"What next?" asked he.

Bramham beat the bowl of his pipe against the balcony rail.

"Cursed if I know what next!" he proclaimed. After a pause he added: "I wish you'd come and help me sift it out, Karri."

Carson shrugged; his face grew a little weary.

"I am not particularly interested in girls, Bram; I'm afraid I couldn't help you much."

Bramham might have made a rude retort, but he didn't. He got up and leaned against a pole of the verandah, facing Carson.

"Well, I should like to have had your opinion, Karri. What with that girl with the saint's eyes, and Brookfield's slippery ways----"

"But where does Brookfield come in?"

Bramham did not answer immediately. He appeared to be turning it over in his mind as to whether he should tell that part of the story at all.

Eventually he roused himself to a point of indignation when he _had_ to tell.

"Well, now, look here, Karri--this is the whole thing: About a month ago Brookfield came to my office with a yarn about his typewriter--pretty girl--good girl--knew her business, but fearfully poor, and he hadn't enough work to keep her going--would I give her some of my typing? It meant bread-and-b.u.t.ter to her, etc. _Of course_, I said 'Right!' But when it came to finding the work for her ... well, Milligan, my head man, put it to me that it meant taking away the typewriting from our own man, who can't do anything else, and has a wife and family ... and when I thought it over, anyway, I kicked at having a woman about the office.

However, as I'd promised Brookfield to do something, I went round to see him about it and met the girl--Miss Cornell. I didn't take to her much; but she's poor, you know, and something had to be done to help her out."

"I don't see what business it was of yours at all."

"Karri, it's everybody's business when a woman's down on her luck--even if she has the shifty eye of Miss Sophie Cornell. All the same, I didn't contemplate having to tip up three hundred pounds, and I feel deuced sore about it."

"Three hundred _what_?" cried Carson.

"Well, look here, what was I to do?" said Bram sullenly. "Brookie badgered me into promising to do something; then the girl said she had a friend who wanted to come and join her, and if they could only get a little hole of their own they could set up an agency and take in work.

Presently Brookie heard that some people called Lumsden were going to leave, and wanting to sell up their cottage--offered to sell the whole bag of tricks as it stood for three hundred, and Brookie said he would stand in for half if I would for the other half. I wasn't prepared to plank down one-fifty by any means, but the Cornell girl got hold of me and pitched me a long story about her friend, an English girl, who had got left in Kimberley by some people she was governessing for ... also, she was so full of grat.i.tude about all our plans for them, that before I knew where I was I had promised. Well, Brookie asked me to arrange the thing quietly and take the house over from the Lumsdens in my name, as he didn't want to appear in the matter, because Mrs. Lumsden's sister at the Cape is a great friend of his wife's and he was afraid it might get to her ears. So I paid Lumsden one-fifty down on the nail, and the rest was to be paid in a month, and Miss Cornell settled in and the other girl turned up from Kimberley, and they've made the place all snug and seem as happy as sandboys. In fact, everything was going all right until this afternoon, when Brookie looms up with a face as long as a horse's, and says he's not prepared to pay the other one-fifty."

"The little blackguard!"

"Exactly. Just what I said to him. He said: 'Not at all!' Declared he hadn't let me in for anything.... I could get three hundred pounds any day of the week for Lumsden's place.... Just as if I could, or would, turn those two poor girls out now they're so happy! So, of course, I've just got to tip up the rest of the money and look pleasant ... and, after all, you know, Karri, why should I?... They're nice little women, and all that, and I'd gladly have done something, but three hundred!...

I've troubles of my own, by Jove!... My wife doesn't live on Quaker Oats and barley water, by any means."

"And then there's the pleasure of knowing you've been rooked. I never heard of such a piece of barefaced roguery in my life."

"Well, what could I do? He said his wife was coming back unexpectedly and he couldn't raise the money."

"You're three hundred different kinds of fool, Bram, if you let him rook you like that."

"He's been too clever for me," grumbled Bramham, and shut his mouth on his pipe.

"H'm! Mind the girl's not too clever for you too."

A plaintive expression came into Bramham's face, mingled with irritation; he took his pipe out again.

"My dear Karri, don't I tell you that I have nothing to do with the girl, or she with me? I was sorry for her and helped her out of a hole, and there the matter ends. I don't really regret the money--because of that other girl--but as you know, I am not a millionaire, and three hundred _is_ three hundred. What annoys me is that I should have been such a fool----"

"Why did you pay? I should have refused."

"Oh no, you wouldn't, because the women would have had to get out. No, that would never have done."

"Well," said Carson, getting up and walking down the long verandah.

"It's just as well that Mrs. Brookfield has come back. I wouldn't live in the house with Brookfield after this." He went indoors and began to negotiate a whiskey-and-soda.

"Oh, come, I say, Karri!" Bramham got up and came and leaned in the doorway, one leg in the room and one in the verandah. "This isn't your affair, you know. Don't you get your back up about it. I've really no right to have told you; but you understand that I've been a good deal annoyed, and it's been a relief to speak of it. Of course, if Brookie had been here I should have gone into his room and blazed away at him after dinner and got rid of it that way. As it is, I feel better and there's no harm done. By Jove! what a glorious moon! Let's go for a tramp before we turn in."

"Right!"

They fortified. Later, without hats, they tramped off along the shining sands silvered by the light of a shimmering moon gazing at herself in the sea.

Brookfield's wife having returned, he came no more to Sea House. But he hailed Carson blithely at the Club next day.

"What do you say to a drink, Karri?"

"I don't want a drink," said Carson shortly.

"Why not?"

"Don't ask me why not. I don't want one, that's all."

"O G.o.d! look here! Now, d.a.m.n it, why not?"

Brookfield was as easily infuriated as Carson.

On this occasion Carson stayed cool.

"Because I don't like you--if you must have it."

Brookfield at once became calm; he prepared to argue out the matter.

"Karri," he began plaintively, "I want to tell you one thing. I like you and Charlie Bramham better than anyone in this rotten country, but there's no one who can annoy me more than you can----"

Carson yawned, got up, and walked out of the room.

CHAPTER VI

It was a moonless night, but the stars were out in their legions, and the garden was full of a warm, silvery silence--the silence composed of the thousand tiny sounds and scents that make the charm and wonder of an African night. The moon-flowers were tolling their heavy, white bells, and some big flowering-bush, with pale, subtle blossoms, seemed to have all the fragrance of a beautiful woman's hair.

Poppy walked in the gracious dimness, her bare, pale feet picking their way delicately amongst bright things lying like fallen stars in the gra.s.s. A green, clinging plant, waving long tendrils, clutched at her gown as she pa.s.sed, and she broke it off, and, twining it into a crown, put it on her hair. It had tiny flowers dotted amongst its leaves. The trees shut her in from all the world, and it was as though she walked in some great, dim, green well.

She had been all through the garden and was tired. At last she threw herself down and lay at full-length on the soft, short gra.s.s, in which there was no dampness, for a terrible pall of heat had lain all day upon Natal, and through the thin nainsook of her gown Poppy could feel the warmth still in the earth. She stared into the solemn velvet sky where Orion, in gleaming belt and sword, leaned above her, and the Milky Way was a high-road to Heaven, paved with powdered silver. Far away, in the town below, a church clock flung out eleven clear strokes upon the night air. Poppy turned on her side and lay with her cheek to the earth.