Renshaw Fanning's Quest: A Tale of the High Veldt

Chapter Thirty Five.
The Price of Blood

After the explanations attendant upon Christopher Selwood’s awkward discovery, relations between Violet and her entertainers became somewhat strained.

Spoiled and petted ever since she could remember, bowed down to as a very goddess as she grew up in her fascinating girlhood; accustomed to the most unbounded admiration, and undivided withal, Violet Avory was now receiving almost her first check.

It was all very well for her host to wonder “what the deuce she could see in the fellow,” the fact remained that her love for Maurice Sellon engrossed her whole headstrong and passionate nature, and opposition served no other purpose than to rivet her determination.

To reasoning she was deaf. All appeals to her sense of self-respect rendered her sullen – but underlying this sullenness lurked a dogged intensity of resolution. If ever a woman was on the road to ruin Violet Avory was that woman, and she would be lucky did she escape the final goal.

The days that followed were tolerably uncomfortable for all concerned. Violet sulked. She was an adept in the art of putting on an air of outraged innocence, and managed to make everybody supremely uncomfortable accordingly. She kept to her room as much as she conveniently could, and when she did venture out she shunned Marian’s companionship, taking her solitary wanderings in secluded places. Her hostess, angered and disgusted, after one or two further attempts at reasoning with her, fell in with her mood, and left her severely to herself. But kind-hearted Chris – with whom she had always been a great favourite – persisted in declaring that she was not the one to blame in the matter – that she was rather deserving of sympathy – and he accordingly was the only one to whom she condescended to unbend.

She was so sorry to be such a nuisance to everybody, she would say, putting on the most winningly plaintive air for his benefit. Had she not better go at once instead of waiting for opportunities, which might not occur for weeks? She would be quite safe, and had no fear of travelling by herself. She was only a “wet blanket” in the house, and an intolerable burden – she could see that. Everybody was so strange now – as if she had done something awful. He, Christopher, was the only one who ever gave her a kind word, or seemed to care whether she was alive or dead. And then out would come the daintiest little lace handkerchief in the world, and, of course, poor old soft-hearted Christopher felt extremely foolish – as she intended he should – and wilder than ever with the absent Sellon, which she did not intend.

Then he would endeavour to reassure her and reiterate again and again that nobody blamed her, which, of course, did not impose upon her, for with the freemasonry existing among women Violet knew better; knew that she was in fact the very one whom her hostess indeed did think the most to blame. She must not hurry away from them like that, he would say. Things would come right again – it was only a temporary misunderstanding, and they would all be as jolly again together as before. And Violet in her secret heart rejoiced – for any day might bring back her lover. However great was her apparent anxiety to relieve them of her presence it would not do to be hurried away just in time to miss him. That would be too awful.

Her relief at the welcome reprieve would not, however, have been so great had she been aware of a certain fact as to which she had been designedly kept in ignorance. Selwood had written to Maurice, directing the letter to the principal hotel of a town through which the treasure seekers were bound to pass on their return. He had taken steps to ensure its immediate delivery, or return to himself if not claimed within a given period, and in it she asked Sellon not to come to Sunningdale until he had had an interview with the writer – at any place he, Sellon, might choose to appoint. No, assuredly, her equanimity might have been a trifle disturbed had she known of that. So the days went by.

One afternoon she was indulging in a solitary stroll, according to her recent habit. It was nearly sundown. She walked along absently, her dress sweeping the crickets in chirruping showers from the long dank herbage under the shade of the quince hedge. She crossed, the deserted garden, and gained the rough wicket-gate opening out of it on the other side. Down the narrow bridle-path, winding through the tangled brake she moved, still absently as in a dream. And she was in a dream, for it was down this path that they two had walked that first morning – ah! so long ago now.

She stood upon the river bank, on the very spot where they had stood together. The great peaks soaring aloft were all golden in the slanting sunset. The shout and whistle of the Kaffir herds bringing in their flocks sounded from the sunlit hillside, mellowed by distance. Doves cooed softly in the thorn-brake – their voices mingling with the fantastic whistle of the yellow thrush and the shrill chatter of a cloud of finks flashing in and out of their hanging nests above the water. She stood thus in the radiant evening light, trying to infuse her mind with a measure of its peace.

