"Heard anything of Renshaw?" said Christopher Selwood, coming in hot and
tired from his work, for a cup of tea late in the afternoon.
"Not a word," answered his wife, looking up from the last of a batch of
letters that had just come in with the weekly post. "Why--you don't
think--?" she began, alarmed at the grave look which had come over her
husband's face.
"Well, I don't know," he replied. "I hope there's nothing seriously
wrong. How long is it since you wrote?"
"More than a fortnight now."
"Ah, well. I dare say it's all right. Now I think of it, they've had
big rains up that end of the country. Big rains mean big floods, and
big floods mean all the drifts impassable. The post carts may have been
delayed for days."
"You think that's it?" she said anxiously.
"Why, yes. At first, I own, I felt a bit of a scare. You see, the poor
chap was desperately ill when he wrote--though, to be sure, he must have
got over the worst even then--and I've been feeling a little anxious
about him of late. Well, he'll come when he can, and bring his friend
with him, I hope. It'll liven the girls up, too. Miss Avory must be
getting properly tired of having no one to flirt with."
The soft afternoon air floated in through the open windows in balmy
puffs, bringing with it a scent of flowers, of delicate jessamine twined
round the pillars of the _stoep_, of rich roses now bursting into full
bloom. A long-waisted hornet rocketed to and fro just beneath the
ceiling, knocking his apparently idiotic head against the same, and the
twittering of finks darting in and out of their pendulous nests above
the dam in all their habitual fussiness, mingled with the melodious
whistle of spreuws holding contraband revel among the fast-ripening figs
in the garden.
For a few minutes Mrs Selwood plied her sewing-machine in silence,
then--
"Talking of Violet, Chris, did it never occur to you that she had flung
her net over poor Renshaw?"
"Flung her net--Renshaw! No, by Jove, it never did! Why, he's the most
sober-going old chap in the world. Confound it, he must be past that
sort of thing--if he ever went in for it. Why, he's only two or three
years my junior."
"And what if he is?" was the reply of calm superiority. "He needn't be
Methuselah for all that. And then remember the hard, struggling,
solitary life his has been. He's just the man to fall over head and
ears in love at middle age."
"Pho! Not he! What matchmakers women are. Bryant and May are nothing
to them. But, I say, Hilda, supposing it is as you say, why shouldn't
he go in and win, eh?"
"Do you think Violet is the sort of girl to go and end her days in a
wattle-and-daub shanty away in the wilds of Bushmanland? Come now. Do
you think for a moment she's that sort?"
"N-o. Perhaps not. But there's no reason why she should. Renshaw
might find some farm to suit him somewhere else--down here, for
instance. I don't see why it shouldn't be done. He's a fellow who
thoroughly understands things, and would get along first-rate at
whatever he turned to. If he's come into low water up there it's more
the fault of that infernal country than his own, I'll bet fifty pounds.
No, I don't at all see why he shouldn't go in and win, and, by Jove, he
shall."
"Who's the matchmaker now?" retorted his wife with a smile of conscious
superiority. "But there are several things to be got over. First of
all, I believe he must be in very low water; in fact, pretty well at the
end of his tether. That drought can't have left him much to the good.
And I am tolerably certain Violet has nothing--at least, nothing to
speak of."
"Well, that might be got over--living's cheap enough,--and here we never
get any downright bad seasons."
"Then there's the difference in their creeds."
"Pho! That doesn't count for much in these parts, where there's
precious little opportunity of running any creed in particular."
"No, unfortunately; but there ought to be," replied Woman, the born
devotee. "But the most fatal obstacle of all you seem to overlook. It
usually takes two to make a bargain."
"What! Do you mean to say she wouldn't have him? Well, that's another
story, of course. But Renshaw's an uncommonly fine follow all round--
and she might do worse."
"That I won't attempt to deny. But I'm afraid the impression left upon
my mind is that she doesn't care twopence about him."
"Only making a fool of him, eh?"
"I won't say that. Violet is a girl who has been accustomed to a great
deal of admiration, and has an extremely fascinating manner. It is
quite possible that poor Renshaw may have walked into the trap with his
eyes open."
"Not he. He isn't such an ass. She must have been trying to make a
fool of him," growled Selwood, with whom Violet Avory was, nevertheless,
a prime favourite. "Just like you women! You're all alike, every one
of you."
His wife vouchsafed no reply, and the whirr of the sewing machine went
blithely on. Soon the silence was broken by an unmistakable snore. The
slumbrous warmth of the afternoon had told upon Selwood. His head had
fallen back, his pipe had slipped on to the floor. He was fast asleep.
An hour went by. It was getting nearly time to go to the kraals and
count in the sheep. Still he snored steadily on. His wife, drowsy with
the continual whirr of the sewing machine, felt more than half inclined
to follow his example.
Suddenly there was a sound of wheels on the grassy plot outside the
front garden, then a voice exclaiming in dubious tone--
"Here's a take in. I believe they're all away from home."
The voice proceeded from one of the two occupants of a very travel-worn
buggy standing at the gate.
"No, they're not!" cried Mrs Selwood, to whom that voice was well
known. "Come--wake up, Chris. Here is Renshaw himself!"
"Eh--what! I believe I've been asleep!" cried Selwood, starting
up--"Renshaw--is it! Hallo, old chap. This is first-rate," he added,
rushing out. And the two men's hands wore locked in a close grip.
"Allamaghtag! But you are looking pulled down--isn't he, Hilda?--though
not quite so much as I should have expected. How are you, sir? We are
delighted to see you," he went on as Renshaw duly introduced his friend.
["Allamaghtag!" "Almighty!" A common ejaculation among the Boers. It
and similar colloquialisms are almost equally frequent among their
colonial brethren.]
