Four of them, well arranged against the end wall, would lighten the room with their white mats and lend a spot of interest that would not be wholly impersonal. She carried the stack of photographs—some eight or ten in all—down to the living room and spread them out on the floor. There she knelt before them to make her choice.
A little pang of homesickness went through her at sight of these Chicago scenes and she braced herself against it. She was where she wanted to be—with Dirk. Wherever he was, there she would make her home.
News pictures seldom came out best for her. She liked to try for good ones, but she knew she was still very much an amateur. Sometimes such a picture was inherently dramatic because of the circumstances involved. But when she was photographing a person it was possible to take more care and obtain a more striking graphic effect. She picked up her favorite picture of the aged newsdealer at his stand and studied it with pleasure.
A sudden ringing of the doorbell made her jump. She dropped the picture and stood up as if she were a child discovered playing with forbidden toys. Unaccustomed to servants, and not sure of her own role, she wondered if she was supposed to let one of them answer the bell. But nothing happened and there was another ring. Probably neither the yard boy nor the cook was expected to answer the front door, and she would not have a housemaid until tomorrow, Mara had said. She went to the door herself and opened it.
Silhouetted against the gray morning stood John Cornish, tall and angular and grave. He said nothing for a moment, his deepset eyes observing her as though he might expect some show of displeasure.
“G-good morning,” Susan faltered, taken aback. After the antagonism that Dirk had shown toward this man in the Kimberley airport, Cornish was the last person she had expected to see, and so quickly, on her own doorstep.
“Good morning,” he said. “May I come in?” His mouth was straight and unsmiling, his look knowing as if he fully understood the predicament he placed her in.
She did not move from the doorway. “Dirk isn’t at home. If you’ve come to see him—”
“I haven’t,” he said calmly. “I’ve come to see you, Mrs. Hohenfield.”
She knew very well that Dirk would not want this man in his house, but there seemed no way to refuse him entry without being ruder than she was able to be. Had he found out that she was Niklaas van Pelt’s daughter and come on that account to further his aims?
Wordlessly she gestured him into the hall and took his damp coat to hang on the hall rack. Then she led the way reluctantly into the living room where her pictures lay spread across the floor. When Dirk found out about this visit, she would be in for his displeasure, she was very sure. She hated to try his patience further. Why did John Cornish have to add to her problems on this gray, uneasy day?
4
“I won’t keep you guessing,” Cornish said as he followed her into the living room sidestepping the pictures. “I don’t suppose you’ve had an opportunity to meet Mr. van Pelt yet, but of course you will be meeting him shortly.”
So he didn’t know her identity as yet. She invited him to a chair, sat down on the window seat, and waited in silence for him to go on.
“Your husband seems to have prejudiced himself against me without a hearing,” Cornish continued, watching her keenly from beneath craggy brows. “But you are an unprejudiced newcomer on the scene, and an American besides. Is it possible that you might hear me out on this?”
“What has my being an American to do with it?” she asked.
He permitted himself a frosty smile. “I live in America now, you know. And I’ve found American wives often given to independent thoughts and decisions of their own.”
She did not want to be an American wife, she wanted only to be loyal to Dirk, and this man’s presence in the house already involved her in something close to disloyalty. She must be rid of him quickly.
“All this is my husband’s affair, not mine,” she told him. “If you are here to ask me to intervene and try to arrange a meeting for you with—with Mr. van Pelt, you’re asking the impossible.”
“I see.” The look of appraisal was still in his eyes and she had the sudden instinct that he was here not merely for the obvious purpose which he had stated but for some further reason that he did not mean to tell her. She suspected that he had never believed she would really go against Dirk’s wishes. The uneasiness she felt in his presence increased.
He glanced at the photographs which lay spread in a row near his feet. “Interesting,” he said. “Do you mind if I look?”
She shook her head helplessly. It was clear that telling him she minded would do little good.
He picked up the picture she had taken of a fire on Chicago’s West Side, and held it up to the light, studying it. “What a good shot. Fortune certainly played into your hands.”
She prickled to her own defense. “Even shots of dramatic circumstances don’t always come out well. A news photographer has to be quick to see a picture, and he has to have the patience to wait.”
“Granted.” He set the photograph down and picked up another—the one of the newsdealer that she liked best. “A good friend of mine in New York does news stories on assignment for a big magazine. I’ve gone the rounds with him a few times and he has helped me with occasional photos for my books. I find there’s a similarity in some ways between the journalist’s approach and a photographer’s.”
Casually he carried the picture over to her. “Take this shot, for instance.” He held it out for her to see, though she knew it by heart. “Here you didn’t quite wait for the story, I think.”
She could understand very well why Dirk did not like this man. He was a person who did not hesitate to speak his mind, no matter what toes might be stepped on.
“What do you think the real picture should have been?” she asked stiffly.
He tapped the photograph with one long finger. “This is good composition and interesting in itself, but not particularly revealing. You’ve caught a well-balanced shot of an old man with a tired face working behind a stack of newspapers, but you haven’t told us much about him. You didn’t wait for the moment when his expression would light up and come to life—either over a sale, or in disgust at a customer, or some other way that might show what he’s like as a person.”
