coyly hiding in a tarry fold, there remained some residue of what had evidently once been a full bag of mail—on Her Majesty’s Service—a stamped and addressed letter, and a newspaper. The ants had chewed both a little, but the canvas had kept them in good condition. Vivienne examined them with interest, and it being at this time full noon, the pleasant idea occurred to her of having a little rest, and a little read. Accordingly she seated herself and opened the newspaper.

It was the Buluwayo Chronicle dated October the 21st (the date she had landed in Cape Town) and addressed to a lady in Devonshire who would never now receive it. The contents did not interest Vivienne. The local news of a town she had never seen would scarcely be likely to do so. She threw it aside and took up the letter. For a moment she looked at the blurred address:

George Brain, Esqr.,
Mining Hotel,
Beaconsfield,
Diamond Fields.
(Barkly West.)

Then as if it were the most natural thing in the world to open other people’s letters, she slipped her fingers under the flap of the envelope, pulled it off and threw it away. Unfolding the letter, she read it from beginning to end.

“Onder-koppies” near Buluwayo.

October 20th, 19—.

Dear George,

As soon as you get this, raise 500 pounds on the nail, and wire it up. I know money is tight, but get that pony from somewhere and your pile is made. Hunt and I have struck it rich. As a farming partner Hunt is no more good than a dead dog, but he knows the surveying and mineralogy business like his A.B.C. On the Rand, they used to call him the fellow with a nose for reef, and only he’s lazy as the devil he’d be rich as Hades by now. Anyway prowling round here he has nosed out a plum... the land adjoining ours is lousy with gold. Unfortunately the whole 6000 acres belong to de Windt—you know—the hunter and explorer fellow, who got this farm for his share in the Matabeleland row. However he’s never done anything with it except stick up a hut, and it’s common knowledge here that he’ll take what he can get for his land, for since the railway is on its way he professes himself sick of this country and is going to make tracks further north. He’s got no money, never has, and will jump at 500 pounds ready cash, so hustle and raise it George, and we’ll keep the loot in the family. Hunt and I haven’t a rap between us, and no means of getting any except by selling our land, which would look fishy to de Windt who is no fool. You can trust me there’s no mistake. Hunt is too wise a bird for that. But if you’ve any doubts, come up yourself and bring the best surveyor on the Fields. You’ll find that everything is O.K. Only it must be done sharp,—for de Windt will be up here on his way North about end November. Get busy. Zachabona!

Brother Frank.

“Charming fellow, brother Frank!” said Miss Carlton thoughtfully, and having no pocket, thrust the letter into the front of her silk shirt. Afterwards she sat shuffling the rags of paper and canvas with the toe of her shoe, wondering how they had come to this place. The conclusion was that the bag must have been dropped from the down-country coach, though clearly not at this spot, for there was no road. Probably some hungry animal had carried it off and torn it open to see what it contained. Possibly the coach road was not far off, and by continuing ahead she would find it. But she felt a curious indifference on the subject. The heat had filled her with a delightful drowsiness, and she decided to rest a little longer. With her back against a tree she stared dreamily at the lovely slope of country over which the sunshine appeared to be passing in ripples making the long pale grass sway in waves, though not a breath of wind stirred the air. Everything seemed wrapped in a pleasant golden haze, but whether the haze was in her mind or on the golden silent land about her she could not have told. At last her eyes gradually closed and she slept.

When she awoke the plain was still simmering under the sun waves, and leaves and grass crackled and stirred as before in the windless air. All was unchanged, except that at the top of the slope half a quarter of a mile away, a dozen or more buck were peacefully grazing among the pale long grass. Often from the coach Vivienne had seen such herds, and she knew the great dark creatures, with patches of white gleaming under them as they moved, to be sable antelope. Lazily she sat watching their slow graceful movements, as they fed, never dreaming of the presence of a human being, though sometimes one or another of them would raise its head and for a moment seem to listen.

Then in an instant with the flash and crack of sudden doom the scene changed. The antelope terror-stricken, were bounding across country and the girl leaping to her feet stood with eyes dilated and hand on heart. A gun had been fired and the dark body of one of the buck lay shuddering where a moment before it had been happily grazing.

Even as she stood staring, the figure of a man came from behind a far group of bush into the open—a tall hulking figure, in sloppy trousers belted at the waist, his gun over his shoulder. He was a long way off, but he walked straight as a die for the spot where the buck lay, stooped over it for a minute, then wiped something he held in his hand on the grass and stuck it back into his belt. Afterwards he tied a little strip of white rag onto a bush close by. He stood for a while looking after the rest of the herd, now black dots in the distance, then leisurely started to walk back in the direction he came. Never once had he looked towards where Vivienne, motionless as a statue stood in the shadow of the trees.

As she watched him, his figure momentarily disappeared behind a bush, and then for the first time immobility passed from her face and figure. Panic swept over her like a wave. Uttering short sharp cries, she began to run after the man, and, as she ran, the remembrance came over her like the memory of some frightful nightmare how she had run like this before—on and on and on—over rocks, through bush, in blinding sunshine and heavy darkness. And with the remembrance came such terror as lent wings to her feet—terror of losing sight of this human creature, and being left once more to the awful loneliness of the veld.

In a few moments she caught up to within thirty yards of the man, but long before that he had turned round and was watching her, his hat pushed back above his dark coarse face, his eyes full of astonishment.

“Hi! young fellah—stop that!”

If he had fired off his gun at her the result could not have been more effective. She drew up instantly, stopped tearing with both hands at the collar of her shirt, and stood staring into his eyes, panting heavily. He ran a shrewd glance over her.

“Where’d you spring from?” he demanded. She continued to stare at him. His voice which was common and brutal troubled her, and she did not like his face.

“Crazy!” he mused, looking at her keenly through half-closed eyes. “I’m not sure it wouldn’t be a good thing to give you a crack on the cocoa-nut and leave you to the aasvogels. You’ll only be a darned nuisance.”

She understood very well what he was saying, but somehow it did not terrify her. Nothing terrified her except the thought of being left alone. He tried her with another question.

“How long you been lost?”

She waved her hand towards the trees that fringed the river bank. Why she did this she had not the faintest idea.

“Ach!” he exclaimed impatiently, and turned on his heel. “Come on to my waggons, you fool.”

Without any indignation at his way of addressing her, she fell into step beside him. A few paces farther on, two natives bounded into sight, coming towards the man as though searching for him. He addressed them in Kaffir, pointing backwards to where he had left the buck. They gazed at Vivienne with impassive faces. Both parties continued on their way.

At last Vivienne’s eyes fell once more upon the broad dusty road, and a hundred yards or so from it two transport waggons were drawn up and outspanned. At the sight of them, and the smouldering fires, and a dog that jumped up barking, and the smell of newly-baked bread, something in the girl’s breast gave a great throb, and she had speech.

“Since yesterday,” she said, answering the question the man had asked her some twenty minutes past.

“Oh! you’ve found your tongue have you,” said he. “Since yesterday what?”

“Lost.”

“Lost since yesterday?” he stared at her wonderingly. “Oh! you’re mad, right enough, young fellah. The sun’s done your business for you. Here! come and eat.”

She was not too mad to understand that at any rate. There were some loaves of newly-made dough bread lying on a box, each broken in two to let the steam out. Several other boxes were scattered about and the man motioning her to one handed her half a loaf. She took it eagerly, and began to eat at once, almost wolfishly. When she had finished she looked longingly at the other loaves.

“No, you don’t,” said the man, “you’ve had enough for one go.” He had called out an order to some young native boys squatting by the fire, and they now set a tin kettle full of coffee and two beakers before him. He handed her one of the beakers full of hot black liquid and she drank even to the last drop.

