"Hullo, Kenrick. What's the row?" sang out Brian, even before he had
got down from the driving seat. "Man, but you do look sick."
"He just does," echoed Iris from the back, herself as yet hardly
visible.
A stranger who had been seated beside Brian now got down.
"Mr Holt, isn't it?" he said. "Glad to meet you. I've heard so much
about you."
The address was frank and friendly, the aspect of the speaker
prepossessing. I strove to respond with suitable cordiality, and while
doing so a resolve flashed lightning-like through my mind. I was giving
myself away by dwelling too much on this direful change. Well, I would
not.
"Oh, I'm all jolly," I said, with forced carelessness. "Think I got a
touch of the sun yesterday. All right again now."
The while I was helping to extract the other occupants of the Cape
cart--first Iris, then Beryl. Her quick, solicitous glance as we
clasped hands was not lost on me, nor was the tact wherewith she
refrained from adding her comments upon my personal appearance. Then
George got himself out, looking very sobered and subdued, and quite
different to the impudent mischievous pup of so short a while back.
"Where's the dad?" said Brian, looking up from his outspanning. "He's
not seedy, too, is he?"
"Not a bit. He's down in the further land. Ah, here he comes. By
Jove, Brian, you've had rather a load," I went on, as I helped in the
extraction of numerous bundles, and in the casting loose of the luggage
lashed on behind. I must be doing something, I felt; talking too,
otherwise the contrast between this return as I had pictured it hardly
twenty-four hours ago and as it now was, would have been too forcibly
brought home. Then, even though others were by, I would have managed to
convey to Beryl what a delight her return had brought to, at any rate,
myself; now, we had met in ordinary conventional fashion, and she was
chatting with the stranger, while I chaffed Iris and tried to cheer up
that poor little devil, George.
The stranger aforesaid, whose name was Pentridge, was a well-set-up,
good-looking fellow of about my own age, a man to whom under other
circumstances I should have taken. But now it was easy to see that
Beryl occupied nearly, if not quite, as large a preponderance in his
thoughts as she did in mine. He was a doctor by profession, and an old
acquaintance of the Mattersons, though they had not met for some time.
Now, meeting him by chance in Fort Lamport, Beryl had invited him out to
the farm.
Here was a new element in the situation for which I had not bargained.
The said situation I had thought out again and again during the
twenty-four hours which had intervened since my first hearing the
abominable news, and notably during an almost sleepless night. I would
not say anything about it yet; would take time to think it over more
fully. Meanwhile I had found some comfort in the thought that things
would be to all outward appearance as they had been. Beryl and I would
be together as before; and did I, by any chance, cherish a wild vague
hope that anything might happen to cut the knot of the whole difficulty?
I believe I did.
But now the advent of this stranger upset all this. In him I saw a
rival, and a potent one, for he was probably in a position to declare
himself at any moment, while I must perforce lie low. Not only this,
but there was that in the personality of the fellow which rendered him
doubly dangerous, for he was one of those men to whom all women would
naturally turn, some indeed with headlong resistless attraction; whereas
I, Kenrick Holt--plain, common-place, plodding--knew myself to be
endowed with no such attributes, and had anybody hinted to the contrary,
should have laughed in their face.
Upon the resolve to keep my own counsel for the present followed another
one, and this was to throw off the dead weight which the change in my
fortunes had at first bound upon me, outwardly at any rate. Wherefore
as we all shook down again into the ordinary routine of life, I avoided
any appearance of aloofness and strove to bear myself as if there had
been no change at all. But it involved a tremendous effort of will,
amounting at times almost to physical anguish. For instance, if we were
taking a collective walk or ride, and I had to witness the incidental
pairing off together of Beryl and Pentridge, the bitter reflection that
up till now it would have been her and myself would require some
crushing down, it may safely be assumed; or in half a hundred incidents
of everyday life he had a way of showing her little attentions, and that
in a way which to me, at any rate, was unmistakable, though there was
this about Pentridge, he never trod upon his own heels, so to say, with
over-eagerness.
Still, my manner towards her must have undergone an unconscious change,
for more than once Beryl would give me a strange look which I could not
quite fathom. Sometimes, too, she would take on almost a coldness
towards me, as different from her former free, unaffected cordiality as
it could possibly be. Ah! a light suddenly dawned upon me. I was in
the way, was becoming a nuisance to her. And acting upon this idea, I
threw myself into the work of the place with tenfold energy. That would
keep me out pretty well all day, and every day--but then, there was
always the evening.
To me there was a humorous element underlying even this situation, and
it spelt Trask. Trask's disgust on finding Pentridge already in the
field was quite comical. He could no longer monopolise the
conversation, and when he started in to be funny, Pentridge, without
seeming to do so, would invariably cap his would-be wit, and effectually
turn it against himself. In short, to use a homely metaphor, Trask's
nose was put clean out of joint.
"Who the deuce is that bounder Pentridge, Holt?" he said to me one day
when we were alone together.
"First, I don't know. Second, he's rather a good chap."
"Eh? Rather a good chap? Man alive! I should have thought if any one
would wish him to the devil it'd be you."
