"HE DOES NOT RING TRUE."
Three weeks had gone by since the arrival of our two friends at
Sunningdale, and yet, although he expected great things--everything--
from the change, Renshaw seemed to find it impossible altogether to
throw off the effects of his recent illness.
Now, to one member of the Sunningdale household this was a source of
great, though secret anxiety. That one was Marian Selwood.
With growing concern she noticed an unwonted dejection settling over
him--a kind of physical and mental languor and loss of appetite totally
unlike his former self. Sometimes she ascribed it to the baleful
witcheries of Violet Avory, at others to the consciousness of his hard,
uphill struggle to make headway at all; sometimes, again, to both causes
combined. Still there was no getting over the fact that he did not gain
in convalescent strength, notwithstanding that his surroundings were in
every way favourable and congenial to that end.
They had ever been great allies, these two. It is strange that they had
not become greater--even for life; it is possible that this might
eventually have come about but for two obstacles--Renshaw's poverty
and--Violet.
We do not commit ourselves to the assertion that Marian was in love with
Renshaw. But that, in her opinion, he was absolutely faultless, we do
freely admit, and her remarks upon him to Violet Avory earlier in this
narrative lifted merely a corner of the curtain which veiled her
predilection. Wherefore now she was mightily exercised on his account.
He did too much. For instance, what earthly necessity was there for him
to have turned out so early that morning and gone right away up the
mountain to look for half a dozen wretched sheep left out overnight,
riding back by the vij-kraal to count Umsapu's flock? Or what business
had he toiling hard all day yesterday in the broiling sun, helping to
pack a stone wall for a new "land" which was to be laid under
cultivation, and he just through a return of a deadly malarial fever?
It was too bad of Chris to allow it.
All this and more she took the opportunity of putting before Renshaw
himself one hot morning as the two sat together in a delightfully cool
and shady corner of the _stoep_.
"It won't kill me yet, Marian," he replied to her expostulations. "But
do you seriously think I should get back my old form the sooner by just
loafing around all day doing nothing?"
"Yes, I do," she rejoined decisively. "Yes, I do--even though you put
it that way. You do far too much."
"Pooh! Not a bit of it. Why, it's quite a treat to be able to do
something. Bless my life, on my dried-up old place it's a case of
vegetating day after day--counting out--looking around--counting in.
I'm like the jolly nomad moving around with his flocks, except that,
mine being stationary, I have less trouble even than he has."
"You certainly are nomadic in that you are wandering from the point,
Renshaw, which is very crafty of you, but useless. As I am continually
telling you--we feel bound to see that you get well and strong while you
are with us, and how can you do either when day after day you are
over-exerting yourself?"
There was just a _soupcon_ of tenderness in her voice--and Marian
Selwood had a beautiful voice--as she thus reasoned with him. Her head
was partly bent down over her work, throwing into prominence the
glorious masses of her golden hair, which, swept up into an artistic
coronal, lent an additional dignity to her calm, sweet beauty. Renshaw
lounged back in his cane chair, idly watching the supple, shapely
fingers plying the needle in rhythmic regularity--every movement one of
unconscious grace. The boom of bees floated upon the jessamine-laden
air, varied by the shriller buzz of a long, rakish-looking hornet
winging in and out of his absurd little clay nest, wedged, like that of
a swallow, beneath the eaves of the verandah. Great butterflies flitted
among the sunflowers, but warily and in terror of the lurking amantis--
that arrant hypocrite, so devotional in his attitude, so treacherously
voracious in his method of seizing and assimilating his prey--and a pair
of tiny sugar-birds, in their delicate crimson and green vests, flashed
fearlessly to and fro within a couple of yards of Renshaw's head,
dipping their long needle-like bills into the waxen blossoms of the
fragrant jessamine.
And here we frankly admit losing patience with our friend Renshaw. Had
we been in his place, with that exquisitely modulated voice talking to
us, and fraught with that tender solicitude for our well-being, we feel
sure we should in our own mind have sent a certain outrageous little
flirt to the right-about then and there, and have dismissed her from our
thoughts outright. But then, after all, we must remember that these two
had known each other intimately all their lives, had been almost like
brother and sister, which, we suppose, counts for something.
"Well, I'm taking it easy enough this morning, in your sweet society,
Marian," he rejoined, "so you mustn't be too rough upon me. And--it is
Paradise."
"What is? My society?"
He laughed.
"That, of course. Understood. Didn't need specifying. But--all this,"
with a wave of the arm that caused the sugar-birds to dart away in
terror and a couple of flashes of sheeny light, a result he certainly
had not intended, "All this. To lounge here at ease like this,
literally bathed in the scent of flowers, with a sound of running water
in one's ears, and of bird life, animal life, every sort of life, after
the dead, burnt-up, famine-stricken waste, watching day after day, month
after month, for the rain that doesn't come--seeing one's stock snuffing
out like flies with daily increasing regularity. Bah! It's enough to
drive a man mad."
"Why don't you give it up, Renshaw? Sell off your place and come and
try this part? Chris is always saying you could do much better
somewhere down here."
"And Chris is right. But selling off is easier said than done, let me
tell you. No one will so much as look at land investment up there--
and--I'm about cleaned out. As soon as I've picked up a little more in
form I'm off up country again. The interior. It's the only thing
left."
