A wild, deep, romantic valley, winding between lofty bush-clad hills,
their summits broken into many a rugged cliff, which echoes back the
muffled roar of a mountain torrent foaming and hissing through its
pent-up rocky channel. A lovely valley as travelled in the morning
sunshine, melodious with the piping of birds from the cool shade of
tangled brake and sylvan recesses on either side. Overhead a sky of the
most brilliant blue; around a fresh, clear atmosphere, revivifying as
wine; for it is mountain air and the day is yet young.
At its head the valley opens out into a wide basin, where the stream
winds and curves through a green fertile bottom, whose rich soil for
many acres is covered with growing crops of wheat and maize. Higher up
still, in vivid contrast to the darker-hued foliage around, stands forth
a group of tall willows, their trailing feathery boughs--affording a
nesting-place to a perfect colony of noisy and chattering finks--shading
the glassy surface of a large dam. Between this and an extensive
orchard, whose well-cared-for trees are groaning beneath the weight of
their ripening loads--peaches and apricots, the delicate nectarine, and
the luscious pear--stands the homestead.
No bare, rough-and-ready shanty of sun-baked bricks this, but a good and
substantial house, rendered picturesque by its surrounding of orange
trees and pomegranates; of great red cactus, glowing prismatically, now
crimson, now scarlet; of many-hued geraniums; of the royal passion
flower twining up the pillars of the _stoep_, spreading over the roof of
the verandah itself. No dead, drear, arid thirst-land this, but a
veritable garden of Eden; the murmur of running water in the air, the
fruits of the earth glowing and ripening around, the sunlight glinting
in a network through the foliage, and a varying chorus of gladsome
bird-voices echoing around from far and near. Such is Sunningdale--
Christopher Selwood's farm in the Umtirara Mountains. Nor was it
inappropriately named.
Seated on the _stoep_ aforesaid, under the cool shade of the verandah,
are two young women--one busily engaged on a piece of needlework, the
other reading, or, to be more accurate, pretending to read. Not less
dissimilar in appearance are these two than in their present occupation.
One tall, fair, grave; the Other of smaller build, dark, _espiegle_.
One deliberate of speech and movement; the other all mirth and vivacity
upon any or no provocation.
"How much longer are you going on with that eternal stitch, stitch,
stitch, Marian?" cries the latter, dropping her book for the twentieth
time and yawning.
She addressed smiles slightly.
"Why? What would you rather I did?" she says. "You generally say it's
too hot to stroll in the morning."
"Do I? Well, perhaps it is. But you were looking so preternaturally
solemn, and so silent, that I believe you were thinking of--some one.
Who was it? Come, out with it!"
"You shouldn't judge everybody from your own standpoint, Violet," is the
good-humoured reply. "Now, my private opinion is you are developing
quite a fidgety vein because we only get a post here once a week."
A close observer, watching the countenance of her thus bantered, might
have thought there was a hit underlying this perfectly innocent remark,
but if so it escaped the speaker, for she never looked up from her
sewing.
"Ha, ha, ha! Oh, wise Marian. The post, indeed! You should see the
cartload of astonishing effusions I get. I believe I will let you see
them one of these days. They'd astonish you considerably, if only as
evidence of what a lot of idiots there are among men. No; your sagacity
is at fault. You haven't hit the right nail this time."
"Don't you get rather tired of that kind of fun?" said Marian, biting
off the end of her thread. "I should have thought there was a great
deal of sameness in it."
"Sameness! So there is. But what is one to do? I can't help it. I
don't ask them to come swarming round me. They do it. I see a man for
the first time to-day, forget his very existence to-morrow, and the day
after that he tells me he can't live without me. It isn't my fault.
Now, is it?"
"Since you ask me, I tell you I firmly believe it is. You're a
hard-hearted little--wretch, and one of these days you'll find your own
wings singed--mark my words."
"A truce to your platitudes," laughed the other. "I've heard that said
so often--and--sometimes I almost wish it would come true. It would be
such a novel sensation."
