The Adventures of Miss Gregory. Gibbon Perceval
old are you?" she said suddenly.
The man started; he had no time to lie. "Thirty," he answered, with a gasp. He looked fifty.
Miss Gregory made a note. "Public school?" she shot at him again.
He gulped, and Miss Gregory nodded and wrote in her book. He was shaking now like a man in an ague. He put out a hand and steadied himself by the door-post.
"Stay where you are," said Miss Gregory curtly. "Changed your name, of course? Parents living?"
He found his voice. "Let me go," he said. He quavered as he spoke among shrill notes.
"Presently," said Miss Gregory. "The girl who used to have this room said that sometimes, did n't she? Answer me."
"Yes," he said sullenly. "I did n't hurt her," he added. "What are you going to do?"
"Hurt you," was the answer. "Were you in prison in England?"
She looked up as she put each question, and he could not summon force to defy her.
"Yes," he said.
"Stealing?"
"Yes," he answered again.
Miss Gregory wrote, and sucked her pencil thoughtfully.
"And now you persecute young women," she said at length. "I wonder what you meant to do—in the end. I suppose——" She paused, and scanned him again. He shuffled in wretched distress.
"Are you married?" demanded Miss Gregory.
He started and took his hand from the doorpost. A flush mounted into his face.
"To hell with you!" he cried hysterically. "Why do you——"
"Are you married?" repeated Miss Gregory.
She rose suddenly to her feet, and took a step toward him, pointing at him with the hand that held the pencil. "Say—are you married?"
There was a moment's war of eyes; so long his sudden anger sustained him. But it was no more than a moment; he was flimsy, shoddy, rotten to the core. He groaned and put his hands before his face with a child's movement.
"Are you married?" came the chill question again.
"Yes," he said, behind his hands.
Miss Gregory wrote, and put the book in her pocket. She drew a deep breath, and then shouted. The man, startled beyond endurance, uttered a shrill yelp and nearly fell. Miss Gregory shouted again and yet again. There came the noise of hurried feet on the flagged courtyard; men drummed up the wooden stairs. The fat, swarthy face of the manager showed itself at the door.
Miss Gregory pointed to the abject man.
"This man came to my door and opened it," she said. "You ought to take better care of your guests. Hand him over to the police at once. To-morrow I shall complain to the consul."
The manager grinned unpleasantly. "Madame," he said, "I am mos' sorry. Once today I 'ave t'rowed 'im out; you see yourself. Dis time I settle 'im. I am mos' extrem-a-ly sorry."
Miss Gregory waved her hand. Some one grasped the abject man from behind and dragged him through the door with a jerk. He cried out as they surrounded him. As she closed her door—and locked it—Miss Gregory heard the tumultuous descent down the staircase. Once there was a scream.
She shook her head. Sadness fell upon her like a shadow.
"Another soul to be saved," she said—"if one only could. But what a character for the book!"
III. A SEASON OF MIRACLES
THEY buried Doña Fortuna in the late afternoon, while the sun still quelled the streets of Tete and held them silent. Her grave was on the bank of the river, at a spot whence one might look forth from the shadow of palms and follow with one's eyes the great stream of the Zambesi, sliding smoothly into the haze of distance. Her half-caste women sobbed and whined at that last significant parting, but restrainedly; the presence of the tall priest and the cool, calm Englishwoman who had gone downstream to bring him subdued them. It was in a hush as of reverence that the priest, shaking with his ague, raised his voice in that final office; the forgotten city was voiceless behind his shoulder; the palms overhead drooped motionless in the heat. His voice quavered and broke as his malady shook him; it had the effect of tears and grief. The awed women caught their breath and stared; only the Englishwoman, trim, grey-haired, austere, kept her manner of invincible composure. And in that tenseness of silence and wonder the business was done. The priest dropped his hand, stood a moment gazing down, and turned away. The Englishwoman looked at him sharply, and went with him. The palms overhead rustled with the first touch of the evening breeze from the east, and the women made way for the two Kaffirs with shovels. Anna, the eldest and stoutest of them all, stopped her ears as the first shovelful of earth fell.
"The noise of it, like a dull drum, stops my heart," she explained, that evening. "I feel as though I were in the grave, with the boards over me and about me, and the lumps of earth falling."
Timotheo, the priest's "boy," nodded thoughtfully. The pair of them were sitting in the courtyard of Doña Fortuna's house, cross-legged on the flagstones, with their backs against the wall. The soft gloom set them in a confidential solitude; the sky over them was spangled with a wonder of great white stars. The light from an open doorway made a path across the courtyard and touched Anna's plump bare shoulders softly. She was all full curves and comfortable ripeness; Timotheo saw her with grave approval.
"I do not like it myself," he said. "Naturally I hear it oftener than you, since it is, in a manner, my business. But I do not like it."
He drew at his cigarette, and the glow of it lighted up his lean, sober face and pale, restless eyes.
"But, at any rate," he added, "it is always the last of a sorrowful business. It finishes the affair. To-night, for example, we may rest."
Anna agreed. "There are some of us that need it," she said, yawning. "Our Doña Fortuna—peace be with her!—was all that is great—a woman of notable splendour and many sorrows—but she was not reposeful. Seven maids she had, counting me, and Kaffirs enough to turn you sick. But do you think there was sleep of an afternoon or quiet in the evening?"
"What was there, then?" inquired Timotheo.
"What was there?" Anna sank her voice. "There was a woman with a sickness of the soul, who could not rest. God give her healing! No sooner were your eyes closed in the afternoon than the calling of your name woke you. 'My head is hot; fan me,' and there was your sleep gone. And always there were old letters to be brought and untied, and bound up again and put back. And many things of the same kind; but no repose."
Timotheo lighted a fresh cigarette from the stump of the last, and let himself slip lower against the wall, so that his bare brown feet fay in the path of light from the door, while the rest of him reclined in shadow. He was full-fed and inclined for conversation.
"This Englishwoman, now," he said, "this Mees Gregory that came down the river to summon the Padre and me—she is known to you?"
"I have spoken to her," replied Anna; "but I do not know her. She is English. She comes hither from the south, walking, with Kaffirs to carry her belongings. The English always come in this manner. Doña Fortuna was already ill then."
"But the Englishwoman?" persisted Timotheo. "Who sent her down the river? What was her concern with you and Doña Fortuna? These English—they are not so useful as all that."
"Give me a cigarette, then," said Anna, "and I will tell you."
Timotheo grunted, but produced a cigarette from the bosom of his shirt and handed it over. Anna bowed over him to light it from his.
"Well," she said, drawing at it strongly, "this,