Kitabı oku: «The Triumph of Hilary Blachland», sayfa 9
Chapter Four.
Lyn
“Well, Mr Blachland, what luck have you had?”
The speaker was standing on the stoep, whither she had come out to meet them. She was rather a tall girl, with a great deal of golden hair, arranged in some wonderful way of her own which somehow enhanced its volume without appearing loose or untidy. She had blue eyes which looked forth straight and frank, and an exquisite skin, which even the fierce glare of the summer sun, and a great deal of open-air life had not in the least roughened, and of which a few tiny freckles, rather adding piquancy to a sweetly pretty face, oval, refined and full of character, were the only trace. If there was a fault to be found in the said face, it was that its owner showed her gums slightly when she laughed – but the laugh was so bright, so whole-hearted, and lighted up the whole expression so entrancingly that all but the superlatively hypercritical lost sight of the defect altogether.
“He’s bowled over that thundering big bushbuck ram we’ve been trying for so often in Siever’s Kloof, Lyn,” answered her father for his guest.
“Well done!” cried the girl. “You know, Mr Blachland, some of the people around here were becoming quite superstitious about that buck. They were beginning to declare he couldn’t be killed. I suggested a silver bullet such as they had to make for those supernatural stags in the old German legends.”
“A charge of treble A was good enough this time – no, I think I used loepers,” laughed Blachland.
“I almost began to believe in it myself,” went on the girl. “Some of our best shots around here seemed invariably to miss that particular buck, Mr Earle for instance, and Stephanus Bosch, and, I was nearly saying – father – ”
“Oh don’t, then,” laughed Bayfield. “A prophet has no honour in his own country. Keep up the tradition, Lyn.”
“And, as for the Englishman, the one that came over here with the Earles, why he missed it both barrels, and they drove it right over him too.”
“By the way, Lyn,” said her father, “what was that Britisher’s name? I’ve clean forgotten.”
“That’s not strange, for you’ll hardly believe it, but so have I.”
“Um – ah – no, we won’t believe it. A good-looking young fellow like that!”
“Even then I’ve forgotten it. Yes, he was a nice-looking boy.”
“Boy!” cried her father. “Why, the fellow must be a precious deal nearer thirty than twenty.”
“Well, and what’s that but a boy?”
“Thanks awfully, Miss Bayfield,” said Blachland. “The implication is grateful and comforting to a battered fogey of a precious deal nearer forty than thirty.”
For answer the girl only laughed – that bright, whole-hearted laugh of hers. It was a musical laugh too, full-throated, melodious. She and her father’s guest were great friends. Though now living somewhat of an out-of-the-world life, she had been well-educated, and her tastes were artistic. She drew and painted with no mean skill, and her musical attainments were above the average. So far from feeling bored and discontented with the comparative isolation of her lot, she had an affection for the free and healthy conditions of her surroundings, the beauties of which, moreover, her artistic temperament rendered her capable of perceiving and appreciating. Then this stranger had come into their life, and at first she had been inclined to stand somewhat in awe of him. He was so much older than herself, and must have seen so much; moreover, his quiet-mannered demeanour, and the life-worn look of his firm dark countenance, seemed to cover a deal of character. But he had entered so thoroughly and sympathetically into her tastes and pursuits that the little feeling of shyness had worn off within the first day, and now, after a fortnight, she had come to regard his presence in their midst as a very great acquisition indeed.
“I say, Lyn,” struck in her father. “Better take Blachland inside – yes, and light up some logs in the fireplace. There’s a sharp tinge in the air after sundown, which isn’t good for a man with up-country fever in his bones, as I was telling him just now. I must just go and take a last look round.”
“Did you do any more to my drawing to-day?” asked Hilary, as the two stood within the sitting-room together, watching the efforts of a yellow-faced Hottentot girl to make the logs blaze up.
“I’ve nearly finished it. I’ve only got to put in a touch or two.”
“May I see it now?”
“No – not until it is finished. I may not be satisfied with it then, and tear it up.”
