A Secret of the Lebombo
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The said objects were only some cattle, a most ordinary everyday sight, and the cattle were not even his. Yet a frown came over his face. The cattle were poor, and one or two, to his experienced eyes, showed signs of disease.
“Wyvern’s, of course!” he pronounced to himself wrathfully. “Every case of redwater or brand-ziekte in the whole country-side is sure to be traceable to Wyvern’s cattle or sheep. What the devil could have put into such a fellow’s head that he was any good in the world at fanning? He’d better stick to his fusty books and become a damned professor. That’s about all he’s good for. I doubt if he’s even good for that I doubt if he’s even good for anything.”
These wrathful reflections were due to the fact that he had just met with a reminder – one of many – that he had at any rate made one bad bargain, for Wyvern was engaged to his daughter; and now it was a question only of months perhaps, when Wyvern should be sold up.
Then and there he made up his mind again that the engagement should be broken off, and yet while so making it up – we said “again” – the same misgiving that had haunted him on former occasions did so duly and once more, that the said breaking off would be a matter of no little difficulty even were it ever achieved at all. Wyvern might be a bad fanner, a hopeless one in fact, but he would be a hard nut to crack in a matter of this kind, and Lalanté – well, here was a hard and fast alliance for the offensive and defensive, which would require a breaking power such as he could not but realise to himself he scarcely possessed.
On rode Vincent Sage, mile after mile, still frowning. The good bargain he had made at yesterday’s ale had well-nigh faded from his thoughts now, and as he drew near to his home his private worries seemed to oust his professional satisfaction over his own acuteness and the steady but sure accumulation of the goods of this world. He had liked Wyvern well enough during the earlier period of their acquaintance – in fact more than well enough; but he had all the invariably successful man’s impatience of – even contempt for – the chronically unsuccessful; and in this particular instance his oft repeated dictum to himself – and sometimes to others – was “Wyvern will never do any good for himself or for anybody else either.”
Suddenly he pulled up his horse with a jerk, and emitted a whistle. He was scanning the road, scanning it intently.
“Oh-ho! So that’s how the cat jumps!” he exclaimed to himself, grimly.
He had reached the point where the track to Wyvern’s farm joined the wider road leading to his own. The frown became more of a set one than ever.
“One horse spoor coming this way alone,” he pronounced, “and I know what horse made that spoor. Two horse spoors going back – and the same horse made one of these spoors. That’s the game, is it, directly my back is turned? Well, it’s a game that must be stopped, and, damn it – it shall be.”
In spite of which vehemence, however, that same little cold water misgiving returned to render Vincent Le Sage’s mind uncomfortable.
He rode on, slowly now, keeping his horse at a walk; he was near home and there was no occasion for hurry. But as he went, he read that road like the pages of a book. He would find Wyvern at his place? Not a bit of it. For he had marked the returning spoors of the other horse.
Then again he reined in, suddenly and shortly, for the horse-hoofs had ceased and with them mingled the print of boots – and the said boots spelt one of each sex. From that point the spoor of one horse continued alone. The other was a returning one. This, then, was where they had parted.
Vincent Le Sage had every sign of the veldt at his fingers’ ends, and here, these imprints on a scantily used road, were as the very elementary side of his craft to him. They had not been made to-day; there were evidences of the effect of dew to show that. They had been made yesterday, and tolerably late at night; that too, he took in, and doing so felt more than ever justified in his resentment. What on earth had Lalanté come to that she should ride over, alone, to this man’s place directly his own back was turned, and – return with him late at night? Now he had good ground for interference, and what his inner consciousness told him was still better, a just grievance against Wyvern.
“He’ll be sold up,” he said to himself in hot wrath, as he covered the short distance which still lay between him and his homestead. “He’ll be sold up, and I’ll buy the place – I will, by God, even if it’s the only rotten bargain I ever made in my life. I won’t leave the chance to any other fool, with some arrangement perhaps for keeping him on on the halves. No – I’ll buy it myself – although it won’t be worth a tinker’s twopenny damn for years to come. Then he’ll have to clear, and that’s what I want.”
A Hottentot stable boy ran to take his horse as he dismounted at the gate. Lalanté came down the garden path to meet him. Her greeting of him was unreservedly affectionate. Perhaps his own to her thawed more than he was aware of.