But above the voices of Nature and of evening came another sound – the dull thud of hoofs. Some one was riding up the bridle-path on the other side of the river. Heavens! Could it be – ?

The thought set her every pulse tingling. Nearer, nearer came the hoof strokes.

The horseman emerged from the brake. Tired and travel-worn he looked, so too did his steed. The latter plunged knee-deep into the cool stream, and drank eagerly, gratefully, of the flowing waters.

But the glint of the white dress on the bank opposite caught the rider’s eye. Up went his head. So too did that of the horse, jerked up suddenly by a violent wrench of the bridle. There was a prodigious splashing, stifling the horseman’s exclamation, as he plunged through the drift, and the water flew in great jets around. Then scarce had the dripping steed touched the opposite bank than the rider sprang to the ground and the waiting, expectant figure was folded tight in his arms.

“Oh, Maurice, darling, it is you at last!” she murmured, clinging to him in his close embrace. And then she felt that it was good indeed to live.

“Me? Rather! And ‘at last’ is about the word for it. And so my little girl has been waiting here for me ever since I went away. Confess! Hasn’t she?”

“Yes.”

“Of course. This was always our favourite retreat, wasn’t it? Still, I thought just the very moment I happened to arrive you would be anywhere else – with the rest of the crowd. It’s just one’s luck as a rule. But mine is better this time – rather!”

“But – but – where’s Renshaw?” she asked, lifting her head, as she suddenly became alive to the other’s non-appearance. Sellon looked rather blank.

“H’m – ha! – Renshaw? Well – he isn’t here – hasn’t come, anyhow.”

“But – is he coming on after you?” she said, awake to the inconvenience of their first meeting being suddenly broken in upon.

“M – well. The fact is, Violet darling, you don’t care about anything or anybody now we are together again? The long and the short of it is, poor Fanning has rather come to grief!”

“Come to grief!” she echoed, wonderingly.

“Well – yes. Fact is, I’m afraid the poor chap will never show up here again. He got hit – bowled over by those cursed Bushmen or Korannas, or whatever they were. We had to give them leg-bail, I can tell you. They pinked him with one of their poisoned arrows. He’s done for.”

“Oh! Poor Renshaw!” cried Violet, in horror. “But you – you are unhurt, dearest? You have – have come back to me safe!”

“Safe as a church. I got a trifle damaged too. Sprained my ankle just at the wrong time – those Bushmen devils coming on hard in our rear. Touch and go, I’ll tell you all about it by-and-bye. I shan’t tell the others about Fanning all at once – break it gradually, you know. So don’t you cut in with it.”

“Poor Renshaw!” That was all. In those two words she dismissed the memory of the man but for whose unselfish heroism the lover in whose embrace she nestled so restfully, so gladsomely, would now be lying in ghastly fragments among the weird mountains of that far-away land. “Poor Renshaw!” Such was his epitaph at her lips. Truly her all-absorbing clandestine passion had exercised no improving, no softening influence upon Violet Avory – as, indeed, how should it? – for was it not the intensely selfish absorption of an intensely selfish nature! “Poor Renshaw!”

And the man – he who owed his life to the other many times over, but never so much as in the last instance – what of him?

Nothing! For from such a nature as his nothing was to be expected. This modern Judas, unlike his prototype, was prepared to enjoy to the full the price of blood. No compunction on that head troubled him.

“Oh, Maurice. I must warn you!” cried Violet, suddenly. “Everything has come out.”

He started then. A grey scared look came over his face. His conscience and his mind flew back to those grim, iron-bound deserts.

“Everything?” he stammered, blankly.

“Yes, dear. About ourselves, I mean. I can’t imagine how, but it has. They have been leading me such a life. Hilda has been perfectly hateful. The way in which she has treated me is absolutely scandalous. And Marian – sanctimonious sheep! Pah! I hate them all,” she broke off, her eyes flashing.

“My poor darling. But how do you suppose it happened? You haven’t been leaving any letters about?”

“No – no – no,” she interrupted quickly. “No, no. My belief is – she —she– has found out where I – I am – where you are – and has written to them.”