“But you are not to. I’m certain that however it turns out it will be too good to treat in that way.”
“Oh, Mr Blachland, I am surprised at such a speech from you,” she said, her eyes dancing with mischief. “Why, that’s the sort of thing that English boy might have said. But you! Oh!”
“Well, I mean it. You know I never hesitate to criticise and that freely. Look at our standing fight over detail in foreground, as a flagrant instance.”
The drawing under discussion was a water-colour sketch of the house and its immediate surroundings. He would treasure it as a reminder after he had gone, he declared, when asking her to undertake it. To which she had rejoined mischievously that he seemed in a great hurry to talk about “after he had gone,” considering that he had only just come.
Now the entrance of George Bayfield and his youngest born put an end to the discussion, and soon they sat down to supper.
“Man, Mr Blachland, but that is a mooi buck,” began the boy. “Jafta says he never saw a mooi-er one.”
“Perhaps it’ll bring you luck,” said Lyn, looking exceedingly reposeful and sweet, behind the tea-things, in her twenty-year-old dignity at the head of the table.
“I don’t know,” was the reply. “I did something once that was supposed to bring frightful ill-luck, and for a long time it seemed as if it was going to. But – indirectly it had just the opposite effect.”
“Was that up-country, Mr Blachland?” chimed in the boy eagerly. “Do tell us about it.”
“Perhaps some day, Fred. But it’s a thing that one had better have left alone.”
“These children’ll give you no peace if you go on raising their curiosity in that way,” said Bayfield.
“I’ll go up-country when I’m big,” said the boy. “Are you going again, Mr Blachland?”
“I don’t know, Fred. You see, I’ve only just come down.”
The boy said no more on the subject. He had an immense admiration for their guest, who, when they were alone together, would tell him tales of which he never wearied – about hunting and trading, and Lo Bengula, and experiences among savages far wilder and more formidable than their own half-civilised and wholly deteriorated Kaffirs. But he was sharp enough to notice that at other times the subject of “up-country” was not a favourite one with Blachland. Perhaps the latter was tired of it as he had had so much. At any rate, with a gumption rare in small boys of his age, Fred forbore to worry the topic further.
This was one of those evenings which the said guest was wont to prize now, and was destined in the time to come to look back upon as among the very happiest experiences of his life. He regarded his host indeed with a whole-hearted envy, that such should be his daily portion. There was just enough sharpness in the atmosphere to render indoors and a bright, snug fire in a well-lighted room especially reposeful and cosy, as they adjourned to the sitting-room where Lyn’s piano was.
“Fill up, Blachland,” said his host, pushing over a large bladder tobacco-pouch. “Where’s my pipe? No – not that one. The deep one with the wire cover.”
“I’ve got it, father,” cried Lyn. “I’m filling it for you.”
“Thanks, darling,” as she brought it over. “You know, Blachland, my after-supper pipe never tastes so good unless this little girlie fills it for me. She’s done so ever since she was a wee kiddie so high.”
Blachland smiled to himself, rather sadly, as he watched the long tapering fingers pressing down the tobacco into the bowl, and wondered how his friend would feel when the time came – and come it must, indeed any day might bring it – when he would have no one to render this and a hundred and one other little services of love, such as he had noticed during his stay – when Bayfield should be left lonely, and the bright and sweet and sunny presence which irradiated this simple home should be transferred to another. Somehow the thought was distasteful to him, vaguely, indefinably so, but still distasteful.
Meanwhile Lyn had opened the piano, and after an appeal to them for any preference in the way of songs, which was met by an assurance that any and all were equally acceptable, had begun singing. The two men sat back in their armchairs at the further end of the room, listening in supremest content. From the first Blachland had excused himself from attending her at the piano. He wanted thoroughly to enjoy her performance, which he could not do standing fussing around, and Lyn had appreciated the real and practical compliment thus conveyed. And he did enjoy it. Song after song she sang, now grave and pathetic, now gay and arch, and it seemed to him he could sit there listening for ever. Hers was no concert-hall voice, but it was very sweet and true, and was entirely free from mannerism. She did not think it necessary to roll her r’s in the approved professional style whenever that consonant came at the end of a word, or to pronounce “love” exactly according to its phonetic spelling, but every word was enunciated distinctly, and therefore as intelligible as though she had been talking. In short, her singing was utterly without self-consciousness or affectation, and therein lay no small a proportion of its charm.