“Now,” said he, speaking roughly and emphatically as if to a child with no intelligence. “What you want is sleep. Go and get up into that waggon tent, and sleep, do you understand? No use turning in on the ground for we’re going to trek in an hour. Get off with you now, and sleep till you burst.” His tone was the tone of a born bully, but the girl did not resent it. She climbed on to the waggon-brake as easily as if she had been doing so all her life. A rude, but not unclean mattress surged up to meet her, and she sank into it and slept.

The waggon was moving when she awoke, a delicious slow movement which softly swung the mattress suspended on a wooden frame across the tent, from side to side, and was accompanied by strainings and rumblings, musical creakings as of a ship at sea, but without any of the malaise incidental to ships, for the level of the mattress was always maintained. When the wheels jolted over stones, Vivienne got no more discomfort of it than a bird snug in its nest. From the horseshoe opening of the tent, she could see a light haze of dust rising perpetually from under the wheels, and through it, the landscape rolling out and retreating in changing panorama. Everything was wonderfully peaceful. Sometimes she could hear far ahead the crack of a whip, and a long-drawn-out native cry; then the waggon would lumber more hurriedly through the dust for a while, only to return to the slow even movement of serenely pacing oxen.

Lying idly against her pillow, she watched the sun fall swiftly behind a kop, and the whole land become suffused with orange-coloured light. Then the silver-green of bush and tree turned black and kopjes were etched in India ink against the tinted skies.

Her eyes wandered round the tent in which she was lying. There was hardly anything in it except the bed, but from the hoops supporting the canvas various odds and ends of things were hanging; a lantern, a cheap clock, a small tin-bound square of mirror, several coarse canvas bags, evidently stuffed with clothes.

“I suppose they belong to the man who found me,” she thought, and instantly recalled the coarse thick-lipped face, the peculiar sneering way his mouth drew up at one side under the ragged dark moustache, the sharp half-closed eyes. She recalled too his brutal way of speaking to her. No one had ever spoken to Vivienne Carlton in such a fashion, and it had impressed itself on her memory. In fact, it was the only thing that stood out since she knew she had lost herself by the pool. The rest was darkness.

“Hi! Young fellah!”

Her memory began from those words! But why “young fellah?” She had understanding now to marvel at such an address. Was it because of her short hair? The idea inspired her to kneel up on the bed and reach for the tin-backed mirror. She peeped in and, at the sight she met there, almost reeled backwards out of the waggon. A face which under dirt and tan was darker than a Hindoo’s, scratched cheeks, sunken eyes, lips that were dried and cracked. A mop of short curly hair full of dust and bits of grass and dried leaves! A neck that was burnt almost black right down to where it met the ragged shirt collar. She could not even be sure that the eyes were her own, so deep were they in her head.

The shock sent her back to her pillow, and she lay there a long time very still. But her mind was clear enough now to realise why the man had mistaken her for a “young fellow.” She was a tall, athletic girl whose love of outdoor exercises had conformed her figure to a boyish flexibility and litheness rather than feminine plumpness. Moreover, such superfluous flesh as she had once possessed was now gone. The veld had turned her into a lanky, dirty, hungry-looking lout of a boy. She could not help laughing, but a moment later her face grew stern to consternation. The feeling of safety engendered by being once more in touch with people was dispersing the terror of the veld, but another horror now took its place! Her beauty was gone! The one great wand she possessed, the pivot round which all her plans revolved. It would take months to get back her complexion and contours—if she ever got them back!

She stared at her dark hands, blistered and torn, with black rims to them.

“How awful if this ever gets known!”

So far, the world with all its cruelty and malice had never been able to touch her spotless reputation, or Mrs Grundy heave a brick at her for outraged conventions. But now? If this became known? Lost on the veld! Picked up by a strange man, kept in a waggon, travelling alone with him on the veld! What tit-bits to be rolled round the tongues of her enemies!

“It must never be known,” she whispered to herself. “This man must go on believing me a boy. The whole business of my being lost must be kept dark, and I must get back to my world as soon as I can. I wonder if this man is bound for Rhodesia or going down-country!”

Ruefully, she examined her garments. Her riding-breeches and gaiters, though dirty and worn, would last a good while yet, but the soles of her boots were almost gone.

Daylight passed, and was superseded by a great white moon that diffused mother-of-pearl light. Hour after hour the waggon rumbled forward, but at last the wheels creaked over grass and shrub and came to a stop. There were native cries and shouts, the clatter of falling yokes, the low moo of tired oxen. Then newly lighted fires began to crackle and presently a ravishing odour of meat grilling over embers came stealing into the waggon tent. A head showed at the opening.

“Well! how d’you feel now, hey?”

“Better, thank you,” she answered politely. Her voice was a contralto and quite deep enough to pass for a boy’s.

“Oh! better, thank you, hey?” he rudely mimicked. “Ready for a buck steak, I bet!”

She did not at all like this man’s ways and manners, but it seemed politic at this time to disguise her feelings. For one thing, she was horribly hungry. For another, she realised that it was in his power to be intensely disagreeable if she offended him. Just how disagreeable a man with such a mouth could be she did not care to contemplate.

“I am certainly very hungry,” she answered quietly.

“Come on down, then. You don’t expect me to bring it to you, do you?”

“Of course not!” She made haste to descend, and take her place before the packing-case on which the supper was laid. She thought she had never tasted anything in her life so delicious as that chunk of antelope-steak, gritty with cinders, and flavoured with smoke. At the end of twenty minutes or so, the man remarked:

“Nothing wrong with your appetite, I see, whatever the sun has done to your kop.”

Vivienne did not know what a kop was, but her guessing powers were unimpaired.

“I’m afraid my behaviour was rather strange when I first met you,” she said stiffly. “My excuse must be that I am not accustomed to being lost, and the experience had—er—slightly unbalanced me.”

“You were cracked as an over-ripe watermelon,” he sneered, “and are still, for all I know.” He lounged on his elbow, smoking a pipe of atrocious tobacco.

“At any rate I thank you for your hospitality,” said she, longing to box his ears instead.

“Pugh! What I want to know is where you come from and whereabouts you left your party, hey?”

“My party?”

“Yes; the waggons you got lost from.”

Something inspired her to leave it at that, and answer quietly:

“Our last stopping-place was Palapye.”

“Palapye! Why, that’s ten days’ trek from here.”

“Oh, no,” she said. “I was at Palapye three days ago—two days before I lost myself.”

“Look here! Have you any idea of the date you got lost on, hey?” She made a rapid calculation.

“But of course, it was the twenty-first of November—yesterday.”

“That’s all right,” he said grimly. “This is the thirtieth.” She sat staring at him, lips apart.

“You were lost in the bush nine days, and this is the tenth. I thought as much when I saw you.”

“Nine days!” she muttered. “Is it possible!”

Nine days,—alone on the veld—forever unaccounted for!—gone out of her life.

“Yes, nine days,” he repeated grimly. “I suppose you got rid of most of your outfit—that’s the usual game. I wonder you have on anything at all.”

She wondered too, remembering the tales she had heard of lost people and thanked God for the unconscious feminine modesty that had remained to her even in madness and panic—restraining her from that last horror! A warmth crept into her face, but fortunately through the darkness of her skin the man could see nothing though he was studying her keenly.

“I had a camera—and a hat and coat,” she muttered, trying to remember. “Ach! Shut thinking about it or you’ll go off your top again.” She bit her lip at his rude tone, but it at least had the effect of bracing her.

“Where were you bound for, hey?”

“Buluwayo.”

“Oh, indeed! We may run into your party then, for I’m bound there too.”

She knew that the coach from which she was lost must have reached Buluwayo long ago, even if they had delayed a day or two looking for her. But she did not say so. The hatefulness of the man made her wish to keep up as long as possible the fiction of friends close at hand.