Then Marian appeared--her sweet face lighting up with a glow of glad
welcome for which many a man might have given his right hand--and then
the children, who had been amusing themselves diversely after the manner
of their kind, anywhere outside and around the house, came crowding
noisily and gleefully around "Uncle Renshaw," as they had always been in
the habit of calling him. To the lonely man, fresh from his rough and
comfortless sick-bed, this was indeed a home-coming--a welcome to stir
the heart. Yet that organ was susceptible of a dire sinking as its
owner missed one face from the group,--realised in one quick, eager
glance that the presence he sought was not there.
Violet's room was at the back of the house, consequently she had heard
but faintly the sounds attendant on the arrival of the visitors. She
instinctively guessed at the identity of the latter, but it was clean
contrary to Violet Avory's creed to hurry herself on account of any man.
So having sacrificed a few moments of curiosity to this principle, and,
needless to say, taken the indispensable look at herself in the glass,
she issued leisurely forth.
Now, as she did so, Selwood was ushering in his stranger guest--was, in
fact, at that moment standing back to allow the latter to enter before
him. Thus they met face to face.
Then was her self-possession tried in such wise as no member of that
household had yet witnessed. She halted suddenly, her face deadly
white. A quick ejaculation escaped the stranger's lips.
It died as quickly, and his half-outstretched hand dropped to his side
in obedience to her warning glance; for her confusion was but a
momentary flash. It entirely escaped Selwood, who was walking behind
his guest, the broad shoulders and fine stature of the latter acting as
an opportune screen, and all the others were still outside.
"Miss Avory," introduced honest Chris, becoming aware of her presence.
"Mr--er--I really beg your pardon, but I'm afraid I didn't quite catch
your name just now--and Renshaw didn't happen to mention it in his
letter?"
"Sellon," supplied the other.
"By Jove! We hold half our names in common. We are both `Sells,' but
there we branch off--ho--ho! Sellon and Selwood, both `Sells,'"
repeated Chris, who was fond of a joke.
An unimportant, not to say trivial remark. But like many such, it was
destined in the fulness of time to be brought back pretty vividly to the
memory of its originator and his hearers.
Violet acknowledged the introduction with a queenly sort of bow, and
turning preceded them into the sitting-room.
"Where's Mr Fanning?" she asked, rising almost as soon as she was
seated. "I must go and say `How do you do?' to him."
Sellon muttered an oath to himself as she slipped from the room, not
loud enough to be heard by his host, however, who proceeded to ply him
with questions as to his journey--and brandy-and-water.
Meanwhile Violet, in pursuance of her expressed intent, was greeting the
other arrival with a pretty cordiality that was perfection itself, and
when she tuned her voice to the requisite minor key as she asked all
manner of questions and expressed all manner of sympathy with regard to
his late illness, and whether he ought to have undertaken such a long
journey so soon, and if he had taken _great_ care of himself during the
same, the effect on her victim was such a reaction from his first
feeling of dismay at her non-appearance that he could have thrown up his
hat and hoorayed aloud. Whereby we fear it is only too obvious that
friend Renshaw was as big a fool as the general run of his fellow-men.
"Well, and what do you think of this country, Mr Sellon?" came the
inevitable query, as they were gathered together after the first fuss
and flurry of greeting.
"I think various things, Mrs Selwood," was the ready reply. "Parts of
it are lovely, and parts of it are grand, and one gets a fine
opportunity of seeing it all during a fortnight's journey behind three
horses. But other parts, on the other hand, and notably the latitudes
inhabited by friend Fanning here, reminded me forcibly of the Yankee's
reply to the same question."
"And what was that?"
"Why, he was travelling in that awful Karroo during a drought, and
somebody asked him what he thought of the country, `What do I think of
your country?' says he. `See here, stranger, if I owned a section of
your country I guess I'd enclose that section well around, and send out
for a paint-pot and paint it green.'"
This tickled Selwood amazingly, and he burst into a roar.
"Well, that wouldn't hold good of our part," he said when he had
recovered.
"Oh no, no," assented the stranger, hurriedly. "Let me clear myself of
that charge of heresy without delay. Words are inadequate to describe
the beauties of the road as soon as we got into these mountains. I'm
serious, mind."
"Well, we must contrive to show you more of them," said his hostess.
"Are you fond of shooting, Mr Sellon?"
"He just is," put in Renshaw. "He kept us in game all along the road,
and in chronic hot water with all the Dutchmen whose places we passed,
by knocking over springboks under their very windows without so much as
a `by your leave.'"
"Well, it's better to be the shooter than the shootee, eh, Fanning? But
that joke'll keep," laughed Sellon, significantly.
"We can show you plenty of fun in that line here," said Christopher.
"The mountains are swarming with rhybok, and there are any amount of
partridges and quail. Plenty of bushbucks, too, in the kloofs, and
guinea-fowl. Hallo, by Jove! it's time to go and count in," he added,
jumping up from his chair.
Then the three men started off to do the regulation evening round of the
kraals, while the ladies went their ways, either to give a supervising
eye to the preparation of supper, or to while away an idle half-hour
prior to that comfortable repast.
"Well, Violet, and what do you think of the stranger?" said Marian, when
they were left to themselves.
"Oh, I think him rather a joke. Likely to turn out very good fun, I
should say," was the careless reply.
"Sure to, if you take him in hand, you abominable girl. But I've a sort
of idea the `fun' will be all on one side. I suppose you think you can
reduce him to utter and insane subjection in less than a week."
For response Violet only smiled. But the smile seemed to convey more
plainly than words the conviction that she rather thought she could.