Chapter Thirty One.
Conditional
“Another ‘whited sepulchre,’ Faugh!” said Hazel, dropping in disgust the two halves of the outwardly magnificent peach she had just broken open, but which within was a mass of squirming maggots.
“Try these,” said Dick Selmes, pulling down a bough of the tree, on which grew several, and holding it for her while she made a selection.
“I thought so,” she went on, rapidly breaking open and throwing away another, and then another. “No, I give it up. This is a bad year for peaches.”
The two were alone together among the fragrant boskiness of the fruit-laden garden. The midsummer day was hot and cloudless, yet just a puff of cool air every now and then, from the not very far distant Indian Ocean, redeemed it from downright sultriness. Birds piped and whistled away up among the leaves, but shy of showing themselves over much. There had been too much havoc wrought among their kind in defence of the fruit to encourage them to court human propinquity.
“How jolly this is!” went on Dick, looking around.
“Are you ever anything but jolly?” she asked.
“Oh yes! I can get the blues, I can tell you. For instance – ”
“For instance – when?” she repeated, as he broke off.
“For instance – well, I don’t mind saying it. That time we left Haakdoornfontein I felt anything but jolly.”
“Yet Haakdoorn isn’t a wildly exciting place at the best of times. Ah, I see. You missed the hunting.”
This was exasperating. She was in a bright, mischievous, teasing mood, but oh – how entrancing she looked, the lift of the heavily lashed eyelid, the little flash of white teeth in the bantering smile, the rich mantling of the sun-kissed, oval face.
“I missed you. Hazel, you know that perfectly well. And just think. I had you all to myself in those days, and here not. All these jokers who were here for Christmas – well, I found them a bore, for that reason.”
Christmas had just past, and on and around it several people from far and near had been to spend it with the Waybridges; and of these visitors the bulk had been men – and in proportion had seemed fully to appreciate Hazel’s attractions. Dick Selmes could not but own to himself that he had not enjoyed his Christmas over much, though he would not have let it be known for worlds.
“Hadn’t you enough of me all to yourself at Haakdoorn?” she said softly, but still with that mischievous sparkle in her eyes.
“As if that question requires any answer. Darling, you know I want you all to myself always – all through our lives. You must have seen it. Haven’t you?”
“Perhaps. I won’t tease you any more now. But you must listen to me.” The girl had grown very grave now – very earnest. Her eyes, dilated with varying emotions, were full upon his face, and the predominant emotion, was unqualified approval. “First of all, what would your father have to say?”
“The dad? Why, he’d be delighted, of course.”
“Yes, but would he? I’m not so sure. He has never heard of my existence, and would think you had been entrapped by some nobody in the course of your travels – ” Here a slight wave of colour had come over her face. “Now, I won’t have that thought of me, or said by any one.”
“But, Hazel darling,” he pleaded eagerly, “I think you are setting up a kind of – er – bogey. The old dad is the dearest old chap in the world, and a jolly sight too good to me, and for me.”
She looked at him and softened. She liked him more – more than ever – for what he had just said. Perhaps she showed it.
“I can quite believe that,” she answered. “Still, it doesn’t alter what I say.”
His face fell. So blank was it that for a moment he felt positively miserable.
“But, Hazel dearest, don’t you care for me a little bit?”
Her heart went out to him.
“Dick, you know I am very fond of you,” she answered, adding to herself, “as who could help being?” – “No – no, not yet,” putting out a hand as he made a step forward.
“But – now we are engaged,” he protested rapturously.
“We are not,” she answered, and his face fell again. “And the only condition on which we will be is the one I told you. Get your father’s consent.”
“It strikes me, Hazel, that you are forgetting I am not exactly under age. I am quite independent into the bargain.”
“All the more reason why I should refuse to be the means of bringing dissension between you. Why, it would be murderous – absolutely murderous, after what you have told me. I am not forgetting either that you have a certain position.”
“Oh, hang the ‘position’!” cried Dick. “But you are very cool and – er – judicial over it all, Hazel. If you cared as much as I do.”
“Perhaps, dear, I am speaking and acting in your own interests,” answered the girl, softly. “I am setting you a test. It might be that when you get back home again something might transpire which would make you devoutly thankful to me for having refused to allow you to engage yourself to some little nobody whom you had found amusing in the course of your wanderings.”
“Hazel! Now you hurt me.”
