"When are you coming back to your home and your husband, Poppy?"

Indoors, the card-party had broken up. The travellers were tired, and Clem was for hunting them to bed. The men made farewells and went, Abinger with them, and Clem and Miss Allendner hustled away to the rooms of the guests. Poppy took the opportunity of slipping into the narrow little writing-room, which opened off the hall and was meant for common-use. She wished to write out a telegram, and she knew there were forms to be found there. Sitting down to the desk she found the stack of forms and began to write on the top one. But someone had been using it before her, and with a violent hand and stubby pencil had left an entire message deeply indented on the form beneath the one that had been used and torn off. With the first word Poppy wrote the ink flowed from her full pen into the rutted words, outlining a part of the message, and she read all then as dully and unthinkingly as she had done everything else that evening.

"_Come back to me. You have never been out of my heart for a moment since first I loved you.--Loraine._"

The address was a code word, care of the Rand Club, and the words were in Clem's writing. It was the last link in the chain. If Poppy had had any lingering, hoping doubt in her mind, it fled now. She forgot the words she had meant to write, and then she told herself they didn't matter in any case. Vaguely she remembered to tear the form off and destroy it; then rose from the desk and walked rather blindly to the door and out into the lighted hall. Clem was waiting there to bid her good-night.

The red had faded from her cheeks now, or else the light was kinder, and her eyes looked big and dim. She put out her hands, took Poppy's, and gave them a little, gentle squeeze, and she smiled her own brave turned-up-at-the-corners smile.

"Life is a curious thing, Poppy," she said gently. "It is hard to tell which is dream and which is real. Sometimes I don't think any of it is real at all. Good-night dear."

CHAPTER x.x.xII

After a week or so at Potchefstroom, Carson returned to Johannesburg, to find Rosser beating the town for him, crazy with impatience. Wallerstein had offered seven hundred pounds apiece for the South Rands, but Rosser had not closed; he considered it madness not to stand out for eight hundred.

"It'll only be a matter of a week or two," said he. But Carson gloomed and cursed. It maddened him to find the thing still unsettled, for he had made up his mind not to return to Durban until he knew definitely whether he had poverty or wealth--both comparative, of course--to offer to the woman of his heart. However, as he had stayed so long already, a few days more could not make much difference, he argued lifelessly with himself, so he gave a grudging half-a.s.sent to Rosser and went his ways.

He still had several minor affairs to attend to, and various people to see, but he did all half-heartedly. Choosing and despatching a ring to Poppy was the only thing that gave him any joy, and that was too poignant for pleasure. Then, suddenly, in one day he grew restless and haggard. Hunger was on him for the sight of a face, and at last he knew he could wait no longer, but must go. The decision came upon him suddenly in the Club with the sight and scent of a gardenia Forsyth was wearing in his coat at lunch-time. Now, between the scent of a gardenia and the scent of Barbadoes-thorn there is scarcely any difference at all, except that the gardenia's fragrance is perhaps more subtly insistent. Carson spun out of the Club into a cab and in fifteen minutes was in his broker's office.

"Close for seven hundred pounds each, Rosser," he said briskly. "And get the whole thing fixed up as soon as possible. I'm leaving to-night."

"Oh, but I've already closed for eight hundred pounds each," chirruped the elated Rosser. "The transfer is completed and the money paid in." He pranced into an inner office and produced voluminous doc.u.ments. "Loot, my son! Loot from the house of Rimmon! I take my little fifteen thousand pounds and you take twenty-five thousand. Isn't _that_ all right? _Now_ will you be good!"

An hour later Carson regained his cab and was driven to his rooms. A portmanteau at _Vetta's_ head was a sufficient indication of his intentions, and the rest of the afternoon was spent in settling up his remaining business matters and appointments by telegram and telephone.

Then he dined, and caught the eight o'clock express by one minute and a half. _Vetta_, who was on the look-out for him, indicated an empty first-cla.s.s, and Carson fell into it and slept like the dead until morning.

Those were the days when the run between Johannesburg and Durban occupied the better part of twenty-seven hours. The first stop of any importance was at Volksrust, the boundary town, and Carson roused himself to take a look at country he knew well, and was not likely to see again for many years. It was as early as five A.M., and a wet salt mist lay over everything, chilling him to the bone as he opened his window and looked out at the bleak Drakensberg looming through the haze, and tragic Majuba, which throws a shadow athwart every brave man's path as he pa.s.ses. Later, the train dashed through the Laing's Nek tunnel, and as it descended the sloping spur of the range, Natal lay before Carson's eyes--all beautiful green valleys and running water: the land of his desire. The mist had cleared from the air, but it still seemed to obscure Carson's vision as he looked, and he pa.s.sed Ingogo, and Mount Prospect, with ill-fated Colley's monument, unknowingly. Only the far blue haze that meant the coast lured his eyes, for there for him lay heart's content.

