A Secret of the Lebombo

Chapter Four.

“I will not let him go.”

Lalanté’s intention of spending the evening with him had come with the effect of a reprieve upon Wyvern. For all his trust in her he never parted with her without vague misgivings that by some means or other it might be for the last time; for did he not hold her in opposition to a growing and decided parental hostility? It would be through no fault of hers, he told himself, were such misgivings justified. With all her strength and resolution, circumstances might be too strong for her, hence the misgiving.

They wandered about, happy for the moment, watching the great rays of the westering sun sweep lower and lower over the green expanse of the river valley – upon which now, the whiteness of returning flocks moved slowly homeward.

“I’m going to leave you to yourself for a little now, dearest,” said the girl, as these drew nearer. “I should only be in your way, and disturb your counting. Besides, I feel rather hot and dusty, and want to go and titivate.”

“Of course. How stupid of me.”

“No – no. You needn’t come, old Sanna will get me all I want. Now forget that I exist, for the next few minutes. So long,” and with a nod and a bright smile she left him.

Sixpence was looking a very subdued and dejected Kafir as his master finished the count of his particular flock; which was accurate – save for one.

“I have been thinking over your case, Sixpence,” began Wyvern, when the other boy had been dismissed, “and even now haven’t quite made up my mind what to do about it.”

“Nkose!” exclaimed the Kafir, deprecatorily, and sorely exercised in his mind. It was no unknown thing under the circumstances to give the culprit the option of receiving a dozen or so well laid on with a new reim, or taking his chance before the nearest Resident Magistrate; an arrangement on the whole satisfactory to both parties, in that the offender got off far more lightly than he would have got off at the hands of the law, and his employer was saved a great deal of trouble and some incidental expense. This, then, Sixpence feared, was the least he could expect, but he need not have, for Wyvern was utterly incapable of an act of violence in cold blood, and very rarely in hot.

“You see,” went on the latter, “I’m not sure that it is in my power to forgive you, even if I wanted to. I’m not sure that the law would not compel me to prosecute. I don’t see, either, how we can put the thing away. There’s that other fellow lying dead; for he’ll be as dead as the sheep you ‘slaag-ed’ long before this. I shall have to report the whole thing to Baas Le Sage. Then the ‘slaag-ing’ will all come out.”

But the fellow begged and prayed that he might not be sent to the tronk. He would make good the loss – over and over again if his master wished. And Wyvern, an appeal to whose soft side had rarely to be repeated, resolved that he would let the poor devil off if he could possibly do so, and said as much.

“When is Miss Lalanté coming here as Missis?” said old Sanna, as the girl, having bathed her face in cool fresh water, came forth looking radiant with its added glow.

“Don’t you be too curious, old Sanna,” was the answer. “Perhaps soon – perhaps not so soon. Who knows?”

“A Missis is badly wanted here, ja, very badly. Look at all that,” with a sweep of a yellow hand towards the confused pile of books and papers which had encroached over the greater part of the table. “All that would be cleared away. His letters too. Why the Baas does not even take the trouble to open his letters. Look at them.”

The girl’s heart tightened. Well she knew why those envelopes remained unopened. Their contents but bore upon the difficulties of their recipient, but in no sense with a tendency to alleviate the same. She forebore to touch the untidy heap lest something he might want to find should be misplaced, but she got a duster, and dusted and straightened the pictures and other things upon the wall. One frame only there was no need for her to dust or straighten. It was the one which contained her own portrait: and realising this a very soft, sweet smile came over her face. At which psychological moment Wyvern re-entered.

“I notice this is the only thing you allow old Sanna to dust,” she said ingenuously. “How many times a week is she under orders to do it?”

“You shall pay for that,” he answered. “There. Now you have done so duly, you shall own that you knew perfectly well that nobody ever touches it but me.”

“Oh, goeije! it is as if there were really a Missis here at last.”

The interruption came from old Sanna, who at that moment entered, bringing in the dishes. Both laughed.

“See, old Sanna,” said Wyvern. “We are rather tired of that remark. So if you can’t invent a new one don’t make any.”

“Better to be tired of that than of the Missis,” chuckled the old woman, as she withdrew. It will be seen that she was rather a privileged person.

The evening slipped by all too soon for these two, as they sat out on the stoep, watching the suffusing glow that heralded the rising of the broad moon. In the stillness the voices of night, well-nigh as multifold as the voices of day, were scarcely hushed, and the shrill bay of a jackal away beyond the river, would seem but a distance of yards instead of miles. The weird hoot of some ghostly night bird too, would float ever and anon from the hillside; and the dogs lying around the house would start up and bark in deep-toned, angry chorus, as the harsh shout of sentinel baboons echoed forth from the darksome recesses of the kloofs behind the homestead: or perchance as they detected some other sound, too subtle for human ears.

“How restless everything is to-night,” said the girl, listening. “Dearest, it seems a little bit eerie.”

“Oh, on a fine still night things always move about more. It may be something stirring up all those baboons – a leopard perhaps – not wild dogs I hope. You know it’s one of my hobbies that, being able to hear all sorts of wild animal voices when I sit out here of an evening, or when I am lying awake. It’s one of the charms of this place. I wonder if the next man here will say the same.”

“Don’t. Oh, is there no way out,” she cried, in a despairing tone, “no way by which you will not be forced to part with this beautiful place you love so much, and where our lives were to have passed in a very paradise? No way?”

“None.”

Then both sat in silence, fingers intertwined. A rim of gold peered up from behind the dark outline of the opposite rand, then a broad disc, and the great fiery moon soared aloft, penetrating the shadowed recesses of the river valley in a network of silvern gleams. At last Lalanté spoke.

“Dearest, I have to say it, as you know, but – it is time.”