“What’s your name?” was the next question. She told him, “Carlton,” and he repeated it contemptuously.

“A beastly swell, of course. I suppose you lost your eye-glass in the bush, hey? Well, Carlton, my fine fellah, just you understand this: If I’ve got to board and lodge you from here to Buluwayo or until your fine friends pick you up, I shall expect to be well paid for it; and don’t you forget it.”

“Of course you will be paid,” she said coldly. “But I must ask you in the meantime to treat me with a little civility—”

He stared at her with sullen eyes. “Civility be blowed! And don’t you give me any of your cheek, you young snook, else you’ll find yourself in the wrong box. Clear out now, I’ve had enough of you. You’re welcome to the waggon tent as I never use it,—but don’t you come near me again, except by special invitation.”

This was the unpropitious beginning of Miss Carlton’s new adventure. Often during the next two weeks she wondered whether she would not have been wiser to have stayed in the bush. The man Roper, as she discovered his name to be, was an insufferable brute, and she went in mortal terror of his ever finding out that she was a woman. He ill-treated his boys shamefully, thrashing them on the smallest provocation, and never spoke to Vivienne except in a bullying tone. What nationality he was she could not imagine. From his constant use of such colonialisms as Ach! and Hey! he might have been a South African, but his accent was distinctly English, and he scoffed equally at both British and Boer, and seemed to have the good qualities of neither.

The one thing to be earnestly thankful for was that he had such a dislike to her that she was rarely troubled by his society. He invariably took his mid-day meal alone, the greater part of the day being spent in sleep, for like most transport drivers he never slept during the night treks. The hour of danger for Vivienne was at the night outspan, for it was then that Roper usually sent her a gruff message to join him at the meal that was both supper and breakfast in one—afterwards the whole camp would sink into slumber until nearly mid-day, except Vivienne who invariably utilised this time to wash and tidy herself, though she never went far from the waggon, having a horror of once more losing herself.

Since she must see Roper then, evening was much the best time for the ordeal. Flickering firelight and the beams of a waning moon were less inimical than broad daylight to a rôle that became daily more difficult to play. For Vivienne was beginning to outgrow her disguise! True, few people would have recognised in the dirty, if healthy-looking young man in khaki, the erstwhile lovely débutante of a London Season, and more recently lady-correspondent of the Daily Flag. But life in the open with rest and food, were doing their work upon a healthy physique, and her beauty was rapidly returning. The heavy sunburn wearing off showed the skin beneath clear and tinted; her violet eyes had come out of retreat; her lips no longer cracked were a smooth and healthy red. Her hair, for the most part hidden under a primitive hat of plaited grass made for her by one of the umfans (Young native boys) curled and glistened in the sun as though it were alive. It was with increased anxiety that she looked every day into the tin-backed mirror.

During the long afternoon treks, lying in the waggon tent her usual occupation was the study of a letter she had found inside her blouse with no clear idea of how it came there. She wondered if it were possible that during that extraordinary period of mental aberration she had deliberately opened the letter of another person, but she preferred not to believe this.

At any rate, before she had solved the mystery of its origin she knew the thing off by heart, and now for lack of any better thing to do she daily pondered the matter of de Windt’s farm. And one day the thought flashed into her mind. “If I were to get 500 pounds and buy it instead of letting those two rogues at Onder-Koppies have it!” Instantly she dismissed the question with another—“Is this country utterly demoralising me?”—reminding herself sharply of who she was, and the obligations of her birth and honourable training. But later the thought came again, and with it extenuating arguments. After all, would such an act on her part be any more dishonourable than the one she contemplated—marrying some man for his money? The one was no more than a piece of sharp practice, such as business men did every day of their lives. The other—well at any rate it would be a far pleasanter way to fortune than the other!

Cogitating the matter until it made her head ache, she fell asleep at last. It is wonderful how much sleep can be put in on the veld where the air seems charged with mingled ozone and wine!

At outspan time, which seemed to come earlier than usual, she descended to Roper’s call, and slipped unassumingly into her place. Everything seemed much the same, but the moment she glanced at Roper she knew that something untoward had happened. The look she had so long dreaded was in his eye. He knew.

The discovery nearly suffocated her. She felt her face scorch as if by a swift flame, then all the blood drain from it, and tighten like a band round her heart. Opposite her, dark half-closed eyes full of malice and some other hateful quality passed over her in a gloating enveloping stare. If she had suddenly lost her appetite, so, too, it seemed, had he. It was with his eyes he feasted.

Utterly wretched and terrified, hardly knowing what she said, the girl made some attempt at conversation. He laughed strangely, answering her remark with another.

“The mail-coach passed this afternoon, and I had a few minutes’ talk with the driver. He gave me a bit of news.”

“Oh?” she faltered enquiringly, sick with mingled fear and curiosity. Why, oh why, had not she been awake when that coach passed?

“It appears that a young lady was lost off the coach, week before last—much about the same place as you were—you didn’t happen to meet her I suppose?” he leered at Vivienne with indescribable malice. She made no answer,—only with her hand sheltered her pallid face as best she could from the gleam of the fire.

“They were out looking for her some time—nearly a week—have given it up now, though—but all the coach drivers have orders to keep their eyes open. They wanted to know if I had seen anything of her? But of course I said no.”

Brute! was what her sick heart cried, though her lips made no sound. There was a silence. He leaned on his elbows, smiling his slow evil smile at her, and she sat perfectly still looking through her fingers at the fire and the forms of the two umfans beside it, rolled in their blankets and already sleeping. No use calling to them, she knew, and the other boys were away with the oxen. In any case, all were too much under the dominion of Roper to stand by her. She realised that she was in deadly danger—and alone. For the first time in the last two years of proud and bitter defiance, she felt the need of some stronger spirit than her own, and in her extremity her heart turned to God with a silent cry for help.

“I forgot to tell you,” said Roper softly, “that her name was Carlton, too. Isn’t that a funny thing now!”

“I don’t think so,” she found courage to say, though her eyes were the eyes of a hunted thing.

“No? Now I thought it the funniest thing I ever heard,” said he laughing softly, “and ever since, I have been saying to myself, ‘What a pity it wasn’t the young lady I found!’ It would be so pleasant on an evening like this for instance, to have the society of a nice young lady! So very pleasant,” he repeated, and leaned on the table looking into her eyes with some horrible meaning. “Quite alone on the veld, with no one to know or care what we did—no one to—interfere—all alone with love and the daisies.” With a swift movement he caught hold of the girl’s hand which was lying on the table. But the next instant he had loosed it and was on his feet.

“Who the devil—”

A man had come into the camp. Swift-footed and noiseless as a ghost, neither the dog nor the sleeping umfans had heard his coming. It was almost as if he had sprung from a neighbouring bush and Vivienne, startled as Roper by the sudden apparition, rose to her feet. But apart from his quietness, and the gleam of his light clothes, there was nothing supernatural about the tall lithe shirt-sleeved figure which with rifle on shoulder and revolver on hip, came into the firelight. Nothing supernatural either, but something indescribably soothing to the nerves of Vivienne Carlton in the sound of that cheerful, careless voice.

“Ah, gentlemen! Hope I did not startle you? I’m delighted to come upon your camp, having mislaid my own by a few miles. I shall be glad to spend the night here if you have no objection?”

Roper turned his back and with a sullen scowling face sat down again, muttering some words that sounded anything but inviting. The stranger took no offence. He also sat down opposite the girl, and began to relate how he had left his boys and gone after a buck and got too far away to bother to return that night—and all the time he was looking steadily across the packing-case at Vivienne and she saw that he recognised her, even as she recognised him as soon as she saw his light grey eyes. It was the silent, tanned man who had left the coach at Palapye.

