Virtue is its own reward, you silly boy,” answered Hermia, glancing up into his eyes, with her mocking ones. “In this case, it will have to be.”
“Will it indeed?” he retorted shortly; and, stirred by the maddening proximity, likewise encouraged by a certain insidious yielding of her form within the enforced embrace, he dropped his lips on hers, and kissed them full, passionately, again and again.
“There, that will do,” she gasped, striving to restrain the thrill that ran through her frame. “I didn’t say you might do that. Really, Justin, I shall have to forbid you the house. Let me go, do you hear?”
“Hear? Yes, but I don’t intend to obey. Oh – damn!”
The last remark was addressed at large as he changed his mind with marvellous alacrity, and, wheeling round, was endeavouring to hang the bandolier to the wall upon a pin that would hardly have held a Christmas card, as though his life depended upon it. For there had suddenly entered behind them one of the small Mashuna boys who did the house and other work – had entered silently withal, the sooty little rascal; and now his goggle eyes were starting from their sockets with curiosity as he went about doing whatever he had to do, sending furtive and interested glances at these two, whom he had surprised in such unwonted proximity.
“See, now, where your impulsiveness comes in,” said Hermia, when the interrupter had gone out.
“Is that the name of that small black nigger?” said Justin Spence, innocently. “I always thought he was yours.”
“Don’t be foolish, dear. It’s a serious matter.”
“Pooh! Only a small black nigger. A thing that isn’t more than half human.”
“Even a small black nigger owns a tongue, and is quite human enough to know how to wag it,” she reminded him.
“I’ll cut it out for the young dog if he does,” was the ferocious rejoinder.
“Excellent, as a figure of speech, my dear Justin. Only, unfortunately, in real life, even in Mashunaland, it can’t be done.”
“Well, shall I give him a scare over it?”
“You can’t, Justin. In the first place, you could hardly make him understand. In the second, even if you could, you would probably make matters worse. Leave it alone.”
“Oh, it was on your account. It was of you I was thinking.”
“Then you don’t mind on your own?”
“Not a hang.”
She glanced at him in silent approval. This straight, erect fearlessness – this readiness to defy the whole world for her sake appealed to her. She was of the mind of those women of other times and peoples – the possession of whom depended on the possessor’s ability to take and keep.
“Well, I must leave you now for a little while,” she said. “Those two pickannins are only of any use when I am looking after them. They haven’t even learnt to lay a table.”
“Let me help you.”
“No. Candidly, I don’t want you. Be a good boy, Justin, and sit still and rest after your walk. Oh, by the way – ” And unlocking a cupboard, she produced a bottle of whisky. “I was very forgetful. You’ll like something to drink after the said walk?”
“No, thanks. Really I don’t.”
“You don’t? No wonder you’ve done no good prospecting. A prospector who refuses a drink after a hot afternoon’s exertion! Why, you haven’t learnt the rudiments of your craft yet. But you must want one, and so I’ll fix it up for you. There, say when – is that right?” she went on brightly, holding out the glass. “Yes, I know what you are going to say – of course it is, if I mixed it. You ought to be ashamed to utter such a threadbare banality.”
He took the glass from her hand, but set it down untasted. The magnetism of her eyes had drawn him. It seemed to madden him, to sap his very reason, to stir every fibre in his body.
“No,” she said decidedly, deftly eluding the clasp in which he would fain have imprisoned her again, and extending a warning hand. “No, not again, – so soon,” she added mentally. “Remember, I have not forgiven you for that outrageous piece of impertinence, and don’t know that I shall either. I am wondering how you could have dared.”
If ever there was a past mistress in the art of fooling the other sex, assuredly Hermia Blachland might lay claim to that distinction. Standing there in the doorway, flashing back a bright, half-teasing, half-caressing look, which utterly belied the seeming sternness of her words, the effect she produced was such as to turn him instanter into a most complete fool, because her thorough and subservient slave. Then she went out.
We have said that one of the large circular huts within the enclosure served the purpose of a kitchen, and hither she proceeded with the exceedingly useful and unromantic object of getting supper ready. Yet, standing there in the midst of stuffy and uninviting surroundings, as she supervised the Mashuna boys and the frying of the antelope steaks, even that prosaic occupation was not entirely devoid of romance to-night; for somehow she found herself discharging it extra carefully, for was it not for him?
“Now, Tickey, keep those goggle eyes of yours on what you’re doing, instead of rolling them around on everything and everybody else,” she warned, apostrophising the small boy whose entrance had been so inopportune a short time ago.
“Yes, missis,” replied the urchin, his round face splitting into a stripe of dazzling white as he grinned from ear to ear, whether at the recollection of what he had recently beheld, or out of sheer unthinking light-heartedness. Then he turned and made some remark in their own language to his companion, which caused that sooty imp to grin and chuckle too.
“What’s that you’re grinning at, you little scamp?” said Hermia, sharply, with a meaning glance at a thin sjambok which hung on the wall, a cut or two from which was now and again necessary to keep these diminutive servitors up to the mark.
“No be angry, missis. Tickey, he say, ‘Missis, she awful damn pretty.’”
Hermia choked down a well-nigh uncontrollable explosion of laughter.
“You mustn’t use that word, Primrose,” she said, trying to look stern. “It’s a bad word.”
“Bad word? How that, missis? Baas, he say it. Baas in dere – Baas Sepence,” was the somewhat perplexing rejoinder.
“Well, it’s a white man’s word; not a word for children, black or white,” explained Hermia, lamely.
The imps chuckled. “I no say it, missis,” pursued Primrose. “Tickey, he say missis awful beastly pretty. Always want to look at her. Work no well done, missis’ fault. Dat what Tickey say. Always want look at missis.”
“You’d better look at what you’re doing now, you monkey, and do it properly too, or you know what’s likely to happen,” rejoined Hermia. But the implied threat in this case was absolutely an empty one, and the sooty scamps knew it. They knew, too, how to get on the soft side of their mistress.
That, however, was the side very much to the fore this evening. Throughout her prosaic occupation, her mind would recur with a thrill to that scene of a short half-hour ago, and already she longed for its repetition. But she was not going to give him too much.
