"Look here, Beryl," I said. "To prevent any misunderstanding I'll tell
you this much. I have something on my mind just now, but it relates to
matters of business. I had some rather nasty news from England the day
before you came back, and it has worried me a good bit. That's all."
But she shook her head.
"I doubt if that is all," she said, and my pulses were set a-hammering
as I wondered whether she was going to get the rest of it out of me too.
"I believe it is worse than you are admitting. I don't want to pry
into your affairs, Kenrick, but you are like one of ourselves now, and I
can't bear to see you going about looking as you have been doing of
late. And--and--you might do worse than consult father or Brian about
it. They are both very shrewd in that line you know, and might be of
use to you."
"Well, it may come to that," I answered. "But meanwhile, Beryl, what I
have told you is between ourselves. You made me tell you, you know.
Heaven knows I never intended to whine to you about my sordid
grievances."
"Kenrick, don't," she said, impulsively putting forth her hand to rest
on mine. "`Whine,' indeed! That isn't you anyway. Why, I am proud of
your confidence, and sorry--oh, so sorry--for its cause. But you must
cheer up. I have an instinct that everything will come right. It
sometimes does, you know."
Would it? I thought I knew better, but I had done enough grizzling
already, so was not going to say so. And I thought with a certain
bitterness that her sympathy, sweet as it was, was not of the nature I
could have wished it to be. Even then the concern in her tone, the
softening of her eyes, the touch of her hand as she stood facing me,
scattered my resolution to the winds. She should know all, then and
there--all--all.
"So you think that everything will come right, do you?" I said,
pretending to do something with the spade so as not to be obliged to
look at her.
"Yes. I have an instinct that way."
"But if it can't?"
"That is an `if' in which my belief is somewhat feeble," she answered
confidently.
"Supposing I--er, supposing a man had lost all he had in the world, and
that beyond all possibility of recovery--what then?"
"He might remedy the loss. Energy, some resourcefulness, and a great
deal of common sense, constitute not a bad foundation for a fresh
start--say in a country like this."
The cool, practical, matter-of-fact tone of this reply fairly startled
me--and then--Great Scott! the remarks that Pentridge had let fall
during our conversation a day or two back, gratifying to myself in that
they reflected the estimation in which I seemed to be held, flashed
across my mind. Beryl's words were spoken with a purpose--were meant to
be taken home, and with the idea came another. Could I, without
anything definite passing between us, turn the key of her mind as
regarded herself?
"Yes, he might remedy the loss--after a time," I said, still pretending
to work with the spade--still not looking at her. "After a time. But
what if that time were too late?"
"Could it ever be?"
"Why, yes. Because by that time what would have made success worth
striving for might be no longer attainable; might have passed out of
reach irrevocably and for ever."
She did not answer. In the tensity of the silence the clink of my spade
in the dry dusty furrow seemed to my wrought-up mind to sound as with a
loud hammering. A network of sunlight, from the deep blue of an early
winter sky, fell through the nearly denuded boughs upon the earth
around, and the screech of crickets and the far-off melodious shout of a
hoepoe hardly seemed to break the stillness. What would she answer? Or
would she even understand? And as to this I almost hoped not, for here
had I, under cover of this veiled talk, been saying to her in effect:
"Beryl, I am a ruined man, a beggar, but--how would it be to throw away
the best years of your life and wait for me on the off chance of my ever
being able to rise substantially above that most unenviable position?"
"Of course I am only putting a case," I appended with conscious
lameness.
"Oh, of course," she answered readily. "But, supposing--"
"Beryl! Beryl!" rang out a clear, child-voice, _crescendo_. "Oh, there
you are. I thought she had gone to the garden, Dr Pentridge," this
last back over a shoulder, and Iris came tearing along the path, tossing
back the wealth of her gold-brown hair. After her, in more leisurely
fashion, came Pentridge.
He started on seeing me, so plainly, so unmistakably, that, keenly
observant, I at once set up the theory within my own mind that he had
come to find Beryl alone, with a purpose of course. The child could
easily have been got rid of, but I--well, that was a different matter.
