Warren it was who broke the awkwardness of the meeting.
"Hullo, Le Sage," he sang out as they dismounted. "I lugged this chap
over to say good-bye to you. He's just going to clear. I told him he
couldn't clear without saying good-bye, just because you had a bit of a
growl at each other."
This in his most breezy way. Le Sage put out a hand to Wyvern, though
not particularly cordially.
"Oh, you're really going, are you?" he said.
"Yes. Day after to-morrow. My sale comes off next week, but I shan't
wait for it."
The air was still and clear, and, upon such, voices travel afar. The
above conversation, taking place at the stables, had been heard by
Lalante, who therefore felt exceedingly friendly towards Warren, whose
words implied that the other would not have come over but for his
persuasion. She knew, of course, that Wyvern would not leave without
managing a farewell meeting between them--just as she knew what her
father did not--that he was on the eve of departure. Yet, here he was,
and he should not leave her that day if she could help it. There was
parting at the end of it, but all its precious hours in between were
theirs.
The anxiety which had at first overclouded her face cleared, as she knew
by the conversation of the three men drawing near the house, that her
father had kept his word. If his tone was somewhat constrained, why
that was only to be expected.
"Well, Miss Lalante," cried Warren, in his breeziest way as she came to
meet them. "I hope we haven't invaded you too unexpectedly."
"Not at all," she answered cordially. "It was good of you to come
over."
In secret Wyvern somewhat resented this way Warren had of using the
girl's own name, even though not omitting the formal prefix. It was
quite unnecessary, and formal prefixes are prone to lapse on occasions.
But this little jealous twinge was allayed with her greeting of him--all
in the old way. He appreciated, too, Warren's tactful thought in
turning Le Sage's attention right in the other direction.
Then the small boys came in, hot and dusty after their ramble, and it
behoved Lalante to go and superintend the process of making them
presentable for dinner--for which it was nearly time.
In process of that festivity assuredly Wyvern's reputation with the two
youngsters as a spinner of "such ripping good yarns" did not suffer as
they listened open-mouthed to his narrative of shooting the big leopard
in the Third Kloof. The more startling incident of that night he did
not narrate for their benefit.
"Man, Mr Wyvern, but I'd like to have been there," said Charlie.
"Do take us with you some night, Mr Wyvern," supplemented Frank.
"There won't be any `some night' again, Frank. I'm going away."
"What?" cried both youngsters. "No. It's not true."
"But it is," answered Wyvern, with a tinge of sadness. "The day after
to-morrow. I've only come to-day to say good-bye."
"But you can't go. Lala, tell him he's not to. He'll stop if you tell
him to."
These two youngsters were actually beginning to feel "choky," in proof
whereof a plateful apiece of one of their favourite puddings seemed in
danger of being left untouched.
The whole-souled affection of the two little boys--Lalante's brothers--
went to Wyvern's heart.
"Never mind, old chappies," he said. "We shall meet again some day, and
then you'll be big fellows, and will want to patronise me because I
don't bring down a bushbuck ram at four hundred yards when only his head
is showing round a _spek-boem_ bush, as you'll do. Here, stop that," he
added, as Charlie, the smallest of the pair, began to sniffle ominously,
then giving up the effort, broke into a genuine howl. "Men don't cry--
and, this last day we most be all jolly together. See?"
"If you're going in for the Zulu trade, Wyvern, I'm afraid you've hit
upon the wrong time," struck in Le Sage. "I hear they're all unsettled
in the Zulu country over the return of Cetywayo. There'll be a lively
war up there among themselves I'm told."
"Got to chance that, like most things in this sad and weary world."
"Man, Mr Wyvern, but they'll kill you if you go up there," remarked one
of the small boys in round-eyed consternation. "Why you fought against
them in the war"--some of his Zulu war experiences being among the
"ripping good yarns" he had the reputation for spinning.
"Oh, no they won't. Besides, you don't suppose they know who fought
against them or who didn't--and even if they did they'd only respect me
the more for it."
"There's a little matter I want to talk over with you, Le Sage," said
Warren, as they got up from table, "if it isn't trenching on your
Sabbath rest."
"Oh, Sabbath rest be hanged," answered Le Sage, shortly. "Come along."
"Father, don't talk in that abominably heathenish way," laughed Lalante.
