He never could make out what on earth Mrs Stannard saw in the little monkey to justify the amount of devotion she lavished on it. Many a time and oft, when to his mind a sound spanking would have filled the bill, he was astonished to see with what tenderness and patience Amber Eyes beguiled the peevish elf back to happiness. But, somehow, though it made him impatient he never could help liking her all the better for it. The trouble was that everything she did made him like her the better, but she gave no sign of being similarly affected, and the ten good days were speeding by with never a silver arrow nor a red rose to mark their flight! Five were already gone, and nothing achieved but this one-sided love affair with the abominable Aimee! When he came to think of it, it made him tired. After all, he was a man and a journalist, and something more he hoped to Gad, than food for babes and sucklings! What did Amber Eyes take him for? Having asked himself this question several times, he grew very broody, and wasted a sixth day in sulking.

This, he was delighted to note brought her to her bearings, and she began to give him more of her attention. Aimee, whose health was visibly improving from day to day, was handed over more often to the tender care of September, and Mrs Stannard and Bettington resumed their tramps ahead of the waggons, spending long afternoons and evenings in an intimacy that for two people who were nothing to each other would have been almost impossible anywhere else in the world except on the South African veld. None of the other people with the waggons made any comment, most of them being busy grinding little axes of their own, and the rest too full up with the weariness of life to care two bones how that fellow Bettington (who thought such a deuce of a lot of himself!) and Mrs Stannard (whom none of them knew) were occupying their time.

So that Bettington had quite a lot of

Time and place and woman altogether

in which to reveal the other side of his soul to Amber Eyes. In fact, he felt that it was up to him to show her the kind of man she had been turning into a nurse-maid and mother’s help; and Bettington in the showing-off attitude was an entrancing spectacle. Fortunately, he sometimes became so interested in the mind of his listener that he forgot to "show off" and then she was really to be felicitated, for Bettington, once you got past a thin outer crust of conceit and arrogance, was an uncommonly clever fellow. In fact, in the matter of his work, he was something of a genius, and when a man has the star of genius glimmering—​however faintly—​within, a dozen good qualities will be sure to be found, like attendant satellites waiting upon it and throwing it into prominence. Furthermore, he loved his profession with a wholehearted love and knew the practising of it inside out, and up and down the earth, and backwards and forwards upon it, and most things that were to be known about literature past, present, and future. And to his intense satisfaction, Amber Eyes cared also for these things. Her mind had not been spoiled by shallow reading, for she had been educated with great simplicity, and since coming to Rhodesia had lived among men more familiar with sport and outdoor life than with intellectual matters. But she had a natural taste for literature and took to all things pertaining to it as a duck to water. Bettington found her mind not only ready to receive, but to retain what he could feed to it and thereafter to formulate opinions and convictions on what she had heard. He was greatly pleased with her, and as happy as a sparrow on a pump handle, until she went away from him to eat or sleep or mind the baby. Then, he poignantly remembered that it was not thus he had planned to spend the time between Umtali and Beira! What booted it to him to turn a pretty unhappy woman’s eyes inwards to the cultivation of her literary instincts instead of in his own direction? He derided himself for a duffer and was more tormented by the thought of imaginary silver arrows gone astray than was Saint Sebastian by the real steel-tipped article. He dreamed of red roses left ungathered by the roadside, and he wrote another poem.

It was at Massi-kessi that she found it lying loose between the leaves of a volume of Henley he had lent her, and she could not but read it for it wore her initials at its head:

You came and called me when the world was grey, You whispered of a land of endless May; Of flowers abloom, fair skies, birds always singing: And I, half-listening, lingered on my way.

Yes, I half-lingered with a troubled heart, Your dearest sweetness had a touch of smart! Ever at fall of eve I heard the tolling Of Life’s grim curfew bidding us to part.

Ah! was it well to take the lonelier way? To thrust with prudent hands the cup away, To leave the harvest of your heart ungarnered, And all the precious treasure of our love to pay?

When she had read it, she gave a curious, furious little laugh and said,

"What abominable impertinence!"

But if Bettington could have seen the colour in her cheeks he would have counted unto himself the first red rose.