Chapter Two.

Wild Honey—Part II.

The three sat round the fire awhile, unspeaking, each busy with their own thoughts. Whatever were Roper’s his face grew more sullen every moment, and the glances he cast in the direction of the new-comer were full of malignance. He looked menacingly too at Vivienne, who had suddenly taken on such a feminine appearance that he was amazed he could have been deceived so long. Her intense pallor and the dilation of her eyes through fear or excitement until they looked like great sombre pools of fire may have had something to do with the phenomena, but there she was, spite of the travesty of masculine attire, glowing like some beautiful night-blooming magnolia. And she said nothing; just sat very still behind the packing-case, watching the two men.

As for the stranger, he had taken up an easy position on one of the boxes which were always lying about the camp, and with his rifle beside him, leaning forward elbows on knees, began to fill his pipe. No hospitality of any kind was offered him. Just as he was about to light up, he gave a half glance in the direction of the girl, and for a moment she was afraid he was going to ask for her permission to smoke, but it must have been fancy on her part for he lit without speaking.

“I hope your waggons are not far off,” said Roper suddenly. “For I’ve no idea of turning mine into a sort of refuge for lost dogs.” His tone was extremely offensive. The other man looked at him steadily for a long moment, then said with a gentleness almost deadly:

“I don’t see any dogs about here—except one.” It is true that Roper’s pointer was asleep under the waggon not far off, but the stranger did not happen to be looking that way. Roper was at liberty to like the inference or lump it, whichever he pleased. Perhaps the cheerful flicker on the bright barrels of the stranger’s .303 helped his decision not to lump it, for his tone was less aggressive when he spoke again.

“What I mean is, I’ve had enough of picking up and feeding and lodging people who choose to get lost on the veld. I’m full up with it. I didn’t lay in provisions against such accidents.”

“Oh!” said the stranger, still gently. “Have you had many of the kind?”

“Yes; one too many,” was the retort.

Vivienne thought this the time and place to make a statement. “I am the unfortunate accident,” she said in a low voice. “I was lost on the veld some three weeks or more ago, and this man Roper found me, and has been supplying me ever since with food and a waggon tent to sleep in. He seems to resent having to do it so much, however—in spite of my assurance that he will be well paid—that I should be only too glad to leave this camp if I could.”

This was tantamount to an appeal and she anticipated and hoped that the stranger would immediately offer her the refuge of his camp. To her mortification, he merely looked reflective.

“I see,” he said; then casually to Roper: “Well, you needn’t worry about me. I shall not encroach upon your provisions.”

“Very glad to hear it,” commented Roper, brusquely. “As for you, young fellah,” he turned his dark glance on Vivienne, “I don’t see what you’ve got to complain of. You have always had civil treatment from me and the best of whatever was going. Fine gratitude to turn on me now!”

The girl was silent for a moment, nonplussed by the stranger’s indifference, and the thought that perhaps after all his presence there was only an accident, that he did not mean to help her, and would go off to-morrow without a word, leaving her once more in the power of Roper! She determined that at any rate he should not be in any doubt as to her position.

“I’m not complaining without cause,” she said, looking at Roper scornfully; “you have repeatedly spoken most insultingly about being obliged to give me hospitality, and to-night your manner was so offensive that I was very glad to see this gentleman come into camp.”

“Ach! you’re a fool to get scared at my jokes. I’ve even forgotten what it was we were talking about. Whatever it was, I should have thought a big strapping fellow like you could have taken his own part.”

He laughed blusteringly, and she realised that he did not suspect the other man knew of her identity, and that he meant to keep up the fiction she herself had begun. Doubtless, he, too, expected the stranger to be gone with the dawn before he could make any further discoveries!

It seemed at any rate that there was nothing further to be done for the moment, or until she could be sure of the man whose name she did not even know, or whether he knew hers! After all, had he recognised her? Had she been mistaken in the meaning of that swift look given her when their eyes first met, that seemed to say: “All’s well! I am your friend!”

Surely he must remember her! Yet what had she done to be remembered by? Nothing. She had held herself aloof in disdainful pride from him as from all the others. She knew now that she had always felt an interest in this silent light-eyed man, who never seemed to look at anything but the horizon, and had felt more instinctively akin to him than the others. Still, she had never given any outward sign that he was not, as Laurence Hope has it, “less than the dust beneath her chariot wheels,” and had treated him to the same civil disdain with which she froze the other passengers. Oh! would he remember it against her now?—if he remembered her at all!

Her eyes searched his face almost pleadingly; but it told nothing. He had crossed his legs easily, and with one hand nursing his elbow, the other holding his pipe, sat smoking in impenetrable reflection.

Well! it was something to have him here. His very presence gave her a feeling of protection. One of the umfans made a diversion by rising like a somnambulist from his dreams to throw a great heap of fuel on the fire. Mechanically, he performed his task, then, without looking to east or west, rolled himself to sleep again.

“You keep up your fires all night—here?” remarked the stranger.

“I always keep them up—it gives those brutes something to do,” was Roper’s surly response. “And why not, about here?”

“Oh, it’s a good general plan. But there isn’t any particular need round here. No lions. A stray hyena or two is the worst you’ll strike.”

“You seem to know all about it,” sneered Roper, his straggly moustache lifted to one side in the usual unlovely manner.

“I ought to. I helped to make that road.” The stranger slightly indicated the wide and dusty main track fifty yards off. Roper gaped a moment or two.

“Ah! a blessed pioneer!” he said at last, but there was no benediction in his tone. “And a mighty rotten road it is,” he was presently inspired to remark.

“Yes,” said the stranger placidly, “roads are like dogs—and some men—they soon go to pot if they are not kept in order.”

Roper digested this as best he might, but the process did not appear to agree with him.

“No one seems to realise that it’s nearly one o’clock in the morning,” he suddenly snarled. “Get off to bed, youngster.” He added to the stranger: “If you’re going to make tracks for your waggons at dawn, I should advise you to get some sleep too.”

“Thanks, I’m not sleepy—but I’ll turn in when you do.”

“Well, I’m going now. The youngster has the tent. I roll up under the waggon.”

“I’ll roll up beside you,” announced the stranger pleasantly. “But I hope you don’t snore, for I am a light sleeper, and wake at the slightest sound.” He happened to be looking steadily into the eyes of Vivienne as he said this.

“The blazes you do!” burst out Roper violently, as though this were the last straw. “Well, I don’t care a hang whether you sleep or not.”

“Thanks,” answered the other imperturbably. Vivienne spent a wakeful night. As a matter of fact, snoring was not an accomplishment of Roper’s, so she was unable to gather from the silence that reigned under the waggon whether either or neither of the men slept. She lay straining her ears for what seemed ages, but the only break in the silence was the sound of the umfan at his mechanical duty of replenishing the fire, until, in the dark hour just before dawn, she was aroused from an uneasy doze by a faint movement at the opening of the tent. She lay dead still, and for one moment her heart seemed to miss a beat. In the darkness she could see nothing by which to judge whether the person near were friend or foe, but suddenly her heart beat again, for a faint fragrance of Navy Cut tobacco had come stealing into the tent, and she knew that fragrance well. She had sat next to it for many days in a coach. Very different that to the rank odour of Roper’s Boer tabak.

Then, silently and swiftly, a small heavy object, cold and polished to the touch slid in beside her. Her hand slipped round it, and another hand closed for an instant on hers, then withdrew. No word was spoken.

As soon as it was light enough, she examined her new possession, though her fingers had long since informed her of its character. A beautiful Colt’s, loaded in all its five chambers. A tiny leaf of paper tucked into the barrel bore a few scribbled words:

“Use this if necessary. Don’t worry about consequences. I’ll look after those, Kerry.”