Marian's head bent down lower over her work, for her eyes were brimming.
Renshaw, busily engaged at that moment knocking the ashes out of his
pipe against the post of the verandah, was half turned away from her,
and, for good or for ill, the teardrop which fell upon her work escaped
him altogether. When he turned round again she had entirely recovered
her self-control.
"If that is your idea, you had better follow my advice and do all you
can to get strong again," she said. "For you cannot think of launching
out into an undertaking of that sort for some time to come. But--are
you going to make another attempt to find `The Valley'?"
Renshaw nodded.
"That's it!" he said. "By the way, you haven't let drop anything about
it to any one, Marian."
She felt hurt.
"I should have thought you knew me better than that. Ah, I see. Only a
woman, after all!" she added, with a smile. "That's what you were
thinking?"
"No. It came out instinctively. You must forgive me, Marian. I really
believe I'm half crazed on the subject of that confoundedly elusive
Golconda. Well, we shall find it this time."
"We?"
"Yes. I'm going to cut Sellon into the scheme. It's an undertaking
that'll carry two. Besides, he's a good fellow, and I owe him a turn
for pulling me through that fever."
"I'm sorry to tread upon your quixotic susceptibilities, Renshaw," said
Marian, after a brief pause, "but if you were not as astoundingly
unselfish as most of us are the other way, it might strike you that if
Mr Sellon has done you one good turn, you have done him several. If he
saved your life by nursing you through that fever, as you say--though it
is by no means certain you would not have pulled through it without
him--you have saved his on another occasion. Where would he have been
with that snake crawling over him, for instance?--Ugh!"
"I say, Marian. It isn't like you to be so ungenerous," was the
astonished reply. "Wasn't it awfully good of the chap to stick there in
my hovel all those weeks, boring himself to death just for the sake of
looking after me? Come now!"
"Where would he have been if your `hovel' had not come so opportunely in
sight when he was lost in the veldt, exhausted and without food or
water?" came the calm, ready rejoinder.
"Oh, I say, come now. We can't count that. It wouldn't be fair. But--
look here, Marian. You don't like Sellon? Now, why not?"
"There you're wrong," she answered after a pause. "Within the ordinary
meaning of the word, I do `like' him. I think him a very pleasant,
well-informed man, and good company. But he is not a man I should
trust."
"Not, eh? But, in the name of all conscience, why not?"
"That I can't tell you, Renshaw. I don't quite know myself, except that
somehow or other he doesn't seem to ring true. It's a question of ear,
like a false note. There, though, this is shameful. Here I am taking
away a person's character in the most reckless way, with nothing more
definite to go upon but my woman's instinct. I wouldn't mention such a
thing to any one else in the world--not even to Chris or Hilda. But I
always did make a father-confessor of you," she added, with a smile.
"And I hope you always will. Still, Marian, with all due deference to
your woman's instinct, it's just on the cards it may in this instance be
erroneous."
"Perhaps so. I hope so. I mean it sincerely, not ironically. But,
Renshaw--how much do you know of this Mr Sellon? Who is he?"
"Well, the fact is, I don't know much--beyond that he's knocking around
here on the look-out for anything that may turn up trumps--like a good
many of us. He's a man who seems to have seen a good deal of the
world--and, as you say, he's good company. Seems well bred, too."
"Oh yes," acquiesced Marian, half absently. "But we had better forget
that I ventured an unfavourable opinion on him." And as at that moment
they were invaded by twelve-year-old Effie, the subject perforce
dropped.
"Is Violet inside, Effie?" asked Marian.
"Inside? Not she. Not when somebody else is outside. She's spooning
away somewhere--as usual."
"That's a nice way for little girls to talk," said Marion, severely.
"Well, so she is," went on Precocity, with the abominable
straightforwardness of her tender years. "Wasn't it always too hot to
move, if any one suggested going out in the morning, until `somebody'
came? Now--ahem!"
"You're talking nonsense, you naughty child," said Marian, angrily. "In
fact, you don't know yourself what you're talking about."
"Eh? Don't I? If you had seen what I saw--only the day before
yesterday--"
"But we didn't see it, and we don't want to know anything about it,"
struck in Renshaw, sternly. "I never expected you to turn into a little
mischief-maker, Effie."
"You needn't be so cross, Uncle Renshaw," whimpered Miss Precocity, in
whose affections the speaker held a prime place. "I only thought it
rather good fun." (Boo-hoo-hoo!)
"I didn't mean to be hard upon you, dear--but spreading stories is
generally anything but fun--not unusually least of all to those who
spread them. Never repeat anything, Effie. Half the mischief in life
comes out of tittle-tattle."
But at that very moment, as though to turn the edge of the above highly
salutary and not uncalled-for precept, who should heave in sight but the
very pair under discussion, though in fact Christopher Selwood made up a
third. The sight seemed to dry up Effie's snivelling as if by magic.
"There! Didn't I say so?" she muttered maliciously, and judiciously
fled indoors.
"Still at work, Marian?" cried Violet, as the trio came up. "Why, what
a regular Darby and Joan you two look," she added, with a mischievous
sparkle in her eyes. For although she laid herself out to keep well in
with Marian, yet it was characteristic of her that she could not refrain
from launching such a shaft as this--no, not even though her life
depended on it.
And to her quick eye it seemed that there was ever so faint an
indication that the bolt had struck home.