He looked it. There was no doubt about it that his feelings were deeply wounded, but there was a dignity about the way in which he took it that appealed to her so powerfully as well-nigh to bring about her surrender there and then.
“I didn’t mean to, God knows,” she answered earnestly and more softly still. “But I am looking at things from a sheer common-sense standpoint. You are very brave and strong, Dick, but in one way, I believe I am stronger than you. I am only putting before you a little trial of strength, of endurance. Surely you won’t shrink from that?”
“Let us understand each other, Hazel,” he said gravely, all his boyish light-heartedness gone. “You won’t engage yourself to me until I get my father’s consent?”
“That’s it.”
“But you will, conditionally, on my getting it?”
She thought a minute.
“I will wait until you do get it, or it is refused. But, Dick, understand that this doesn’t bind you in the slightest degree.”
“Oh, but it does bind me. Whoever heard of a one-sided engagement?” some of his light-heartedness returning. “I’ll write to the dear old dad on the very first opportunity.”
“Wouldn’t it be better to go yourself than to write?”
“And leave you all that time? No – no, Hazel. I’m not going to give you that chance of forgetting me.”
“Or yourself?” with a significant smile.
“Now you are repeating the offence, and I shan’t forgive you unless you give me just one k – Oh, damn!”
The change of tone, the change of attitude were in keeping, and Dick found himself in a sort of “standing at attention” rigidity, as small Jacky Waybridge came lounging down the garden path, a catapult in his hand. We fear that Dick came near wishing he had left that unwelcome urchin to the sharks on a former occasion, but that in such case he himself would not now be here – with Hazel.
“Been shooting any birds, Jacky?” said Dick. “Look. Just over there I saw a rare clump of mouse-birds light just now; over there, just this side of the mealie land.”
The spot indicated would take the small intruder fairly out of sight.
“No good, catapult’s broken.”
“Why don’t you go to the house and get another?”
“They’re all broken. Mr Selmes, couldn’t you mend it for me?”
“I’ll try. Let’s see. Ah, got a bit of reimpje about you?”
The youngster felt in his pockets.
“No, I haven’t,” he said.
“Well, you’d better cut away to the house and get one,” said Dick.
There is a modicum of cussedness, sometimes vague, sometimes more pronounced, inherent in most children.
This one had his share of it. He was fond of Hazel, and attached to his rescuer, yet there was something about the two which had aroused his infantile curiosity. When he saw them alone together – which he did pretty frequently – a sort of instinct to watch them would come uppermost in his unformed mind, and this was upon him now. So he said —
“Never mind about the catapult, Mr Selmes. I’m tired. I’ll sit and talk to you and Hazel.”
“Well, what shall we talk about, Jacky?” said Dick, making a virtue of necessity.
“Oh, let’s go on talking about – what you were talking about while I came.”
This was funny. The two looked at each other.
“But that wouldn’t interest you in the least, Jacky,” answered the girl. “In fact, you wouldn’t understand it.”
The sharp eyes of the youngster were full upon her face, and did not fail to notice that she changed colour slightly. When he himself had done something which he ought not to have done, and was taxed with it, he would change colour too; wherefore now he drew his own deductions. What could Hazel have been doing that came within that category?
“Never mind,” he said. “I won’t tell. No, I won’t.”
“Won’t tell?” repeated Hazel. “Won’t tell what, Jacky?”
“I won’t tell,” was all they could get out of him. Dick Selmes burst out laughing.
“Before you can ‘tell’ anything, kid, you must first of all have something to tell,” he said. “You’ve been talking a lot of bosh. Now, I think we’d better go in, for it must be getting on for dinner-time.” The two got up, and as they strolled along beneath the high quince hedge, hanging out round fruit, like the balls upon a Christmas tree, both hoped for an opportunity of at any rate satisfactorily closing their conversation. But it was not to be. That little wretch stuck to them like their shadow, nor did either want to inflame his curiosity by telling him positively to clear.
“Then it is to be conditional,” Dick said, just before they reached the door.
“That’s the word.”
“On the terms named?”
“Exactly on the terms named.”
“Good. I accept them – except as to the one-sided part of the business.”
“That, too, I insist upon,” she answered, with a smile and a bright nod, as she left him.
