"AMORIS INTEGRATIO."
"On, Maurice, how could you be so imprudent?"
"Imprudent be--somethinged! If you only knew the difficulty I've had to
cut loose from the other fellows at all."
"Yes, imprudent," she went on, ignoring the last remark. "Supposing any
of those wretched children had been about--and they're just like little
savages, always jumping out upon you unexpectedly from nowhere. And we
are quite by a pathway, too."
"Then the sooner we get away from it the better, for I intend repeating
the operation with interest before we rejoin the merry crowd."
"How did you find me out, Maurice? How did you know where I was?"
"Aha, you couldn't hide from me, you see," he replied. "No good, was
it?"
She made no answer. She seemed to be undergoing a struggle with
herself. Then at last--
"Why did you break through our agreement? We were not to see each other
for six months. It is not four yet."
"Violet! Do you mean to tell me you are sorry I have not kept that
boshy arrangement of ours. Look me straight in the face and tell me you
are--if you can."
He turned her face towards him. The dark soft eyes were brimming, the
delicate features were working with a wild yearning, which its owner was
in vain striving to suppress.
"Sorry to see you? Oh, Maurice, my darling, I have thought of late I
should never see you again," she cried, breaking into a storm of sobs as
she threw herself on his breast.
And this was the girl who, but a few days before, and almost on that
very spot, had made an utter mock of all that savoured of real feeling.
"I almost wish it would come true. It would be such a novel sensation,"
had been her words to Marian. Ah, but it had come true--and that long
before she uttered them. Certain it is that none there at Sunningdale
had ever seen this side of Violet Avory; had ever suspected this secret
chapter in her history.
"Don't cry, little one," said Maurice, soothingly, drawing her further
within the recesses of the garden, and away from the obnoxious quince
hedge, which might shelter prying eyes. "We are going to have such a
happy time together now."
"Now, yes," she answered. "But--after? Nothing but misery."
"Not a bit of it. We can go on waiting. Patience--that's the word.
When I used to get my `cast' hung up or otherwise tangled while fishing,
instead of blowing off a volley of cuss words, and tearing and tugging
at the stuff, I made it a rule to remark aloud, `Pazienza!' That
answered, kept one in a cool and even mind, and saved further tangle and
a lot of cussing. Well, that must be our watchword--`Pazienza!'"
"I have got you now, at all events," she murmured, pressing his arm.
"But now, don't you see why I met you as a perfect stranger last night?"
"Not altogether. It annoyed me a good bit--in fact, worried me all the
evening. I should have thought it would have been better to have let
them know we were old acquaintances, at any rate. They would have left
us more to ourselves."
"Not a bit of it. They would have set up a romance on the spot. As
soon as a woman gets wind of a romance, she can't for the life of her,
with the best intentions in the world, help watching its progress. It
would have been a case of every one hurrying to _ecarter_ themselves as
soon as they saw as together, doing it, too, in the usual blundering and
clumsy manner. I know it all so well--I've seen it so often, and, I may
as well add, gone through it."
"That was the reason, was it? Well, you do know a thing or two, little
one," he said admiringly. "But look here. We must snatch a little time
together as often as we can. We'll make Selwood get up rides and
expeditions, and pair off, lose ourselves by accident, and all that sort
of thing. But mind, I can't go on talking to you day after day, only as
one of a crowd. I can't stand it. We must manage somehow."
"Do you think I am a bit less anxious to than you? But, Maurice
darling, do mind what I'm going to say. You must be on your guard
before people, you always were such an awful old blunderer. You mustn't
go letting slip any `Violets,' for instance, and you're quite as likely
to as not."
"I'm not going to let one slip at the present moment, anyway," he
replied with a laugh. "And so you thought you were never going to see
me again?"
"Ah, I have sometimes feared so. The agonies I have gone through! I
know what you are going to say--that it was my own doing. I did it to
test you, Maurice. Six months is not a long time, but ah, I have at
times thought I should die long before it was over! Day after day, week
after week, no news, not a word from you, or even of you. And every one
here thinks I am utterly heartless. I never try to undeceive them; in
fact, I rather encourage them in the idea."
No one would have thought so could they but have seen her there that
morning, slowly wending through the mimosa brake encircled by her
lover's arm; for they had left the somewhat precarious refuge of the
garden. The restless, eager face, the quick, passionate tones, as
though she were talking against time, and grudged every one of the too
swiftly flying moments which were bringing this doubly sweet, because
surreptitious, interview to its end.
They had reached the river-bank. The cool water bubbling along beneath
the shade of the trees, the varying call of birds in the brake, the
chirruping tree-crickets, the hum of bees dipping into the creamy cups
of snow-white arums which grew in the moist shade, the melodious shout
of the hoopoe echoing from the black kloofs that rent the mountain
side--all made an appropriate framework, a fitting accompaniment of
harmonious sounds to this sweet stolen interview. High overhead the
hoary crest of a great mountain frowned down from the dazzling blue.
"You haven't told me yet how you managed to find me out," said Violet at
length, after a good deal of talk that we feel under no special
necessity to reproduce, because, given the circumstances, the reader
should have no difficulty in guessing its nature.
"Oh, that was the most astonishing piece of luck that ever came about,"
he answered. "You had better call it a fatality. I had started to look
for you in quite the wrong direction, and fell in with that queer
fellow, Fanning. Came down here with him, as you know."
"Did Mr Fanning talk about--er--tell you about--me?" she said
hesitatingly.
Maurice Sellon was not the man to betray poor Renshaw's involuntary and
delirious confidences, even to Violet herself--at least, not unless some
strong motive existed for doing so, which at present was not the case.
