turn of the conversation favoured him. He might have volunteered considerable information for the benefit of the man who was going up-country, he suspected, for the first time. The conversation would have become general, and might have paved the way to an acquaintanceship. There was no necessity for him to have been so reticent. He had lived too long stowed away, he decided. It was high time he came out of his shell.
He had applied for and obtained his leave, and had come down there to spend it. The sea breezes blowing across the isthmus of the Cape Peninsula, the cool leafiness of the lovely suburbs, were as a very tonic after the hot, steamy, tropical glow of his remote home. But the effects of the fever, combined with a natural reserve, kept him from going much among people, and most of his time was spent alone.
“I wonder who that man is who sat at our table,” Nidia Commerell was saying; for the trio were seated outside trying to converse amid the cackle and din of one of the livelier parties before referred to.
“He looked awfully gloomy,” said Mrs Bateman.
“Did you think so, Susie? Now, I thought he looked nice. Perhaps he wasn’t feeling well.”
“He had a look that way, too,” said Moseley. “Up-country man perhaps. Down here to throw off a touch of fever. I’ve seen them before.”
“Poor fellow! That may have accounted for it,” said Nidia. “Yes; he’s quite nice-looking.”
John Ames, meanwhile, was smoking a solitary pipe on the balcony in front of his room, and his thoughts continued to run on this new – and to him, supremely foolish subject. Then he pulled himself together. He would get on his bicycle and roll down to Muizenberg for a whiff of the briny.
The afternoon was cloudless and still, and the spin along a smooth and, for the most part, level road exhilarating. A brisk stroll on the beach, the rollers tumbling lazily in, and he had brought his mind to other things – the affairs of his district, and whether the other man who was temporarily filling his place would be likely to make a mess of them or not, and how he would pull with Inglefield – whether Madúla had recovered from the sulky mood into which the action of Nanzicele had thrown him – and half a hundred matters of the sort. And so, having re-mounted his wheel, and being about halfway homeward again, he could own himself clear of the foolish vein in which he had set out, when – there whirled round the bend in the road two bicycles, the riders whereof were of the ornamental sex; in fact, the very two upon one of whom his thoughts had been chaotically running.
One quick glance from Nidia Commerell’s blue eyes as they shot by, and John Ames was thrown right back into all that futile vein of meditation which he had only just succeeded in putting behind him. The offender, meanwhile, was delivering herself on the subject of him to her companion in no uncertain terms.
“Susie, that’s the man who was sitting at our table. I think we’ll get to know him. He looks nice, and, as he bikes, he’ll come in handy as escort to a pair of unprotected females.”
“How do you know he’ll appreciate the distinction you propose to confer upon him? He may not, you know. He looks reserved.”
“Oh, he’s only shy. Say something civil to him to-night at dinner. We’ll soon get him out of his shell. He only wants a little judicious drawing out.”
The other looked dubious. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’m not sure we hadn’t better leave him alone. You see, I’m responsible for your good behaviour now, Nidia; and really it is a responsibility. I don’t like being a party to adding this unfortunate man’s to your string of scalps.”
We regret to record that at this juncture Nidia’s exceedingly pretty mouth framed but one word of one syllable. This was it:
“Bosh!”
“No, it isn’t bosh,” went on her friend, emphatically. “And, the worst of it is, they all take it so badly; and this one looks as if he’d be no exception to the general rule, but very much the reverse. I don’t know what there is about you, but you really ought to be cloistered, my child; you’re too dangerous to be at large.”
“Susie, dry up! We’ll exploit our interesting stranger this evening, that is, presently; and now I think we’d better turn, for after three weeks of the ship I can’t ride any further with the slightest hope of getting back to-night.”
The upshot of all this was that when the two sat down to dinner they gave John Ames the “Good evening” with just as much geniality as the frigidity of English manners would allow to be manifested when outside England towards the only other occupant of the same table. It sufficed for its purposes, and soon the three were in converse.
“We passed each other on the road this evening,” said John Ames. “It was some way out, and I wonder you got back in time. Are you fond of bicycling?”
“We simply live on our bikes when the weather is decent,” replied Nidia. “This seems a good locality for it. The roads are splendid, aren’t they?”
“Yes. I generally wheel down to Muizenberg or Kalk Bay for a puff of sea air. It’s refreshing after the up-country heat.”
“Sea air? But can you get to the sea so soon?” said Mrs Bateman, surprised.
“Oh yes. In less than an hour.”
Both then began to enthuse about the sea, after the British method, which was the more inexplicable considering they had just had three weeks of it, and that viewed from its very worst standpoint —upon it, to wit. They must go there to-morrow. Was it easy to find the way? And so forth. What could John Ames do but volunteer to show it them? – which offer was duly accepted. Things were now upon a good understanding.
“Do they ride bikes much up-country – I think you said you were from up-country, did you not?” said Nidia, artlessly, with that quick lift of the eyelids.
“Oh yes, a good deal. But it’s more for the hard practical purpose of getting from one place to another than just riding about for fun. It strikes one though, if one has any imagination, as a sample of the way in which this aggressive civilisation of ours wedges itself in everywhere. You are right away in the veldt, perhaps only just scared away a clump of sable or roan antelope, or struck the fresh spoor of a brace of business-like lions, when you look up, and there are two fellows whirring by on up-to-date bikes. You give each other a passing shout and they are gone.”
“Yes. It is a contrast, if one has an imagination,” said Nidia. “But not everybody has. Don’t you think so?”
“Certainly. But when a man lives a good deal alone, and sees comparatively little of his kind, it is apt to stimulate that faculty.”
Nidia looked interested. The firm, quiet face before her, the straight glance of the grey eyes, represented a character entirely to her liking, she decided. “Is it long since you came out?” she asked.
“Well, in the sense you mean I can’t be said to have come out at all, for I was born and bred out here – in Natal, at least. But I have been in England.”
“Really? I thought you were perhaps one of the many who had come out during the last few years.”
“Am I not colonial enough?” said John Ames, with a quiet laugh.
“N-no. At least, I don’t mean that – in fact, I don’t know what I do mean,” broke off Nidia, with a perfectly disarming frankness.
“Do you know Bulawayo at all?”
The