“Come along in, father dear,” she cried, hooking her arm within his, and drawing him through the open door into the cool room beyond. “And tell me how you got on. But first of all, you must have something after your ride,” unlocking a cupboard and producing a decanter of excellent Boer brandy. “Now, did you pick up anything worth having?”
“Not bad in a small way. Couple of dozen slaughter-oxen of Piet Nel’s – he’s in a bad way, you know, and obliged to sell I can turn them down upon Hartslief at Gydisdorp, at an easy two pound a head profit, if not more. There was nothing else quite worth taking on. Warren’ll do the delivery for me on very small commission.”
He had thawed still more as he watched his daughter moving about, ministering to his comfort. Any preconceived idea that Vincent Le Sage was of the tyrannical order of parent may at once be jettisoned. He was – as we have said – simply intolerant, to a fault, of the unsuccessful man.
“Warren?” repeated Lalanté, in some astonishment, as she placed the porous terra-cotta water-bottle wits its fresh, cool contents upon the table. “Was Mr Warren at the sale then?”
“No. I came back by his place.”
There was a something in her father’s tone, and the searching glance he threw upon her face as he said this, that struck the girl as strange. She had not expected him back by that particular way, but she failed to connect the circumstance with her doings of the day before. The mysteries of spoor, of course, were rather outside her scope.
“Oh, did you?” was all she said. “A little further round, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but I had business with him – this and other. Where are the kiddies, Lalanté?”
“Oh, they’re larking about down the kloof, catapulting birds, or something.”
“All the better. I want to have some serious talk with you.”
“Serious? Don’t scare me, old chap, will you?” she answered, going to him, and taking his face between her long cool fingers. “Because I’m easily scared, and ‘serious’ sounds so unconscionably alarming.”
Le Sage felt more than ever disarmed. He was glowing angry with himself, and in proportion felt the less inclined to be so with her. His heart swelled with pride and love, as he met the half-laughing, half-wistful eyes of this beautiful, splendid girl of his. How the devil could he get out what he wanted to say, he asked himself savagely? But the thought of Wyvern came to his aid. With him, at any rate, he felt desperately angry.
“What time did you get back last night?” he said, shortly.
It was Lalanté’s turn to feel disconcerted.
“Last night? Get back?” she repeated, changing colour ever so slightly.
“Yes. That’s what I said,” he answered, still more shortly, and inwardly lashing himself up. “What time?”
“Well, it wasn’t so very late,” replied the girl, serenely. She had had time to pick herself up, though it cost her an effort, while wondering who had given her away; though indeed who could have done so, seeing that she herself had met her father at the gate before he had spoken to anybody? “But there was a fine bright moon – almost at the full.”
“Well, you have done a thing I entirely disapprove of. You had no business to go over there all by yourself like that, at night.”
“But I didn’t go at night. I went in the morning.”
“But you came back at night. At least if you didn’t I’m a raw Britisher at reading spoor. How’s that?”
Spoor? Oh, this was what had given her away then. This was a factor Lalanté had wholly omitted to take into account, and even if she had not she had never reckoned on her father returning by that particular road at all.
“How’s that?” she repeated sweetly. “Why of course that you’re not a raw Britisher at all.”
“Surely you must see it isn’t the thing for a girl to go and spend the day with a man at his own place all alone,” he fumed. “Can’t you see that?”
“It depends on the girl and the man,” she answered demurely. “Not if they are engaged?”
“Not even then. Coming back late at night too. I’m surprised at Wyvern being a party to it; and shall let him have a bit of my mind next time I see him.”
“Oh, don’t blame him,” said Lalanté, rather quickly. “I paid him a surprise visit, and – and – well, under the circumstances I stopped on. I stopped on. He couldn’t very well turn me out. Now could he?”
Le Sage snorted. He had no reply ready. The shrewd practical farmer, the hard-headed man of business, was floundering more and more hopelessly out of his depth here.
“Were you never young once, father?” said the girl in her softest tone, bending over him and sliding an arm round his shoulders.
“Young? Young? Well, Wyvern’s not particularly young at any rate, and ought to have known better.” Then, bitterly, “I wish to God we’d never set eyes on him.”
The arm was removed.