So he answered--
"Talk about you? Not he! He's much too deep a dog. He just barely
mentioned that you were here, which drove me pretty well wild, for it
was long enough before I could get him to make a start, and of course I
couldn't let him suspect the reason."
Strict veracity was not one of Sellon's strong points. He did not
choose to let her into the fact that the wild surprise of their meeting
in the hall on the occasion of his arrival was absolutely and
impartially mutual.
"But look here, Violet," he went on. "Talking of Fanning, you were
almost--well, carrying on with him last night. I began to get quite
angry. You mustn't make a fool of the poor chap--if you haven't
already, that's to say."
Violet laughed--her old, heartless, mocking laugh.
"Fancy being jealous of Mr Fanning!" she said scornfully.
"That be hanged!" cried Maurice, gaily, "But, darling, I grudge seeing
you talking too much to any one."
Thus, womanlike, secure in the possession of her own heart's desire, she
spoke contemptuously of one for whom she really entertained a great and
deep-laid respect. Her own love, outside its special object, had not
availed to render her more considerate, more tender, towards the man
whose heart she had made a plaything of.
Returning through the garden they came upon Renshaw himself, who, with
Marian and Effie, was strolling around. Now, the latter, for all her
tender years, knew quite as much as was good for her, and in the present
instance was prompt to recognise a case of "spoons," as her abominably
precocious young mind did not hesitate to define it. It happened that
she disliked Violet, so she fixed her eyes maliciously upon the pair,
and her mouth expanded into a knowing grin--which made Violet ardently
desire to box her ears soundly there and then--and resolved to store up
the incident for future use; in fact, to improve upon the discovery.
"Hallo, Fanning," cried Sellon, as they met, "you're looking rather
seedy, old chap. Been legging it around too much all the morning."
"Not I. I feel all right. You won't have to do doctor again, Sellon--
no fear," was the genial reply.
Now, Sellon's words had caused Marian to steal a very quick and anxious
glance at her companion's face, which at that moment was certainly
destitute of its normal healthy colour.
"Renshaw, you have been overdoing it," she said warningly. "You have
come here to be set up, not to be made ill again. So luckily it's just
dinnertime, and we must all go in."
So the parties fused, and, merged into one, retraced their steps towards
the house, chatting indifferently. But that glance of Marian's had
drawn, as it were, a curtain from before Violet's eyes. She, too,
thought she had made a discovery, and she, too, resolved to turn it to
future account--should the necessity arise.
"I say, Renshaw," said Selwood, _sotto voce_, and with a characteristic
nudge, as they entered the passage a little way behind the rest of the
party, "that chum of yours is a knowing dog, eh? Miss Avory has soon
managed to cure his headache. Ho--ho--ho!"
Thus did everybody combine to turn the steel, already sticking deep
enough, in this unfortunate man's heart.
Dinner over, the heat of the afternoon was got through in delightfully
easy and dawdling fashion. Christopher Selwood, in a big armchair, sat
in a cool corner absorbed in the ill-printed columns of the local sheet,
the _Fort Lamport Courier_, which set forth how _brandziekte_ had broken
out in one end of the district, and how a heavy hailstorm had peppered
the other, and how "our esteemed townsman, Ezekiel Bung, Esquire, the
genial landlord of the Flapdoodle Hotel," had, "we deeply regret to say,
fallen off the _stoep_ of his house and injured his leg," the fact being
that the said Bung, Esquire, had walked straight into space while as
drunk as a blind fiddler, and intent on kicking out a Fingo who had
contumaciously reckoned on quenching his thirst at the public bar,
instead of among his compatriots in the canteen. This and other news of
a like interesting and intellectual nature, Selwood scanned. Suddenly
an exclamation escaped him.
"By Jingo! This is good!" he cried. "I say, Marian, you remember those
two black chaps who were round here with all that stock two or three
weeks back? That one-eyed cuss who was inclined to be so cheeky?"
"Yes. What about them?"
"You remember the names on their pass?"
"Perfectly. Muntiwa and Booi."
"All right. The whole of that stock was stolen, and they've been run in
at Fort Lamport and committed for trial at the Circuit Court, which'll
be held in a week or two."
"That's good business," said Renshaw. "How were they nobbled?"
"Why, a Dutchman spotted them just outside Fort Lamport, and recognised
some of the cows as belonging to his uncle or somebody. He said nothing
at the time, but just trotted up to the court and swore an affidavit,
and they were all run in."
"But didn't you say they had a pass?" said Renshaw.
"Of course they had. But therein lies the cream of the whole situation.
The pass turns out a forged one, cooked up by a mission-station Kafir,
and well done it was, too. So much for educating the niggers. It turns
out, too, that the police have discovered these chaps' hiding-place,
away up among the thick bush and caves in Slaagter's Hoek. It was a
regular vultures' nest, chock full of bones of stolen stock. They must
have been at it for years. And then to think of them marching openly
through the country on the strength of that forged pass. Let's hope
they'll get it stiff now they are quodded."
"Who's the circuit judge this time?" asked Renshaw.
"Van Reneen, I expect. Judge Sherrington was round on circuit last
time, so we are sure to have the other man; and a good thing, too. Old
Sherrington loves a black fellow as if he was his father, and lets him
down about as lightly as he comfortably can, and that's very lightly
indeed."
"You are sure to be subpoenaed to give evidence, Chris," said Marian,
mischievously.
"Eh! By Jingo, I never thought of that. I hope not, though!" cried
Selwood, in dismay at the prospect of an enforced absence from home,
involving, moreover, two long and tiresome journeys, and Heaven knew how
many days of kicking up his heels in Fort Lamport, in hourly expectation
of being called. "Well, likely enough they'll have plenty of evidence
without mine. Sellon--Renshaw--how about a stroll round? it's turning
cool now. But we'll do a glass of grog first."