Flower o' the Peach

"Jakes," cried Ford urgently, in his ear, and shook him as vigorously as he could. "Jakes, you hog. Wake up, will you."

The doctor's head waggled loosely to the shaking and settled again to its former place. It was infuriating to see it rock like that, as though there were nothing stiffer than wool in the neck, and yet preserve its deep tranquillity. Ford looked down and swore. There was no help here.

He unlocked the door and threw it open. In the hall the Kafir and the policeman were as he had left them.

"Come in here," he ordered briefly.

The Kafir came, with the trooper and the revolver close at his back. The latter's eye made notes of the room, the glasses, the doctor, all the consistent details; and he smiled.

"You 're a doctor," said Ford to the Kafir. "Can you do anything with this?"

"This" was Dr. Jakes. Kamis made an inspection of him and lifted one of the tight eyelids.

"I can make him conscious," he answered, "and sober in a desperate sort of fashion. But he won't be fit for anything. You mustn't trust him."

"Will he be able to doctor Miss Harding?" demanded Ford.

"No," answered Kamis emphatically. "He won't."

"Then," said Ford, "what the deuce are we to do?"

The Kafir was still giving attention to Dr. Jakes, and was unbuttoning the neck of his shirt. He looked up.

"If you would let me see her," he suggested, "I 've no doubt I could do what is necessary for her."

Ford ran his fingers through his short stiff hair in perplexity.

"I don't see what else there is to do," he said, frowning.

The trooper had not yet spoken since he had entered the room. He and his revolver had had no share in events. He had been a part of the background, like the bottles and the soot, forgotten and discounted. Not even his prisoner, whose life hung on the pressure of his trigger-finger, had spent a glance on him. But at Ford's reply to the suggestion of the Kafir he restored himself to a central place in the drama.

"There will be none of that," he remarked in his drawling nasal voice.

Both turned towards him, the Kafir to meet the pistol-barrel pointing at his chest. The trooper's mouth was twisted to a smile, and his Punchinello face was mocking and servile at once.

"None of what?" demanded Ford.

"None of your taking this nigger into women's bedrooms. He 's my prisoner."

"I 'll take all responsibility," said Ford impatiently.

The trooper's smile was open now. He had Ford summed up for such another as Margaret, a person who held lax views in regard to Kafirs and white women. Such a person was not to be feared in South Africa.

"No," he said. "Can't allow that. It isn't done. This nigger 'll stay with me."

"Look here," said Ford angrily. "I tell you – "

"You look here," retorted the other. "Look at this, will you?" He balanced the big revolver in his fist. "That Kafir tries to get up those stairs, and I 'll drill a hole in him you could put your fist in. Understand?"

He nodded at Ford with a sort of geniality more inflexibly hostile than any scowls.

Ford would have answered forcibly enough, but from the doorway came a wail, and he looked up to see Mrs. Jakes standing there, with a hand on each doorpost and her small face, which he knew as the shopwindow of the less endearing virtues, convulsed with a passion of alarm and horror. At her cry, they all started round towards her, with the single exception of Dr. Jakes, who lay in his chair with his face in that direction already, and was not stirred at all by her appearance on the scene that had created itself around him.

"O-o-oh," she cried. "Eustace – after all I 've done; after all these years. Why didn't you lock the door, Eustace? And what will become of us now? O-oh, Mr. Ford, I begged you to go to bed. And the Kafir to see it, and all. The disgrace – o-o-h."

The tears ran openly down her face; they made her seem suddenly younger and more human than Ford had known her to be.

"Oh, come in, Mrs. Jakes," he begged. "Come in; it 's – it 's all right."

"All right," repeated Mrs. Jakes. "But – everybody will know, soon, and how can I hold up my head? I 've been so careful; I 've watched all the time – and I 've prayed – "

She bowed her face and wept aloud, with horrible sobs.

Ford was at the end of his wits. While he pitied Mrs. Jakes, Margaret might be dying in her room, under the bland and interested eyes of Fat Mary. He turned swiftly to the Kafir.

"Could you prescribe if I told you what she looked like?" he asked, in a half-whisper. "Could you do anything in that way?"

"Perhaps." The Kafir was quick to understand. Even in the urgency of the time, Ford was thankful that he had to deal with a man who understood readily and replied at once, a man like himself.

"Let me pass, Mrs. Jakes," he said, and made for the stairs.

