Now as I sat there, that still and radiant afternoon, in the sylvan
wildness of our shaded resting-place, whose cool gloom contrasted well
with the golden warmth of the sunlight beyond, I was rather more
disposed for silence than speech. I was thinking, and the subject
matter of my thoughts was all unalloyed with any misgiving of foreboding
that should tarnish its brightness. I was realising Beryl's presence,
and all that it meant to me. There she was, within a couple of yards of
me, and the mere consciousness of this was all-sufficing. I was
contrasting, too, this wondrous change which had come into my life--such
a joy of living, such a new awakening to its possibilities. It seemed I
was hardly the same man. I who had hitherto gone through life in a
neutral-tinted sort of way, content to exist from day to day among
neutral-tinted surroundings, with, as I thought hitherto, a happy
immunity from all violent interests or emotions. And now, by an almost
magical wave of a wizard wand, I had been transported to this fair land,
to sunlight from gloom, to a golden awakening from a drab slumbrous
acquiescence in a bovine state of existence, which supplied the physical
wants, leaving all others untouched. And the magic which had wrought
this upheaval--
"Well? A penny for your thoughts."
I turned to the speaker. It was perhaps as well that the child was with
us, or I don't know what I might have been led into saying, probably
prematurely, and would thus have tumbled down my own bright castles in
the air.
"He's thinking of his pipe," said Iris mischievously. "Brian always
gets into a brown study too when he's plunged in smoke. Beryl, I think
we must make him put it out."
"Don't be a little barbarian, Iris," I answered, knocking the ashes out
of the offending implement. "The fact is, I was thinking of what a
blessed instrument of Providence was the prow of the _Kittiwake_ when it
knocked my sculling boat to matchwood in mid-Channel and brought me
here. That was all."
"Oh yes. You were thinking you'd like to be back in that smoky old
London of yours, and how slow we all are," retorted Iris. "Trask's
always crowding London down our throats. I hate the very sound of its
name. It must be a beastly hole. I always ask him why he doesn't go
back there if he's so fond of it."
"I should say _Mr._ Trask, Iris," I said, with a sly glance at Beryl.
"Ach!" exclaimed the child disgustedly, throwing a handful of grass
stalks at me.
After all, we were only enjoying a lazy Sunday afternoon, talking
nonsense, as people will at such times--anyhow, indulging in no rational
conversation worth chronicling. And Beryl and I would engage in a
playful argument on some unimportant trifle, and Iris, with child-like
restlessness, would wander about, now throwing a stone into a water-hole
to scare a mud turtle floating with its head on the surface, or peer
about from bush to bush trying to discover a bird's nest; and at last as
the afternoon wore on we started to retrace our steps homeward.
It will always linger in my memory, that peaceful, utterly uneventful
stroll. The flaming wheel of the westering sun was drawing down to the
farther ridge as we came in sight of the tree-embowered homestead, with
a soft blue smoke-reek or two curling up into the still air. The bleat
of the returning flocks was borne to us from the distance; and,
approaching along a bush path which should converge with ours, came half
a dozen Kafirs of both sexes, walking single file, the red ochre
colouring their blankets and persons harmonising not uneffectively with
the prevailing green of the surroundings, while the full tones of their
melodious language--the deep bass of the males and the rich pleasing
inflection of women's voices as they conversed--added an additional note
of completeness to the closing beauty of a typical African day. And
within my mind was the all-pervading thought that this day was but the
beginning of many such; that the next, and the morrow, and the day
after, that would be brightened and illuminated by the same sweet
companionship--even that of her who was now beside me; that each day's
occupation would be sweetened and hallowed by the thought that we were
dwellers beneath the same roof--and then--and then--who could tell? Ah,
it was one of those periods that come to some of us at a time in our
lives when imagination is fresh, and heart and mind unseared by
shattered illusions, and the corroding gall of latter days not even so
much as suspected then.
"Hullo!" I exclaimed, catching sight of a third figure strolling beside
Brian and his father, "Who's that? Looks like Trask."
"Yes, it is," assented Beryl.
The appearance of the stranger seemed to mar the harmony of the
situation to my mind. I did not like Trask. He was one of those men
who, wherever they find themselves, never give any one a chance of
forgetting their presence; no, not even for a moment. When Trask
appeared at Gonya's Kloof--which, by the way, was the name of the
Mattersons' farm--why, there was no possibility of overlooking the fact,
for he simply monopolised the whole conversation. He was a man of about
my own height and build, and three or four years my senior, on the
strength of which, and of having about that amount of colonial
experience, he chose to assume towards my humble self a good-humouredly
contemptuous and patronising manner, which to me was insufferable. Not
infrequently, too, he would try his hand at making me a butt for his
exceedingly forced and laboured wit, which is a thing I don't take. He
was a neighbour of twelve miles or so, where he farmed--or was supposed
to farm--his own place, and was reputed well off. To crown his other
offences in my eyes, he was a bachelor, and was a precious deal too fond
of coming over to Gonya's Kloof on any or no pretext.
Turning from his greeting to the girls--a greeting to my mind dashed
with a perfectly unwarrantable tone of familiarity--he opened on me.
"Ha, Holt, getting more into the way of things now, I suppose? You'll
soon know your way about. Things take a little getting into at first--
ha-ha!"
