"There are men like that," said Margaret thoughtfully. "And women, too."
"Yes, aren't there?" he agreed quickly. "But I 'd rather--it 's a pity you should know it. However, you wanted to hear about Capetown."
The afternoon was waning; the Kafir, with his hat at the back of his head and the rim of its brim framing his patient face, was set against a skyful of melting color. Even in face of those two attentive hearers, he sat as though in an immense and significant isolation, imposing himself upon them by virtue of his strong aloofness. Margaret was conscious of a great gulf set between them, an unbridgable hiatus of spirit and purpose. The man saw the life of the world not from above or below but as through a barred window, from a room in which he was prisoned and solitary.
He was entirely matter-of-fact as he told of his troubles and difficulties when he landed in Capetown; he spoke of them as things accepted, calling for no comment. On the steamer from England he had been told of the then recent experiences of a concert party of American negroes who visited Africa and had been obliged to sleep in the streets, but the tale had the sound of a smoking-room ingenuity and had not daunted him. But it was true for all that and he ran full-tilt into the application of it, when nightfall of the day of his arrival found him still seeking vainly for a lodging. He had money in plenty, but neither money nor fair words availed to bribe an innkeeper into granting him a bed.
"But I saw a lot of Capetown," he said. "I walked that afternoon and evening full twenty miles--once all the way out to Sea Point and back again. And I was perhaps a little discouraged: there were so many difficulties I hadn't expected. I knew quite well before I left England that I should have difficulties with the whites, but I hadn't allowed for practically the same difficulties with the blacks. There was a place behind the railway station, a tumble-down house in which about a dozen Kafirs were living, and I tried that. They fetched a policeman who ordered me away, and I had to go. You see, they could n't make head or tail of me; I was much too unusual for them to keep company with. So about midnight I found myself walking down towards the jetty at the foot of Adderly Street. You don't know Capetown, I suppose? The jetty sticks out into the bay; it 's no great use except for a few boats to land and at night it serves the purpose of the Thames Embankment for men who have nowhere else to go. I was very tired by then. As I passed the Van Riebeck statue, a woman spoke to me."