the terrace, but his expression did not change as Ruth waved Mark to the seat opposite him and he immediately plunged back into the paper and angrily read out the editorial to them, mocking the writer by his tone and emphasis before crumpling the news sheet and dropping it beside his chair. That man's a raving bloody idiot, they should lock him up.
Well sir, Mark began delicately.
Ruth sighed a silent breath of relief for she had not consulted Sean on the new luncheon arrangements, but the two of them were instantly in deep discussion, and when the main course was served, Sean growled, Take care of the chicken, Mark, and I'll handle the duck, so that the two of them were carving and arguing at the same time, like members of the same family, and she covered her smile with her table napkin as Sean ungraciously conceded a debating point to his junior. I'm not saying you are right, of course, but if you are, then how do you account for the fact that And he was attacking again from a different direction, and Ruth turned to listen as Mark adroitly defended himself again; as she listened, she began to appreciate a little more why Sean had chosen him.
It was over the coffee that Mark learned at last what had become of Storm Courtney.
Sean suddenly turned to Ruth. Was there a letter from Storm this morning? When she shook her head he went on, That damned uppity little missy must learn a few manners, there hasn't been a letter in nearly two weeks.
just where are they supposed to be now? Rome, said Ruth. Rome! grunted Sean. With a bunch of Latin lovers pinching her backside. Sean! Ruth reprimanded him primly. Beg your pardon. He looked a little abashed, and then grinned wickedly. But she's probably putting it in the correct position for pinching right at this moment, if I know her. That night when Mark sat down to write to Marion Littlejohn, he realized how the mere mention of Storm Courtney's name had altered his whole attitude to the girl he was supposed to marry. Under the enormous workload which Sean Courtney had dropped casually on his shoulders, Mark's letter to Marion was no longer a daily ritual, and at times there were weeks between them.
On the other hand, her letters to him never faltered in regularity and warmth, but he found that it was not really the pressure of work that made him keep deferring their next meeting. He sat now chewing the end of his pen until the wood splintered, seeking words and inspiration, finding it difficult to write down flowery expressions of undying love on every page; each empty page was as daunting as a Saharan crossin& yet it had to be filled. We will be travelling to Johannesburg next weekend to compete in the annual shooting match for the Africa Cup, he wrote, and then pondered how to get a little more mileage out of that intelligence. It should be good for at least a page.
Marion Littlejohn belonged to a life that he had left behind him when he passed through the gates of Ernoyeni.
He faced this fact at last, but was none the less dismayed by the sense of guilt the knowledge brought him, and he tried to deny it and continue with the letter but images kept intruding themselves, and the main of these was a picture of Storm Courtney, gay and sleek, glitteringly beautiful and as unobtainable as the stars.
The Africa Cup stood almost as high as a man's chest on a base of polished ebony. The Ernoyem houseboys had polished it for three days before they had achieved the lustre that General Courtney found acceptable, and now the cup formed the centre-piece of the buffet table, elevated on a pyramid of yellow roses.
The buffet was set in the antechamber to the main ballroom, and both rooms overflowed with the hundreds of guests that Sean Courtney had invited to celebrate his triumph. He had even invited Colonel Hamilton of the Cape Town Highlanders to bring his senior officers by Union Castle liner, travelling first class, as the General's guests to attend the ball.
Hamilton had refused by means of a polite thank-you note, four lines long; without counting the address and the closing salutation. The cup had been in the Cape Town Castle since it had been presented by Queen Victoria in the first year of the Boer War, and Hamilton's mortification added not a little to Sean Courtney's expansive mood.
For Mark it had been the busiest period he had known since coming to Emoyeni. Ruth Courtney had come to place more and more trust in Mark, and under her supervision he had done much of the work of preparing the invitations and handling the logistics of food and liquor.
Now she had him dancing with all of the ugly girls who would otherwise have sat disconsolately along the wall, and at the end of each dance, the General summoned him with an imperious wave of his cigar above the heads of his guests to the buffet table where he had taken up a permanent stance close to the cup. Councillor, I want you to meet my new assistant Mark this is Councillor Evans. That's right, Pussy, this is the young fellow who clinched it for us. And while Mark stood, colouring with embarrassment, the General repeated for the fifth or sixth time that evening a shot by shot account of the final day's competition when the two leading regiments had tied in the team events, and the judges had asked for an individual re-shoot to break the deadlock. A cross wind gusting up to twenty or thirty miles an hour, and the first shoot at two hundred yards Mark marvelled at the intense pleasure this trinket gave the General. A man whose fortune was almost beyond calculation, whose land could be measured by the hundred square miles, who owned priceless paintings and antique books, jewellery and precious stones, houses and horses and yachts, but none of them at this moment as prized as this glittering trifle. Well, I was marking myself, the General had taken enough of his own good whisky to begin acting out his story, and he made the gesture of crouching down in the bunker and looking up at the targets, and I don't mind telling you that it was the worst hour of my life.
Mark smiled in agreement. The Highlander marksman had matched him shot for shot. Each of them signalled as a bulls-eye by the flags of the markers. They both shot possibles at two hundred yards, and then again at five hundred yards, it was only at the thousand-yard targets that young Mark's uncanny ability to judge the crosswind, By this time, Sean's audience was cow-eyed with boredom, and there were still ten rounds of deliberate and another ten of rapid fire to hear about. Mark sensed panic signals across the ballroom and he looked up.
Ruth Courtney was beside the main doors of the ballroom and with her was the Zulu butler. A man with warrior blood in his veins and the usual bearing of a chief, now he was grey with some emotion close to fear and his expression was pitiable as he spoke rapidly to his mistress.
Ruth touched his arm in a gesture of comfort and dismissal, and then turned to wait for Mark.
As he hurried to her across the empty dance floor he could not help but notice again how much mother resembled daughter. Ruth Courtney still had the figure of an athletic young woman, kept slim and firm and graceful by hard riding and long walking, and only when he was close to her were the small lines and tiny blemishes in her smooth ivory skin apparent. Her hair was dressed high on her head, scorning the fashionable shorter cut, and her gown had a simple elegance that showed off the lines of her body and the small shapely breasts. One of her guests reached her before Mark did, and she was relaxed and smiling while Mark hovered close at hand until she excused herself and Mark hurried to her. Mark. Her worry showed only in her eyes as she looked up at him towering above her, but her smile was light and steady. There is going to be trouble. We have an unwelcome visitor. What do you want me to do? He is in the entrance hall now. Please, take him through to the General's study, and stay with him until I can warn my husband and send him to you. Will you do that? Of course. She smiled her thanks, and then as Mark turned away she stopped him with a touch. Mark, try to stay with them. I don't want them to be alone