"Before your children too!"
She and Wyvern, both, and again, appreciated Warren's tact, for neither
of them believed in the pretext. They had not been alone together yet,
and Warren, like the good fellow he was, had resolved that they should
be. That was how they read it.
So while the other two adjourned to Le Sage's business den, these two
adjourned to the _stoep_. The small boys, like their kind, unable to
keep still for any length of time, betook themselves off somewhere down
in the garden.
"Love, and so you are really going," began Lalante with her hand in his.
"Really. But it is going only to return."
"Yes, I feel that. Yet--it is like parting with one's very life."
"That is how I feel it. And yet--and yet--this time somehow I am
sanguine. I have a sort of instinct that things are going to mend; that
one's luck cannot always be on the down grade. I can't tell why, but
something--a sort of revelation, perhaps--has come to me telling me I am
doing right in going away from here--wrench though it will be. But mere
locality--why that's nothing as long as we have each other. Is it?"
"Darling, you know it is not," she answered, her head resting in the
hollow of his shoulder. "If it were a mere rock island in the middle of
the sea and I had you, it would be Paradise."
He laughed sadly. But it was no time for upsetting her ideals. For a
few moments they sat in a happy, if somewhat sad, silence; the same hum
of winged insects making its droning lull upon the sunlit air; the
sweeping roll of golden green spread out in radiant vista beneath the
unclouded sky; the full, seductive beauty of the girl nestling within
his arms.
"I was longing for you so," she said at last. "I was sitting here all
the morning going over all the time since we had first known each other.
I felt that I would give half my life if you would only come over
to-day. And--here you are."
"But you didn't think I should go without seeing you again, child?"
"Of course not. But it would have been one of those hurried snatched
meetings in the veldt. Well now I have got you all to myself, and I
will keep you. Come. We will have a last long walk alone together
while they are in there."
The while the thought was hammering in her brain, that to-morrow at the
same time all would be as it was now; no shadow of a difference in
anything around but--he would be gone.
"I won't keep you waiting a moment," she said, her fingers intertwined
in his as she rose. "We will go before they come out."
Wyvern, left there even for that "moment," could not help blessing the
luck that had brought Warren over to Seven Kloofs the night before, to
talk him into coming to bid good-bye to Le Sage as if nothing had
happened. As Lalante had said, they would have managed a final and
farewell meeting; but as she had also said, it would have been a
snatched and hurried one.
True to her word she reappeared in a moment, looking her best and
sweetest; and that was very good to look at indeed. And they went
forth, down the way they knew so well, the way they had so often trodden
together, and the voices of the gladsome, sunlit _veldt_ made music as
they went.
"Oh, darling," said the girl, as she leaned heavily upon the arm passed
through hers, and upon his shoulder. "However am I going to get through
the time without you--day after day, week after week, even month after
month, and know that you are hundreds of miles from me, after this
year--this whole year--when we have been all in all to each other? Tell
me--again. No one has ever been to you as I have? Tell me. I will
feed on it after you have--gone."
Her hungry, passionate accents thrilled his every fibre, then his arms
were around her in a close embrace.
"Lalante--my own love--my one and only love, I could go on telling you
the same thing. No one has ever been to me as you have been or ever
could be. You know how from the time our eyes first met we knew we were
made for each other, and it was not long before we proved it to be so."
"Yes, I know. I was thinking of that all this morning, was bathing
myself in a very day-dream of our time together. And now, you are
leaving me."
"Oh, sweet--don't put that tone--that hopeless tone--into it. I am
leaving you only to come back to you. You know that there is no one
like you in all the world. I could not imagine anything approaching a
duplicate of you if I were to try. But, if ever I find a difficulty it
is what on earth you can see in me to love like this: in me--a battered
failure all along the line. What is it?"
"What is it?" she answered, slowly, her eyes responding to his straight,
full gaze. "What is it? I don't know. Only a little trick of
thought-reading--character-reading rather--and when I had seen you I
thought I had seen--the Deity."
"No, no, child," he said quickly and reprovingly. "You must not--to put
it on the lowest ground--pitch your ideals at such dizzy heights. Only
think what a fall it means one of these days."
"Now I could laugh. Never mind. We have just so many hours--how many
have we? And then--blank--deathlike blank."
