Poppy positively blushed for her.

"Sophie, how can you! It was perfectly plain that he did not want to bring the man--and that he doesn't intend to, anyway. Are you really as dense as you pretend to be?"

"Bosh!" said Sophie, retiring to the table and beginning to make a fresh onslaught on the bread-and-b.u.t.ter. "They'll turn up here in a day or two, you'll see. Isn't there any jam, I wonder?"

"I shall not see anything of the kind. I wash my hands of you and your men friends. I didn't engage to meet anyone but Mr. Bramham, and I've done all I promised."

She had done a little more than she had promised, as she very well knew, but observation was not Sophie's strong point, as her next remark made plain.

"Now, don't be cross just because he didn't admire you. I told you to put on my silk blouse, didn't I?"

Poppy laughed her entrancing laugh.

"Do you really think men care for clothes, Sophie?"

"Of _course_ they do! They love to see a well-dressed woman--especially when they don't have to pay for the dress. Lots of men won't even be _seen_ with a woman unless she's _perfectly_ turned out. Brookie is like that; and I'll bet that man Abinger is, too!"

"Is he, indeed! Then remove him far from me. I'm afraid you won't suit him, either Sophie," with a touch of malice.

"Why not? Don't I pay enough for my clothes? I dress far better than Mrs. Portal does, anyway. She always has on faded old linens and things, and I've only seen her in two hats since I came here--both of them _awful_!"

"I thought she looked extremely nice when I saw her."

"Well, your taste and mine differ, my dear. _I_ think she is a frump.

Cap.r.o.n's wife now _is_ good looking, and always dressed mag-_nif_-icently. But it makes a person sick to see the way they freeze on to all the decent men and never let them meet anyone else."

"But do the men want to meet anyone else? If one woman is witty, and the other pretty, what more is there to be desired?"

"You talk like a book with all the pages torn out, and the cover lost,"

said Sophie irritably.

Poppy laughed provokingly, and lay back in her chair, thinking--the whole thing was rather amazing. Abinger still here, and moving amongst pretty and witty women, whilst he pretended to be up in the Transvaal!

His friend _Umkoomata_ the _St.u.r.dy One_, whom she had told herself she would like to know, here too, visiting Sophie Cornell, whom he plainly didn't like. Nick Cap.r.o.n! How odd the world was! She began to ponder about _Intandugaza_, too--whether he was the mysterious dark Irishman who went on secret expeditions----

"_Man!_ Rosalind," broke in Sophie suddenly. "That fellow Abinger is just crazy to meet me. We ran into each other as I was coming out of Brookie's office yesterday, and he gave me a look that made me go hot all over. He's got those bad eyes that make you feel curly all down your spine--_you_ know!"

Poppy turned away from her. With the remembrance of certain recent sensations still burning within her, she could not say that she did _not_ know; but her mouth expressed weariness and disgust.

"It seems to me that you are talking about some kind of brute, Sophie,"

she said.

"Brute! Oh, I don't know," said Sophie, and laughed. The laugh sent Poppy out of the room with her teeth in her lip.

"I can't stand Sophie any longer," she said to herself in her own garden, looking at the rose-red walls of the house and the flaming flowers on the plant before the door. As she went indoors her thought changed; she began to smile subtly to herself.

"So Luce is in Durban all the time! He simply pretended to go away, to avoid discussing that matter of going out with me! And Mrs. Nick Cap.r.o.n!

If I were to go out here, should I meet her? And would she recognise in me, I wonder, the little wretched vagabond of six years ago?"

She reached her gla.s.s, and looked in.

"I think not."

CHAPTER V

Bramham and Carson sat smoking in the verandah of Sea House. Before them, not two hundred yards away, lay the sea, washing and rippling on the beach under the full of the moon. Behind them, through the open French windows a number of large woolly moths were _buzzing_ in and out, much intrigued by the light that shone through a pink silk lamp-shade, which had been made and presented to the establishment by Mrs.

Brookfield, on the occasion of her husband's accession to Bramham's mess for six weeks. The electric-lights had been turned out to keep the room as clear as possible of insects. It was Bramham's house, and they were Bramham's native servants who stepped so gently, removing the dinner-things deftly without clamour, making no sound but the rustle of bare feet on polished boards and an occasional softly-spoken Zulu word.