They left the waggons at Massi-kessi for it was the railway terminus from the coast and they were all to embark next day on the Portuguese train for a journey through Portuguese territory. In the meantime, most of the travellers—​for the sake of sleeping in a bed again, and eating a dinner cooked on a stove and served on a table—​adjourned to the corrugated-iron hotel which stood bleak and blue in the midst of a waste of sands. Mrs Stannard and her baby were amongst those who went over, and, needless to say, Bettington followed the trail. He spent a good deal of the morning arranging the menu for an exclusive little dinner party composed of himself and Mrs Stannard. It was a charming dinner too and the menu a great success, though it embraced nothing more original than a fried sole, lamb cutlets with green vegetables, a sweet omelette, fresh fruit for dessert, and a bottle of wine on ice. This does not sound pretentious, but in the "good old times" in Rhodesia people never saw fresh fruit or fresh fish from one month’s end to another; goat was the only meat ever available and ice a thing remembered only in fevered dreams as a feature of life in some far-away fair land of a long-ago existence. Wherefore Bettington and his guest dined chez Lucullus that evening, and felt very well and happy after it as they sat with a dozen other people on the cool dark stoep, or strolled up and down the one long street of sand. There was a huge mountain of wool-bales lying ready for transportation just beside the hotel, and Amber Eyes, who for some reason was as gay as a canary in a golden cage, had a fancy for climbing this mountain and sitting on its summit, so as to get as near the stars as possible, she said. Their two cigarette tips were the only points of light in the vapoury darkness. She had never smoked a cigarette in her life before, and this fact refreshed the jaded heart of Bettington, accustomed to women who mostly smoked too many. They sat talking there, under the stars and their old friend the crushed pearl who arrived late, until after midnight, and he beguiled her with brilliant tongue and words sweeter than honey in the honeycomb. But her hand was never once within reach of his. Neither did she confide in him that her husband was a brute! Certainly she was an original woman!

Since none of the usual confidences were forthcoming from her direction then, Bettington began to unfold (so eloquently that he almost believed it himself) on the poignant loneliness and misery of such a lot in life as his. But his word pictures evoked nothing better from her than silvery giggles, and after she had had enough, she took a firm hand on the reins once more, and turned his nose into the safe fields of literature and adventure. He had tired of these subjects and was a little inclined to fall into gloom when she would not listen to the tales of his woes, but she was so gay and sparkly it seemed a pity to dim her pleasure, and churlish not to sparkle and be gay with her. So he bottled up his emotions for the time being, though he did not omit to put as much of them as he dared into his good-night handshake. He possessed very firm magnetic hands and had rather specialised in the use of them in cases where speech was not permitted.

He slept badly that night. It seemed to him that, in spite of all the good fun he got out of his success as a soldier of fortune and journalist, he was missing some vital thing in life and he could not bear it. He hated missing things. It made him feel like the "weariest river" making a bee-line for the nearest sea.

In the tender sunshine of early morning, they took train for the coast. The carriages were two long narrow affairs on a two-foot gauge, built like tram-cars, with seats running down the sides and the passengers sitting in two lines facing each other. Amber Eyes and her baby had a seat in a corner of the men’s compartment because for one reason, Aimee could not bear to be separated from her unwilling love, Bettington, and for another because in the other compartment a woman was too critically ill to be able to bear the noise of a little child.

Hour by hour, the tender sunshine of dawn developed into smiting, biting heat that blistered the paint on the roof above their heads. Some of the men slept uneasily and some sat wrapt in reflection. Bettington could have done with an idle hour himself, but Aimee kept him busy. She sprawled and clambered on him, and banged his watch against his nose. He would have liked to bang her nose on the floor, but the fact that Amber Eyes in her corner grew paler and paler every moment, drooping like a flower in the heat, kept a galvanised smile on his face. If he did not look after Aimee she would torment her mother, and that contingency was not to be thought of. But oh! how he would have enjoyed pushing the little worm out of the window,--and probably would have done it if it could have been engineered without suspicion attaching to himself. He saw some of the wounded warriors exchanging facetious smiles as Aimee tore his hair, whooping like a Comanchee on the war-path, and could only glare at them and curse inwardly, meditating on the revenge he would take out of their pockets on the voyage down coast.

"I’ll rook them of every red cent at poker," he promised savagely. "I’ll make them cough up their last bone!"