As soon as he had gone, the trooper advanced to the desk and laid hands on a bottle and a glass. He mixed himself a satisfactory tumbler and turned to Mrs. Jakes.

"The ladies, God bless 'em," he said piously, and drank.

Kamis, looking on mutely, saw the little woman blink at her tears and try to smile.

"Don't mention it," she murmured.

She came into the room and examined Dr. Jakes, bending over him to scan his tranquil countenance. There was nothing in her aspect of wrath or rancor; she was still submissive to the fate that stood at the levers of her being and switched her arbitrarily from respectability to ruin. She seemed merely to make sure of features in his condition which she recognized without disgust or shame.

"Would you please just help me?" she asked, looking up at the policeman, very politely, with her hands on the doctor's shoulders.

"Charmed," declared the policeman, with an equal courtesy, and aided her to raise the drunken and unconscious man to a more seemly position in his chair. It was seemlier because his head hung forward, and he looked more as if he were dead and less as if he were drunk.

"Thank you," she said, when it was done. "It is – it is quite a fine night, is it not? The stars are beautiful. There is whisky on the desk – very good whisky, I believe. Won't you help yourself?"

"You 're very good," said the trooper, cordially, and helped himself.

Ford came shortly. He ignored Mrs. Jakes and the trooper entirely and spoke to the Kafir only. His manner made a privacy from which the others were excluded.

"I say," he said, with a manner of trouble. "She 's still in a faint. Very white, not breathing much, and rather cold. She looks bad."

The Kafir nodded. "You could n't take her temperature, of course," he said. "There hadn't been any fresh hemorrhage?"

"No," replied Ford. "I asked Fat Mary. She was there, and she said there 'd been no blood. I say – is it very dangerous?"

He was a layman; flesh and blood – blood particularly – were beyond his science and within the reach only of his pity and his fear. He had stood by Margaret's bed and looked down on her; he had bent his ear to her lips to make sure that she breathed and that her white immobility was not death. His hand had felt her forehead and been chilled by the cold of it; and he had tried inexpertly to find her pulse and failed. Fat Mary, holding a candle, had illuminated his researches, grinning the while, and had answered his questions humorously, till she realized that she was in some danger of being assaulted; and then she had lied.

He made his appeal to the Kafir as to a man of his own kind.

"I 'm afraid it 's not much use," he said – "what I can tell you, I mean. But do you think there 's much danger?"

Kamis shook his head. "There should n't be," he answered. "I wish I could see her. Cold, was she? Yes; temperature subnormal. I could cup, – but you could n't. Do you think you could make a hypodermic injection, if I showed you how?"

"I could do any blessed thing," declared Ford, fervently.

"Digitalin and adrenalin," mused Kamis. "He won't have those, though. Do you know if he 's got any ergotin?"

"He has," replied Ford. "He shoved some into me. Mrs. Jakes – ergotin? where is it?"

Mrs. Jakes was leaning on the back of the chair which contained the doctor. She had recovered from the emotion which had convulsed and unbalanced her at the discovery of the study's open door. She looked up now languidly, in imitation of Margaret's manner when she was not pleased with matters.

"Really, you must ask the doctor," she said. "I couldn't think of – ah – disposing of such things."

Kamis had not waited to hear her out. Already he was overhauling the drawers of the desk for the syringe. Ford aided him.

"Is this it?" he asked, at the second drawer he opened.

"Thank God," ejaculated Kamis. He could not help sending a glance of triumph at Mrs. Jakes.

"Now attend to me," he said to Ford. "First I 'll show you how to inject it. Give me your arm; can you stand a prick?"

"Go ahead," said Ford; "slowly, so that I can watch."

"Take a pinch of skin like this," directed the Kafir, closing his forefinger and thumb on a piece of Ford's forearm. "See? Then, with the syringe in your hand, like this, push the needle in – like this. See?"

"I see."

"Well, now do it to me. Here 's the place."

The arm he bared was black brown, full and muscular. Ford took the syringe and pinched the smooth warm skin.

"In with it," urged the Kafir. "Don't be afraid, man. Now press the plunger down with your forefinger. See? Go on, can't you? You mustn't mess the business upstairs. Do it again."

"That 's enough," said Ford.

Drops of blood issued from the puncture as he withdrew the needle, and he shivered involuntarily. It had been horrible to press the point home into that smooth and rounded arm; his own had not bled.

"Mind now," warned the Kafir. "You must run it well in. And now about the drug."