This in a sort of bray, accompanied by a condescending expression.
Catching Brian's eye, I discerned a killing twinkle therein.
"Why, Trask," he said in his quiet way, "Holt's got into the way of
things about twice as quick as any imported man I ever knew."
"Yes. Twice as quick," repeated Beryl, in emphatic assent.
I fancy Trask didn't like this--he looked as if he didn't; but I did,
though of course I made no sign either way. Now all this was petty, and
by every rule I ought to have been superior to any such trivial
annoyances. But bear in mind that I make no claim to be a hero; indeed,
I propose in this narrative to set down my own weaknesses with a candid
and impartial hand. And I intensely disliked Trask.
The latter proceeded to make himself at home. Of course he was going to
stay the evening, equally of course when we sat down to table he must
needs plant himself on the other side of Beryl, and the only thing that
kept him from entirely monopolising her was that he could not bring
himself to allow the attention of any one else in the room to stray for
many moments from himself, and as usual the conversation consisted of
Trask, with an occasional monosyllable of assent or dissent interjected
elsewhere. So hidebound was the self-complacency of Trask that even
George found it profitless to cheek him with any effect, although in
justice to George I am bound to say he tried his level best.
"What stay are you making, Holt?" brought out Trask, by way of varying
the conversation.
Now this sort of query propounded to a guest right in the eye of his
entertainers has always struck me as the very acme of idiotic
tactlessness, and about on a par with asking an acquaintance of twenty
minutes' standing whether he's married. Yet nothing is more common to
encounter than both forms of foolishness. But before I could frame an
adequate reply Brian answered for me.
"He's staying on altogether, Trask. We're going to put him up to the
ropes."
"Eh? Altogether? What? Going to fix up in this country then?"
I nodded, for I could not speak. I had just caught Brian's eye, and the
expression therein was too much for my feelings. I should have exploded
had I attempted speech, for the blank astonishment on Trask's face was
too comical. He looked about as happy under the announcement as though
somebody had just begun to open fire upon him with shrapnel. But he
said something about "the more the merrier," which, I fear, was not a
genuine expression of sentiment in the present instance.
"Pass the quince jam, please, Kenrick."
Clear and unconcerned rose Iris' voice. Every one stared, while Brian
emitted a subdued whistle.
"Hullo, young woman, you're getting on," he said.
The little girl grinned with mischievous delight, showing two extremely
pretty rows of white teeth.
"Oh, it's all right," she said. "We've arranged all that. He's my big
brother now, hey, Kenrick?"
"Why, certainly," I confirmed gravely, but with more inward merriment
over Trask's expression of countenance. Indeed, the possible
implication conveyed by the statement was calculated to evolve some
sensation all round. Even Brian looked puzzled for a moment, but only
for a moment.
"And when did you confer that supreme honour upon him, Iris?" he said.
"This afternoon. He's much too good a chap to go on mistering him,"
answered this impudent child, with a decisive nod of her pretty head.
"Anyhow, we're not going to do it, are we, Beryl?"
"I say, Iris, you're making me blush like the mischief, you know," I put
in. "Well, it's consoling to know that one's trumpeter isn't dead."
"Ha-ha-ha! May I ask, Miss Matterson, whether you are included in this
newly formed--ha--fraternity?" said Trask in his most asinine tones; but
then he was always a tactless fool.
"Call it the Confraternity of the Shipwrecked Mariners," said Brian,
possibly in order to save Beryl the trouble of answering the idiotic
question. And as though to render the diversion more complete still,
something between an exclamation and a groan escaped from the master of
the house at the other end of the table.
"Why, what is it, father?" cried Beryl, half starting up in alarm.
"Nothing, dear. Only this confounded rheumatism. Am all ache from head
to foot. Sharper twinge than usual--couldn't help singing out. Must
have caught a chill on top of it."
"Father, you must go to bed at once," said Beryl decisively. "Brian and
I will come and look after you."
"Well, I think I will. Good-night everybody. Trask, you'll excuse me."
Septimus Matterson was, as he said, anything but well, and his early
retirement rather put a damper on the evening from Trask's point of
view, especially as Beryl was out of the room looking after her father.
Moreover, Trask prided himself on his capacity for singing comic songs,
which he accompanied himself, and, to give the devil his due, uncommonly
well. But under the circumstances there was no demand for this form of
entertainment to-night, and it was rather earlier than usual when we
found ourselves alone together, he and I, for he had needed no pressure
to be induced to stay the night, and had been allotted a shakedown in
the same room with me.
Now, Trask was one of those men--of whom there are plenty, and women
too--who are entirely different when there is no gallery to play to; in
a word, Trask alone with one was entirely different to Trask showing off
before a crowd, and in fact might have been taken for an ordinarily
decent fellow, before you became alive to a little trick he had of
engaging you in what would seem at the time quite an interesting
conversation or discussion, only to reproduce with variations any idea
you might so have expressed, in order to turn you into ridicule when he
should next get an audience. But I, who had already experienced this
idiosyncrasy, confined conversation with its exploiter to the merest
commonplace, wherefore conversation soon languished. Trask was asleep,
and I was just drowsing off, when a tap at the door and Brian's voice
started me wide awake again.
"What's the row? Anything wrong?" I said.
"Wrong? Yes, very much wrong," was the answer, and striking a match he
proceeded to light my candle.