Chapter One.

Kimberley was once the most famous diamond diggings in the world. Rhodes founded his fortunes there, and the friendships that backed him throughout his career. In the tented camps, hundreds of men became millionaires, and hundreds of others went to jail for the crime of I.D.B. (illicit diamond buying). Later, stately buildings and comfortable homes took the place of tent and tin hut, and later still, the town, like a good many other mining towns in South Africa, became G.I. A mine is G.I. (meaning “gone in”) when there is no longer any output. This was hardly true of Kimberley. It continues until this day to put out diamonds, and still may be found there “the largest hole in the world.” But Kimberley’s day was over when gold was found in the Transvaal, and the adventuring crowd left it, never to return.

At the present time, it is chiefly remarkable for its scandals, dust, heat, and the best hotel in South Africa, which is not so much a hotel as a palatial country house started by the De Beers magnates for the entertainment of their friends or for their own use when they are bored with home life. Notabilities are often entertained there as guests of the famous company, but, even if not a guest of De Beers’, a traveller may stay at the Belgrove for about a pound a day and be silent and cool as in an ice-house while all the rest of Kimberley is a raging furnace. Mr Rhodes entertained General French at dinner here after the relief of Kimberley. There is a picture over the dining-room mantelpiece of the two men meeting on the famous occasion of the relief of Kimberley.

Loree Temple, seated at a table just below it, looked often at this picture and then contemplatively at her own image in a mirror on the wall. It seemed a pity that Rhodes was dead, the Boer War over and all the mining adventurers gone away. She would have liked to live and love among such men instead of being married to Pat Temple. None but the brave deserve the fair, and she imagined her beauty adorning a scene of “triumph and roses and wine” when gallantry returned to white arms and the soft rewards of victory. She had often dreamed herself back in ancient Rome, seated in a chariot beside some blood-stained general, with pearls strung in her hair and immense uncut rubies and emeralds against her dazzling whiteness. Or perhaps led into the banquet as a slave, with chains upon her wrists, part of the spoils of war, proud and sad and exquisite in her doom. At other hours, she remembered the words of Arthur, bitter and tender, to his queen:

—With beauty such as never woman wore Until it came a kingdom’s curse with thee.

No doubt she took an exaggerated view of her own case. At any rate, her women friends would have found much pleasure in telling her so. It was only natural she should think herself a great deal more beautiful than she was. All pretty women do. But there is no denying that the sight of her, as she sat there, would have spoiled many a woman’s sleep and gladdened the heart of any man—a girl with red hair and a redder rose in it, the milky skin such hair ensures, a sweet ensnaring mouth, eyes with a plaintive expression in them, a string of small but perfect pearls round her young throat, and a black georgette gown by Viola. Pat always liked her to wear black while he was away. The simple soul had an idea that in black she would not be looked at so much.

Needless to say, Pat Temple was neither a blood-stained general nor a mining adventurer. He made his income honestly enough out of a cold-storage plant, and though indirectly he dealt with corpses, they were legitimate corpses of beef and mutton. This was hard on Loraine Loree (as her mother had romantically named her after Kingsley’s poem), with her secret thirst for glamour and glory and strange jewels. But husbands often know nothing of their wives’ secret thirsts. Pat Temple knew that he had found the girl he wanted growing like a flower in a Channel Island garden—a “Jersey lily,” with French blood in her veins—and that was enough for him. He meant to get her the best the world can give before he had finished, but he never mentioned his intentions. At the moment, he was up North trying to persuade Rhodesians to install cold-storage plants in all their big towns. That was why Loree was alone in the luxurious Kimberley hotel. He had told her it was better for her to keep cool and comfortable there than be bucketing about all over Rhodesia.

So there she sat in her black gown, reflecting and drawing the string of little pearls softly back and forth across her fresh lips. The difference between real pearls and false is that you can play with the real ones in this manner or twist them perpetually between your fingers; artificial ones should be more discreetly used and are best worn unassumingly under chiffon or only allowed to peep with modesty from the V of your gown.

