1940-12-19 — Page 117

A

ACAU THE CHINA-MAIL SPECIAL CHRISTMAS SUPPLEMENT, DECEMBER 19, 1940.

Some Queer Xmas Eves

"D'you realise. David." I said, per caps, coloured streamers and flinging my pick disgustedly to a lavish array of foods and wines.

the ground that it's Christmas Eve?"

I was wearing a false, nose-a wise thing to do on the Continent where noses are apt to be pulled and dancing with an ash-blonde girl from Prague who defeated all my efforts to speak her in French and German,

to

David, my partner on the dia mond diggings

in South Africa, wiped the sweat from his sun- burnt face. "And what if it is."

table Seated at an adjoining he replied lacon.cally. "Do you expect me to become a sentimen- was a young Irishman who wrote tal pagan and sing carols beneath Satiric verse, with an English girl. a sprig, of mistletoe?" And he re- They had become engaged during sumed his digging in that hard, the course of their sojourn at St. sun-baked earth for the diamonds There they both were,

that never mutertulised,

Moritz.

on

Christmas Eve, looking dismally, It was the reply I might have unhappy. The news of their be- expected from him. David was a trothal had been a twenty-four true wanderer. At the same time, hours' affair. Now, even the wait- I was beginning to realise huw

ers knew it, and treated them much the wanderers on this earth with excessive deference. The hate Christmas. It is because, at Irishman occasionally blew E heart, they are all sentimentalists. nuper whistle with a sort of de- Christmas does make them think flant enjoyment. Neither of them of home.

'We'll have to go a long WHY from here to find mistletoe," I said to David, "but at least

We tan

get 1 Christmas dinner of sorts at old

By

danced.

W.J. Makin

It was when the orchestra began playing a dan- gerously senti- mental waltz that the English girl looked up to find a young mono-

Georgeu's shack There cled Austrian bowing before her. are rumours about a dance to- Gnadiges fraulein! he said suavely. "I would be charmed if David pushed back his double- you will pull a cracker with me."

night."

felt hat and stared at me.

And, graciously, he held before "Why this sudden desire for, her one of those paper crackers galety" he asked

that decorate most Christmus

"Just because 14 Christmas tables. Eve," I repeated tritely.

"And how do you suggest we light shone in the uce of the shall pay for these sentimental luxuries Christmas dinner and a dance in an old Greek's tin shanty?"

1 fingered the pouch of my belt "What! The only diamond we've found in this shell-hole,” he ex- claimed.

"Why not?"

David snorted Then he grin- ned.

"Yes, why not?" he mused. "It's such a miserable specimen that I doubt whether we'll even get a Aver for it Still, old Georgeu might buy it or give us a drink and a dance in exchange.

"And a Christmas dinner,” r insisted.

મૈં

A moon-like expression of de- English girl, "How delightful of you." she said. And stretching out her hand she seized une end of the cracker.

and the ruins of the cracker were A sharp tug, an absurd "pop"

in their hands.

"There is a motto Inside.“ she cried childishly. "You must read it."

The Austrian bowed, and fum- bied in the

He paper wreckage. discovered the slip of

paper, >moothed it, and read slowly aloud in English. I can still hear him mouthing the trite words:

"Roses are red, violets are blue.” Sugar is sweet, and so are you!"

the But by this time

young Irishman was on his feet. His eyes blazed. He had the specially decorated menu folded in his hand. With a melodramatic ges- the face with it, causing the mono- ture he struck the Austrian across

cle to fall.

reco-

Twenty-four hours previously, David and 1 had joined in a rush for diamond claims over

this stretch of South African veld that now looked like

battlefield. Battered motor-ears, Cape carts and ox-wagons added to the gen eral effect of an army in retreat. A few mounted policemen rode the debris, a hand occasionally The Austrian stooped to straying to pistol holster when any ver his monocle. When he fixed it of the diggers became violent. At firmly against his eye he was pale, the same time # naked Zulu stalked about the diggings vigor- bell. He carried ously ringing a an ink-crawled poster in one hand. The invitation was tional: --Come and dance at Georgeu's

Women, Music and Champagne. Georgeu, after much twisting of his black moustaches, gave us exactly five pounds for the rough little pebble that we called a dia- mond. David and I began reck- lessly to spend that dve pounds.

Three sausages apiece, a lump of mashed potatoes, and, special afterthought, a tin of green peas-such was our Christmas ,dinner.

sensa-

He faced the Irishman.

"I think we shall have some- thing to discuss-after the dance,' he said with quiet deliberation, Then superbly, he turned to the English girl. "Our waltz, I think' he murmured.

It was a thoroughly terrified English girl who was eventually led back to the little table. The Austrian bowed her to a seat and then proffered his cigarette-case to the Irishman,

"Perhaps, mein herr," he said, "you would like as

to smoke cigaret'e in the next room, hein?" They stalked out of the dining- room together,

•

and

David called loudly for cham- The next morning they set out pagne. With a smirk that would curly to climb a snow-peak to- have done credit to the head wait- gether-complete with ice-axes, er of the Cafe de Paris, in Monte It must have been nearby mid- Carlo, Georgou, the Greek, pro- night when I saw the two young duced the first bottle with the al- men again, standing in the door- acrity of a conjurer Hẹ charged way. They were laughing us two pounds for the bottle. joking with each other. The best Queer Christmas Eve. I can of friends. And the object of their well remember the dance that fol- amusement? A wealthy American lowed. When the dancing began, was presenting the girl with a diggers kicked off their heavy plateful of caviare sandwiches, veldt-schoen and began lumber while she gazed adoringly into his ing about the floor in their shoes, eyes,

And the women? Georgeu, the I remember, too, a Christmas Greek, had kept his word, They Eve among the Zulus. Under a sky were there. Strapping Boer girls stretched like blue silk I watched wearing white. Kanpies beneath the Zulu impia, the fighting men which bunched their flaxen hair, with shields and assegins, stamp There were also the strange wo- their way forward in battle form- men who haunt every diamond ntion, Across a huge plain they camp-girls, heavily lip-sticked, came, enormous black crescent who had been in the chorus of moons roaring their war songs. some Johannesburg revue or else Again and again they stamped been barmaids in Rhodesla or the their bare black feet in the dust East Coast,

so that the ground trembled. The A different, and much more lu- Zulu maidens, in all their ranked xurious atmosphere, two years beauty, shrilled in chorus And later, St. Moritz in the snow sea- urged the Aghters to even greater son. A dining-room filled with a deeda healthy, snow-tanned crowd, pa- Slowly, and remorselessly, the

black crescent moons came on- wards. The chanting was solemn and deliberate. Then, with one huge roar, the black flood charg- cd, one crescent moon after an- other.

And, by a miracle of discipline, It stopped clead, within a yard of the group of whites watching.

Qizer, Clárlatinas Eves;ra

Tavern DE LUXE Candles

X'MAS

CHEAP SALE

COFFEE - PERCOLATORS

FROM

$17 to $23

TABLE AND WALL LAMPS

FROM

COMPLETE WITH SHADES

$7 to $16

DON'T MISS THIS OPPORTUNITY OF

GIVING YOUR FRIENDS A REAL XMAS

PRESENT.

GILMAN & CO., LTD.

132, Nathan Rd., Kowloon.