“Doesn’t his face show that?” Susan demanded. “After all, he has lived his face.”
Cornish shrugged. “You’re annoyed with me, aren’t you? Not that I blame you. I had no business popping off like that.”
“I sold the picture,” Susan said more quietly.
“You should have, of course. It’s worth printing.” He leaned toward the row of pictures and replaced the one he held. “You’re very good, you know. Don’t take the words of an amateur critic too seriously. If you keep on you’ll be able to laugh at the critics.”
She wanted to resent his words, to consider him rude and officious, but he gave her a slow, grave smile that lessened the somber quality of his face, and she felt herself unexpectedly disarmed. It was true that he spoke from a position of greater maturity and experience. However, her very softening toward him put her on guard again. It was his purpose, of course, to disarm her.
“How did you know where to find us?” she asked. “How did you know I would be alone?”
His sardonic left eyebrow quirked. “A good reporter never reveals his private sources. It wasn’t particularly difficult to manage. Do you mind if we talk a bit about Niklaas van Pelt?”
She saw that she was neatly caught and must either be as rude as she should have been in the first place or hear him out. At least she would not tell him that Niklaas was her father. His private sources had not revealed everything and she wanted no place as Niklaas’s daughter in this book John Cornish was writing.
“I’d like to finish my work here as quickly as I can,” he went on. “That’s why I’ve let no grass grow under my feet. I want to get out of South Africa and back to the States.”
“You were born here, we
ren’t you? Isn’t South Africa your home, even more than the States?”
Cornish frowned. “It was Mr. van Pelt we were going to talk about.”
“You were going to talk about him, not I,” Susan said.
“Exactly. As I mentioned in Kimberley, I’m writing a book about diamonds and what they can do to men. It’s the men I am interested in more than the diamonds. One of the men who had an influence on the diamond business, and was affected by it in turn, is Niklaas van Pelt. He belongs in the book. His name will run through it and he will have a chapter given over to him, whether he likes it or not.”
“As I understand it,” Susan said quietly, “you had a hand in injuring him rather seriously some sixteen years ago. Haven’t you done enough?”
He was silent for a moment and she sensed again the relentless determination in this man, though exactly where it led she was not sure.
“If what happened can stand unchallenged, then that is what I shall write,” he said. “But there were certain aspects of the affair that I have never understood. Perhaps van Pelt can be persuaded to talk about them now.”
He would have gone on, but Susan heard the sound of a key in the front door and knew that Dirk had come home.
“Here is my husband,” she said. “You had better talk to him.”
Cornish stood up. “I doubt that he’ll listen to me, but I will see you again.”
Before she could say that she had no intention of seeing him again, Dirk was in the room. At the sight of John Cornish he threw Susan a questioning look and faced the other man, antagonism bristling as it had before.
“What do you want here?” he demanded.
Cornish answered without hesitation. “I want an appointment with Niklaas van Pelt.”
“You’d better realize,” Dirk said, his voice tight with anger, “that I will arrange no such appointment. Mr. van Pelt does not wish to see you under any circumstances.”
“He has answered none of my letters, and I quite understand how he may feel,” Cornish said calmly. He went into the hall, took his coat from the rack and bowed gravely to Susan. As Dirk opened the door for him, he paused for a moment longer. “Nevertheless,” he added, “I will manage to see him.”
Susan returned to the living room and stood staring absently at the row of pictures on the floor. She felt not a little frightened by the anger in Dirk’s face. Anger that might now be directed at her. She braced herself against whatever was to come. In some long-ago time she had learned to retreat from angry words, to shut herself away in a world of her own making where violence could not reach her. But Dirk’s anger was cold and nonexplosive—the outburst did not come. Perhaps the deepest anger was always deadly cold, and all the more alarming for that very fact.
“Susan—” his very tone was chill—“I will not have that man in my house. He’s not to be trusted. Whether you care about your father or not doesn’t matter. I am deeply concerned about protecting him from the harm this man may do. Cornish spells disaster for all of us. Do you understand me?”
She looked at him distantly, unable to return at once from the inward retreat to which she had withdrawn. For a long moment he faced the remoteness in her eyes, then he went abruptly from the room and she heard the sharp closing of the door as he left the house.
She pressed her fingers to her temples and felt the pain of sensation flooding back. What was happening? What had gone so wrong between herself and Dirk that suddenly they did not understand each other? Why had she not gone to him quickly and promised whatever he wished, since that was all that really mattered?
Something nebulous and threatening seemed to crowd about her, gathering like mists on the mountain, menacing all her new-found happiness in some dreadful way. If Dirk stopped loving her, there would be nothing left—only empty loneliness again, and all her hopes ended. Yet at the core of her there was a small, hard spot of anger—not cold like his, but hot and bitter. She could not be wholly meek in her loving. If she had the scene with John Cornish to relive, she would be forced to do again as she had done and ask him into the house. There had been no harm in her action, no complete justification for Dirk’s attitude toward this man.