"No--no--no! Not deathlike. It is life--life through absence. See
now, Lalante--what a sweet name that is, for I am perfectly certain
nobody else in the world bears it--I am looking at you, now in the full
glow of the sun at his best light I am looking into and photographing
your dear face--as if it needed that--so that it will remain fixed in
the retina of memory through day and night when we are apart. Those
eyes--yes, look into mine, so will it burn the picture in more
indelibly, if possible."
"Oh, love, love!" Her accents thrilled in their passionate abandonment.
"You are going away from me and you have torn my very heart out with
you. Yes, I look into your eyes, and my very first prayer is that they
may look at me in my dreams as they do now. Yes. Even parting is bliss
beside what I could imagine of dead love."
"Dead love! My Lalante, how could such a term occur as between you and
me?"
"No--no. Not as between us. My imagination was only running away with
me. That was all."
Thus they wandered on. Half unconsciously their steps turned towards a
favourite spot, where even on the hottest of days shade lay, in the
coolness reflected by a rock-face never turned to the sun, ever shadowed
by an overhanging growth. Birds piped in the brake with varying and
fantastic note, while now and again the still air was rent by the lusty
shouting of cock-koorhaans, rising fussily near and far, disturbed by
real or imaginary cause of alarm. It was an ideal place, this sheltered
nook, for such meetings as these.
Hour followed upon hour, but they heeded it not at all, as they sat and
talked; and the glance of each seemed unable to leave the other, and the
pressure of interlocked fingers tightened. This would be their first
parting since they had first met, and it was difficult to determine upon
which of the two it fell the hardest Wyvern was a man of deep and strong
feeling, in no wise dulled by the fact that he could no longer exactly
be called young, and the impending parting had been with him as an
all-pervading heart pain to an extent which well-nigh astonished
himself--while as for the girl, her passionate adoration of him was as
her whole being. It is safe to say that he could have done with her
what he chose; and realising this, and how he stood as a tower of
strength to her, not as a source of weakness, in his firm unbending
principle, the very fact fed and fostered that adoration.
It was here that their real farewell was made, here alone, unseen save
by the bright birds that flitted joyously and piped melodiously in the
shaded solitude.
"Oh, my own, my own," whispered Lalante, her beautiful form shaken by
sobs she was powerless to repress. "My adored love, you will come back
to me, even if you meet with nothing but ill-fortune--worse even than
you have met with up till now. You will come back to me. Promise."
He could only bend his head in reply. He dared not trust himself to
speak.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Haven't those two come in yet?" said Le Sage shortly, sitting up in his
chair. "_Magtig_! Warren, I must have been asleep."
"Well, you were, but why not?" answered Warren easily. "Oh, never mind
about them: you were young once yourself, Le Sage."
The latter looked grim.
"Wyvern's not so damned young," he said. "That makes it all the worse,
because it shows he'll never do any good."
"He may where he's going."
Le Sage snorted.
"Where he's going. Going!--Yes, that's the only good thing about him--
he's _going_."
If only the speaker knew how intensely his listener was agreeing with
him. It might be that Le Sage's hostility was not the most formidable
obstacle these two had to reckon with. A sufficiently lurid picture was
at that moment passing before the mental gaze of the easy-mannered,
elf-possessed lawyer. People who were "going" did not always return.
"Why, here they are," he said, "and the kiddies with them."
The two youngsters, whom they had chanced to pick up on the way, were a
factor in easing down the situation, which was as well, for Lalante's
face with all her brave efforts at absolute self-control, was not
without some pathetic trace of the strain she was undergoing.
Supper, that evening, was not a particularly convivial institution; in
fact, the conversation was mainly sustained by Warren. Even the two
small boys were instinctively subdued.
"By Jove, I believe we are going to have a storm," said Warren, as they
got up. "We'd better saddle up and _trek_ before it comes, eh, Wyvern?"
"Well, you might just escape it," said Le Sage, with alacrity. "I'll go
and see about getting the horses up."
The sun was setting in gloomy, lurid fire behind an opaque curtain of
inky cloud, as they went forth into the open air; which said air was
strangely still and boding and oppressive, though now and again a fitful
puff would bring dull distant rumblings of thunder. Wyvern went round
with his uncordial host to the stables, while the others remained on the
_stoep_ to watch it.
