Flower o' the Peach. Gibbon Perceval

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ Paul's guilelessness had served the specious ends of tact, for to corroborate a woman's opinion of herself is the sublime compliment.

      He received the lesser luggage which she handed down to him and then she came down herself, and one train, at least, had shed its marvel upon the Karoo. She was not less wonderful and foreign on the platform than she had been at the window; the Cape Policeman, coming past again, lost his military-man air of a connoisseur in women and stiffened to a strutting perfection of demeanor at sight of her. South Africa is still so short of women that it makes the most of those it can get, both as goddesses and as beasts of burden. Paul was free of the evil civilized habit of thinking while he could feel, and the girl had to despatch the single lanky porter for her baggage herself and attend to having it stacked at the back of the cart. Then she was beside him, with the poignant air from the open south fresh on their faces, and the empty veld before them. The slow dawn was suddenly magical and the stillness was the hush that attends miracles.

      He had to give his mind to steering the big cart through the gateway to the road, and it was here that he saw, against the white fence, a waiting figure that looked up and was silent. He bent forward and waved his hand, but the Kafir did not respond. The girl at his side broke silence in her low rich voice.

      "That was a native, was n't it?" she asked.

      Paul looked at her. "It was a – a friend of mine," he answered seriously. "A Kafir, you know."

      The light in the eastern sky had grown and its lower edge, against the rim of the earth, was tinged with a rose-and-bronze presentiment of the sunrise. The Karoo lay under a twilight, with the night stripping from its face like a veil drawn westwards and away. In that half-light, its spacious level, its stillness, its quality of a desert, were enhanced; its few and little inequalities were smoothed out and merged in one empty flatness, and the sky stood over in a single arch, sprinkled with stars that were already burning pale. In all the vast expanse before them, there rose no roof, no tree, no token of human habitation; the eye that wandered forward, returned, like the dove to the Ark, for lack of a resting-place. It was a world at gaze, brooding grimly. The little morning wind, which would die when the sun rose clear of the horizon and leave the veld to its day-long torpor of heat, leaned upon their faces; the girl raised her brows against it and breathed deeply of its buoyancy.

      "Oh," she said; "this is what I came for."

      "The air?" Paul glanced sideways at her clear profile set against the shadowy morning. "They say it is good for – for – "

      He hesitated; Mrs. Jakes had managed to make the word difficult. But Miss Harding took it in her stride.

      "For the lungs?" she suggested without compunction. "Yes, I 'm sure it is. And you live here all the time, do you?"

      "I was born here," Paul answered.

      "How you must love it," she said, and met his eyes with a look in which there was a certain curiosity. "All this, I mean," she explained. Then: "But do you?"

      "Yes," he answered. "It 's – it's fine to look at – if you like looking at things."

      It was not all that he desired to say, for he was newly eager to make himself clear to this wonderful person at his side, and he felt that he was not doing himself justice. But Miss Harding had seen inarticulate souls before, aching to be confidential and to make revelations and unable to run their trouble into a mould of speech. They were not uncommon in the neighborhood of her address in Kensington. She smiled her recognition of the phenomenon. "There are not many kinds of men, and only two kinds of boy," she said to herself. She was twenty-six, and she knew.

      "Oh, I," she answered. "Yes, I like looking at things."

      Paul nodded, watching his horses. "I was sure you did when I saw you at the window," he said. He turned to her, and she smiled at him, interested in the strong simplicity with which he spoke.

      "I was sure," he repeated, "and yet nobody like you ever came here before, ever. They always went on in the train. I used to wonder if one of them would never get out, but they never did. They just sat still by the window, with their faces tired and sleepy, and went on again."

      He loosed the lash of his whip, and it made lightning circles over the off horse, and the tail of the lash slapped that animal reproachfully on the neck. Miss Harding contented herself with a little incoherent noise of general sympathy. "If I say anything," she thought, "I 'll be knocked off my seat with a compliment."

      But Paul had only wanted to tell her; it seemed necessary that she should know something of her value. That done, he was content to drive on in dreaming silence, while the pair of them watched the veld grow momentarily lighter, its bare earth, the very hue and texture of barrenness, spreading and widening before them like water spilt on a floor. The stronger light that showed it to them revealed only a larger vacancy, a void extending where the darkness had stood like a presence. Beside the cart, and no more than a dozen yards away, a heavy bird suddenly uttered a cry and spouted up into the air, with laborious wings, flapping noisily. It rose perhaps thirty feet, with an appearance of great effort, whistled and sank again forthwith, girl laughed; it was such a futile performance.

      "What was that?" she asked.

      "A lark," was the answer, and Paul turned his eyes to the east. "Look!" he bade her, pointing.

      Over the horizon which was like a black bar, set rigid against the heavens, stood the upper edge of the sun, naked and red, – a fiery eye, cocked arrogantly over the sky-line. About it, the very air seemed flooded with color, and the veld reflected it in dull gleams of red.

      "And there!" said Paul again, pointing ahead.

      They were at the top of a gentle slope, so gradual that it had made no break in the flat prospect of ten minutes ago, and before them, and still so far off that it had the appearance of a delicate and elaborate toy, stood the Sanatorium. In that diamond clearness of air, every detail of it was apparent. Its beautiful serene front, crowned by old Dutch gables mounting in steps to the height of the rooftree, faced them, frank and fair, over the shadowy reticence of the stone-pillared stoep. Beyond and behind it, the roof of the farm, Paul's home, stood in a dim perspective.

      "Is that it?" asked Miss Harding. "Where I am going, I mean."

      "Yes," said Paul.

      "It's very beautiful," she said.

      He smiled contentedly. "I was sure you would say that," he replied. "I am so glad you have come here."

      Miss Harding regarded him doubtfully, but decided that no rebuke was necessary.

      "Yes," she said, soberly. "It ought to give my lungs a chance."

      Paul flicked the long lash towards the off horse again, and spoke no more till he brought the cart to a stand-still at the foot of the fan-shaped flight of steps that led up to the door on the stoep. The big house was voiceless and its windows blank; he was preparing to call out when the front door opened, uncovering a vista of a stone corridor within, simple and splendid, and there emerged Mrs. Jakes to the glory of the new day. She crossed the stoep, challenging the dignity of smooth cold stone with her little black figure of ceremony and her amiable, empty face of formal welcome.

      "Miss Harding?" she enquired. "I scarcely expected you so early. Isn't it charming weather?"

      Paul helped the girl to alight, and watched the two women as they stood, before entering the house, and exchanged perfunctory civilities.

      "And now, to see your room," said Mrs. Jakes at last, and let her pass. "Isn't it fortunate that the rain has held off so nicely?"

      Her СКАЧАТЬ