The days sped by and still Hilary Blachland remained as a guest at
George Bayfield's farm.
He had talked about moving on, but the suggestion had been met by a
frank stare of astonishment on the part of his host.
"Where's your hurry, man?" had replied the latter. "Why, you've only
just come."
"Only just come! You don't seem to be aware, Bayfield, that I've been
here nearly four weeks."
"No, I'm not. But what then? What if it's four or fourteen or forty?
You don't want to go up-country again just yet. By the way, though, it
must be mighty slow here."
"Now, Bayfield, I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings, but you're
talking bosh, rank bosh. I don't believe you know it, though. Slow
indeed!"
"Perhaps Mr Blachland's tired of us, father," said Lyn demurely, but
with a spice of mischief.
"Well, you know, you yourselves can have too much of a not very good
thing," protested Hilary, rather lamely.
"Ha-ha! Now we'll turn the tables. Who's talking bosh this time?" said
Bayfield triumphantly.
"Man, Mr Blachland, you mustn't go yet," cut in small Fred excitedly.
"Stop and shoot some more bushbucks."
"Very well, Fred. No one can afford to run clean counter to public
opinion. So that settles it," replied Blachland gaily.
"That's all right," said Bayfield. "And we haven't taken him over to
Earle's yet. I know what we'll do. We'll send and let Earle know we
are all coming over for a couple of nights, and he must get up a shoot
in between. Then we'll show him the pretty widow."
A splutter from Fred greeted the words. "She isn't pretty a bit," he
pronounced. "A black, ugly thing."
"Look out, sonny," laughed his father. "She'll take it out of you when
she's your schoolmissis."
But the warning was received by the imp with a half growl, half jeer.
The prospect of that ultimate fate, which had already been dangled over
him, and which he only half realised, may have helped to prejudice him
against one whom he could not but regard as otherwise than his natural
enemy.
The unanimity wherewith the household of three voted against his
departure was more than gratifying to Hilary Blachland. Looking back
upon life since he had been Bayfield's guest, he could only declare to
himself that it was wholly delightful. The said Bayfield, with his
unruffled, take-us-as-you-find-us way of looking at things--well, the
more he saw of the man the more he liked him, and the two were on the
most easy terms of friendship of all, which may best be defined that
neither ever wanted the other to do anything the other didn't want to.
Even the small boy regarded him as an acquisition, while Lyn--well, the
frank, friendly, untrammelled intercourse between them constituted, he
was forced to admit to himself, the brightness and sunshine of the
pleasant, reposeful days which were now his. He had no reason to rate
himself too highly, even in his own estimation, and the last three or
four weeks spent in her daily society brought this more and more home to
him. Well, whatever he had sown, whatever he might reap, in short,
whatever might or might not be in store for him, he was the better now,
would be to the end of his days, the better for having known her.
Indeed it seemed to him now as though his life were divided into two
complete periods--the time before he had known Lyn Bayfield, and
subsequently.
Thus reflecting, he was pacing the stoep smoking an after-breakfast
pipe. The valley stretched away, radiant in the morning sunshine, and
the atmosphere was sharp and brisk with a delicious exhilaration. Down
in the camps he could see the black dots moving, where great ostriches
stalked, and every now and then the triple boom, several times repeated,
from the throat of one or other of the huge birds, rolled out upon the
morning air. The song of a Kaffir herd, weird, full-throated, but
melodious, arose from the further hillside, where a large flock of
Angora goats was streaming forth to its grazing ground.
"What would you like to do to-day, Blachland?" said his host, joining
him. "I've got to ride over to Theunis Nel's about some stock, but it
means the best part of the day there, so I don't like suggesting your
coming along. They're the most infernal boring crowd, and you'd wish
yourself dead."
Hilary thought this would very likely be the case, but before he could
reply there came an interruption--an interruption which issued from a
side door somewhere in the neighbourhood of the kitchen, for they were
standing at the end of the stoep, an interruption wearing an ample white
"kapje," and with hands and wrists all powdery with flour, but utterly
charming for all that.