He was minute in his instructions and careful to avoid technical phrases and terms of art. He took the syringe and cleaned and charged and gave it to Ford.

"Don't funk it," was his final injunction. "This is nothing. There may be worse for you to do yet."

"I won't funk it," promised Ford. "But – " he appealed to the Kafir with a shrug of deprecation – "but isn't it a crazy business?"

It was like a swiftly-changing dream to him. The hot and dirty room, with the Kafir busy and thoughtful, the malevolent trooper and his revolver, the sprawl of the doctor and his slumberous calm and Mrs. Jakes groping through the minutes for a cue to salvation, were unconvincing even when his eyes dwelt on them. They had not the savor of reality. Six paces away was the hall, severe and grand, with its open door making it a neighbor of the darkness and the stars. Then came the vacant stairs and the long lifeless corridors running between the closed doors of rooms, and the light leaking out from under the door of Margaret's chamber. Through such a variety one moves in dreams, where things have lost or changed their values and nothing is solid or immediate, and death is not troublous nor life significant.

Fat Mary was resting in Margaret's armchair when he pushed open the door and came in, carrying the syringe carefully with its point in the air. She rose hastily, fearful of a rebuke.

"Miss Harding wake up yet?" Ford asked her.

"No. Missis sleep all-a-time," replied Fat Mary. "She plenty quiet, all-'e-same dead."

"Shut up," ordered Ford, in a harsh whisper. "You're a fool."

Fat Mary sniffed in cautious defiance and muttered in Kafir. Since her duties had lain about Margaret's person, she had become unused to being called a fool. She pouted unpleasantly and stood watching unhelpfully as Ford went to the bedside.

The blood had been washed away and there was nothing now to suggest violence or brutality. The girl lay on her back in the utter vacancy of unconsciousness; the face had been wiped clean of all expression and left blank and void. Mrs. Jakes had known enough to remove the pillows, which were in the chair Fat Mary had selected for her ease, and the head lay back on the level sheet with the brown hair tumbled to each side of it. Ford, looking down on her, was startled by a likeness to a recumbent stone figure he had seen in some church, with the marble drapery falling to either side of it as now the bedclothes fell over Margaret Harding. It needed only the crossed arms and the kneeling angel to complete the resemblance. The idea was hateful to him, and he made haste to get to the work he had to do in order to break away from it.

The sleeve of the nightgown had soft lace at the wrist and a band of lace inserted higher up; softness and delicacy surrounded her and made his task the harder. The forearm, when he had stripped the sleeve back, was cool and silk-smooth to his touch, slender and shining. His fingers almost circled its girth; it was strangely feminine and disturbing. A blue vein was distinct in the curve of the elbow, and others branched at the wrist where his finger could find no pulse.

Fat Mary forgot her indignation in her curiosity, and came tiptoeing across the floor, holding a candle to light him, and stood at his shoulder to watch. Her big ridiculous face was gleeful as he took up the syringe; she knew a joke when she saw one.

Ford pinched the white skin with thumb and forefinger as he had been bidden and touched it with the point of the needle. The point slipped and was reluctant to enter; he had to take hold firmly and thrust it, like a man sewing leather. The girl's hand twitched slightly and fell open again and was passive. He felt sickish and feeble and had to knit himself to run the needle in deep and depress the plunger that deposited the drug in the arm. Over his shoulder Fat Mary watched avidly and grinned.

He drew the sleeve down again and laid the arm back in its place. He passed a hand absently over his forehead and found it damp with strange sweat, and he was conscious of being weary in every limb as though he had concluded some extreme physical effort. He looked carefully at the unconscious girl, seeking for signs and indices which he should report to Kamis. The likeness of the marble figure did not recur to him; his thoughts were laborious and slow.

He woke Mr. Samson on his way downstairs, invading his room without knocking and shaking him by the shoulder. Mr. Samson snorted and thrust up a bewildered face to the light of the candle. His white mustache, which in the daytime cocked debonair points to port and starboard, hung down about his mouth and made him commonplace.

"What the devil 's up?" he gasped, staring wildly. "Oh, it 's you, Ford."

"Get up," said Ford. "There 's the deuce to pay. That Kafir 's arrested – Kamis, you know; Miss Harding 's had a bad hemorrhage and Jakes is dead drunk. I want you to go to Du Preez's and send a messenger for another doctor. Hurry, will you?"

