Flower o' the Peach. Gibbon Perceval

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      "Gently!" warned the Kafir. He looked at the boy curiously. "Yes," he said. "Lots of people do it, and lots more go to look at the things they make and talk about them. People pay money to learn to do it, and there are great schools where they are taught to model – to make things, you know, in clay, and stone, and bronze. Did you think it was all done behind dam walls?"

      Paul breathed deep. "I did n't know," he murmured.

      "Do you know Capetown?" asked the other. "No? It doesn't matter. You 've heard of Jan van Riebeck, though?"

      As it happened, Paul had heard of the Surgeon of the Fleet who first carried dominion to the shadow of Table Mountain.

      "Well," said the Kafir, "you can imagine Jan van Riebeek, shaped in bronze, standing on a high pedestal at the foot of a great street, with the water of the bay behind him, where his ships used to float, and his strong Dutch face lifted to look up to Table Mountain, as it was when he landed? Don't think of the bronze shape; think of the man. That's what clay is for – to make things like that!"

      "Yes, yes. That's what it's for," cried Paul. "But – I never saw anything like that."

      "Plenty of time," said the other. "And that's only one of the things to see. In London – "

      "You 've been in London?" asked Paul quickly.

      "Yes," said the Kafir, nodding. "Why?"

      Paul was silent for a space of seconds. When he answered it was in a low voice.

      "I 've seen nothing," he said. "I can't find out those ways to work the clay. But – but if somebody would just show me, just teach me those – those tricks you spoke about – "

      "All right." The Kafir patted his arm. "Under the dam wall, eh? In the evenings? I 'll come, and then – "

      "What?" said Paul eagerly, for he had broken off abruptly.

      "The train," said the Kafir, pointing, and sighed.

      Paul had been too intent in talk to hear it, but he could see now, floating against the distance, the bead of light which grew while he watched. The group further down the platform dissolved, and the tank-men went past at a run to their work. A voice at his elbow made Paul turn quickly. It was the Cape Mounted Policeman.

      "You 're not having any trouble with this nigger, hey?" he demanded.

      "No," said Paul, flushing. The Kafir bit off a smile and stood submissive, with an eye on the boy's troubled face.

      "You don't want to let them get fresh with you," said the policeman. "I 've been keepin' my eye on him and he talks too much. Have you finished with him now?"

      His silver-headed whip came out from behind his back ready to dismiss the negro in the accepted manner. Paul trembled and took a step which brought him near enough to seize the whip if it should flick back for the cut.

      "Let him alone," he said wrathfully. "Mind your own business."

      "Eh?" the policeman was astonished.

      "You let him alone," repeated Paul, bracing himself nervously for combat, and ready to cry because he could not keep from trembling. He had never come to blows in his life, but he meant to now. The policeman stared at him, and laughed harshly.

      "He 's a friend of yours, I suppose," he suggested, striving for a monstrous affront.

      "Yes," retorted Paul hotly, "he is."

      For a moment it looked as though the policeman, outraged in the deepest recesses of his nature, would burst a blood vessel or cry for help. A man whose prayer that he may be damned is granted on the nail could scarcely have looked less shocked. He recovered himself with a gulp.

      "Oh, he is, is he? A friend of yours? A nigger!" Then, with a swelling of rage he dodged Paul's grasping hand and swung the whip. "I 'll teach him to – "

      He came to a stop, open-mouthed. The Kafir was gone. He had slipped away unheard while they quarreled, and the effect of it was like a conjuring trick. Even Paul gaped at the place where he had been and now was not.

      "Blimy!" said the policeman, reduced to an expression of his civilian days, and vented a short bark of laughter. "And so, young feller, he 's a friend o' yours, is he? Now, lemme give you just a word of advice."

      His young, sun-roughened face was almost paternal for a moment, and Paul shook with a yearning to murder him, to do anything that would wipe the self-satisfaction from it. He sought furiously for a form of anathema that would shatter the man.

      "Go to hell," he cried.

      "Oh, well," said the policeman, tolerantly, and then the train's magnificent uproar of arrival gave Paul an opportunity to be rid of him.

      In the complication of events Paul had all but forgotten his duty of discovering the young lady with "chest trouble," and now he wondered rather dolefully how to set about it. He stood back to watch the carriage windows flow past. Would it be at all possible just to stand where he was and shout "Miss Harding" till she answered? To do that needed some one more like the policeman and less like Paul; the mere thought of it was embarrassing. The alternative was, to wait until such passengers as alighted – they would not be many – had taken themselves away, and then to go up to the one that remained and say, "Is your name Miss Harding, if you please?" But supposing she answered, "Mind your own business!"

      The train settled and stood, and Paul became aware that from the carriage nearest him a woman was looking forth, with her face in the full light of a lamp. The inveterate picture-seeker in him suddenly found her engrossing, as she leaned a little forward, lifting her face to the soft meager light, and framed in the varnished wood of the window. It was a pale face, with that delicacy and luster of pallor which make rose tints seem over-robust. It was grave and composed; there was something there which the boy, in his innocence, found at once inscrutable and pitiful, like the bravery of a little child. Distinctly, this was a day of surprises; it came to him that he had not known that the world had women like this. His eyes, always the stronghold of dreams, devoured her, unconscious that she was returning his gaze. Perhaps to her, he also was a source of surprise, with his face rapt and vague, his slender boyishness, his general quality of standing always a little aloof from his surroundings. On the Karoo, people said of him that he was "old-fashioned"; one word is as good as another when folk understand each other. The point was that it was necessary to find some term to set Paul apart from themselves.

      He saw the girl was making preparations to leave the carriage, and was suddenly inspired. He found the handle of the door and jerked it open, and there she was above him, and looking down. She wore some kind of scent, very faint and elusive; he was conscious of her as a near and gentle and fragrant personality.

      "I hope," he said, letting the words come, "I hope you are Miss Harding?"

      The girl smiled. It had been prettily spoken, with the accent of sincerity.

      "Yes," she answered. "You have come to meet me?"

      The thing about her to which Paul could put no name was that she was finished, a complete and perfect product of a special life, which, whatever its defects and shortcomings, is yet able to put a polish of considerable wearing qualities on its practitioners. She knew her effect; her education had revealed it to her early; she was aware of the pale, intent figure she cut, and her appearance of enlightened virginity. The reverence in the boy's eyes touched her and warmed her at once; it was a charming welcome at the end of that night's СКАЧАТЬ