"What's that you're plotting, father? No, you're not to take Mr
Blachland over to any tiresome Dutchman's. No wonder he talks about
going away. Besides, I want to take him with me. I'm going to paint--
in Siever's Kloof, and Fred isn't enough of an escort."
"I think I'll prefer that immeasurably, Miss Bayfield," replied he most
concerned.
"I shall be ready, then, in half an hour. And--I don't like `Miss
Bayfield'--it sounds so stiff, and we are such old friends now. You
ought to say Lyn. Oughtn't he, father, now that he is quite one of
ourselves?"
"Well, _I_ should--after that," answered Bayfield, comically, blowing
out a big cloud of smoke.
But while he laughed pleasantly, promising to avail himself of the
privilege, Hilary was conscious of a kind of mournful impression that
the frank ingenuousness of the request simply meant that she placed him
on the same plane as her father, in short, regarded him as one of a
bygone generation. Well, she was right. He was no chicken after all,
he reminded himself grimly.
"I say, Lyn, I'm going with you too!" cried Fred, who was seated on a
waggon-pole a little distance off, putting the finishing touches to a
new catapult-handle.
"All right. I'll be ready in half an hour," replied the girl.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
One of the prettiest bits in Siever's Kloof was the very spot whereon
Blachland had shot the large bushbuck ram, and here the two had taken up
their position. For nearly an hour Lyn had been very busy, and her
escort seated there, lazily smoking a pipe, would every now and then
overlook her work, offering criticisms, and making suggestions, some of
which were accepted, and some were not. Fred, unable to remain still
for ten minutes at a time, was ranging afar with his air-gun--now put
right again--and, indeed, with it he was a dead shot.
"I never can get the exact shine of these red krantzes," Lyn was saying.
"That one over there, with the sun just lighting it up now, I know I
shall reproduce it either the colour of a brick wall or a dead smudge.
The shine is what I want to get."
"And you may get it, or you may not, probably the latter. There are two
things, at any rate, which nobody has ever yet succeeded in reproducing
with perfect accuracy, the colour of fire and golden hair--like yours.
Yes, it's a fact. They make it either straw colour or too red, but
always dead. There's no shine in it."
Lyn laughed, lightheartedly, unthinkingly.
"True, O King! But I expect you're talking heresy all the same. I
wonder what that boy is up to?" she broke off, looking around.
"Why, he's a mile or so away up the kloof by this time. Do you ever get
tired of this sort of life, Lyn?"
"Tired? No. Why should I? Whenever I go away anywhere, after the
first novelty has worn off, I always long to get back."
"And how long a time does it take to compass that aspiration?"
"About a week. At the end of three I am desperately homesick, and long
to get back here to old father, and throw away gloves and let my hands
burn."
Blachland looked at the hands in question--long-fingered, tapering, but
smooth and delicate and refined--brown indeed with exposure to the air,
but not in the least roughened. What an enigma she was, this girl. He
watched, her as she sat there, sweet and cool and graceful as she plied
her brushes, the wide brim of her straw hat turned up in front so as not
to impede her view. Every movement was a picture, he told himself--the
quick lifting of the eyelid as she looked at her subject, the delicate
supple turn of the wrist as she worked in her colouring. And the
surroundings set forth so perfectly the central figure--the varying
shades of the trees and their dusky undergrowth, the great krantz
opposite, fringed with trailers, bristling with spiky aloes lining up
along its ledges. Bright spreuws flashed and piped, darting forth from
its shining face; and other bird voices, the soft note of the hoepoe,
and the cooing of doves kept the warm golden air pleasant with harmony.
"What is your name the short for, Lyn?" he said, picking up one of her
drawing-books, whereon it was traced--in faded ink upon the faded cover.
She laughed. "It isn't a name at all really. It's only my initials. I
have three ugly Christian names represented under the letters L.Y.N.,
and it began with a joke among the boys when I was a very small kiddie.
But now I rather like it. Don't you?"
"Yes. Very much... Why, what's the matter now?"
For certain shrill shouts were audible from the thick of the bush, but
at no great distance away. They recognised Fred's voice, and he was
hallooing like mad.