"My sainted aunt," exclaimed Mr. Samson, in amazement. "You don't say. I 'll be with you in a jiffy, Ford. Don't you wait."

He threw a leg over the edge of the bed, revealing pyjamas strikingly striped, and Ford left him to improvise a toilet unwatched.

The trooper was talking to Mrs. Jakes in the study when Ford returned there. He had relieved himself of his hat, and his big head, on which the hair was scant, was naked to the lamp. He had found himself a chair at the back of the desk, and reclined in it spaciously, with his half-empty tumbler at his elbow. The Kafir still stood where Ford had left him, his eyes roving gravely over the room and its contents. The trooper looked up as Ford came in, lifting his saturnine and aggressive features with a smile. He had drunk several glasses in a quick succession and was already thawed and voluble.

"Well," he said loudly. "How's interestin' patient? 'S well 's can be expected – what? Didn't express wish to thank med'cal adviser in person, I s'pose?"

Ford bent a hard look on him.

"I 'll attend to you in good time," he said, with meaning. "For the present you can shut up."

He turned at once to the Kafir and began to tell him what he had seen and done, while the other steered him with brief questions. The trooper gazed at them with a fixed eye.

"Shup," he said, to Mrs. Jakes. "Says I can shup – for the present. Supposin' I don't shup, though."

He drank, with a manner of confirming by that action a portentous resolution, and sat for some minutes grave and meditative, with his bitter, thin mouth sucked in. He never laid down the big revolver which he held. Its short, businesslike barrel rested on the blue cloth of his knee, and the blued metal reflected the light dully from its surfaces.

"Is it dangerous?" Ford was asking. "From what I can tell you, do you think there 's any real danger? She looks – she looks deadly."

"Yes, she would," replied the Kafir thoughtfully. "I think I 've got an idea how things stand. As long as that unconsciousness lasts, there 'll be no more hemorrhage, and there 's the ergotin too. If there 's nothing else, I don't see that it should be serious – more serious, that is, than hemorrhages always are."

"You really think so?" asked Ford. "I wish you could see her for yourself, and make certain. Perhaps presently that swine with the revolver will be drunk enough to go to sleep or something, and we might manage it."

The Kafir shook his head.

"If it were necessary, the revolver wouldn't stop me," he said. "But as it is – "

"What?"

"Oh, do you think it would make things better for Miss Harding if you took me into her bedroom? You see what has happened already, because she has spoken to me from time to time. How would this sound, when it was dished up for circulation in the dorps?"

Ford frowned unhappily. He did not want to meet the mournful eyes in the black face.

"You think," he began hesitatingly – "you think it – er – it wouldn't do?"

"You were here when the other story came out," retorted Kamis. "Can you remember what you thought then?"

"Oh, I was a fool of course," said Ford; "but, confound it, I did n't think any harm."

"Didn't you? But what did everybody think? Isn't it true that as a result of all that was said and thought Miss Harding has to risk her life by returning to England?"

"No, it wouldn't do, I suppose," said Ford. "Between us we 've made it a pretty tough business for her. We 're brutes."

The thick negro lips parted in a smile that was not humorous.

"At a little distance," said Kamis, "say, from the other side of the color line, you certainly make a poor appearance."

Mr. Samson made his entry with an air of coming to set things right or know the reason.

"Well, I 'll be hanged," he exclaimed in the doorway, making a sharp inspection of the scene.

He had got together quite a plausible equivalent for his daily personality, and had not omitted to make his mustache recognizable with pomade. A Newmarket coat concealed most of his deficiencies; his monocle made the rest of them insignificant.

Mrs. Jakes sighed and fidgeted.

"Oh, Mr. Samson," she said. "What can I say to you?"

"Say 'good-morning,'" suggested Mr. Samson, with his eye on Jakes. "Better send for the 'boys' to carry him up to bed, to begin with – what? Well, Ford, here I am, ready and waiting. This the fellow, eh?"

His arrogant gaze rested on the Kafir intolerantly.

"This is Kamis," said Ford. "Dr. Kamis, of London, by the way. He is treating Miss Harding at present."

"Eh?" Mr. Samson turned on him abruptly. "You 've taken him up there, to her room?"

"No," said Ford. "Not yet."

"See you don't, then," said Mr. Samson strongly. "What you thinkin' about, Ford? And look here, what 's your name!" – to the Kafir. "You speak English, don't you? Well, I don't want to hurt your feelin's, you know, but you 've got to understand quite plainly – "

Kamis interrupted him suavely.