Alone, for a brief space, Dick Selmes went over in his mind the interview, so untowardly and exasperatingly interrupted, and was obliged to admit to himself that his love and admiration for Hazel Brandon were, if possible, deepened and intensified. Her beauty and bright, sweetness of disposition had fascinated and captured him, but now he had awakened to the fact that she possessed a rare depth of character indeed. He knew now that she cared for him – yes, and that very deeply; he had read it in the course of that interview by several unmistakable signs. Yet she had deliberately, and of set purpose insisted upon that conditional delay. It showed a worldly wisdom, a knowledge of human nature beyond his own, he was constrained to admit; and in every way it was creditable to her. Of the obstacle he made entirely light, for it was in reality no obstacle at all except for the period of waiting involved.
And over himself some change had come. What was it? He felt a gravity he had never felt before. The old, thistledown, light-hearted recklessness seemed to have left him. His mind, attuned to a new and set purpose, seemed to have altered, to have solidified. And yet, realising this development, he rejoiced in it. He would not have foregone it for the world. Henceforward his was a new being.
Chapter Thirty Two.
Signs and Omens
“Which way shall we go?” said Hazel. “Shall we ride over to Komgha?”
“I vote we go bang in the other direction,” answered Dick Selmes. “The township’s all clatter and dust – and altogether abominable. Mrs Waybridge was an angel of light when she cropped up and dragged me out of it.”
“Yes, you wanted some dragging, didn’t you?” was the somewhat mischievous rejoinder.
“As if I knew. Good Lord! what a narrow thing it was. And there I was, cudgelling my muddy brains for some excuse, because I thought you were staying in the town.”
The two were on horseback. They had started off for an afternoon ride together, all undecided as to where they should go. But there was one place Dick Selmes was resolved they should not go to – unless Hazel particularly wanted to, and somehow he did not think she would – and that was the township. It was full of his own sex, and he wanted the girl all to himself, to-day at any rate. He had a lively recollection of the Christmas gathering which he had not enjoyed, for the reason that then he never could get her all to himself. He had voted them a set of unmitigated bores, and, rare thing indeed with him, had become almost irritable. Yet if ever any one was what is known as a “man’s man,” that was Dick Selmes. Given the absence of Hazel on that festive occasion, he would have voted them all thundering good fellows. But – circumstances alter cases.
Since the understanding of that morning, and the compact entered into between them, a more restful feeling had come over these two; a feeling as though they belonged to each other; and though some patience was needed, at any rate there was an end to uncertainty.
“We might go round by old Umjuza’s kraal and Sampson’s store,” suggested Dick, “unless you would like to look anybody up. There are the Paynes, for instance.”
“No; I don’t want to see any one. We’ll keep to the veldt.”
“Them’s my sentiments,” cried Dick, gaily, emphasising the said gaiety by a swish of his whip that caused his steed to prance and snort. His wounded arm was quite healed by now. “What a difference there is about the veldt here; no jolly old koorhaans crowing and squawking – or a buck every now and then jumping up under your feet, not even an odd pair of blue cranes. Only those silly old bromvogels, and they wouldn’t be there either, but that even John Kafir won’t eat them.”
A pair of the great black hornbills were strutting among the sparse mimosa on the opposite slope, emitting their deep, booming grunt. But although deficient in game, the veldt was fair and pleasant to the eye, with its roll of sunlit plain and round-topped hills, and if the crowing of koorhaans or the grating cackle of the wild guinea-fowl were wanting, the cooing of doves, and the triple call of the hoepoe from the bush-grown kloofs made soft music on the slumbrous calm.
“You’ll never stand English life after this, Dick.”
“Oh yes. We can always come out here again for change. There’s more variety of sport in England; in fact, there’s something going all the year round. What do you think, dear? The dad talks about putting me up for Parliament soon.”
“A very sensible plan too.”
“But I can’t spout. And I’m pretty certain I’d promise the crowd anything it asked for. Whether it would get it is another thing.”
Hazel laughed, but she there and then mentally resolved that Sir Anson’s wish should meet with fulfilment – in certain contingencies, that is.
“What a rum thing it is to feel one’s self out of leading-strings again,” went on Dick. “But I wonder when old Greenoak will turn up here and give me marching orders, like he did at Haakdoorn. I shan’t obey this time. Though, I was forgetting, I shall have to give them to myself.”
When Harley Greenoak had returned to the Komgha he laughed to himself as he learned what had become of his charge. Twice he had ridden over and spent a day or two with the Waybridges, and from what he had seen there he judged that his responsibility was nearing its end. But the fact of his charge being in such good hands had left him free to follow out the secret investigations and negotiations in which he was then engaged, and the success or failure of which, both chances being about even, would be of momentous import.