“You didn’t always wish that. You thought a great deal of him once.”
“That was before I found out he was no good,” retorted Le Sage, who had succeeded in lashing himself up again. “Pity, while you were about it, if you must go in for – for leaving me – you didn’t fix upon some solid and sensible fellow like Warren, for instance, instead of a mere dreamer. Warren’s worth fifty of such wasters as that.”
The “leaving me” had softened the girl, but the opprobrious term applied to her fiancé had been as the one nail that driveth out another.
“Don’t call him names,” she said, coldly, not angrily, thanks to her power of self-control. “He has been unfortunate, but he is the most honourable man who ever lived. The word ‘waster’ doesn’t apply.”
“Oh, I’m not saying anything against his honour,” snapped her father. “But the fact remains that he has never done any good for himself and never will. He’s no chicken, mind; he can’t be so very many years younger than myself. And when a man of his age gets to that age and is – well, where Wyvern is, the chances are a thousand to one he never picks himself up again. How’s that?”
“How’s that? It isn’t.”
“Isn’t it. Well, then, Lalanté, now we’re well on the subject I want you to understand that this affair between you and him had better be broken off. In fact it must be broken off.”
The girl was standing erect and her face had gone white. The large, dark-lashed grey eyes had something of a snap in them.
“It’s too late for that now,” she answered. “It cannot and shall not be broken off, no never. As long as he lives I will cling to him, and the more unfortunate he is the more I will cling to him. He is – my life.”
Le Sage’s face had gone white too – at least as far as the weather-beaten bronze was capable of doing – white with anger.
“So that’s your answer?” he said.
“That’s my answer.”
For a moment they gazed at each other. Then, before a reply could come, a sound without struck upon the ears of both. It was the creaking sound made by the swing of a gate upon its hinges. Both faces turned to the window. Coming up the path between the orange trees was Wyvern himself.
Whereby it is manifest that infinite potentialities lay within the space of the next half-hour.
Chapter Six.
What they did not find
“How are you, Le Sage?” said Wyvern, as his father-in-law elect met him in the doorway. “You look worried. Anything wrong?”
“Don’t know. No – er, well no,” as they shook hands. They had been very friendly before Lalanté had appeared upon the scene, and even afterwards, Le Sage had a sneaking weakness for the other, but what he could not pardon was what he termed the other’s incapacity. A man might have ill-luck and pick himself up again, but this one, he told himself, was incapable of that. Nor did it carry any soothing effect that Lalanté went straight to him and kissed him openly and affectionately.
“How glad I am to see you, darling,” she said, a sunny light in her eyes as she looked at him. Le Sage grunted to himself, but it did not escape Wyvern. Something of warning too in Lalanté’s eyes did not escape him either.
“Father is only just back from the sale at Krumi Post,” she went on, “and although he did a good stroke of business there he’s come back grumpy. Well now it’s just dinner-time and you’ll all be better after that.”
Wyvern was quick to take in that something was wrong, but it never occurred to him to connect it with the doings of the day before. He set it down rather to the general disapproval of himself which had become more and more manifest of late in the demeanour of his quondam friend. There might have been an awkwardness but that Lalanté took care never to leave them alone together.
“Did anyone take your horse, dear?” she said. “Because, if not, I can send someone to shout for Piet.”
“That’s all right, Piet took him from me at the gate. Well, Le Sage – what did you do at the sale?”
The other told him, thawing a bit. Then, when they sat down to table, Wyvern opened the story of the slaughtering incident, and the tragic end of one of the actors therein. But of the attack of both upon himself he said nothing.
“A most infernal nuisance,” grumbled Le Sage. “I don’t know why I was fool enough to allow myself to be nominated Field-cornet. Well, if one of the schepsels has cheated the ‘cat’ the other’s all there for it, that’s one consolation.”
“Oh, I don’t know. I’m going to let the poor devil off.”
“Going to – what?” snapped Le Sage. “Oh, look here, Wyvern, really you’re getting past a joke. A fellow like you is a nuisance to the whole community. Why it’s putting a premium on ‘slaag-tag.’ You catch this swine red-handed – a clear case for the ‘cat’ – and then say you’re going to let him off. It isn’t fair to the rest of us. Don’t you see that?”
As a matter of fact Wyvern did see it; and felt a little uncomfortable.