"I don't seem to like starting in the face of this," said Warren. "It's
coming up and we shall get it thick about half way."
"Then don't start," said Lalante decisively. "We can easily put you up.
Ah--look!"
A succession of vivid flashes lit up the gloomy murk in the distance,
followed immediately by a heavy, detonating roar.
"I believe you're right," said Warren, meditatively. "By Jove, it's
coming on at express pace--right for us, too."
"One thing is certain," pronounced Lalante, not even trying to suppress
the jubilant ring in her voice, "and that is that you two can't possibly
go: back to-night. It isn't safe. Look how the storm is working up,
right across your road too. No, you can't. Now, can you, Mr Warren?"
"I'm in Wyvern's hands," answered Warren with a laugh, "and he, I
suspect, is in yours."
"Very well. That settles it. Come. We'll go round and tell them not
to bother about getting up the horses, for you're both going to stop the
night. I'm horribly afraid of lightning--for other people."
The livid, inky cloud was slowly and surely advancing, and as she had
said, it was right across the road back to Seven Kloofs. As the two
went forth a distant but heavy boom rolled dully to their ears.
"For other people?" repeated Warren significantly. "And for yourself?
You are never afraid?"
"No, I don't believe I am."
Warren looked at her with warm admiration, and something else--which he
succeeded in disguising the more easily that--as we have said--she was
in total ignorance of those two portraits which he cherished in secret.
"Here, father," she called out, as they reached the place where Le Sage
and Wyvern were standing, "call those boys back. The horses won't be
wanted till to-morrow. Just look what an awful storm there is working
up. Right across the way too."
"By Jove, so there is," said Le Sage. "Hope it means real rain, that's
all. You two 'll have to shake down here to-night."
The swift glance exchanged between Wyvern and Lalante did not escape
Warren. To those two the coming storm had brought reprieve. Only of a
few hours it was true, but--still a reprieve. Their real farewell had
been made, still--
Throwing out its dark and jagged streamers in advance, the black curtain
of cloud came driving up. A blinding gleam, and one of those awful
metallic crashes that are as though the world itself were cleft in
twain, and, ever growing louder as it drew nearer, a confused raving
roar.
"Hail, by Jove!" pronounced Le Sage. "That's a nuisance because it
means little or no rain. Where are those two youngsters, Lalante?"
"Indoors."
"And that's where we'd better get, and pretty soon," pronounced Wyvern.
But before they got there a hard and splitting impact caused all to
hurry their pace, for it was as though they were being pelted with
stones; and indeed they were, for the great white ice-globes came
crashing down, as with a roar like that of an advancing tidal wave the
mighty hailstorm was upon them; in its terrific clamour almost drowning
the bellowing of the thunder.
"We're well out of that," went on Wyvern, as they gained the shelter of
the house. "By George, if one had come in for it in an open camp, it
would have been a case of covering one's head with one's saddle. The
stones are as big as hens' eggs. I've only seen it like that once
before. Look."
Outside, the enormous hailstones lay like a fall of ice; and as the blue
spectral gleams of lightning fell upon the scene the effect was one of
marvellous beauty. It was as though a rain of gigantic diamonds was
cleaving and illuminating the darkness, while the layer which overspread
the ground flashed out a million points of incandescence. Then, with
receding roar, the hail cloud whirled on its course, and there was
stillness as of death, save for an intermittent roll of thunder.
Lalante had found herself drawn to a window--the others were crowding
the doorway--and as she pressed to her side the arm that encircled her,
she gazed forth upon the weird scene of storm and terror with a kind of
ecstasy, and, in her heart, blessing it. But for it she would now be
alone--alone and heart-wrung. The evil hour was only postponed--but it
was postponed--and they stood thus, close together in the darkness,
silent in their sweet, sad happiness.
"We'll be able to ice our grog to-night, Le Sage," said Warren presently
in his breezy way.
"Why, yes. We'd better have some too--and we may as well have some
light upon the scene. See to it, Lalante."
"All right, father," said the girl, cheerfully, but inwardly furiously
anathematising Warren for breaking up her last solitude _a deux_. For
she instinctively realised there would be no further opportunity of its
renewal--either to-night or to-morrow.
Nor--was there.