Before Hazel could reply there was a rush of dogs, and vast snarling and barking as the brutes leapt at the horses, and one or two, incidentally, at their riders. The latter on topping a rise had come upon a large kraal, whose beehive-shaped huts stood in clusters, adjoining the square, or circular, cattle or goat pens common to each.
In a moment Dick had curled the lash of his raw-hide whip round the long, lithe body of a fine, tawny, black-muzzled greyhound, which was savagely leaping at the hind quarters of the steed ridden by Hazel. With a snarling, agonised yelp the beast dropped back howling, and for a second or two the ardour of the others seemed checked. Then they came on again.
Dick now turned his horse, and charging in among them, cut right and left with his whip. The savage pack, demoralised, retired howling, and by this time the riders were right abreast of the kraal.
The latter seemed now in a ferment. The ochre-smeared figures of women – many of them with a brown human bundle on their backs – stamping mealies in a rough wooden pestle, or smoking and gossiping in groups – now got up, chattering and laughing shrilly; while the male inhabitants of the place – quite a number – came swarming out of the huts, talking volubly in their deep-toned bass, to see what was going on. But no attempt was made to call off the dogs. These, encouraged by the presence of their owners, and an unmistakable sympathy on the part of the latter which their instinct realised, rushed with renewed savagery to the attack.
There were upwards of a score of them; some really fine specimens of the greyhound breed, tawny or white, and large withal; and now it became manifest that the evil, contemptuous barbarians were actually hounding them on. Dick’s whip seemed to have lost its effect among the snapping, frantic pack, and when one brute fastened its teeth in the tendon of the hind leg of Hazel’s steed, Dick Selmes judged it time to draw his revolver.
The effect upon the dark, jeering crowd was electric. A fierce, deep, chest-note, akin to a menacing roar, took the place of the derisive laughter with which the barbarians had been enjoying the fun. Quick as animals most of them had dived into the huts. In a trice they reappeared, and there was the glint and bristle of assegais. Truly it was a formidable-looking mob, that which confronted these two, taking a peaceful afternoon ride.
The worst of it was the latter were unable to talk the Xosa tongue. Hazel, though Colonial-born, had no knowledge of it; first, because in the Cape Colony it is rather the exception than the rule to use anything but the – now world-famed —taal in intercourse with natives; secondly, because in her part of the country there were hardly any Kafirs at all, Dick Selmes because he had never even begun to learn it.
“Try them in Dutch, Hazel,” said the latter, quickly. “Tell them if they don’t call the dogs off sharp. I’ll shoot the best. Then I’ll begin to shoot them. First shot I fire, you start off home at full gallop, and never mind about me.”
She obeyed. At the sound of her voice there was a momentary lull, then the jeers blared out afresh. Dick Selmes felt his blood fairly boil as he realised that they were actually mimicking her. Then as the dogs made another rush, he dropped the muzzle of his revolver and shot the foremost, fair and square through the shoulders. The beast uttered a feeble yap and rolled over kicking. The rest hung back.
But its owner, a hulking, ochre-smeared savage, emitted a howl and rushed forth from the crowd, a long tapering assegai in his hand poised for a throw. Dick’s revolver covered him in a moment. The Kafir, for all his blind rage, realised that it was pointed straight. He had seen what execution its wielder could do, wherefore he pulled up sharp. Kafirs are sworn dog fanciers, and not infrequently have more affection for their dogs than their children; but this particular one had still more affection for his life, wherefore he halted. Then both knew that the situation was saved.
Slowly, warily, they rode on – on, not back; for Dick bore well in mind Harley Greenoak’s precept, never to let savages think you are afraid of them; the Kafirs hurling after them all manner of jeering abuse, which it was quite as well that Hazel, at any rate, did not understand.
“We are well out of that,” said Dick, reloading the discharged chamber from some extra cartridges loose in his pocket. “The infernal scoundrels! Hazel, darling, I’m afraid I have let you in for a considerable scare.”
“I wasn’t scared to speak of. Dear, but you did bring it off well. I shall – should – always feel so safe with you.”
“Shall – should?” he repeated, looking at her. “No, there’s no occasion to correct the grammar. Let it stand as at first.”