Part of the “y” of “Kerry” had been left behind in the note book from which the leaf was torn.

“Well! our friend the gallant pioneer has gone, hey?”

It was the first time Roper had ever come near the waggon tent while she was in it, and the coincidence was not lost upon Vivienne. He sat on the brake now, face level with the mattress, and looked in with a triumphant leer on his degenerate face. But his news was no news to her. She had climbed down softly as soon as it was light, according to her usual custom, and made for herself the discovery that the stranger was gone. It was no more than she expected. The gift of the revolver had meant nothing if it had not meant that he would not be there to use it himself in case of need. The knowledge that it reposed under the pillow close to her hand was of great service to her nerves at the present moment, enabling her to answer Roper with an air of nonchalance that surprised him.

“I daresay he will soon catch us up again.”

“Oh, do you? And what makes you daresay that, hey?”

She moved her shoulders in a slight disdainful movement, to express that he and his question bored her intolerably, but for all her assumed carelessness she was on the alert. It was as much for her own reassurance as for his annoyance that she remarked:

“His waggons can’t be far off, or he wouldn’t have reached us on foot last night.”

“Ah!” Roper sat gazing at her, his moustache lifted sideways, the shadow of a sneering smile under his half-closed lids. It was patent to her that he was meditating something malignant, though what it was she could not at present fathom. No word did he speak on the subject of their last night’s interrupted conversation: but his glance, travelling over her in slow gloating detail, was eloquent of much that his tongue left unsaid; and though her eyes met his with scornful contempt, she could feel the colour mounting in her cheeks and passing over her face from chin to hair in a hot wave. And the sight was not lost on Roper. Laughing in his throat in a way that chilled her blood, he jumped from the brake and walked away.

Immediately afterwards, he let loose a storm of abuse upon the umfans, who began to scuttle round the camp like frightened squirrels. It was unusual for him to be stirring in the camp at such an early hour, and this was their time to be cutting their own little capers while they collected fuel and stowed it on the other waggon for the night fires. Roper now diverted them from this to the task of clearing up camp. Then Vivienne heard him get down the ox-whip from the side of the waggon and begin to swirl the lash round and round in the air. A moment later the revolver-like crack of the huge whip went ringing and echoing across the veld and she understood. It was the sign for the return of the oxen! He meant to begin the afternoon trek about five hours earlier than usual!

Thus, when the stranger, secure in the knowledge that all transport riders give their oxen from ten to twelve hours for rest and grazing, caught up to the present outspan, it would be to find Roper gone with a five hours’ start. And once let anyone get five hours’ start of you on the veld it will take stiff running to catch up. A man with oxen in less robust condition than Roper’s might never catch up! This was the situation Vivienne had to face, and, thanks to the Colt, she was able to face it without panic. But her heart was somewhere in the vicinity of her boots as she watched the weary oxen come trampling back from their short respite. Seeming to know that they had been robbed of their legitimate rest, they kicked and butted each other, ran round the waggons, and gave as much trouble as they could. Many a bad and bitter word went to their yoking, but at last they were under weigh, raising clouds of dust as they took the road.

It was soon clear that Roper did not mean to let things go at the usual easy pace. He kept the lash over his beasts, running beside them like a man possessed, cracking and swirling the long whip thong in the air, letting out astonishing cries, and long streams of words which though incomprehensible to the uninitiated ear left, by the violent sound of them, no doubt as to their character, every injunction ending in a ferocious command to “Yak!”

The oxen at an incredible pace shuffled and clappered along, the waggon spite of its heavy load bounding and swaying at their heels. Sometimes Roper, a menacing figure covered with dust, appeared round the end of the waggon and dropped back a few paces on the road, thereby enabling himself to see well into the tent where Vivienne sat guarding her shaking soul behind a calm and unapprehensive manner. Nearly always he would laugh—a laugh that made the girl grip the revolver under the pillow. A moment later she would hear his voice adjuring the oxen with a savage “Yak!”

It must have been about four o’clock in the afternoon when she found herself suddenly face to face with him in the opening of the tent. With such unexpected agility had he sprung upon the brake that for the moment she was taken unawares, and might easily have been out-generalled, but for his cocksureness that he was master of the situation. He stood there smiling his slow evil smile—giving her time to shift farther into the tent and lay her hand on the stock of the revolver. “What do you want?” she demanded evenly. He assumed an air of hurt surprise. “I suppose I can have a ride in my own waggon if I want to?”

“Not here,” she said in a firm voice. “You must go and ride where you have always ridden. This tent has been given over to me and I mean to keep possession of it.”

“Oh, you wouldn’t be so unkind,” he said with a slimy smile, and made to mount his knee on the mattress and clamber in, but found himself nose to nose with the shining steel barrel.

“If you stir a hand, I fire.” Her voice was absolutely steady. “Get down!”

His utterly dumbfoundered look and the alacrity with which he loosened his hold on the side of the tent and dropped from the brake was funny. But his face was not funny. Something in it made Vivienne shiver. His mouth under the tilted moustache worked as if it tasted poison, and his eyes were bad to see. Down in the road he looked upwards once more to where Vivienne sat, the weapon lowered, but still in sight.

“So that’s it?” he muttered. “He left you his revolver, did he?”

It was plain, of course, that she could have come by it in no other way. He walked behind awhile blinking and swallowing the dust, considering perhaps the problem of how much she had told the other man. Then silently in his veld-schoened feet he passed to the side of the waggon, and for the time being she saw him no more.

Nor even heard him. The tent on a buck-waggon is so placed that when the latter is loaded there is no way of entering or seeing from the tent except from the brake end. The whole of the back opening was blocked with heavy packing-cases that could not have been budged except by the efforts of several men. Vivienne congratulated herself on that for it made for safety. But it also kept her in ignorance of what was going forward in the front part of the waggon, or even at the sides. All she could do through that long bright hot afternoon was to sit like Sister Anne in her tower watching the road down which help might come.

When she observed that the waggon was no longer on the road, she was instantly on the alert for the meaning of the new move. It was too early to outspan, and if Roper did so he must know that he could easily be caught up, for they had not been travelling more than three hours! But they did not stop. They went crashing on over shrub and bush, lurching against ant-hills, being torn at by the branches of trees.

At last, the terrified girl realised what was happening. Roper was leaving the road and all danger of interference from those who might be travelling on it, and making for the wild bush!

What should she do? Jump down and run? He might, expecting that, be lurking beside the waggon, and spring upon her while her hands in descending were yet engaged in holding the quickly moving waggon. There was a subtle cunning about the fellow that terrified her. Better stay in the tent where at least she had her face to the foe, and her back guarded by packing-cases. Besides, to where could she run? Back to the bush, to be lost once more, perhaps for ever this time? No, better stay and fight it out; die fighting, if necessary. That was what the man had given the gun for. And he meant to come back. She felt sure of that. She trusted him. But would he come in time?

On and on went the waggon, lurching and swaying over the rough ground. Once a dead branch ripped open the roof of the tent and a long slit of blue sky showed through. Another time a back wheel sank deep into a hole, and the whole waggon tipped over to such an angle that Vivienne found herself standing on the canvas ribs of the tent with her back keeping up the mattress and bedding. It took much hooting and hauling, two boys working with a crowbar, and Roper lashing, and howling terrible imprecations at the oxen before they pulled out and went lumbering on. The sun began to sink, and the skies to turn blood red with the trees inked against them. The approaching night looked menacing and full of danger. The girl crouched in the tent holding fast to the revolver.

“Oh, this Africa! What terrible things she has done to me, and is doing! What terrible things has she still in her hand? ‘Out of Africa always something new,’ indeed! Pliny knew something when he wrote that! Oh, man Kerry, do not fail me! Come soon!”