Unless? “Disaster for all of us,” Dirk had said, and the sharp chill of his voice seemed to linger in the room.
With a sweeping gesture she gathered up the photographs and carried them upstairs. She did not want to hang any just now. There was no comfort for her in looking at them.
When Cookie came to tell her that lunch was served, she went downstairs and sat at the dining table alone. It was hard to swallow, and sugar beans, cooked with meat and served over rice, tasted as flat as her spirits. Which was not Cookie’s fault. She tried to pretend an appetite she did not feel, and lectured herself firmly as she ate.
John Cornish had spoken of her as an American wife. The fact that she had married a South African husband must also be considered. The English husband and the Afrikaner and Dutch and German husbands were not, as she must never forget, entirely like the American husband. The Old World still held the man to be master, and perhaps in the long run that was a better and more satisfying thing for any woman. She knew that Dirk liked in her the very youthful qualities she was inclined to regret, and that he did not enjoy any tendency to oppose him and go off on some headlong tangent of her own. It was up to her to learn how to be a South African wife and suppress her occasional headlong American impulses.
Dirk remained away all that day and into the evening. Susan went early to bed between chilly sheets, not yet being hot-water-bottle minded.
It must have been after midnight when he came in. He undressed quietly and she pretended to be asleep. In spite of her good resolutions, her wounded spirit resisted him, turning from him, yet longing perversely to have him break down her resistance.
He did not come near her, however, and she heard his even breathing in the next bed while she lay awake for a long while. At some time during the late-night hours she fell into an uneasy slumber, but she was awake again at dawn, to find a cold clear light seeping into the room.
She knew she would not sleep again, so she slipped out of bed in her thin nightgown and went to a window, heedless of the cold. There she parted the draperies so that she could look out. The window faced at an angle across the irregular amphitheater of mountains and town, so that the Lion’s Head, the right wing, was out of sight, just behind the house. The broken pyramids of Devil’s Peak rose straight ahead on the far side of town. She had to turn to her right a little to view what all Cape Town affectionately called “the mountain,” and with her turning the full impact of it struck boldly across her vision.
The mists had blown away and the dawn sky was clear, with a rosy tinge beyond Devil’s Peak. No cloud “tablecloth” lay over the mountain’s top this morning. It stood clear in awesome power, its great mass stretched behind Cape Town, its head a long straight line ruled against the sky. The light of dawn struck across the rocky face of sheer precipice and set it glistening. Thirty-five hundred feet it rose, so massive and close that every cleft and ravine and steep fall of rock was visible in detail. Here the black gods of old Africa had lived in times long past before the white man had come to the continent. And here they would live when the white man’s power was gone.
Upon Susan the impact was tremendous. She had no thought for the chilly room behind her or the cold pane of glass beneath her fingertips. She had half expected to find the mountain dwarfed when set against her childhood recollection, but the reality was more impressive than her memory of it.
She had come home. This was the Cape Town she had loved, with Table Mountain ruling the sky and Devil’s Peak raising its jagged head across the valley. She liked best an older name for the peak—the Wyndberg. What a home for storms it was, when great winds beat across Cape Town winter and summer. Today the white houses and red roofs no longer looked dim and gray. There was a clean, well-washed gleam to them, untouched by industrial grime.
She did not hear Dirk when h
e left his bed, did not know he was near until he put his arms about her and drew her slim body against his own. For an instant she stiffened, and then warm love flowed through her and she was alive again.
“I’m sorry, darling,” he said softly and kissed the place where her short hair curled above her ear.
She forgot the mountain and turned her face to him. Relief was a wave engulfing her, carrying her free of darkness. She put her arms about his neck and pressed her cheek against his own.
“Dirk, it’s been dreadful! You went so far away and I didn’t know how to reach you.”
“I know,” he said. “There’s a devil of perversity that gets into me at times. And you closed yourself away from me behind those wide eyes of yours. We mustn’t let this happen, sweet. You know I love you. Never forget it.”
And he knew how much she loved him, she thought. He did not need to hear her say it. It was something she told him with her hands framing his face, with her lips upon his own. The embrace was all the sweeter because she had been for a little while so frighteningly far away from him.
Before they went back to the warmth of blankets, she turned once more to the mountain. “I remember what they call it—the Old Gray Father. Oh, Dirk, it’s good to be home again! Yesterday I couldn’t find myself. I couldn’t find you and I was afraid.”
His hands pressed her shoulders gently. “Do you see the ravine that cuts down the hill below us? The house you lived in as a child is just across. Your father’s house. Can you find it there, lower than we are, on the opposite hill?”
Her gaze swept the width of the ravine and moved along the hill beyond to a white house with red-tiled roof and the intricate lacework of wrought iron around its porches and balconies. From this angle it did not look altogether familiar, but she knew it was the house she had visited with so much joy as a little girl and dreamed about with longing through the Johannesburg winter.
“Your father expects you today,” Dirk said. “Mara will come for you this afternoon and you mustn’t be afraid.”
Blue Fire Page 6