"Well, I don't. I like the chap," I rejoined, shortly.
Trask fired off a long whistle.
"That's good," he said. "That's good, coming from you of all people,
Holt. Why he's cutting you out all along the line."
Then I fired off a speech.
"I won't pretend to misunderstand you, Trask," I said. "But that sort
of remark is in the rottenest taste, in fact downright caddish. And
look here. For a good while past you have laid yourself out to try and
make me a butt for your stodgy wit. Well, I've had enough of that--more
than enough. So chuck it. See? Chuck it."
"Oh, all right, Holt. Keep your hair on, old man. How beastly `short'
you've got in these days. You usen't to be."
There was an insinuation here conveyed that did not tend to soothe me,
but possibly it was unintentional. Trask had a way of climbing down if
tackled direct, that disarmed resentment. To do him justice, I don't
think it was due to cowardice, but to a feeling that he had gone too
far, and a natural shrinking on the part of a man not actually drunk or
an idiot, from the possibility of being made to look foolish in a row of
his own bringing on.
One wet and drizzling day George, who was riding round the place with me
during one of my tours of inspection, burst forth with--
"Man, but that chap Pentridge is dead spoons on Beryl."
"What are you talking about?" I said, rather roughly, not relishing the
topic, yet not unwilling, curiously enough, that he should pursue it.
"Why, of course he is. Any fool could see that. Why, they're always
together, and then the way he looks, and the way he talks to her. I
mean not what he says, but the way he says it. Of course they are
spoons. But he's a fine chap--hey, Kenrick?"
The young rascal, it will be observed, had made a big brother of me by
that time.
"That's a great yarn you've got hold of there, George," I answered, "but
I should advise you not to be too fond of spinning it around, because
I'm pretty certain Beryl wouldn't like it."
"Oh, of course I wouldn't say it to any one but you, Kenrick," he
answered, rather hurt. I had taken the youngster somewhat under my wing
of late, and he was keen to accompany me on my rounds. It had been
decided that he must on no account be allowed to go about alone; in
fact, his father had been advised to send him right away out of the
locality altogether, and was even then negotiating for a school for him
in Port Elizabeth or Cape Town. It could not be too far, it was
represented.
The boy's inconsequent chatter had given another turn to the knife. He
was a sharp youngster, and prone to get in everybody's way. Probably he
had seen or heard more between the two than we had, but as to this, of
course, I should curtly have shut him up had he volunteered any such
narrative to me.
"We'll just look round by Jabavu's flock, and then go home," I said.
"_Ja_, let's. It's beastly cold, and I've had enough of it," he
answered, as if that decided the matter.
Cold it assuredly was. A thin penetrating drizzle was falling, and the
hilltops over beyond the valley were hidden in mist. Dotting the slope
in front, which looked indescribably dreary in the drawing-in afternoon,
a spread of white specks and patches represented a thousand or so of
sheep.
"Why, there are several Kafirs there with Jabavu," said George. "Look,
Kenrick. There are at least three of them--no, two--counting him."
The herd, as we drew near, made a great show of rounding up his flock.
The other two stood still, awaiting our arrival. They gave me sullen
greeting.
"What do you do here, you two? Who are you?" I said in Kafir, which I
could talk fairly well by that time. And hardly had I uttered the words
when I recognised the big savage, Sibuko, and in the other the fellow
who had announced his amiable intention of cutting my throat up there in
the cattle-stealers' cave. "You. What is your name?" I went on,
pointing at this latter.
"Maqala."
The fellow was staring at me with an expression of impudent menace. I
didn't relish his off-hand way of answering, and it was all I could do
to restrain myself from laying my whip about his shoulders; but I
remembered that we had had enough trouble of late, and it would be as
well to avoid a fresh quarrel. So I said--
"Go, Maqala. Go, Sibuko. You have no business here. Go."
They muttered something as they slouched their blankets around them, and
strolled leisurely away. But for one moment, as their glances rested on
the boy, the expression of their countenances was such that I thought it
would be well if those school negotiations could be brought to a head as
soon as possible. Anyhow, that they were here to-day for no good was as
certain as that they were here at all.
"I wonder if they've been `slaag-ing,'" said George.
Evidently he was under no apprehension on the other head, which was as
well.
"I don't think so," I answered, "but we can count and see." So we
called Jabavu, and having halted our horses a little way apart, made him
drive the whole flock slowly between us. The count was correct.
The herd, who was one of Kuliso's people, declared that these two had
merely sat down for a while to have a chat. What harm could they do? he
said. They were not even disturbing the game, for they had no dogs.
This was undeniable, but I had a very uncomfortable feeling on the
subject of the encounter; and a conviction that these two scoundrels had
joined hands through no mere chance, but were watching their opportunity
for mischief, forced itself in upon my mind more and more; and as we
rode home in the gathering dusk, I almost forgot my own troubles in
thinking out what form such mischief might take, and how to guard
against it.
A presentiment is a wholly arbitrary thing and subject to no laws of
reasoning whatever. Such a presentiment was upon me then. I felt
irresistibly that some danger hung over some or all of us, and that when
we should be least on our guard. Well, the only way to defeat it was
never to be off our guard.