His face grew dark.

“That devil!” he muttered between his teeth. “That she-devil would do anything – anything.”

“I want to warn you, Maurice. The only way out of the difficulty, while we are here, is for us to pretend to care nothing about each other – that the past was only a matter of a passing flirtation, and not to be taken seriously. Do you follow my plan?”

“Yes; but I don’t like it.”

“That can’t be helped. Do you suppose I like it? But it will not be for long. I am going away very soon – it might be any day now – home again. Then we can make up for the present hateful restraint. What is to prevent you returning by the same steamer? You will, Maurice, darling – you will – will you not?” she urged, clinging closer to him, and looking up into his eyes with a piteously hungering expression, as though fearing to read there the faintest forestalment of a negative. But her fears were groundless.

“Will I? I should rather think I would. Listen, Violet. This mad expedition of poor Fanning’s has turned up trumps. I have that about me at this moment which should be worth two or three hundred thousand pounds at least. Only think of it. We have the world at our feet – a new life before us. You are, as you say, going home. But it will be to a real home!”

She looked into his eyes – her gaze seemed to burn into his – her breast was heaving convulsively.

They understood each other.

“Do you mean it, Maurice?” she gasped. “My darling, do you really and truly mean it?”

“Mean it? Of course I do. It was with no other object I went risking my life a dozen times a day in that ghastly desert. With the wealth that is ours we can afford to defy all the world – that she-devil included. And we will.”

“Yes, we will.”

Their lips met once more, and thus the compact was sealed. Alas – poor Violet! She had given herself over, bound, into the enemy’s hand. She had sold herself, and the price paid was the price of blood – even the blood of him who had sacrificed his own life for her sake.

Chapter Thirty Six.
Sellon’s Last Lie

But that he held the key to it in the shape of Violet’s communication, the reserve, not to say coldness, of his reception by the family, would have astonished Sellon not a little. Now, however, it in no wise disconcerted him; rather, it struck him in the light of a joke. He had got his cue, and meant to act up to it.

So when his somewhat involuntary host asked if he would mind giving him a private interview, he replied with the jolliest laugh in the world —

“Certainly, certainly, my dear fellow. Delighted, Well, Miss Effie” – as that young person ran against them in the hall – “here I am, back again to tease you, you see.”

“Where’s Uncle Renshaw, Mr Sellon?” said the child.

Maurice stared. The straight question – the straight look accompanying it, disconcerted him for a moment.

“Renshaw! Oh, coming on,” he answered quickly, “coming on. Be here soon, I dare say.”

He had made the same sort of reply to the same inquiry on the part of his host. He thought he had done with the subject. It irritated him to be called upon to repeat the same lie over and over again.

“By the way, Mr Sellon,” began the latter, “did you get the letter I sent you at Maraisdorp?”

“Mister Sellon!” Maurice started. Old Chris, was taking the thing seriously indeed, he thought with an inward laugh.

“Not I,” he answered. “Probably for the best of all possible reasons. I didn’t come through Maraisdorp, or anywhere near it.”

“Before going any further, I want you to look at this,” said Selwood, unlocking a small safe and taking out the unfortunate missive. “Wait – excuse me one moment, I want you to look attentively at the direction first.”

He still held the envelope. Maurice took one glance at the address – the handwriting – and as he did so his face was not pleasant to behold.

“All right. I know that calligraphy well enough. Ought to by this time. Ha, ha! So she has been favouring you with her peculiar views on things in general and me in particular. You ought to feel honoured.”

“I? Favouring me?” echoed the other, in a state of amazement.

“Yes – you. I suppose the communication is an interesting one.”

“My dear Sellon, look at the address again,” said Christopher, handing him the envelope.

“By Jove! It’s for me, after all,” looking at it again. “What a treat! Why the devil can’t the woman write legibly!” he muttered. Then aloud: “Why, it looks exactly as if it was addressed to you, Selwood.”

“Ha! I am very glad indeed to hear you say that. I thought the same. You see, I’d got it mixed up among a crowd of other letters, and opened it by mistake.”

“The devil you did!”

