Men of Men - Smith Wilbur (онлайн книга без txt) 📗

"A double wedding, who are the others?"

"You would never guess, not in a thousand years."

They looked more like brothers than father and son, as they stood before the carved altar in the little whitewashed church at Khami.

Zouga wore his full dress uniform, and the scarlet cket, tailored twenty years before, still fitted him to perfection The gold lace had been renewed to impress Lobengula and his indunas, and now it sparkled bright and untarnished, even in the cool gloom of the church.

Ralph was dressed in expensive broadcloth with a high stock and cravat of watered grey silk that on this hot June day brought beads of sweat to his forehead. His thick dark hair was dressed with pomade to a glossy shine, and his magnificent moustache, twirled with beeswax, pricked out in two stiff points.

Both of them were rigid with expectation, staring fixedly at the altar candles which Clinton had hoarded for such an occasion, and lit only minutes before.

Behind them one of the twins fidgeted with excited anticipation, and Salina pumped up the little organ and launched into "Here comes the Bride", while Ralph grinned with bravado and, out of the side of his mouth, muttered to his father, "Well, here we go then, Papa. Fix bayonets and prepare to receive cavalry!"

They turned with parade ground precision to face the church door, just as the brides stepped through it.

Cathy wore the mail-order dress which Ralph had brought up from Kimberley, while Robyn had lifted her own wedding dress from its resting place in the leatherbound trunk and they had taken in the waist and let down the hem to fit Louise. The delicate lace had turned to the colour of old ivory, and she carried a bouquet of Clinton's yellow roses.

Afterwards they all straggled across the yard. The brides tottered on their high heels and tripped on their trains, clinging to the arms of their new husbands; and the twins pelted them with handfuls of rice, before running ahead to the verandah where the wedding board was piled with mountains of food and lined with regiments of bottles, the finest champagne from Ralph's wagons.

At one end of the table Ralph loosened his stock and held Cathy in the circle of his arm and a glass in his other hand as he made his speech: "My wife, "he referred to her, and the company hooted with laughter and clapped with delight, while Cathy clung to him and looked up at his face in transparent adoration.

Then when the speeches were ended, Clinton looked across the table at his eldest daughter. His bald head shone with the heat and excitement and the good champagne.

Will you not sing to us, my darling Salina," he asked.

"Something happy and joyous?"

Salina nodded and smiled, and lifted her chin to sing in her gentle voice: "However far you go, my love, I will follow too.

The highest mountain top, my love, Across deepest ocean blue."

Louise turned her face towards Zouga, and when she smiled the corners of her dark blue eyes slanted upwards and her lips parted and glistened. Below the tabletop Clinton reached for Robyn's hand, but his gaze stayed upon his daughter's face.

Even Ralph sobered, and sat attentively while Cathy laid her cheek upon his shoulder.

"No arctic night too cold, my love, No tropic noon too fierce.

For I will cleave to you, my love, "Til death my heart do pierce."

Salina sat very straight on the wooden bench with her hands in her lap. She was smiling as she sang, a sweet serene smile, but a single tear broke from her lower lid and descended, with tortuous slowness, the velvet curve of her cheek, until it reached the corner of her mouth.

The song ended, and they were silent for a long moment, and then Ralph pounded on the table with the flat of his hand.

"Oh bravo, Salina, that was superb."

Then they were all applauding, and Salina smiled at them and the single tear broke and fell to her breast, to leave a dark star upon the satin of her bodice.

"Excuse me," she said. "Please excuse me."

And she stood up and, still smiling, glided down the verandah. Cathy sprang to her feet, her face twisted with concern, but Robyn caught her wrist before she could follow.

"Leave her be," she whispered. "The child needs to be alone a while. You will only upset her further." And Cathy sank back beside Ralph.

"Shame on you, Louise," with forced jocularity, Clinton called down the table. "Your husband's glass is empty, are you neglecting him so soon?"

An hour later Salina had not returned, and Ralph's voice had become louder and even more assertive. "Now that mister Rhodes has got his charter, we can begin to assemble the column. Cathy and I will start back tomorrow with the empty wagons. Heaven knows we will need every pair of wheels, and I thought old King Ben would never take those rifles off my hands."

But Cathy was for once not drinking in every one of his words; she kept looking down the verandah, and again she whispered to Robyn, who frowned and shook her head.

"You talk as though the whole affair was arranged for your personal profit, Ralph." Robyn turned from Cathy to challenge her new son-in-law.

"Perish the thought, Aunty., Ralph laughed, and winked at his father down the length of the table. "It's all for the good of Empire and the glory of God."

Cathy waited until they were once more embroiled in amiable argument, and then she slipped away so quietly that Robyn did not notice until Cathy reached the end of the verandah. For a moment she looked set to call her back, but instead she made a move of annoyance and addressed herself to Zouga.

"How long will you and Louise remain at Gubulawayo?"

"Until the column reaches Mount Hampden. mister Rhodes doesn't want any misunderstanding between the volunteers and Lobengula's young bucks."

"I will be able to send up fresh vegetables and even a few flowers while you are at the king's kraal, Louise," Clinton offered.

"You've been too kind already," Louise thanked him, and then broke off, and an expression of deep concern crossed her face.

They all turned hurriedly in the direction she was staring.

Cathy had returned and climbed the verandah steps.

She leaned against one of the whitewashed columns. Her face was the muddy yellow of a malaria sufferer, and her brow and chin were blistered with droplets of sweat. Her eyes were tortured, and her mouth twisted with horror.

"In the church," she said. "She's in the church." And then she doubled over, and retched with a terrible tearing sound, and it came up her throat in a solid yellow eruption that soaked the virginal white skirts of her wedding gown.

Robyn was the first to reach the church door. She stared for only a moment and then she whirled and hid her face against Clinton's chest.

"Take her away," Zouga ordered Clinton brusquely, and then to Ralph. "Help me!"

The garland of pink roses had fallen from Salina's head, and lay below her on the floor of the nave. She had thrown a halter rope over one of the roof beams, and she must have climbed up on the table that Robyn used for her surgery.

Her hands hung open at her sides. The toes of her slippers were turned in towards each other in a touchingly innocent stance, like those of a little girl standing on tiptoe; but they were suspended at the height of a man's waist above the flagged floor.

Zouga had to look up at her face. The rope had caught her under one ear and her head was twisted at an impossible angle to one side. To Zouga her face seemed swollen to twice its normal size, and it was mottled a dark mulberry hue.