She kept saying that last sentence over and over again, like a prayer. Sometimes it seemed to her the only prayer she knew. The night fell abruptly, as pitch-black as if some monstrous bat had spread its wings and blotted out the light. There was no moon, and storm clouds had defaced the stars. Since first she came to the veld, Vivienne had never seen a night so black, so filled with brooding abysmal loneliness.

At last, the waggon stopped. Yokes began to clatter and fall, and the tired beasts lowed moodily as they moved away. The flicker of a swiftly lighted fire sprang up, casting knife-like shafts of light through the heavy darkness, and the weary, nerve-wrung girl in the tent, tense as an overstrung violin, braced herself for she knew not what fresh ordeal of terror might be awaiting her in this silent lonely spot. She was well aware that it was of no use relying on any help from the cowed native boys. There was nothing to hope from anyone, or anything, but her own courage and the revolver. She had a sudden, swift vision of the light-eyed man who had left it with her, and a little involuntary cry burst from her heart at the thought of him.

“Oh, Kerry!—come!”

She would never have known that she had cried the words aloud but for the immediate answer that came in a casual, confident voice she seemed to have known all her life.

“All serene—don’t worry.”

Something loomed large and white below the brake, but the voice seemed to be on a level with her, and almost she fancied she could catch the gleam of his eyes in the enveloping darkness. She was too shaken with joy and relief to make any response, neither was there time, for Roper raging and profane arrived upon the scene.

“What the—? Who the—” came his infuriated voice.

“I’ve had a hard time catching you up,” drawled the stranger. “Why, my good fellow, what kind of transport rider are you? You’ve lost the road! I wonder what Deary and Co. would say if they knew their goods were being battered and bundled all over the veld like this, miles off the track?”

The rage of the baffled Roper came down like a river in flood, a foul torrent of abuse in Dutch and Kaffir mingled with English. Fortunately, most of it was incomprehensible to Vivienne, but she was able to gather that the man on the horse, Deary and Co., the goods, and the veld, were all being consigned en bloc to a place whose exact geographical position has never yet been officially defined.

The fire now burning brightly revealed the new-comer seated idly on a large white tailless horse, which in outline somewhat resembled a grey hound and whose lean sides were closely pitted with tiny blue spots as though it had at some past time suffered from smallpox. The rider in his shirt sleeves looked cool and careless as always, but the hair lying dank upon his forehead and the soapy foam upon his horse’s flank told a tale which whoever ran might read. He now, with the subsidence of Roper’s eloquence, contributed his favourite remark to the occasion.

“That’s all right.”

“What the Billy-cock-hat,” (or words to that effect) “do you want, hey?” demanded Roper.

“Just company. The pleasant time I spent with you last night gave me a taste for more. Then too I was sure you’d be glad of my assistance in finding your way back to the road to-morrow, without being obliged to lose several days in doubling on your tracks. Deary and Co. are particular friends of mine, and I know they’ll be grateful for anything I can do in the way of speeding up their goods.”

Some part of this information, or the nonchalance with which it was delivered gave Roper pause, and made him swallow any further observations he might have felt inclined to offer. He turned away muttering in savage tones something about his boys having “left the road” while he slept. The lie was an obvious one, but the stranger doubtless had his own reason for accepting it blandly and without comment. He now dismounted, unsaddled and knee-haltered his horse, and turned it to graze. Without taking further notice of Roper or anyone else, he proceeded to gather fuel from the neighbouring bush, and in a short time had a great fire of his own leaping in the gloom. He had built it some twenty yards or more from the waggons, but exactly facing Vivienne’s watch tower, and by its rays she could see him foraging in his saddle-bags and preparing a meal. He made no attempt to communicate with her or amalgamate in any way with Roper’s camp. She wondered a little at this, but had already learned to rely upon the certainty of his knowing what he was about, and having a good reason for his every action. Since the moment she heard the unexpected sound of his voice, a feeling of peace and security had invaded her. Her strung nerves were at rest, and menace had gone from the night with the knowledge that this man was of those who took the fate of others in his hands and that hers was for the moment in his keeping.

A drowsy weariness had followed upon the strain of the afternoon, and her inclination was to sleep, but the sight of her knight-errant taking his supper in a very natural and everyday manner made her wonder whether she ought not to do the same, not only for the sake of keeping up appearances, but to preserve her health in case of emergencies. So when an umfan came as usual to tell her that the dinner was ready, she descended from the waggon, and strolling over to the packing-case took her place as though nothing in the world had happened.

But sitting opposite a face which wore baffled rage and spite printed on every line of it was not a pleasant experience, and she was glad to look past it sometimes to a figure lying full length, smoking peacefully by a fire. The man Kerry never once glanced their way, but Vivienne was curiously aware of his being on the alert for every sound and movement in the camp. She knew very well that he could hear her say to Roper that it would be a pleasant act of courtesy to send over a cup of coffee to the stranger who evidently had no kettle in which to make any, and Roper’s surly response to the suggestion.

“Look here! Do you take me for a damn-fool Samaritan?”

“No, indeed!” she retorted dryly. “But I thought that even you might be inclined to perform an act of common decency.”

“Well, you thought wrong. I told you before that my waggon wasn’t a hotel for lost, stolen, or strays, didn’t I?”

Her only answer was to emphatically refuse the cup of coffee proffered her by an umfan. The rest of the meal was accomplished in silence.

Back in her tent once more, she composed herself for the night, revolver to hand, her face towards her friend. He had made another collection of fuel, and evidently meant to keep a big fire going all night. Something in the quiet way he had settled himself, half seated against his saddle, told her that he meant to keep watch.

Also, he had produced a book, and was leaning forward in the firelight ruffling its pages, and softly whistling to himself. A wave of pleasure tingled through the girl as she recognised the air for one she had known and loved all her life; that exquisite setting by Mendelssohn and Lizst to Heine’s poem On Wings of Song. She was strangely thrilled to hear its dear familiar cadence in this wild spot. Like the twinkle of home-lights seen suddenly from afar by a lost wayfarer, it gladdened and put fresh courage into her heart. How strange it seemed that this shirt-sleeved man who seemed part and parcel of primitive Africa, whom she had looked upon as a sort of Boer, should know anything so exquisitely civilised as the “Auf Flügeln des Gesanges!” She lay listening dreamily, her mind putting Heine’s words to the frail haunting air.

On wings of song, Belov’d One,
Away I’ll waft thee, to where
I know in the plains of the Ganges
A secret nook most fair.
There sleeps a rich blossoming garden,
Calm in the still moonlight:
The lotus flowers are awaiting
Their dearest Sister to-night.
The violets laugh as they prattle,
And gaze on the stars in their spheres;
Odorous legends the roses breathe
Low in each other’s ears.
There bound, and stand shyly listening,
The gentle timid gazelles;
Afar, from the sacred river,
The waves’ deep murmur swells.
There under the palms reclining,
We’ll drink by the sacred stream
Of love and rest in full measure,
And blissful dreams will we dream.

On Wings of Sleep it should have been called, she thought, for the whole thing was a dream that could only come in sleep. It occurred to her at last that the man Kerry thought so too, and meant his persistent though soft whistling as a hint to her to sleep while he kept watch. It seemed indeed the best thing she could do, so that later when he was tired out she in turn could keep guard. Already Roper had got down his blankets, and she knew by the lowered tones of the umfans that he had retired under the waggon.

Wearied out by the various emotions of the day, it did not take her long to fall asleep, but several times during the night she awoke, prompted by a restless fear which even through her dreams vaguely disturbed her. But always there was calm in the camp, and always the man Kerry sat intent on his little book. The storm clouds had gone by, and the sky, shroudy and mysterious as the blue veil of an Eastern woman, was hung with jewels that shed a misty luminance over the immense and silent land.