“Yes. I can only tell you how sorry I am, and how I have spent life cursing my blundering asinine stupidity ever since. But there is another thing. I feel bound in honour to tell you that I didn’t become aware of the mistake until I had run my eye down the first page. You will notice there is no beginning. I turned to the signature for enlightenment; but between the first page and the signature I did not read a word.”

Sellon burst into a roar of laughter – apparently over the mistake, in reality as he realised how quickly he would be in a position to turn the enemy’s flank.

“My dear fellow, don’t say another word about it. The joke is an exceedingly rich one. See what comes of our names being so infernally alike. Two Sells – eh? But you don’t suppose I am going to share in your entertainment over this charming epistle? Not much. Just oblige me with a match.”

“Wait, wait,” cried the other. “Better read it this time – or, at any rate, as much of it as it was my misfortune to see.”

“H’m! Well, here goes,” said Maurice, jerking the letter out of the envelope as though it would burn his fingers, “Quite so,” he went on, with a bitter sneer, running his eye down the sheet. “That’s about enough of this highly entertaining document, the rest can be taken as read, like a petition to the House of Commons. That match, if you please. Thanks. I need hardly remind you, Selwood,” he went on, watching the flaming sheet curling up in the grate, “I need hardly remind you how many men there are in this world who marry the wrong woman. I dare say I needn’t remind you either that a considerable percentage of these are entrapped and defrauded into the concern by lies and deception, against which it is next to impossible for any man to guard – at all events any young man. When to this I add that there are women in this world who for sheer, gratuitous, uniform fiendishness of disposition could give the devil points and beat him at an easy canter. I think I’ve said about enough for all present purposes.”

“This is an awkward and most unpleasant business,” said Selwood. “Excuse me if I feel bound to refer once more to that letter. The – er – writer makes reference by name to Miss Avory, who is a guest in my house, and a relation of my wife’s – and that, too, in a very extraordinary manner, to put it as mildly as I can.”

“My dear fellow, that’s a little way of hers. I can assure you I am most awfully put out that you should have been annoyed about the business. As to the mistake, don’t give it another thought.”

“How did Mrs – er – the writer – know Miss Avory was here?”

This was a facer – not so much the question as the fact that the knowledge of Violet’s whereabouts on the part of the writer implied that he, Sellon, had not met her there at Sunningdale for the first time. But he hoped the other might not notice this side of it.

“That’s beyond me,” he answered. “How did she know I was here? For I need hardly tell you we don’t correspond every mail exactly. I can only explain it on the score that more people know Tom Fool than T.F. knows; that there are, I suppose, people in this neighbourhood who hail from the old country, or have relations there, and the postage upon gossip is no higher than that upon business.”

“You will not mind my saying that it is a pity we did not know you were a married man.”

“‘Had been,’ you should have said, not ‘were.’ Not but what legally I am still tied up fast enough – chained and bound – which has this advantage, that it keeps a man from all temptation to make a fool of himself a second time in his life. Still, it doesn’t count otherwise.”

“No, I suppose not,” said the other, significantly. “Perhaps it doesn’t keep a man from making a fool of other people, though.”

“Now, my dear Selwood, what the very deuce are you driving at? For Heaven’s sake let us be straight and open with each other.”

“Well, I mean this. It’s a most unpleasant thing to have to say to any man. But, you see, Miss Avory is our guest, and a relation as well. You must know as well as I do that your attentions to her were very – er – marked.”

One of those jolly laughs which has so genuine a ring, and which Maurice knew so well when to bring in, greeted this speech.

“Look here, Selwood,” he said, “I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but the fact is you don’t understand women in the least. You are quite on the wrong tack, believe me. Miss Avory doesn’t care the ghost of a straw for me, or my ‘attentions.’ You must remember that we both knew – er – the same people in England. There, you must fill in the outline. I am not at liberty to say more. But there won’t be much time to put the matter to the test, for I’ve got to leave you again to-morrow.”

