Flower o' the Peach. Gibbon Perceval

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      "Of course he knows," she said contentedly. "Of course he knows. My dear, he really does know."

      "I 'm sure he does," agreed Margaret.

      Mrs. Jakes put a hand on her arm. "I feel certain we 're going to be friends," she said. "You 're so pretty and – and distinguished. And – and what a pretty frock you 've got!"

      She hesitated an instant, and was very timid and humble.

      "I should love to see you unpack," she said earnestly.

      CHAPTER IV

      The strength of a community, of almost any community, is its momentum; it is easier to go on than to pull up, even though its progress be erratic and the tear exceed the wear. Dr. Jakes' Sanatorium was a house divided against itself and poised for a downfall; but the course of its daily life had yet current enough to pick up a newcomer and float him from his independent foothold. The long languors of its days, its deep whispering nights, were opiates for the critical and exacting, so that before they had made it clear to themselves that this was no place for them, they were absorbed, merged in, the eventless quiet of the house and its people. For some – for most of them, indeed – there came at last a poignant day when Paul and his tall horses halted at the door to carry them to the station, and it was strange with what a reluctance they rode finally across the horizon that rose up to shut the big gray house from view, and how they hesitated and frowned and talked curtly when the station opened out before them and offered them the freedom of the world. And for the others, those who traveled the longer journey and alone, there stood upon the veld, a mile from the house, an enclosure of barbed wire – barbed against – what? For them came stout packing cases, which made the Kafirs sweat by their weight, and being opened, yielded some small cross of marble, black-lettered with name and dates and sorrowful texts; the lizards sunned themselves all day upon these monuments, for none disturbed them.

      At the Sanatorium, day began in the cool of morning with a padding of bare feet in the long corridors and the fresh wakeful smell of coffee. Africa begins its day with coffee; it is the stirrup-cup of the country. Margaret opened her eyes to the brightness of morning and the brisk presence of Fat Mary, radiant across her adventurously held tray of coffee cups and reflecting the joy of the new light in her exulting smile. She had caught from Mrs. Jakes the first rule of polite conversation, though none of the subsequent ones, and she always began with a tribute of words to the weather.

      "Sun burning plenty; how 's Missis?" was her usual opening gambit.

      The wide-open windows flushed the room with air, sweet from the night's refreshment; and Margaret came to value that hour between the administration of coffee and the time for rising; it was the bonne boucheof the day. From her pillows she could lie and see the far mists making a last stand against the shock of the sun, breaking and diffusing before his attack and yielding up wider views of the rusty plain at each minute, till at last the dim blue of infinitely remote hills thickened the horizon. At the farm, a mile away, figures moved about and among the kraals, wonderfully and delicately clear in that diamond air which stirred her blood like wine. She could even make out Paul; the distance robbed him of nothing of his deliberate, dreamy character as he went to and fro with his air of one concerned with greater things than the mere immediacies of every day. There was always a suggestion about him of one who stoops from cloudy altitudes of preoccupation to the little concerns of men, and towards Margaret he wore the manner of having a secret to divulge which was difficult to name. She met him sometimes on the veld paths between the two houses, and each time he seemed to draw near the critical moment of confession and fall back from it baffled. And though Margaret in her time had heard many confidences from many men and had made much progress in the subtle arts of the confidante, this was a case beyond her powers. The deftly sympathetic corkscrew failed to unbottle whatever moved in his mind; he evidently meant to bide his time. Meanwhile, seen from afar, he was a feature of the before-breakfast hour, part of the upholstery of the morning.

      It was when she heard Mr. Samson pass her door on his way to the bath that she knew the house was definitely awake. He wore Turkish slippers that announced him as he went with the slap-slap of their heels upon the floor. Once, putting her head forth from the door incautiously to scout for Fat Mary she had beheld him, with his bath-robe girt about him by its tasseled cord and bath towels round his neck, going faithfully to the ritual initiation of his daily round, a figure consistent with the most correct gentlemanly tradition. The loose robe and the towels gave him girth and substance, and on the wary, intolerant old face, with its gay white mustache, was fixed a look of serious purpose. Mr. Samson never trifled with his toilet, by gad – what? Later, on his return, she would hear his debonair knock on Ford's door. "Out with you!" he would pipe – he never varied it. "Out with you! Bright and early, my boy – bright and early – what?" An answer growled from within contented him, and he would turn in at his room, there to build up the completed personality which he offered daily to the world. It took time, too, and a meek Kafir valet, for a man is not made and perfected in a minute or two, and the result never failed to justify the labor. When next he appeared it would be as a member of the upper classes, armored and equipped, treading the stoep in a five-minutes' constitutional in a manner that at once dignified and lightened it. When one looked at him, one thought instinctively of exclusive clubs, of fine afternoons in Piccadilly, of the landed interest and the Church of England. One judged that his tailor loved him. He had a cock of the head, with a Homburg hat upon it, and a way of swelling his neck over the edge of his conservative collar, that were the very ensign of gallantry and spirit. It was only when he coughed that the power abandoned him, and it was shocking and pitiful to see the fine flower of gentility rattled like a dice-box in the throes of his malady and dropped at last against a wall, wheezing and gasping for breath in the image of a weak and stricken old man.

      "Against the ropes," he would stammer shakily as he gathered himself together again, sniffling into his beautiful handkerchief. "Got me against the ropes, it did. Damn it – what?"

      He suffered somewhat in his aggressive effect from the lack of victims. He had exhausted his black valet's capacity for being blasted by a glance, and had fallen back on Dr. Jakes. The wretched little doctor had to bear the brunt of his high severity when he came among his patients racked and quivering from his restless bed, and his bleared and tragic eyes appealed in vain for mercy from that high priest of correct demeanor. Mr. Samson looked at him as a justice of the peace, detained upon the bench when he should be at lunch and conscious that his services to the State are gratuitous, might look upon a malefactor who has gone to the length of being without visible means of subsistence. The doctor might wriggle and smile painfully and seek the obscurity of corners, but it could not serve him; there was no getting out of range of that righteous and manly battery while he stayed in the same room with it. Once, however, he spiked its guns. The glare across the tea-table, the unspoken sheer weight of rebuke and condemnation, seemed to suddenly break up the poisoned fog that clouded his faculties, and he lifted his face, shining a little as with sweat, in a quick look at Mr. Samson. Margaret, who saw it, recognized it; just so he had looked in his study when he questioned her on her case and bent his mind to the consideration of it. It was direct, expert, impersonal, the dehumanized scrutiny of the man whose trade is with flesh and blood. Something had stirred the physician in the marrow of the man, and from a judge and an executioner of justice, a drawing-room hangman, Mr. Samson had become a case. At the beginning of it, Mrs. Jakes, unfailingly watchful, had opened her mouth to speak and save the situation, but she too saw in time and closed her mouth again. Mr. Samson glowered and the hectic in his thin cheeks burned brighter.

      "You 've seen me before, Jakes!" he said, crisply.

      The little doctor nodded almost easily. "Your hand, please," he said. "Thanks."

      His forefinger found the pulse and dwelt on it; he waited with lips pursed, frowning.

      "As I thought," he said, dropping the stringy white hand again. "Yes! I 'll see you in the study, Mr. Samson, please СКАЧАТЬ