When she finally threw off sleep in the small hours before dawn it was to find Kerry still lying there on his elbow placidly smoking. His book was still in his hand, but he appeared to be reading the fire rather than it. Vivienne wondered how she could let him know that she was awake and able to take up the vigil, but with the Wings of Song still haunting her memory she did not wonder long. Very softly she began to whistle the air. He stirred, and glanced towards the tent. She whistled delicately on, and saw a slow smile flicker for a moment across his impassive face. Then he closed his book and lowered his head to the saddle. He understood. She stopped whistling. He slept, and she vigilled until the stars turned white and the hand of Dawn pushed them back from sight, and in their place scattered red and golden roses across the skies.

Full morning brought new factors into the game. Two sinewy Bechuana boys came light-foot up the trail of broken trees and crushed ant-hills made by Roper’s waggons, and approaching Kerry set down the heavy packages from their heads and gravely saluted him. An indaba ensued, accompanied by an arm-wave or two at the track by which they had come, some soft clicking remarks, and a few low sighs. Kerry, his pipe in his teeth, listened reflectively, and at the end of the recital gave a brief order to each. One went away to the horse, the other proceeded to make a cooking fire and unpack one of the loads which obviously contained provisions.

Vivienne, who had been for a little morning walk, and now sat on a rock some distance away, saw Roper, much intrigued, watching the proceedings from under his waggon. When he could no longer contain his curiosity he slouched over to Kerry.

“What’s all this? Whose boys are these?”

“Mine. Any objection to them?”

“Well!—What the Halifax?—How do you travel then? Where is your waggon?”

“I can’t remember ever having mentioned a waggon,” was the imperturbable answer.

That was the secret of it all then! He had no waggon. Only a horse and two native carriers. Vivienne to whom the whole conversation came clear on the morning air witnessed also Roper’s stupified amazement.

“So you’re just hanging on to me?” he snarled at last.

“I like pleasant company.”

“To Jerusalem with you—well, I don’t!”

“It’s a free country.” Kerry’s manner was unfailingly suave, but at this juncture he arose from the mound on which he was seated and made it clear that as far as he was concerned the conversation was closed. There was nothing left for Roper but to return to his own business of making things as unpleasant as possible for everyone in his camp. All through that torrid day he prowled and swore around his waggons, furiously tinkering and greasing and patching up the injuries they had sustained during the forced trek, giving his boys no rest from labour and abuse. But never once did he come near Vivienne, nor throw her a glance. She sat in her tent most of the day, mending a hole in the knee of her knickerbockers or staring at the sunlit land about her.

Thus it was from day to day. The two parties trekked and outspanned together as though they were one, yet after the first day never a word passed between them. Kerry made no attempt to communicate with Vivienne. Roper never spoke to Kerry. Vivienne passed her days unmolested by Roper.

The objectionable feature of the affair was Roper’s offensive habit of airing in a loud voice at the night outspan his opinion of “loafers” and “hangers-on”—men who “followed like jackals the waggon of another man, having none of their own.” Kerry might have been a stock or a stone for all the sign he gave of hearing any of these things. But Vivienne’s cheek burned for him, and at times she felt a curious impatience that one who had taken upon himself the chivalrous affair of guarding her should be able to put up with such insults. She could not help thinking that since he was there for her protection a simple way out of an odious situation would be for him to say: “Look here; come over to my camp, and I’ll take care of you, and let this fellow go to the deuce. Certainly you will have to rough it with me, but you have to rough it in any case with this lout.” She would have gone like a bird from a cage. In fact, she could not understand how any chivalrous man could fail to see that it was the only dignified thing to do, especially when Roper began presently to be ironical to her on the subject of her condescension in staying in his camp. One evening he remarked to her rudely: “I wonder you don’t go and take up your quarters with your pal the Pioneer, instead of housing in my tent.”

She was furious that the Pioneer, smoking not twenty yards off, took no more notice than if he were deaf or a fish. It seemed to her that patience might go a little too far, and a chill disdain began to take root in her soul.

And then one day she realised that it was rather a good thing after all that he had not invited her to leave Roper’s waggon to join his own unsheltered caravan. That was the day on which the heavy lowering heat broke at last in a storm such as she had never known in her life. When trees and iron rocks leaped in flame and fell under splitting flashes of lightning, thunder seemed to explode upwards from the bowels of the earth to meet an answering detonation in the heavens, and rain came down like grey straight rods of steel, battering the road into a liquid, quivering mass of mud.

At the first warning peal, Roper had drawn his waggons to a standstill, covered everything with great bucksails and retired under the shelter of one, while the boys took shelter under the other. Peering from ant-eaten holes in her bucksail, Vivienne could just distinguish through the heavy curtain of rain her rear-guard escort—the white horse with drooping head and drapery of mackintosh, and a tall figure sheltering to leewards of it. The carriers with the instinctive art of natives had found some cranny of shelter somewhere, but Kerry and his horse got the full brunt of the storm.

In less than an hour, it was all over. A turquoise sky burned overhead, vivid orange sunshine drew clouds of incense from tree and earth and rock. The quivering mud of the roadway was the only unsightly evidence of what had passed—that and the drenched forms of a man and beast whom Roper mocked obliquely by calling up to Vivienne:

“Nice weather for jackals, hey? I’ve just been waiting for this! We’ll have it every day now the wet season has set in.”

The girl’s heart sank. But it was to sink lower yet in the days that followed when Roper’s words came true and the storm faithfully repeated itself. She began to wonder then whether she had not misjudged the Pioneer, and to realise that possibly his knowledge of the country and the climate had something to do with the regulation of his temper to Roper’s sneers. It was clear at any rate that if she had left the waggon and sought refuge with him she, too, would have had to weather the blinding storms that came and went every day regularly as clockwork, always leaving the country fresh and fragrant as a rose. Except for the roads! The going grew heavier daily and in that at least triumph was not all on Roper’s side, for while he was obliged to keep to the morass-like track or risk capsize, Kerry’s horse could pick its way delicately between rocks and ant-holes at the roadside. After the first day or two of wet weather the native bearers disappeared, and Kerry’s horse bore the weight of an extra bundle.

It was a despairing experience to watch man and horse half-drown every day, then dry in clouds of steam under the brilliant sunshine that followed, and Vivienne sickened of it. She knew, too, that however strong the man, such an experience could not go on indefinitely without affecting his health, and she trembled for the day when he would perhaps fall ill of fever or pneumonia. Fortunately that day never dawned. One morning just as the sun was bursting forth after a terrible downpour, and the bucksails were being removed from the waggons, the blare of a coach horn came sailing through the air and a sound of mules’ hoofs flapping in the mud. Vivienne almost jumped out of her skin with joy at the sight of a mail-coach, empty of everything but the driver and a mass of mail-bags.

Within twenty minutes, she was stowed inside the cart tent, the white horse was switched on behind, and the drawn-up coach waited only on the convenience of Kerry who before he could take his place in the cart wished to change his soaking clothes for some he had dried overnight. The bush being his only retiring-room he prepared to take his bundle thither, but first he stepped over and addressed a curt remark to Roper scowling beside his waggon.

“Come along with me!”

“Come with you? I’ll see you up a gum tree first.”

“Very well. You can take what’s coming to you here instead if you prefer it.”

“What do you mean?” Roper’s face was belligerent but he began to back. The other’s eyes, suddenly grown very steel-coloured, had taken a kind of measuring glance into them.

“Just this, that you don’t surely suppose you’re going to be let off for your infernal cheek of the past ten days?—and all the annoyance you have caused this gentleman here?” (He slightly indicated Vivienne.)