“There! That’s enough for one night!” she cried at last, closing the instrument.
“Not for us,” declared Blachland. “But you mustn’t overstrain your voice. Really to me this has been an immense treat.”
“I’m so glad,” said the girl brightly. “I suppose, though, you don’t hear much music up-country. Don’t you miss it a great deal?”
“Yes, indeed,” he answered, and then a picture crossed his mind of evening after evening, and Hermia yawning, and reiterating how intensely bored to death she was. What on earth was it that made retrospect so utterly distasteful to him now? He would have given all he possessed to be able to blot that episode out of his life altogether. Hermia the chances were as five hundred to one he would never set eyes on again – and if he did, she was powerless to injure him; for she had not the slightest legal hold upon him whatever. But the episode was there, a black, unsavoury, detestable fact, and it there was no getting round.
“Now, sonny, it’s time for you to turn in,” said Bayfield. “By George, I’ll have to think seriously about sending that nipper to school,” he added, as the boy, having said good-night, went out of the room. “But hang it, what’ll we do without the chappie? He’s the only one left. But he ought to learn more than Lyn can teach him now.”
“Father, you are mean,” laughed the girl. “Reflecting on my careful tuition that way. Isn’t he, Mr Blachland?”
“I wonder how it would be,” pursued Bayfield, “to make some arrangement with Earle and send him over there four or five days a week to be coached by that new English teacher they’ve got.”
“Who is he?” said Blachland. “A Varsity man?”
“’Tisn’t ‘he.’ It’s a she,” returned the other, with a very meaning laugh. “A regular high-flyer too. Mrs Earle isn’t so fond of her as she might be, but I expect that young Britisher has put Earle’s nose out of joint in that quarter. They say she’s a first-rate coach, though.”
“Now, father, you’re not to start talking scandal,” said Lyn. “I don’t believe there’s any harm in Mrs Fenham at all. And she isn’t even pretty.”
“Ho-ho! Who’s talking scandal now?” laughed her father. “Taking away another woman’s personal appearance, eh, Lyn? By the way, there are several round there you won’t get to agree with you on that head.”
“Oh, she’s married, then?” said Blachland, though as a matter of fact the subject did not interest him in the least.
“Has been,” returned Bayfield. “She’s a widow – a young widow, and with all due deference to Lyn’s opinion, rather a fetching one. Now, isn’t that a whole code of danger-signals in itself? Get out some grog, little girl,” he added, “and then I suppose you’ll want to be turning in.”
“Yes, it’s time I did,” replied Lyn, as she dived into a sideboard in fulfilment of the last request. “Good night, Mr Blachland. Good night, old father. Now, you’re not to sit filling up Mr Blachland with all sorts of gossip. Do you hear?”
“All right,” with a wink over at his guest. “Good night, my little one.”
Blachland had long ceased to wonder – even if he had done so at first – at the extraordinary tenderness existing between Bayfield and this child of his. Cudgel his experience as he would, he could find in it no instance of a girl anything like this one. Sunny beauty, grace, and the most perfect refinement, a disposition of rare sweetness, yet withal plenty of character – why, it would require a combination of the best points of any half-dozen girls within that experience to make up one Lyn Bayfield, and then the result would be a failure. To his host he said as much when they were alone together. The latter warmed up at once.
“Ah, you’ve noticed that, have you, Blachland? Well, I suppose you could hardly have been in the house the short time you have without noticing it. Make allowances for an old fool, but there never was such a girl as my Lyn – no, never. And – I may lose her any day.”