“Perhaps you’re right, Le Sage,” he said. “But I’m too soft-hearted I suppose, and the sight of that other wretched devil, with that beastly snake tied round his leg, squirting blue death into him with every bite, is a sight I shan’t get rid of all in a hurry. And one human life, even that of a Kafir, is about expiation enough for a miserable sheep, worth eighteen bob or a pound at the outside. Eh?”
“I never heard such rot in my life,” was the answer. “All the more reason why the other chap’s hide should be made to smart for the whole mischief. Eh? Aren’t I right, Lalanté?”
A spirit of cussedness made him thus appeal to his daughter, a sort of longing to make her espouse his side against this other. But, even as he did so, he realised that he might as well have spared himself the trouble.
“No. I don’t think you are, since you put it to me,” she answered unhesitatingly. “On the contrary, I think you’d do much better to go and hold your enquiry and leave the other part of the business alone altogether.”
“The devil you do!”
“That’s it. You’ve put it exactly, father,” laughed Lalanté; “You’ll be riding over there after dinner, I suppose. Well, I’ll go with you.”
He expostulated. It was no place for a girl. The sight of a dead Kafir was no sight for her, he pointed out with some show of reason.
“But I’ve no intention of seeing any such sight,” she objected serenely. “I’ll wait for you a little way off while you make your investigations. That’ll be all right.”
Wyvern caught one swift look which rejoiced his heart. She had resolved not to let the whole afternoon go by without him if she could be with him. But there was more beneath her plan than he suspected. She did not mean to afford her father any opportunity of quarrelling with him, as he almost certainly would, in his then mood, if they were alone together for any space of time just then. In most things Lalanté contrived to get her own way.
Now with a rush and a racket, two small boys came tumbling in, hot and ruddy with their scramblings about the veldt. Each exhibited, in triumph, a bunch of long feathers from the tail of the mouse-bird, or rather of many mouse-birds; the spoil of their bow and spear – or rather, catapults.
“Here you are, dad. You’re set up in pipe-cleaners now for some time to come. Hullo, Mr Wyvern. There’ll be enough for you too.”
They chucked the feathers down unceremoniously upon the table, and began to draw up chairs. But Lalanté interposed.
“No. No you don’t, Charlie – Frank – away you go, and do the soap and basin trick. I’m not going to have you sitting down to table straight out of the veldt,” she said decisively. “Come – scoot – do you hear?”
“Oh, all right. Man – Mr Wyvern, but there’s a big troop of guinea-fowl down by the second draai. I hope you brought your gun.”
“Did I say ‘Scoot’?” repeated Lalanté, the disciplinarian.
They lingered no further after that. They were good-looking boys, with their sister’s large grey eyes. In a trice they were back again, keeping things lively with their chatter, and the girl encouraged them. There was thunder in the air, she recognised, and her main anxiety was to avert the impending storm. And afterwards, before she retired to put on her riding-gear, she managed to impress upon the two youngsters that they were to help entertain their guest for all they knew how until her return, which duty – Wyvern being a prime favourite with them – was not an onerous one; moreover with them Lalanté’s word was law.
Their ride forth was not exactly a success. Lalanté, bright, beautiful, sparkling, kept up a flow of laughing quips, but the more she did so, the more gloomy – grumpy she called it – did her father become. Wyvern, riding by her side, felt all aglow with the pride of possession as he noted every fascinating little trick of speech, or manner, or pose, all absolutely natural and unaffected, and all going to make up the very complete charm of her personality. Not for the first time either did he find himself marvelling how this pride of possession should be his at all. Though only in the early twenties Lalanté had had time and opportunity for “experiences,” but such experiences, however disquieting to the other parties to them, had left her unscathed. She had come to him heart-whole. None before him had ever had power to awaken her. That had been reserved for him, and the awakening had been mutual from the very first.
“We’d better leave the horses here, Le Sage,” suggested Wyvern as they drew near the donga wherein the unfortunate Kafir would be lying. “It’ll be cool for Lalanté under these trees, and the place is only a hundred yards further. Moreover we shall have to scramble a bit to get to it.”