Presently, at Newcastle, came the faithful _Vetta_ with tidings of breakfast; and Carson scrambled amongst a weary, sleepy crowd, in which he recognised no face, for sandwiches and vile coffee flung at him, half in cup and half in saucer. When he had breakfasted in this fashion, taken a leisurely stroll, glanced in all the carriages to see if there could possibly be any pa.s.sengers he knew, inspected the accommodation of _Vetta_, and inquired into the matter of the latter's breakfast, he returned to his carriage. There was still a residue of sixteen hours to get through before the journey ended. Having no reading-matter with him, he thought at first to kill time with pleasant thoughts of a woman in a garden, but it was presently borne in upon him that his consciousness, or conscience, or memory, or whatever he may have cared to call it, had another and less agreeable affair to consider with him. Something within, that he would fain have cursed into silence, earnestly solicited his attention to the fact that the train which was crawling with him to the woman he loved, was at the same time tearing with most indecent haste towards one whom he had never loved, and the hour in which he must tell her so. Presently the thought of that hour lashed him, cut him with knives, turned him sick.

In time, he stared at the wild and rugged outline of the Biggarsberg, until it seemed blurred with a red haze; and as the flat and dreary land of stunted bush that lies between Elandslaagte and Howick unrolled itself monotonously before his window, rocks appeared to grin and gibe at him, and isolated trees menaced him with gnarled arms, even as in Wiertzs's picture Napoleon is menaced by the arms of women.

As the hours pa.s.sed his eyes grew bloodshot and his throat dry. His mouth sneered with self-contempt; unconsciously his lips opened and closed, and he swallowed with the expression of a man who is tasting the bitterness of death. But through all, his heart held steadfast to one plan--the man's plan, the old plan that was in the beginning and shall be till the end.

Later, he lay on the seat of the carriage, his face to the wall, his eyes closed, his hands clenched--thinking, thinking. He would remember Poppy's shut eyes as he kissed her under the flamboyant tree; how her throat shone in the darkness. Then a voice, _not hers_, would break in upon him, crying:

"Evelyn, I love you. For your sake men may brand me--swear you will never forsake me for another woman!"

Did he ever swear? Was that his voice he seemed to hear?--tender, fervent--swearing by her face, by his life, by----

"Oh, Lord G.o.d! what a blackguard!" he groaned aloud.

But his heart held steadfast to his plan.

When at last evening fell, the train reached Maritzburg, and the pa.s.sengers poured out into the station dining-room. Carson, haggard-eyed, found the bar, and drank three brandies atop of each other. He was on the point of ordering a fourth when a Maritzburg acquaintance stepped in and saved him the trouble--slapping him on the shoulder, and claiming his attention with a little scheme, which he said Bramham was standing in with. It was something about coal, but Carson never afterwards remembered details, though he listened very politely and intently to every word, for it was good to be spoken to by a decent man as if he were another decent man, after those years of degradation in the train.

The four brandies might have been poured over a rock for all the effect he felt of them; but when the starting bell rang, he made his way back to the train through the hustling crowd with a calmer mien, and leaning from the window, wrung his acquaintance's hand with una.s.sumed warmth.

Ever afterwards he felt real friendship for that Maritzburg man.

To his surprise, he found that he now had a fellow-pa.s.senger, a lady.

Her figure seemed vaguely familiar as she stood packing her things into the rack, and when she turned round he wondered where in the world before he had met the unabashed gaze of those large brown eyes beneath a ma.s.sed fringe of dusty, crispy hair. She, on her part, was regarding him with the pleased smile of an old acquaintance.

"Sir Evelyn Carson! How funny!" she said, and smiled winningly. Carson bowed, and his smile was ready and courteous, for, in truth, he was glad not to be alone; but he continued to greatly wonder.

"I believe you don't remember me!" said she archly. "How unkind! And I've so often bowed to Mr. Bramham when you've been with him in the old days. And you've been to Brookie's office, too, when I was his seckertary."

At last Carson was enlightened. He was, in fact, in the pleasant company of Miss Sophie Cornell.