Loree had always adored jewels, but never owned any until she married. This string of three hundred and sixty-five little pearls, one for each day in the year, was more precious to her than bread. Which was only right, for its purchase had made a considerable dent in Pat’s capital (though he had never mentioned that, either). She also had two rather fine single pearls in her ears, and some pearl rings. For a dealer in carcasses, Pat Temple’s taste in jewellery was curiously eclectic. She had never possessed a diamond. Nor had she particularly wished to do so, though, like most women, she sometimes lingered to gaze at a display of them in a shop window, wondering if they would become her. But it was only since she came to Kimberley that the romance of them had taken hold of her imagination. It was seeing “the biggest hole in the world” that started it. She had gone by herself, and gazed, long into the vast excavation delved by the hands of men in the search for those strange little cadres of imprisoned light, each with a mysterious past behind it and an almost eternal future before it. She wondered what became of diamonds. They seem indestructible, yet where were all the millions of them that had been taken from this one great hole alone—that, down there, out of the light, were still being dug and groped and sweated for?

And it was all for women! That gave her a thrill she had never felt before. Men slaved and wore out their lives and were killed down there, so that women might wear diamonds. Those little sparkling stones were tokens of love between men and women—imperishable counters of passion!

It began to stir her uneasily from that moment to think she had never possessed a diamond. Why had Pat only given her tristful white pearls? Perhaps she was missing something. Perhaps the great things of life were passing her by.

Her eyes wandered round the dining-room. There were not many women, but every one of them had a glimmer of light somewhere—in her ears, at the bosom, or on her fingers. One woman, who, like Loree, was dining alone, wore a single stone slung round her neck on an almost invisible chain, and at every movement it sent long pin-rays of light darting across the room to where Loree sat. Every time a ray reached her, it seemed to give her a prick, increasing her uneasy sense that she was missing something in life. There seemed a magical power in the thing. She determined that after dinner she would, speak to the wearer and examine the jewel more closely.

The lady was a Mrs Cork, a dark woman who did her hair in a classical knot at the back of her head and looked as if she had a past. She was a widow from Johannesburg, not beautiful, but the kind of woman who would be looked at in a room before all the pretty women. Her brilliant, weary eyes wore an expression of having seen everything in the world worth seeing, and finding that nothing was worth having. Loree admired and intensely envied her air of “having lived,” and the cynical flavour of her speech. They had already exchanged smiles and fragments of conversation when meeting in the lounge and drawing-room, and Mrs Cork had told her that she was in Kimberley to consult a noted pedicurist about some trouble with her left foot.

Another person who interested Mrs Temple now entered the dining-room and sat down at a table a few yards away, with his chair so placed that there was nothing between him and an uninterrupted view of Loree except the little delicately shaded electric lamp. Very unobtrusively, he moved the light slightly aside. Immediately Loree experienced the same odd pricking in her blood as the rays of the diamond seemed to cause her. Only, she no longer felt that she was missing something, or that life was passing her by on the other side.

For three days he had deliberately courted her with a pair of fine, golden-brown eyes that contained melancholy, power, a whimsical reflective expression, and a whole world of admiration for Loree Temple. He was a dark, gracefully-built man with thick dark hair brushed back smoothly on his well-shaped head. Everything about him was right, from his hair to his shoes. He was the kind of man who could not make any mistake about dress, and gave distinction to anything he wore. His name was Quelch, and Loree was aware that he was a power in the hotel and in Kimberley.

The first day at lunch, when the heat was sizzling outside among the fernlike leaves of the pepper-trees and coming through the windows in almost visible waves—Mrs Temple’s red head had drooped rather like a poppy overtired by the sun, and she had fanned herself a little wearily with the menu-card. A low-spoken word at Quelch’s table and a shade of the outside verandah was moved by swift hands so that it darkened the window behind her without shutting off the air. A moment later, a huge block of ice standing in a deep tray of greenery miraculously appeared on the window-sill, and a fan daintily composed of lace and ivory lay at her elbow. In the evening, she found that beside her table a wooden tree had sprung up through the floor and blossomed into an electric fan whose zephyrs were for her exclusive refreshment. There were lovely flowers everywhere, but a silver bowl of deep-red roses distinguished her table from the others. There are some things you know for certain without knowing them for sure, as the saying is. Without any evidence, Loree was aware of Quelch’s responsibility for these delicate miracles. He was a power. He spoke, and things happened.

