Chapter 9

THE EPISODE OF THE LADY WHO WAS VERY EXCLUSIVE

The Matabele revolt gave Hilda a prejudice against Rhodesia. I will
confess that I shared it. I may be hard to please; but it somehow sets
one against a country when one comes home from a ride to find all the
other occupants of the house one lives in massacred. So Hilda decided
to leave South Africa. By an odd coincidence, I also decided on the
same day to change my residence. Hilda's movements and mine, indeed,
coincided curiously. The moment I learned she was going anywhere, I
discovered in a flash that I happened to be going there too. I commend
this strange case of parallel thought and action to the consideration of
the Society for Psychical Research.

So I sold my farm, and had done with Rhodesia. A country with a future
is very well in its way; but I am quite Ibsenish in my preference for a
country with a past. Oddly enough, I had no difficulty in getting rid of
my white elephant of a farm. People seemed to believe in Rhodesia
none the less firmly because of this slight disturbance. They treated
massacres as necessary incidents in the early history of a colony with a
future. And I do not deny that native risings add picturesqueness. But I
prefer to take them in a literary form.

"You will go home, of course?" I said to Hilda, when we came to talk it
all over.

She shook her head. "To England? Oh, no. I must pursue my Plan.
Sebastian will have gone home; he expects me to follow."

"And why don't you?"

"Because--he expects it. You see, he is a good judge of character; he
will naturally infer, from what he knows of my temperament, that after
this experience I shall want to get back to England and safety. So I
should--if it were not that I know he will expect it. As it is, I must
go elsewhere; I must draw him after me."

"Where?"

"Why do you ask, Hubert?"

"Because--I want to know where I am going myself. Wherever you go, I
have reason to believe, I shall find that I happen to be going also."

She rested her little chin on her hand and reflected a minute. "Does it
occur to you," she asked at last, "that people have tongues? If you go
on following me like this, they will really begin to talk about us."

"Now, upon my word, Hilda," I cried, "that is the very first time I have
ever known you show a woman's want of logic! I do not propose to follow
you; I propose to happen to be travelling by the same steamer. I ask you
to marry me; you won't; you admit you are fond of me; yet you tell me
not to come with you. It is _I_ who suggest a course which would prevent
people from chattering--by the simple device of a