"Lyn! Mr Blachland! Quick--quick! Man, here's a whacking big snake!"
"Oh, let's go and see!" cried the girl, hurriedly putting down her
drawing things, and springing to her feet. "No--no. You stay here.
I'll go. You're quite safe here. Stay, do you hear?"
She turned in surprise. Her companion was quite agitated.
"Why, it's safe enough!" she said with a laugh, but still wondering.
"I'm not in the least afraid of snakes. I've killed several of them.
Come along."
And answering Fred's shouts she led the way through the grass and stones
at an astonishing pace, entirely disregarding his entreaties to allow
him to go first.
"There! There!" cried Fred, his fist full of stones, pointing to some
long grass almost hiding a small boulder about a dozen yards away.
"He's squatting there. He's a big black ringhals. I threw him with
three stones--didn't hit him, though. Man, but he's `kwai.' Look,
look! There!"
Disturbed anew by these fresh arrivals, the reptile shot up his head
with an ugly hiss. The hood was inflated, and waved to and fro
wickedly, as the great coil dragged heavily over the ground.
"There! Now you can have him!" cried Fred excitedly, as Blachland
stooped and picked up a couple of large stones. These, however, he
immediately dropped.
"No. Let him go," he said. "He wants to get away. He won't interfere
with us."
"But kill him, Mr Blachland. Aren't you going to kill him?" urged the
boy.
"No. I never kill a snake if I can help it. Because of something that
once happened to me up-country."
"So! What was it?" said the youngster, with half his attention fixed
regretfully on the receding reptile, which, seeing the coast clear, was
rapidly making itself scarce.
"That's something of a story--and it isn't the time for telling it now."
But a dreadful suspicion crossed the unsophisticated mind of the boy.
Was it possible that Blachland was afraid? It did not occur to him that
a man who had shot lions in the open was not likely to be afraid of an
everyday ringhals--not at the time, at least. Afterwards he would think
of it.
They went back to where they had been sitting before, Fred chattering
volubly. But he could not sit still for long, any more than he had been
able to before, and presently he was off again.
"You are wondering why I let that snake go," said Blachland presently.
"Did you think I was afraid of it?"
"Well, no, I could hardly think that," answered Lyn, looking up quickly.
"Yet I believe you thought something akin to it," he rejoined, with a
curious smile. "Listen now, and I'll tell you if you care to hear--only
don't let the story go any further. By the way, you are only the second
I have ever told it to."
"I feel duly flattered. Go on. I am longing to hear it. I'm sure it's
exciting."
"It was for me at the time--very." And then he told her of the
exploration of the King's grave, and the long hours of that awful day,
between two terrible forms of imminent death, told it so graphically as
to hold her spellbound.
"There, that sounds like a tolerably tall up-country yarn," he
concluded, "but it's hard solid fact for all that."
"What a horrible experience," said Lyn, with something of a shudder.
"And now you won't kill any snake?"
"No. That _mamba_ held me at its mercy the whole of that day--and I
have spared every snake I fell in with ever since. A curious sort of
gratitude, you will say, but--there it is."
"I don't wonder the natives had that superstition about the King's
spirit passing into that snake."
"No, more do I. The belief almost forced itself upon me, as I sat there
those awful hours. But, as old Pemberton said, there was no luck about
meddling with such places."
"No, indeed. What strange things you must have seen in all your
wanderings. It must be something to look back upon. But I suppose it
will go on all your life. You will return to those parts again,
until--"
"Until I am past returning anywhere," he replied. "Perhaps so, and
perhaps it is better that way after all. And now I think it is time to
round up Fred, and take the homeward track."
"Yes, I believe it is," was all she said. A strange unwonted silence
was upon her during their homeward ride. She was thinking a great deal
of the man beside her. He interested her as nobody ever had. She had
stood in awe of him at first, but now she hoped it would be a long time
before he should find it necessary to leave them. What an ideal
companion he was, too. She felt her mind the richer for all the ideas
she had exchanged with him--silly, crude ideas, he must have thought
them, she told herself with a little smile.
But if she was silent, Fred was not. He talked enough for all three the
rest of the way home.