"Ah! yes, of course--I remember quite well," said he. Indeed, if she could but have known it, he remembered a good deal more than was flattering, for Bram's tale of highway-robbery was still clear in his mind. She had changed a good deal since then: grown coa.r.s.er and more florid--and there were other things--! When a woman has flung her kisses to the world as generously as summer flings daisies in a green meadow, the tale of them is marked upon her face for all who run to read.

However, her dress was black, and so extremely neat that it was a pity she should have spoiled its effectiveness by wearing a pair of yellow _suede_ evening shoes.

Carson was not surprised when she informed him that she had left the uninteresting field of typewriting, to adorn a profession where beauty and wit are more readily recognised and liberally remunerated.

"I am in an _awfully_ nice bar in Maritzburg," she told him languorously. "Come in and have a drink next time you are there--'The Falcon.' All my friends were _awfully_ annoyed with me for leaving _literary_ work, but really it was _so_ dull--and, of course, it's a great mistake to think one can't stay _a lady_, whatever one does; don't you think so, Sir Evelyn, eh?"

"Certainly!" he gravely agreed.

"I am treated as _quite_ the lady by all the smartest men in the town, and there's a great difference between that and being bullied from morning to night by a little bounder like Brookie, you know. Not that he didn't have his good points. But still, the way he treated me in the end was perfectly _frot_[6], and there's no other word for it. In fact, everybody did. Charlie Bramham, now, always said he'd be my friend, but as soon as it suited him, he just scooted off and never came near me again ... after persuading me in the first place to come to Durban to work for him."

[6] Rotten.

"Oh! Bramham's a good fellow," said Carson, smiling at this new version of a tale of highway-robbery. "I don't think he could have behaved very badly."

"Good fellows and bad fellows are all just the same when they're tired of you," said Miss Cornell feelingly; adding, with great hauteur: "Not that I ever allowed any man to get tired of _me_, Sir Evelyn, I a.s.sure you. There's not a single fellow in Africa can say a _thing_ about me."

This was very impressive, but Carson did not exactly know what it might mean. He only knew that he was growing a little weary.

"And then there was a girl that I befriended. I took her in when she came to my house without a rag to her back, or a shoe to her foot, one night--fed her, clothed her, and treated her like my own sister--or would have done if she hadn't been such a cold-blooded, standoffish _slang_.[7] Yet I can a.s.sure _you_, Sir Evelyn, that when I was on the Durban Race-course three weeks ago, with two _perfect gentlemen_ from the Rand, she sat quite close to me in a carriage with that Mrs. Portal, and though I smiled and bowed to her _twice_, she deliberately looked right through me.... I might have been a bit of rubbish lying in the street...."

[7] Snake.

Something in this narrative dimly, though unpleasantly, interested Carson. He forgot his weariness for the moment and looked at the woman intently.

"Yes ... what do you think of that? Deliberately _cut_ me ... me who had been her friend in need. I supposed it was because she had managed to get taken up by a big-pot like Mrs. Portal.... I said so to one of my friends--such a nice boy--you may know him--Wolfie Isaacs, of the firm of Isaacs and Jacobs. But after he'd been away talking to some other men, he came back and told me that _she_ was the great auth.o.r.ess who wrote all the cracked books and poems about Africa, and that everyone was raving about her. He said I must have made a mistake when I thought I knew her! What do you think of _that_? The girl I had taken in without any shoes to her feet!... and, oh my! couldn't I tell a tale to her swell friend Mrs. Portal if I--" Something in the steely expression of the face opposite suddenly arrested her flow of eloquence.

"Do you mind telling me whom you are talking about?" said Carson quietly.

"Certainly--I'm delighted to. It is only fair that everybody should know what a _slang_ that girl is, to cut _me_ like that, who had taken her in without asking a single question about where she came from.... Och! but I can tell you I found out afterwards, Sir Evelyn ... she's as bad as she can be, that Rosalind Chard----"

Carson's tanned skin had turned an ashy-yellow shade, which was neither becoming nor artistic.

"Woman--" he said in a low, hoa.r.s.e voice, scarcely audible; but his eyes said a great deal more than his lips; and Miss Cornell, at first surprised, became angrily red.

"Och! don't you _woman_ me!" she cried, bridling. "So _you're_ a friend of hers, too, I suppose! She's got very grand all at once!... but I wonder if she told you she used to be constantly in a house on the Berea with Luce Abinger. That it was from _his_ house she came that night I took her in! My _boy_ Zambani saw her come through the gap in the hedge that led from Abinger's garden. Ha! ha! and she pretending to be such a saint all the time! Ask Mr. Bramham! He knows all about it."