To Christopher Selwood’s honourable mind no doubt suggested itself as to the genuineness of this explanation. There was a frank straightforwardness about it which, with a man of his character, was bound to tell. He felt intensely relieved. But to this feeling there succeeded one of humiliation. Had he not made an inordinate fuss over the concern at the start? Had he not raised a veritable storm in a teapot, and set everybody by the ears for weeks? Had he not in his anxiety to unburden himself abdicated his own mature judgment in favour of the less reliable decision of his wife? In short, had he not made a consummate ass of himself all round? Of course he had.

“By the way, Selwood, there is one thing I want to tell you about now we are together,” said Maurice, after a pause. “You and the others were asking about Fanning just now. The fact is, he is not with me, but I couldn’t say so without entering into further explanations, which would certainly have alarmed the ladies. We found our ‘Valley of the Eye’ all right, and a deuce of a job it was. Pheugh! I wouldn’t go on that jaunt again for twice the loot. The ‘Eye’ is a genuine concern, I can tell you – a splendid stone – Fanning has got it. Well, we spent the day picking up a few other stones, and just as we were clearing out we were attacked by a lot of Bushmen or Korannas, or whatever they were, and had to run. By Jove! it was touch and go. They pressed us hard until dark, and then we had to separate – to throw them off the scent, don’t you see? We agreed to meet at his place – that is, if we were to meet anywhere again in this world. Well, I had an awful time of it in those infernal mountains, dodging the niggers. I couldn’t show my nose in the daytime, and didn’t know the country well enough to make much headway at night, and I nearly starved. It took me more than a week before I could fetch the river, and get through to Fanning’s place, and when I got there he hadn’t turned up. But I found a letter which had been sent by special messenger, requiring me at Cape Town, sharp, about some infernal but important law business, and I’m on my way there now. I left a note for Fanning, telling him what to do with my share of the swag when it came to dividing, for we hadn’t had time to attend to that then, and except a few small stones he has it all on him. It’ll be something good, I guess. I dare say he’s turned up at home again long before this. He was just laughing in his sleeve at the idea of a few niggers like that thinking to run him to earth. And he seems to know that awful country like ABC. I never saw such a fellow.”

“That’s bad news, Sellon, right bad news,” said the other, shaking his head. “Renshaw has been all his life at that sort of thing, so we must hope he’ll turn up all right. But – the pitcher that goes too often to the pump, you know.”

“Well, I need hardly say I devoutly hope he will, for if not I shall be the loser to a very large extent, as all the swag is with him. But I somehow feel certain we shall hear from him almost directly.”

We may be sure that in narrating his adventures that evening to the household at large Sellon in no wise minimised his experiences of the undertaking, or his own exploits. It is only fair to say that he really had undergone a very hard time before he had succeeded in striking the river at the drift where they had crossed; and, indeed, it was more by good luck than management that he had reached it at all. And during his narrative one listener was noting every word he said, with breathless attention. Whenever he looked up, Marian Selwood’s blue eyes were fixed upon his face. He began to feel very uncomfortable beneath that steady searching gaze.

But he felt more so when, his story finished, Marian began to ply him with questions. “A regular cross-examination, confound it!” he thought. And then, by way of a diversion, he went to fetch the few diamonds which he had kept apart to show as the sole result of the expedition. These were examined with due interest.

The fact of Sellon arriving alone created no suspicion in the minds of Selwood and his wife, nor yet uneasiness. Was he not a newly imported Briton – and to that extent a greenhorn? If he could find his way out and successfully dodge his pursuers, was it likely that a seasoned adventurer such as Renshaw would fare any worse? So on the latter’s account they felt but small anxiety.

Not so Marian, however. A terrible suspicion had taken shape within her mind during Sellon’s narrative. “He has murdered him!” was her conclusion. “He has murdered him,” she repeated to herself during a night of sleepless agony – such as a strong concentrative nature will sometimes be called upon to undergo. But she kept her suspicions to herself – for the present, at any rate. She was helpless. What could she do? There was nothing to go upon.

Then, on the morrow, Sellon took his departure, as he had announced his intention of doing, and the equanimity with which the circumstance was regarded by Violet, together with their indifferent demeanour towards each other on the previous evening, completely lulled any suspicions which might have lingered in Christopher Selwood’s mind; confirming as it did the other’s frank and straightforward explanation.

For his wife had not yet told him all that had transpired between herself and Violet.