The roses were there again to-night, deep and red and dewy, as if they had been plucked in a misty valley and were still wet with the dawn.

As she left the table, she took one from the bowl and stuck it into the V of her gown. It was carelessly done, but her hands trembled a little and her veins thrilled again as if in answer to some magnetic current which, whether it came from a magic stone or from a man’s eyes, made her feel curiously alive and daring. There is no thrill like the thrill of playing with fire that may blaze out and consume you (but you won’t let it), or standing on the edge of a precipice where you might fall over (but you are not going to).

Betaking herself to the cool gloom of the verandah, where coffee was served, she sat down by Mrs Cork. Out in the garden spectral figures were drenching the trees and flowers with water after the cruel heat of the day, and the place was full of the scent of wet earth. Said Mrs Cork:

“I have been so dull all day. Not a thought but to lie perdue under my mosquito-curtains until the sun went down.”

“Do you dislike the heat?” said Loree. “I find it stimulating.”

The other woman considered her with heavily shadowed eyes.

“It flattens me out like a glass of spilled milk. You haven’t been here long enough for it to take toll of you, but it will—body, soul, and spirit.”

Loree laughed, secure in her fresh beauty. Besides, it felt very safe to be Pat Temple’s wife.

“I should be inclined to challenge that if I had come to stay. We are only out here on a trip.”

“You’re lucky. Africa is all right as long as you can get away from her. But you should not challenge her. Like Fate, you never know what she has up her sleeve.”

She sipped her coffee, looking moodily into the dark garden. Loree snatched this opportunity to scrutinise the diamond. It winked at her like a little demon with bluish-green eyes.

“Will you think me very inquisitive if I ask whether your diamond came out of the Kimberley mine?” she said.

Mrs Cork smiled indifferently.

“No: it is a Brazilian. Are you interested in diamonds?”

“They exercise a sort of fascination over me,” said Loree slowly. “Though I never thought about them much before.”

The other woman examined her thoughtfully.

“Yes: one does begin to think about them here. Kimberley is a wicked place.”

The statement gave Loree a sensation—not altogether disagreeable.

“It seems so quiet and peaceful.”

The other smiled cryptically.

“There is a mot current in South Africa with regard to the degree of wickedness to be found in different towns. It runs: ‘Kimberley, first prize; Cradock, second; Hell, highly recommended.’”

Loree could not help laughing, and at that moment Quelch sauntered out from the hall and stood in the light close beside them. Mrs Cork, lifting her voice slightly, addressed him.

“Mr Quelch, come here and help me convince Mrs Temple that the wickedness of Babylon was as nothing compared to the wickedness of this sweet and tranquil town.”

He laughed: they all laughed, and a moment or two later they were sitting together, discussing the matter. Quelch repudiated the libel on Kimberley. If “wickedness” was in question, he thought that Johannesburg ought, at any rate, to receive an honourable mention.

“There are no diamonds in Johannesburg,” said Mrs Cork.

“Diamonds!” Quelch looked musingly at Loree. “‘The most exquisite of gems, known only to kings.’ Pliny wrote that of them in the year 100 Anno Domini!”

His voice held a melancholy cadence; the dark beauty of his face suggested the East where women are addressed with a musical, caressing softness. Loree was susceptible to voices and she listened fascinated. It appeared that the Tintara, a mine outside Kimberley which had produced some remarkable diamonds, belonged to him, but he spoke of it carelessly, as if it were a broken-kneed horse he owned. He showed them a stone that had been discovered that day. It was rather like a piece of washing soda, with no glitter or spangle at all. Difficult to believe that it could be cut and polished into dazzling beauty. It must go to Europe for that though. There are no lapidaries in Africa.