Bramham's household included no woman, but there was no better-appointed one in Natal. Having laid bare the gleaming oak dining-table, one of the _boys_ solemnly spread down its centre a strip of silver embroidery, while another placed two silver bowls of roses at each end, and removed the lamp with the pink shade to a side table. Afterwards the ice-bucket was replenished and fresh gla.s.ses placed near the spirit-tantalus.

Having performed these duties with the greatest decorum and ceremony, they withdrew silently to the back regions of the house, where their solemnity slipped from them as suddenly as water slips from a Kaffir's skin. They disported themselves amongst the pot-washers and dish cleaners, the cooks and stable-boys, with many a merry snicker and laugh, chattering like magpies, clicking and clacking, and crying "Hah!"

over the affairs of the _Old Baas_ (the master of natives is always _Old_ whatever his age) and the various other _Baases_ who sat at Bramham's board with regular irregularity.

Ha! ha! where was _Shlalaimbona_ to-night, they inquired among themselves. It is true that he would sleep here in the house of the _Old Baas_, as he had now done for many nights, but where did he eat to-night? In the house on the hill, where a white star was hidden by day and by night?

No; the information was forthcoming that he dined to-night at the house of Por-tal--he who was gay always with an angry face and had the wife whose hands could smooth away troubles.

And where, the cook particularly desired to know, was _Bechaan_? He whom the world called Brookfield--who had slept in the house of _Umkoomata_ for the matter of six weeks now? Where was he to-night? Followed the tale of the return of Mrs. _Bechaan_, with particulars amazing.

_Vetta_, Carson's personal servant, gave an imitation of the lady, from which might have been gathered that her chief characteristics were a kangaroo-walk and a face which in contour and complacency resembled a camel's.

In the meantime, _Umkoomata_ and _Intandugaza_ smoked in the verandah, which was like the deck of a yacht, broad and white-planked, and lined with a long row of every kind of easy-chair, a Madeira lounge, and a hammock with Union-Jack cushions.

Carson, with his head far back in a canvas chair and his hands behind it, was smoking a cigar at the mosquitoes, sending them in shrieking swarms to roost in the roof. Incidentally, he was trying to persuade Bramham that the fine weather indicated a three-weeks' trip into Zululand, to get some good shooting.

"I have another three weeks to put in, Charlie, and what is the good of loafing here, at a loose end?" He gave a glance at Bramham seated by him, pipe in mouth, hands in pockets, the picture of health and well-being. "And you are looking really seedy. A trip would do you good."

Bramham immediately began to think himself precariously ill.

"I know," said he uneasily; "I feel confoundedly slack. I must take a dose of quinine to-night. A trip would be just the thing to set me up, d.a.m.n it!" He stared at the moonlit night, his eyes full of a wistfulness that was extraordinarily boyish in a man on the wrong side of forty. He thought of a lovely spot he knew up on the Tugela, where the moon would just be rising over a great Kop, and he seemed to smell the wood fires on the night air----

"But I can't get away. I've got a big case coming on next month, you know." His face changed, the boyishness pa.s.sed and the business-man reappeared. "Those fellows in Buenos Ayres are trying to do me up for five thousand."

They smoked in silence for a moment or so, then Bramham continued:

"My lawyer, of course, wants to see me almost every day on some point or another. I really couldn't get away at present, Carson. Why not take a run up to the Rand? By the time you are back I'll have those fellows on toast, and then we'll go off for a few weeks."

"No," said Carson discontentedly, "everything is confoundedly dull on the Rand. I was sick of the place when I was there last month."

"What's wrong with it?"

"It is not the same as it was, Charlie. The old crowd has all gone away or gone to bits--Webb is in the Colony; Jack Lowther is mostly engaged (I think) in praying that his wife won't be too much for him when she comes out--she is on the water! The Dales are away. Bill G.o.dley is up Inyanga way. McLeod's finances are in bits, and he's too busy keeping a stiff lip to be sociable. Clewer is now Public Prosecutor and has become a saint. Little Oppy has gone home. Solomon says he has met the Queen of Sheba at last, and expects that to account for his never being in evidence anywhere except in the stage box of the Standard Theatre."

"Oh, d.a.m.n it! disgusting!" commented Bramham.

"And, anyway, the Rand air always chips the edges off my nerves, Bram.