By the above it will be manifest to the reader that the enunciator of
these sentiments could be nothing less than an arrant flirt; as, indeed,
was the case. Violet Avory was as proud of her conquests, and the
multifold trophies of a substantial nature which accompanied them, as a
Cheyenne war-chief of his scalps, and she looked upon them in the same
light--legitimate tributes to her own prowess. She had begun to flirt
when she was fourteen, and had carried it on, seriously and without a
break, up to date, and she was now twenty-two. And Nature had endowed
her with bountiful facilities in that line. Her face conformed to the
strictest canons of beauty--oval, high-bred, with regular and delicate
features, melting dark eyes, and a winsome little mouth with a smile
ever hovering around its corners; and her quick, vivacious manner was
forcibly if unconventionally defined by a large section of her admirers,
especially the younger ones, as "awfully fetching." She was a sort of
distant connection of the Selwoods, whose acquaintance she had made
during their last visit to England. They had been immensely taken with
her, and now she was fulfilling a long-standing invitation to visit them
in their South African home.
But with all her dazzling beauty and winning arts some men would not
have looked twice at Violet Avory when Marian Selwood was by. The fair
sweet face of the latter, with its large sleepy eyes, its red, smiling
lips, parting from a row of white regular teeth, could grow very lovely;
indeed, it was one of those faces which gain upon the observer with its
owner's further acquaintance. Nor was its normal gravity other than on
the surface, for to cause the great blue eyes to sparkle with fun and
mischief was no difficult matter. And Marian's disposition was as sweet
as her face, her mind that of a refined gentlewoman. She was born in
the colony, and had lived the greater part of her life where we now see
her, helping to keep house for her brother and his wife.
"Hot or cool, I vote we stroll somewhere," cried Violet, starting up
from her chair with a restlessness and energy she seldom displayed at
that time of the day, when the sun made himself very definitely felt,
even at that elevation.
"Very well," acquiesced the other, gathering up her work. Then she
added, with a smile, "You had better get a sunshade, Violet, or you'll
be taking back quite a stock of freckles. The now disconsolate ones
will all cry off then."
"Will they! But--are you not going to take one?"
"No. I'm about burnt enough already. Besides, there are no
disconsolate ones in my case to doom to disillusion, so it doesn't
matter."
"Oh yes! Very likely! I'm sure to believe that."
"Go away, and get your hat on," interrupted Marian.
"Come now, Marian," said Violet, as the two girls wandered down the
shady walk under the fruit-trees. "It's all very well for you to affect
the solemn, and all that kind of thing; but I don't believe in it a bit,
let me tell you. No--not one bit."
"Oh, don't you?"
"No, I don't. I believe, for all that quiet way of yours, you are just
as dangerous as they pretend I am. You're deep; that's what you are.
Now, there's that nice Mr Fanning. You flirted with him shockingly.
You know you did!"
"I wasn't aware of it," was the calm response. And then came a pause.
It was finally broken by Marian.
"Poor Renshaw! He and I were--well, not exactly children together, for
he is about a dozen years my senior, but we have known each other all
our lives. And, by the way, Violet, I hope you have not been
intentionally adding him to the list of your captives; but I am
tolerably certain he has fallen a victim. Whether it is your doing, or
pure accident, I don't undertake to guess. But he is not the sort of
man you ought to make a fool of."
Violet laughed--mockingly, maliciously.
"Why, Marian, you're jealous. I've struck the right chord at last.
Never mind; it isn't too late now. I won't stand in your light, I
promise you."
Most women under the circumstances would have fired up--repelled the
insinuation angrily. But Marian Selwood was not of that sort.
"Poor Renshaw is quite unlucky enough, without having a--well--damaged
heart thrown into the scale," she went on. "His life is hard enough in
all conscience, and is just now a well-nigh hopeless struggle, I don't
mind telling you in confidence. I dare say you think there isn't much
in him because he is reserved; but more than once his cool courage has
been the means of saving not one life, but many. I have heard men say,
not once, not yet twice, that in any undertaking involving peril or
enterprise there is no man they would rather have at their side than
Renshaw Fanning. And he is the most unselfish of men. His is a
splendid character, and one not often met with in these days."
"Well done! Well done, Marian!" cried Violet, mischievously. "The
secret is out at last. I know where Mr Fanning's trumpeter lives.
But, joking apart, he is awfully nice, only a trifle too solemn, you
know, like yourself; in fact, you would suit each other admirably.
There now, don't get huffy. I assure you I quite missed him for ever so
long after he left. How long is it since he left?"
"Just over five weeks."
"As long as that, is it? Well, I wish he'd come again; there, is that
an adequate tribute to your Bayard? But I suppose he won't be able to
come all that distance again--hundreds of miles, isn't it?--for ever so
long--and then I shall be gone--Oh! Look there! Look, Marian, look!"
she broke off, her voice rising to a scream, as she pointed,
terror-stricken, to an object rising out of the grass some twenty yards
distant.