Loree heard for the first time of the theory that diamonds come from the skies, and of the possibility that the mines in various parts of the world are meteorites so immense that in falling they penetrated the earth’s crust and became part of it. This theory is backed by the curious fact that meteorites which fell in Arizona, Russia and Chile all contained small diamonds. As to the destructibility of diamonds she learned that they can be converted by the action of heat or electricity into that most banal substance—black lead! Entranced by these strange tales by Quelch’s wonderful voice, she sat spellbound while he told of the famous diamonds of the world. The Star of South Africa bought by Lord Dudley for 25,000 pounds; the Great Mogul, “a rose-cut stone tall on one side”; the Orloff stolen by a French soldier from the eye of a Brahmin idol, and stolen again and again until it was bought for 90,000 pounds for Catherine the Second and kept among the Russian crown jewels ever after; the blue-white Koh-i-noor shaped like an egg; the lovely pale rose pear-shaped Taj-e-mah belonging to the Shah of Persia; the Nassak, a beautiful stone in the possession of the Duke of Westminster; the brilliant blue Hope diamond lost and found so often, and reputed to bring bad luck; the Tiffany, a magnificent orange-yellow stone of 125.5 carats; the Dresden, part of the Saxon crown jewels, only 40 carats in weight but of a unique apple-green colour. Then there were the lovely little stones to be gathered like dewdrops in a forest in Rhodesia—the Somabula. Most of the best South African diamonds it seemed were of a flawless clearness and water-white. It was wonderful to head Quelch speak of them. It seemed to Loraine that his words were like the gems themselves sparkling and

rippling and tumbling in cascades.

Before they parted that night, he invited them to go next day and see the diamonds at the De Beers offices. They accepted with fervour, and he said he would have a car waiting for them.

“He is not a De Beers man himself,” Mrs Cork told Loree as they went upstairs, “but immensely rich and hand in glove with the diamond crowd here. He can do anything he likes in Kimberley. Fascinating brute, isn’t he?”

“Why brute?” asked Loree, surprised. It was not a word she would have thought of applying to him.

“He has such a gentle voice,” Mrs Cork said, and seemed to think that answer enough. “He had a wife once—a lovely woman, they say. He is mad about beauty. She died in childbirth about fifteen years ago, leaving him a son whom he adores. He has the reputation of being extreme in his loves and hates. Extreme people are always dangerous.”

Smiling her weary enigmatic smile, Mrs Cork bade her good night.

A beautifully appointed car fetched them the next day in the cool of the afternoon, and Quelch met them at the door of the famous Diamond Office, a substantial stone building with no hint in its squat face of the romance it housed. Quelch trod its corridors as if he owned them. Because of being his guests, they were not constrained, like other visitors, to stand behind a rail, but invited to approach the counter where men and women sat pushing innumerable little objects that looked like dull bits of broken glass into cone-shaped heaps. It was difficult to believe in the concealed splendour of those dingy heaps. The two women lingered, plunging their fingers into hidden glory and speculating on the possible future of each stone. Some were for the engagement rings of little shop-girls, some might gleam in a crown, and be dyed with a queen’s blood, as were the diamonds of poor Draga of Serbia. The past of each was silence, a secret buried in the earth’s bowels; its future endless, almost eternal, like the hills. Tout passe, tout lasse, tout casse—only the hills remain—and diamonds!

Among the exhibits specially shown to the guests of Heseltine Quelch was a macabresque souvenir of the swift and sharp death that sometimes descends upon those who work in the depths of a diamond mine. It was a strange cleft object, floating in a jar of spirits-of-wine. Mrs Cork gave one quick glance and looked away with a shiver, but Loree stared in great curiosity.

“What can it be?” she exclaimed.

“A thing often spoken of but seldom seen,” said the young De Beers man. “A broken heart.”

It was indeed a human heart that had once beaten in a man’s breast, and it was cleft apart from top to point almost as if divided by a sharp knife or hatchet. But no weapon had performed this grim piece of artistry. It was the fantastic result of a great fall of reef upon the head of a native. Death must of course have been instantaneous, for though when the body was recovered it was not so crushed as might have been expected, a medical investigation revealed the strange phenomena of the broken heart which is kept to this day by De Beers, as one of the wonders of the world.