“Gentleman!” sniggered Roper, but got no further, for his mouth was stopped in a very rude and unkind manner. Vivienne’s heart gave a leap at the sound of the blow. Never before had she seen a man thrashed, nor any kind of brute violence used by one man to another. A month or two back, the very idea of such a thing would have made her sick, probably have caused her to faint. It is certain that she would, out of very hatred of violence, have sided with the aggressed, whatever his crime, against the aggressor. It showed how Africa had steeled her nerves and readjusted her sense of values that she could sit through the scientific and very thorough punching to which the transport driver was treated, without turning a hair.

Afterwards, Roper’s boys, with a jubilation of manner never before observed in them, removed their master to the shade of his waggon and administered whiskey, while the man Kerry went away to wash his hands and make a quick change. The post-cart driver, a swarthy half-Dutch colonial, who talked the most extraordinary language Vivienne had ever heard, beguiled the tedium of waiting with anecdotes of Roper’s past.

“Maar! it was lekker to see dat slegte skepsel get it good and red! Ach! sis ja, he’s de worst stinkhond on dis road. I knowed him well daar bij de Kaap. Ja wat! he done ten years mealie-meal pap on de Cape Town breakwater already for I.D.B., and another five years in de Bloemfontein tronk for half murdering an arme kind of a Hottentot girl. He hit her on de head with a klip, wat! Allemagtie! sis, yes, he’s a vaabond. I seen him do some dirty jobs between here and Mafeking. Verneuking de Kaffirs and hammering his boys for niks nie. Ek seh ver jou, dere isn’t nothing what dat verdomde bliksem wouldn’t do!”

Vivienne could well believe it. Such of the narrative as was comprehensible to her made her more deeply realise what her danger had been and how much she owed to the protection of Kerry. Her heart glowed with a warmth and gratitude she had never expected to feel again for anyone as she saw him returning, fresh from his dip and change, nonchalant as ever.

“Oh, how good you’ve been to me! What should I have done if you had not come!” she cried, and put out her hands to his in a gesture as charming as it was spontaneous.

“That’s all right,” he said easily. But impassivity went out of his face and darkness came into his eyes for a moment as he touched her hands. Then they sat side by side behind the driver while the mules spattered onwards through the mud. She recounted to him all she could remember of her adventure from the time she knew herself lost until Roper’s appearance roused her from the mental lethargy into which panic and privation had plunged her. But of the ten days’ gap in between she could tell him no more than if she had returned from the dead.

“Only it seems like a miracle that you should have come upon the scene just when you did!”

“It was lucky I left the coach at Palapye,” he said reflectively. But he did not mention why he had done so. “When I got back some days later, there was no way of proceeding except by taking a horse and a couple of bearers.”

“Did you hear then that I was lost?”

“Yes,” he said briefly. “The Government had people out searching for you, but you must have travelled at a great rate. I expect you’ll want to wire to let people know you are all right as soon as we get near a telegraph office?”

“I suppose so,” she said slowly. “Unless it would be possible to just arrive and say nothing as to where I have been, and about that awful time with Roper. I should like that above all.” She looked at him appealingly and then at her grimy clothes. “It would be terrible to run the gauntlet like this!”

“We must think up something,” he said.

“It is only a matter of clothes to arrive in,” she said presently. “I expect I shall find my baggage all safely there.”

“Of course. Well, the best plan will be for me to drop you at Fisher’s half-way house, a day’s drive from Buluwayo. I’ll proceed by coach and send you back whatever you need, and some kind of conveyance to come on by. The woman at Fisher’s is a quiet, half-dazed Dutch creature who won’t talk if she sees you enter a young man and go forth a young woman.”

She coloured slightly, conscious suddenly of her grimy knickerbockers and rush hat. Then their eyes met and they both fell into a rush of laughter that broke the last strand of stiffness between them and turned them into girl and boy in a world empty of old griefs and pains and full of sunlight.

They discussed without constraint what she needed in the way of clothes, and how to outwit the curiosity of Rhodesia as to her adventure. She told him about her work, and something of her reason why she could not afford to have the truth known. And if his eyes expressed humorous wonder that she should so much mind what the world thought when she was clear of fault, his enthusiasm in plotting ways and means for keeping her doings dark was no less than her own.

“You must just turn up casually at a hotel one day in your cart, and say you’ve been all right—that you certainly got lost, but found good friends and have been seeing the country and getting ‘copy’ ever since. Chesterfield says: ‘Never lie, but don’t tell everything.’ Let them think what they like. They can’t prove anything. Roper knows that if he speaks I’ll break him to pieces. As for this driver Koos, I can easily square him. He’s an old crony of mine.”

The sun pressed down on them hard all day, but there were fresh hills on the horizon, and a gold and emerald scape. The crystal air was vibrant with the odours of rolling leagues of vivid flowers growing close to Earth’s hot brown body. Wild bees hovered over the brilliant cactus blooms and strange-coloured brittle cups of the sugar-bush, then rose, honey-laden, and softly burr-red their way home.

At broad noon, they outspanned by a mule stable on the banks of the Lundi, and made a fire for which Vivienne helped collect sticks. Koos filled the kettle at the river, and Kerry went off on the trail of a little bird that was hopping from tree to tree with an insistent note. It was a honey-bird and its message was clear when Kerry came back carrying two large honey-combs dripping with that golden wine of the veld brewed by the little dark wild bees.

Vivienne thought she had never in her life tasted anything so delicious. Koos was still at the river. She and Kerry sat on two stones, close to each other, and munched the dripping combs, looking at the great fantastic land about them and sometimes into each other’s eyes. She did not know that her youthful beauty had burst through grime and sunburn like a flower from its sheath. He did not know that distance was gone from his eyes again and that they burned dark in his tanned face. But both were aware of the enfolding wings of some great unknown force.

Who drinks Nile water must return to Egypt. Who wears veld-schoens will return to the veld; who tastes of Africa’s perfumed honey can never again content him with the honey of pallid Europe. Vivienne could not know that by her act she was being initiated into the fellowship of that great band whose hearts will never more be free from the thrilling exquisite pain of Africa’s claw. She only knew that some strange taste of strange life went from the honey into her very being and that she had never lived before as she lived in that moment. Life had been waiting for her behind a veil, and now she drew nearer the veil and from behind it came the perfume of stephanotis and cactus bloom and wild honey, the murmuring of rivers, the music of trees. Africa was wild honey, and wild honey was Africa. It had got into her blood. Gone to her brain. Oh, the sweetness of it! The flame of skies and flowers! Time and space here for dreams! Here the rats and mice of life—malice, intrigue, slander, all the gibbering gnawing things that can make life hell—were absent. Here one pressed one’s lips to life and felt the thrill of the kiss swinging up and down every vein in one’s body.

Suddenly she gave a cry. A bee’s sting had embedded itself in the sensitive flesh of her lower lip, and an exquisite needle-like pain brought tears to her eyes. He saw at once what had happened and sprang up.

“I’ll get it out. Hold still a minute.”

Touching her face with strong fingers grown extraordinarily delicate, he pinched the lip until he was able to extract the tiny dark sting. She closed her eyes and a tear slipping down her cheek wetted his fingers.

Then he kissed her with the honey and salt wet on her lips, as one might kiss a little crying child. And almost as simply and naturally she kissed him back. When she realised what she had done, her heart seemed to become hollow in the sunlight for one moment, then full, brimming over with some strange wine. She wanted to be furious with him, but looking at his eyes no words would come to her lips. They stood there staring at each other like people in a dream. The sight of Koos coming back recalled her to herself, the spell under which she had been, broke. Frigid conventional words came to her lips, of the kind she might have spoken in a London drawing-room.