“To saddle up? Yes, I’m afraid it is. But it isn’t good-bye yet, seeing we shall be together for another hour and a half.”

Both had risen. The girl went to find her hat and gloves while Wyvern lighted a waggon lantern and went round to the stable. In his mind was the consciousness of the awful depression that would be upon him during his return ride; when her presence was withdrawn. They would see each other again on the morrow in all probability, but – even then it would be under different circumstances.

The horses, fresh and willing in the cool air, snorted and sidled as their riders fared forth into the peaceful beauty of the radiant night. So fresh were they, indeed, that they could have covered the ten miles that lay before them in far less time than their said riders were disposed to allow them. And the latter were not inclined for hurry. This ride beneath the golden moon, the loom of the heights against the pale sky near and far, the sweet breaths of night distilling perfume from herb and flower, and they two together – alone. They talked – and the subject of their talk was one that never grew old – that never palled – for it was of the time which had elapsed since they had first met – and loved; and that time was one. Talked, too, of the time preceding; when he had been happy, contented here in his quiet way, because then unconscious that he was already on the road to financial ruin – of her father’s arrival two years ago, when he had bought the neighbouring stock farm upon which they now dwelt, and had prospered exceedingly; but, more alluring topic still, of her own arrival home a year later than that.

“And you have never quite forgiven me for admitting that I was prepared – well – not to like you?” he said, when they had reached this point.

“Forgiven you, darling? Why – is not the result a very triumph to me? I knew that it was the moment we first looked at each other.”

“Did you? From your side I was not so confident then. But I see you now as you first came into the room – that bright, laughing glance meeting mine, without an atom of gêne or self-consciousness. And then – later. We did not have to say much: – we knew that we belonged to each other. Didn’t we?”

“We did. We did indeed. Sweetheart, will you be very angry with me if I say something that has been on my mind?”

“How can you use that word as between you and me?”

“Well, then – ” she went on, strangely hesitatingly for her. “Even if you had to part with Seven Kloofs, and there’s no doubt, I’m afraid, that it’ll be no good for years – you might get a place you liked just as well I have a little of my own, remember – not much, but all my own – and that, with what you would save from the wreck, would surely be enough to – to set us up again.”

She spoke quickly, hurriedly, deprecatingly, as she noted the grave, disapproving look which deepened upon his face in the brilliant moonlight.

“No – no. Lalanté, love, never that. No. Once you hinted that way before – but – no, that could not be.”

“Now you hurt me.”

“Hurt you – hurt you? Child, if you only knew how I am adoring you at this moment, if possible – I say if possible – more than ever I have done before. Hurt you? You?”

“Now, forgive me. It is I who am hurting you.” And her voice quivered in its tenderness of passion as she reached out her hand to him – they were walking their horses now. “But I thought if two people belonged to each other they had everything in common.”

“Not at this stage, I’m afraid,” he said, with a smile that was meant to be reassuring, but was only sad. “You know I have a certain code of my own.”

“It would be a cruel one if it was not yours,” she answered. But there was nothing of resentment in the tone, only pride, admiration, an intense glory of possession. Nor did she intend to abandon the argument, only to postpone it.

As they had said, they had known from the very first that they belonged to each other. It was as surely a case of coming together as the meeting of two converging rivers; and the process had been as easy, as natural. What had drawn her towards him – apart from his physical attractions, which were not slight, and of which, to do him justice, he was free from any consciousness – was his total dissimilarity to any other man she had ever met. She had told him so more than once – and the reply had been deprecatory. Other men got on, he declared, while he – only seemed to get back; dissimilarity, therefore, was rather a hindrance than a thing to plume oneself upon.

“We are nearly there now,” he said, regretfully, as the track they had been pursuing here merged in a broader main road.

“Yes. But what a day we have had. Hasn’t it been too sweet?”

“Too sweet indeed! A day to look back upon to the very end of one’s life.”

A couple of miles further and they topped a rise. In the stillness the sudden barking of dogs was borne to their ears. It came from where two or three iron roofs glinted in the moonlight some three-quarters of a mile on the further side of the valley. Both dismounted, for the rest of the way she was to finish alone.

“Good-bye now, my own love, my sweet,” he murmured as they stood, locked together in a last long embrace. “I shall see you to-morrow, but it will not be as it has been to-day.”

“Not quite. But we will have other days like this. And – keep up heart – remember, for my sake. When you are disposed to lose it, think of me and feel sure that nothing can part us – as sure as that moon is shining. Good-bye, my love. It is only ‘good-night,’ though.”

No more was said, as he swung her into the saddle. He himself stood there watching her fast receding form, nor did he leave the spot until the sudden subsidence of the canine clamour, told that she had reached her home.

Then he mounted, and took his way slowly back through the moonlit glories of the beautiful slumbering waste.

Chapter Five.

Rebellion

Vincent Le Sage was riding leisurely homeward to his farm in the Kunaga River Valley.

His way lay down a stony bush road, winding along a ridge – whence great kloofs fell away on either side, clothed in thick, well-nigh impenetrable bush. Here and there a red krantz with aloe-fringed brow rose up, bronze-gleaming in the morning sun, and away below, in front, and on either hand, the broad river valley into which he was descending.

He was a middle-aged man, of medium height, but tough and wiry. He had good features and his short beard was crisp and grizzled, but the expression of his eyes was cold and business-like, as indeed it was bound to be if there is anything in the science of physiognomy, for he was a byword as being a hard nail at a deal, and everything he touched prospered. In fact his acquaintance near and far were wont to say that Le Sage had never made a bad bargain in his life. Perhaps they were right, but Le Sage himself, now as a turn of the road brought some objects in sight, was more than inclined to question that dictum.