Le Sage glumly assented, cursing the bother of the whole business. He had just got home off a journey and here he was, lugged out over miles of veldt because an infernal fool of a nigger had got bitten by a snake. The Field-cornet job wasn’t good enough at that price, and he’d chuck it.
Thus grumbling, he followed Wyvern in what was literally a scramble, not always free from danger either; for the river bank along the face of which they had to make their way here was steep enough to be almost precipitous, and high enough to render a fall on to the stones below a contingency not to be contemplated with equanimity. But fortune favoured them, and they gained their objective without accident.
“Magtig! what a beastly hole,” grunted Le Sage, as they stood within the mouth of the donga. “Well, the brute must be pretty far gone by this time. Sss! I can smell him already. We’d better start our pipes, Wyvern.”
They were standing at the bottom of a narrow rift some thirty feet in depth, its sides narrowing walls of a sandy-clayey soil and looking uncomfortably suggestive of the possibility of falling in upon them. A close network of boughs and prickly pear plants overhead well-nigh shut off the light of day, turning the place into a regular cavern. A little further and the walls narrowed, necessitating single file progress.
“A devilish unpleasant place to find oneself confronted in by a kwai geel slang,”1 said Wyvern – who was leading – over his shoulder, grimly. “We couldn’t dodge him at any price here.”
“Yes, yes. But what about the nigger?” said the other testily. “Where the devil is he?”
The same idea had struck Wyvern, who had stopped, and after looking in front was now gazing upwards in most unfeigned amazement.
“Where the devil indeed,” he echoed. “Look, Le Sage. There’s the hole he made in the green stuff tumbling through. Prickly pear leaves too, broken off by the fall. But – where the devil is the chump himself? He ought to be here, but isn’t.”
This was indisputable. The precipitous banks of the place were marked and scored, and leaves and twigs, obviously freshly torn, still clung to the said banks here and there. Some heavy body had manifestly fallen down there at that spot, but of any such thing there was now no other sign.
“Oh, look here, Wyvern. Haven’t you been filling us up with some sick old yarn?” said Le Sage disgustedly. “Why, man, there’s no sign of any dead nigger here. Sure your imagination didn’t play you tricks?”
“Oh, very. No mistake about that – by the way weren’t you saying just now you could smell him?” good-humouredly. “What if some of his pals came and carted him away?”
“Then there’d be spoor, and plenty of it. As it is there’s none. And I do know a little about spoor,” added Le Sage significantly.
“Well it bangs me, I own,” declared Wyvern. “But now we’re here we’d better follow the ditch right up. I don’t feel like taking on that nasty scramble again, do you?”
“No. Drive ahead then.”
Proceeding with some caution, for it was just the place in which to come upon a snake, they made their way gradually upward and soon stood within the open light of day.
“Well, my imagination didn’t play me tricks this shot,” said Wyvern, as they stood looking at the bones of the slaughtered sheep, picked clean by aasvogels and jackals.
“No. There were two of them at this job. I can see that plainly enough,” said Le Sage, scrutinising the ground. “Well, we’ve had our ride for nothing. The first essential towards holding an inquiry on a dead nigger is for there to be a dead nigger to hold it on, and there isn’t one here.”
“Well, I own it bangs me,” said Wyvern, puzzled.
“So it does me,” said Le Sage, significantly.
Chapter Seven.
A Scare – And a Home Circle
“Well, Lalanté. Wyvern’s snake-bitten Kafir has not only killed himself, but he has performed his own funeral into the bargain – at least, he must have, because there’s no sign of him down there. Why – what’s the row?”
There was a curious, startled look upon the girl’s face – hearing the sound of their voices she had come forward to meet them. She was pale, too, as from the effects of a fright.
“What scared you, dearest?” said Wyvern anxiously – he was at her side in a moment. “Not another snake?”
“No. I believe it was a Kafir.”
“A Kafir?” echoed Le Sage. “Hullo, Wyvern. Your snake-bitten chap has not only performed his own funeral but he has already begun to walk.”
“Come over to where I was sitting,” said the girl. “I can show you better from there.”
“But hang it, Lalanté, you’re not the one to be scared by the sight of a Kafir,” said her father, incredulously.
“This one had an awful look,” she answered, with a little shudder. “Hardly human – almost like someone dead.”
She had been leading the way – it was only a few yards – to where she had been seated under the shade of some willows.