"But you told General St. John-" "Do you think Juba and I would have left Khami if there was the least danger?" "St. John?" "It was a fine excuse to get them together again. So romantic, we should allow them a little time alone." Harry reined the gelding down to a more sedate pace, but instead of relaxing her grip Vicky wriggled a little closer.
"My mother does not recognize her own feelings," she explained.
"Sometimes Lizzie and I have to take things into our own hands." Even as she said it, Vicky regretted having mentioned her twin's name. She had also noticed Harry Mellow look at Elizabeth on his only visit to Khami Mission, and she had seen Elizabeth look straight back. After Harry had left Khami in some haste with her mother's ultimate farewells ringing in his ears, Vicky had attempted to negotiate with her sister an agreement that Elizabeth would not encourage further smouldering glances from Mr. Mellow. In reply Elizabeth had smiled in that infuriating way she had. "Don't you think we should let Mr. Mellow decide on that?" If Harry Mellow had been attractive before, Elizabeth's unreasonable tenacity had made him irresistible now, and instinctively Vicky tightened her grip around his waist. At the same time she saw the wooden kopjes that marked Khami Mission Station looming ahead above the low scrubby bush, and she felt a sinking dread.
Soon Harry would be confronted with Elizabeth's honey-brown eyes and that soft dark flood of hair pierced with russet stars of light.
This was the only time in her entire life that Vicky could remember being free from surveillance" without her mother or Juba or, particularly, her twin being within earshot or touching distance. It was an exhilarating sensation added to all the other unfamiliar and clamorous sensations which assailed her, and the last restraints of her strict religious upbringing were swept away in this sudden reckless rebellious mood. She realized with an unerring woman's instinct that she could have what she so dearly wanted, but only if she took direct bold action, and took it immediately.
"It is a sad and bitter thing that a woman should be alone, when she loves somebody so." Her voice had sunk to a low puff, and it affected Harry so that he brought the horse down to a walk.
"God did not mean a woman to be alone," she murmured, and saw the blood come up under the soft skin behind his ears, "nor a man either," she went on, and slowly he turned his head and looked into her green eyes.
It is so hot in the sun," Vicky whispered, holding his gaze. "I should like to rest for a few minutes in the shade." He lifted her down from the saddle, and she stood close to him still, without averting her eyes from his face.
"The wagon dust has covered everything and left us no clean place to sit," she said. "Perhaps we should try further from the road?" And she took his hand, and quite naturally led him through the soft pale knee-high grass towards one of the mimosa trees. Beneath its spreading feathery branches they would be out of sight of any chance traveller upon the road.
Mungo St. John's mare was lathered in dark streaks down her shoulders and his riding-boots were splattered with blown froth from her gaping jaws as he drove her over the top of the neck between the kopjes, and without pause pushed her down towards the white Mission buildings. The mare's hoof beats rang against the hills and echoed from the mission walls, and Elizabeth's slim skirted figure appeared on the wide veranda of the homestead. She shaded her eyes to peer up the slope at Mungo, and when she recognized him, hurried down the steps into the sunlight.
"General St. John, oh, thank God you have come." She ran to take the mare's head.
"How is she? "There was a wild, driven look upon Mungo's bony features. He kicked his feet from the stirrups and jumped down to seize Elizabeth by the shoulders and shake her in his anxiety.
"It started as a game, Vicky and I wanted you to come to Mama because she needs you she wasn't bad, just a little go of fever."
"Damn you, girl," Mungo shouted at her, "what has happened?" At his tone the tears that Elizabeth had been holding back broke with a sob and streamed down her cheeks. "She has changed it must be the girl's blood she is burning up with the girl's blood." "Pull yourself together." Mungo shook her again. "Come on, Lizzie, this isn't like you." Elizabeth gulped once, and then her voice steadied. "She injected blood from a fever patient into herself." "From a black girl?
In God's name, why?" Mungo demanded, but did not wait for her reply.
He left Elizabeth and ran up onto the veranda, and burst in through the door to Robyn's bedroom, but he stopped before he reached the bed.
In the small closed room, the stink of fever was as rank as that of a sty, and the heat from the body in the narrow cot had condensed on the glass of the single window like steam from a kettle of boiling water. Crouched beside the cot like a puppy at its master's feet was Mungo's son. Robert looked up at his father with huge solemn eyes, and his mouth twisted in the thin pale face.
"Son!" Mungo took another step towards the cot, but the child leaped to his feet and silently he darted for the door, ducking nimbly under Mungo's outstretched hand, and his bare feet slapped on the veranda as he raced away. For a moment Mungo yearned after him, and then he shook his head and instead he went to the cot. He stood over it and looked down at the still figure upon it.
Robyn had wasted until the bones of her skull seemed to rise through the pale flesh of her cheeks and forehead. Her eyes were closed, and sunk into deep leaden-purple sockets. Her hair, laced with silver at the temples, seemed dry and brittle as the winter grasses of the parched veld, and as he leaned to touch her forehead, a paroxysm of shivering took her that rattled the iron bedstead and her teeth chattered so violently that it seemed they must shatter like porcelain.
Under Mungo's fingers her skin was almost painfully hot to the touch, and he looked up sharply at Elizabeth who stood beside him with a stricken expression.
"Quinine?"he demanded.
"I have given her more than I should, a hundred grains since this morning, but there is no response." Elizabeth broke off, reluctant to tell him the worst.
"Yes, what is it?" "Before this, Mama had not taken quinine for six weeks. She wanted to give the fever a chance to strike, and to prove her theory." Mungo stared at her aghast. "But, her own studies-" He shook his head in disbelief. "She has shown herself, that abstinence followed by massive doses-" He could not go on, as though the words might conjure up the spectre he feared most.
Elizabeth had anticipated his fears. "Her pallor," she whispered, "the total lack of response to the quinine I am so afraid."
Instinctively Mungo put his arm around Elizabeth's shoulders, and for a few seconds she shrank against him. Mungo had always enjoyed a special relationship with the twins, they had always been his willing accomplices and secret allies at Khami Mission, from the first day that he had arrived, dying of the suppurating gunshot wound in his leg.
Though they had been barely pubescent at that time, the twins had not been proof against the strange mesmeric effect he had on women of all ages.
"Vicky and I tempted fate by telling you that Mama was dying."
"That's enough." He shook her gently. "Has she passed water?" And then, roughly, to cover the embarrassment between them, "Has she urinated?" "Not since last night." Elizabeth shook her head miserably, and he pushed her towards the door. " "We must force her to take liquid. There is a bottle of Cognac in my saddlebag. Get lemons from the garden, a bowl of sugar and a big jug of boiling water." Mungo held Robyn's head, while Elizabeth forced small sips of the steaming liquid between her white lips, and Robyn fought them in her delirium, hounded and driven by the terrible phantoms of malarial fever.