"Ha, Holt! Hard at it as usual?" he said, with rather a forced
geniality.
"Not particularly hard. Only filling up an odd moment."
He told us that he had just received letters by a messenger who had
ridden out from Fort Lamport, letters relating to his pending
negotiations, which would render it necessary for him to leave as soon
as possible; in fact, that very afternoon if it could possibly be
managed. He would have to go straight home from there, so supposed it
would be a final good-bye, though we should all meet again soon--in
fact, quite soon, he hoped.
I don't know whether I did, and that for obvious reasons. However, it
was manifest that he wanted to have a talk with Beryl, and he should
have it, so far as I was concerned; to which end I started in on a
battle of chaff with Iris, which kept her busy for a few minutes, then
craftily manoeuvred her further down the kloof to look at and talk over
a couple of bees' nests we had been planning to take out. This was all
right enough, but what does the little fiend do next but splutter out--
"Can you keep a secret, Kenrick? Because if so I'll tell you one.
Pentridge is awfully smashed on Beryl."
"I should say _Dr._ Pentridge if I was a little girl," I formulated to
the accompaniment of rather a ghastly grin. "Well, is that the secret?
because if so I haven't said I could keep one yet."
"_Ach_! Well, you won't say I said so, hey?"
"I won't say anything at all about it, Iris," I answered magisterially.
"And little girls oughtn't to think about such things."
She opened her big blue eyes wide at the reproof. Then detecting the
mirth--such as it was--depicted on my own face, she bestowed such a
whole-souled pinch upon my brown and bared forearm, as caused me to sing
out and stamp.
"You spiteful little cat. Wait till we get at those bees' nests. You
deserve to be jolly well stung."
She pranced round me, chuckling maliciously.
"Ha-ha! That's what you get for coming the solemn old school-baas over
me," she crowed. Then--"There, there. You're not _kwaat_ with me, are
you?"
The insinuating little rogue. As if she didn't know she could have done
anything she liked to me!
We did not take out the bees' nests that day. My mind was full of what
had gone before, and I listened to the sunny child's chatter, fearful
lest her precocious eyes should see through my own secret--wondering,
too, whether her interruption of us had been for good or the reverse.
She had interrupted us at a critical juncture. What had Beryl been on
the point of saying to me? What was she saying even then to that other?
Had I let slip an opportunity? And yet--and yet I if so, how could I
have seized such opportunity under the circumstances? Of course I could
not.
But what she had or had not said to that other seemed likely to remain a
mystery, and the same held good of what he had said to her, for neither
by word or hint did Beryl let fall any inkling of the matter.
After Pentridge had gone, things seemed to shake down as usual, but for
me a line was drawn, and the glowing, idyllic happiness of the last few
months seemed shut back as though beyond an iron door.
One day when Septimus Matterson and I were alone together, something
moved me to follow Beryl's advice and tell him of my disaster--though I
had hardly done so than I felt it was a more complete burning of my
boats. He was very concerned, and said so.
"Don't lose heart, though, Kenrick," he said. "Many a man has had a
bigger knock than that and has come out smiling. When do you say you
will know beyond all doubt whether things are--as bad as you think?"
"Oh, in a month or two."
"Well, we'll talk over it again then. But--don't lose heart. And
remember this, Kenrick. You are as one of ourselves now, and if the
worst comes to the worst, this place is always your home as long as you
like to make it so."
I mumbled out something that was meant to be appreciative, and then he
began to talk about other things. He was rather put out because his
plans on George's account had fallen through. The schools he had been
negotiating with delicately but firmly refused to take the boy.
"I'm coming round to the conclusion that there's no necessity to send
him away at all," he ended up. "The thing has been settled and is now a
thing of the past. I believe he's as safe as you or I."
To this what answer could I make, remembering that the speaker was
nothing if not a man of sound judgment? Yet even the soundest of such
may fall into an error--and then!