The girl made no reply, but her face, half turned away from him, was wondrously soft. Yes, indeed – that which she had found wanting in him was abundantly supplied now, she was thinking. She almost felt compunction for the conditions she had imposed upon him that morning – and yet – and yet – was it not sound sense, after all? But what if it should fail – would she still have it in her to stand firm? Well, of that she did not care to think – as yet.
“We are nearly at Sampson’s store now,” said Dick, when they had gone a couple of miles further. “Shall we go on and have a yarn with the old chap, or take a round and get home, for it’s just as well not to pass that hospitable hornets’ nest again?”
“Just as you like,” she answered, then added: “Let’s go right on, and have a chat with old Sampson. It’s early yet. What’s this?”
A body of Kafirs appeared in sight, coming down the road towards them. They seemed about thirty in number, and the glint of assegais was plain, even from these. Now, Kafirs were not wont to patrol the roads in armed bodies. They travelled normally in twos and threes, carrying the usual kerries. Yet these were many and armed.
Dick Selmes was conscious of a tightening of the heart. What did it mean, at that time of day, when the atmosphere was rife with disquieting reports?
“We must go through them,” he said. “There’s no other course short of turning and running away. And that wouldn’t do, you know.”
“Of course not,” said Hazel, who was really feeling very anxious. “I declare by now I hate the sight of these horrible wretches. I never want to set eyes on one again.”
“Well, you won’t in England,” said Dick, slily. “There are none there, you know.”
They were in among the group now, which parted to make way for them. Two or three gave them the good day, but it was in a derisive way, and asked for tobacco. Dick shook his head to signify that he had none, for he did not choose to stop in the middle of that wild-looking crowd, after recent experience. The savages leered at Hazel with bold stare, and muttered to each other. Again it was as well that neither of the two understood a word of what they said.
“What on earth have they got all those ox-tails for, I wonder?” she remarked, when they were through. For each had been the bearer of several severed tails, with the hide on, raw and red.
“Probably to make soup with,” laughed Dick. “Contact with civilisation must have taught them the luxury of the kitchen as well as that of the cellar. There’s the store.”
As they drew near the long, low, brick building, roofed with corrugated iron, the store-keeper came out. He was a tall, elderly man, with a grizzled beard. Dick had met him before.
“Why, it’s Mr Selmes,” he said, putting out a hand. “How’ do. How’ do, Miss.” Then again to Dick, “Where’s Greenoak?”
“Oh, he’s away on some mysterious errand of his own.”
“I’m afraid he’ll go on one o’ them once too often. I’m afraid I’m in a poor way to entertain ladies, but I’ve got the coffee kettle on, but only tinned milk.”
Hazel declared she wanted nothing better, and Sampson, disappearing inside, fished out a ricketty chair.
“You’ll be better here nor in there,” he said. “Kafirs and raw-hides, and so on, don’t make the inside of a shanty pleasant.”
As he went in again Dick followed him.
“What’s your idea as to the state of things, Sampson?” he said.
“My idea? There’ll be hell let loose, d’rectly. Nothing’ll stop it. You’d better warn Waybridge, from me, to trek.”
“No!”
“Yes. See. None of ’em come round trading now; no, not even for drinks. Just now, though, I had a robustious mob of Sandili’s Gaikas round here buying ox-tails. There’s been a trade in them lately.”
“What do they want them for, eh? Ox-tail soup?”
The other looked at him pityingly – then emitted a dry guffaw.
“Soup? War fal-lals, that’s what they’re for. And there are other signs.”
“Now I come to think of it, I’ve seen them before, in the Transkei.”
“Yes. You did service there with the Police, I’m told. Well, we don’t want to scare the young lady, but you tip the office from me to Waybridge to clear. There’ll be hell in a week or two at the outside.”
“I’ll tell him. But are you going to remain on here?”
“I dare say. They won’t hurt me. It wouldn’t pay them for one thing. Have a drop of grog?”
“Thanks.”
The store-keeper fished out a bottle of Boer brandy – of antipodal quality, of course, to that which he retailed in the native trade – and then they went outside and rejoined Hazel. She, drinking her coffee, narrated their experience at the wayside kraal.
“That’s Ngombayi’s crowd,” pronounced Sampson, “and they’re a bad lot. They’re a bit disturbed now, but they’ll quiet down in a week or two.”
Dick Selmes, contrasting this cool utterance with the prediction he had just heard, felt amused, but did not show it. Then, after a little more chat, they took their leave, returning by a devious route, so as to avoid the objectionable kraal.