"You need n't trouble," he said. "I quite agree with you. I was just telling Mr. Ford the same thing."

"Were you, by Jove," snorted Mr. Samson, entirely unappeased. "Pity you didn't come to the same conclusion a month ago. You may be a doctor and all that; I 've no means of disprovin' what you say; but in so far as you compromised little Miss Harding, you 're a black cad. Just think that over, will you? Now, Ford, what d'you want me to do?"

There was power of a sort in Mr. Samson, the power of unalterable conviction and complete sincerity. In his Newmarket coat and checked cloth cap he thrust himself with fluency into the scene and made himself its master. He gave an impression of din, of shouting and tumult; he made himself into a clamorous crowd. Mrs. Jakes trembled under his glance and the trooper blinked servilely. Ford, concerned chiefly to have a messenger despatched without delay, bowed to the storm and gave him his instructions without protest.

"Mind, now," stipulated Mr. Samson, ere he departed on his errand; "no takin' the nigger upstairs, Ford. There 's a decency in these affairs."

The trooper nodded solemnly to the departing flap of the Newmarket tails, making their exit with a Newmarket aplomb.

"Noble ol' buck," he observed, approvingly. "Goo' style. Gift o' the gab. Here 's luck to him."

He gulped noisily in his glass, spilling the liquor on his tunic as he drank.

"Knows nigger when he sees 'im," he said. "Frien' o' yours?"

"Mr. Samson," replied Mrs. Jakes seriously, "is a very old friend."

"Goblessim," said the trooper. "Less 'ave anurr."

Kamis and Ford regarded one another as Mr. Samson left them and both were a little embarrassed. Plain speaking is always a brutality, since it sets every man on his defense.

"I 'm sorry there was a fuss," said Ford uncomfortably. "Old Samson 's such a beggar to make rows."

"He was right," said Kamis; "perfectly right. Only – I didn't need to be told. I 've been cursing myself ever since I heard that the thing had come out. It 's my fault altogether – and I knew it long before the row happened, and I let it go on."

Ford nodded with his eyes on the ground.

"You could hardly – order her off," he said.

"That wasn't it," answered Kamis. "Man, I was as lonely as a man on a raft, and I jumped at the chance of her company now and again. I sacrificed her, I tell you. Don't try to make excuses for me. I won't have them. Go up and see how she is. What are we talking here for?"

"God knows," said Ford drearily. "What else 'is there to do? We 've both wronged her, haven't we?"

There was no change in Margaret; she was as he had left her, pallid and motionless, a temptation to death.

Fat Mary was asleep in the armchair, gross and disgustful, and he woke her with the heel of his slipper on her big splay foot. She squeaked and came to life angrily and reported no movement from Margaret. He had an impulse to hit her, she was so obviously prepared to say anything he seemed to require and she was so little like a woman. It was impossible in reason and sentiment to connect her with the still, fragile form on the bed, and he had to exercise an actual and conscious restraint to refrain from an openhanded smack on her bulging and fatuous countenance. He could only call her wounding names, and he did so. She drooped her lower lip at him piteously and again he yearned to punch her.

There was no change to report to Kamis, who nodded at his account and spoke a perfunctory, "All right. Thanks." The trooper sat in a daze, scowling at his boots; Mrs. Jakes was lost in thought; the doctor had not moved. Ford fidgeted to and fro between the desk and the door for a while and finally went out to the stoep and walked to and fro along its length, trying to realize and to feel what was happening.

He knew that he was not appreciating the matter as a whole. He was like a man dully afflicted, to whom momentary details are present and apparent, while the sum of his trouble is uncomprehended. He could dislike the apprehensive and timidly presumptuous face of the trooper, pity Mrs. Jakes, distaste Mr. Samson's forceful loudness, smell the foulness of the study and wonder at the Kafir; but the looming essential fact that Margaret lay in a swoon on her bed, lacking the aid due to her and in danger of death in a dozen forms – that had been vague and diffused in his understanding. He had not known it passionately, poignantly, in its full dreadfulness.

He told himself the facts carefully, going over them with a patient emphasis to point them at himself.

"Margaret may die; it 's very likely she will, with only a fool like me to see how she looks. I never called her Margaret till to-day – but it 's yesterday now. And here 's this damned story about her, which every one knows wrongly and adds lies to when he tells it. It would look queer on the stage – Kamis doctoring her like this. But the point is – she may die."