Towards afternoon Aimee felt seedy, and despite all his efforts to keep her, climbed over to Amber Eyes and lay lamenting in her arms. Then did Bettington sitting forward, contort his face and do strange tricks with his fingers, and almost burst himself in the effort to amuse her. But nothing was any good. She would stare for a moment with her large slate-coloured eyes, then they would fill up and brim over with tears, even while they remained wide open and observant, and she lamented like a banshee. Sometimes she screwed herself into a ball and ejected sharp barking sounds, and sometimes she lengthened herself into a plank that would not be bent up again; but always at spasmodic intervals she howled. The heat beat down through the carriage roof on to the cooped-up travellers and came in sweltering waves through the open windows. Mrs Stannard grew paler than ever and great purple shadows lay like pansies under the amber eyes. Suddenly her hold on the baby relaxed and the latter rolled on to the floor. Some other man picked her up and comforted her as best he might while Bettington made play with the water bottle and brandy flask. After a little while, Mrs Stannard recovered and rewarded him with a pale smile and stammering apology.

"I am ashamed. It is too bad of us—​first Aimee and now me. How you must hate us!"

It was at about that time that Bettington began to realise that he loved her. The real thing had got hold of him at last. He wished he could take her in his arms and kiss away her troubles and her tears forever. He would have given his skin to sole her shoes with. He wished he could die for her. But he only turned very pale himself, and set his arrogant jaw, and took Aimee on his knees and hushed her, and didn’t give a damn any more what the other men thought, and prayed for the end of that infernal journey as he had never prayed for anything in his life.

At length, the weary day drew to a close, and in the hot darkness the train pulled up at Fontes-Villa, which is—​or was in those days—​a unique little corrugated-iron Hades situated on one of the best malarial and mosquito sites in the world. The swamp on which it stood sizzling resembled a large stage carpet made of coarse artificial grass and rushes dyed a bright green by the arsenate-of-copper process. Sliding past in stealthy grim silence, full of crocodiles, and germs, and green slime, was the Pungwe River.

Here the train stood brooding for some hours as if considering the advisability of a midnight plunge. No one seemed to know what was going to happen next, and no one cared much. Enough that after the waggling, jerking, switch-back movements that had prevailed all day there was quiescence. A turgid, heavily-smelling breeze of sorts that meandered unwillingly through the long compartment seemed a heaven-sent zephyr, and everything would have been beautiful if only Aimee had not been vile. She continued her clamourings with renewed energy, and Amber Eyes said that she needed a bottle and that if Bettington would hold the poor little thing she would go and find September and send him up to the hotel (if there was one) to get warm water and mix a bottle of condensed milk. Naturally Bettington volunteered to go and lug out September himself from the truck in which the native boys were sleeping. After an interval then, September arrived with the mixed bottle and Aimee got her supper. But before she was half through it, Amber Eyes discovered that the water was stone cold and would probably be the cause of cramps in Aimee’s anatomy for the rest of the voyage. Again the luckless Bettington went a-hunting for September, but this time the quest was unsuccessful of any result except the news that both September and his own boy Bat had made up their mysterious and labyrinthian minds that they did not care to proceed further on the journey, therefore had taken their blankets and headed back for Umtali. Another thing that Bettington learned was that September had not gone to the hotel at all for water for the baby’s bottle, nor even looked for an hotel, but had simply slunk down to the river’s edge, shipped a bottle of the grey-green slime and mixed it au naturel with the condensed milk. This information the journalist kept to himself. He did not think it would be of the slightest use to Mrs Stannard, and if Aimee were poisoned--tant pis for Aimee! But he doubted there being any such luck. Aimee, he felt convinced, was destined to live to be the scourge of other fine men.

His next job was to go up to the hotel himself and get hot water to make the bottle. Even that was better than sitting still in the little devildom Aimee was creating in the compartment since she found herself robbed of the solacing bottle. Besides Bettington was getting used to his job, even as eels get used to skinning.

One thing to the good was that when he did discover the hotel and rouse the inmates he was able to achieve a whiskey and soda, and sandwich for himself, and bear back similar trophies to the fainting and haggard Amber Eyes. As for Aimee, she had her bottle at last, and Bettington felt that the whole noble army of martyrs were not in the running with him. "And after all these vices there was peace!"