“Great Heavens, Bayfield, surely not! What’s wrong? Heart?”
“No – no. Not that way, thank God – by the by, I’m sorry I startled you. I mean she’s bound to marry some day.”
“Ah, yes, I see,” returned Blachland, reassured, yet furtively hoping that the smile wherewith he accepted the reassurance was not a very sickly one. But the other did not notice it, and now fairly on the subject, launched out into a narrative of Lyn’s sayings and doings, as it seemed, from the time of her birth right up till now, and it was late before he pulled up, with profuse apologies for having bored the very soul out of his guest, and that on a subject in which the latter could take but small interest.
But Blachland reassured him by declaring that he had not been bored in the very least, and so far from feeling small interest in the matter, he had been very intensely interested.
And the strangest thing of all was that he meant it – every word.
Chapter Five.
An Episode in Siever’s Kloof
The days sped by and still Hilary Blachland remained as a guest at George Bayfield’s farm.
He had talked about moving on, but the suggestion had been met by a frank stare of astonishment on the part of his host.
“Where’s your hurry, man?” had replied the latter. “Why, you’ve only just come.”
“Only just come! You don’t seem to be aware, Bayfield, that I’ve been here nearly four weeks.”
“No, I’m not. But what then? What if it’s four or fourteen or forty? You don’t want to go up-country again just yet. By the way, though, it must be mighty slow here.”
“Now, Bayfield, I don’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings, but you’re talking bosh, rank bosh. I don’t believe you know it, though. Slow indeed!”
“Perhaps Mr Blachland’s tired of us, father,” said Lyn demurely, but with a spice of mischief.
“Well, you know, you yourselves can have too much of a not very good thing,” protested Hilary, rather lamely.
“Ha-ha! Now we’ll turn the tables. Who’s talking bosh this time?” said Bayfield triumphantly.
“Man, Mr Blachland, you mustn’t go yet,” cut in small Fred excitedly. “Stop and shoot some more bushbucks.”
“Very well, Fred. No one can afford to run clean counter to public opinion. So that settles it,” replied Blachland gaily.
“That’s all right,” said Bayfield. “And we haven’t taken him over to Earle’s yet. I know what we’ll do. We’ll send and let Earle know we are all coming over for a couple of nights, and he must get up a shoot in between. Then we’ll show him the pretty widow.”
A splutter from Fred greeted the words. “She isn’t pretty a bit,” he pronounced. “A black, ugly thing.”
“Look out, sonny,” laughed his father. “She’ll take it out of you when she’s your schoolmissis.”
But the warning was received by the imp with a half growl, half jeer. The prospect of that ultimate fate, which had already been dangled over him, and which he only half realised, may have helped to prejudice him against one whom he could not but regard as otherwise than his natural enemy.
The unanimity wherewith the household of three voted against his departure was more than gratifying to Hilary Blachland. Looking back upon life since he had been Bayfield’s guest, he could only declare to himself that it was wholly delightful. The said Bayfield, with his unruffled, take-us-as-you-find-us way of looking at things – well, the more he saw of the man the more he liked him, and the two were on the most easy terms of friendship of all, which may best be defined that neither ever wanted the other to do anything the other didn’t want to. Even the small boy regarded him as an acquisition, while Lyn – well, the frank, friendly, untrammelled intercourse between them constituted, he was forced to admit to himself, the brightness and sunshine of the pleasant, reposeful days which were now his. He had no reason to rate himself too highly, even in his own estimation, and the last three or four weeks spent in her daily society brought this more and more home to him. Well, whatever he had sown, whatever he might reap, in short, whatever might or might not be in store for him, he was the better now, would be to the end of his days, the better for having known her. Indeed it seemed to him now as though his life were divided into two complete periods – the time before he had known Lyn Bayfield, and subsequently.
Thus reflecting, he was pacing the stoep smoking an after-breakfast pipe. The valley stretched away, radiant in the morning sunshine, and the atmosphere was sharp and brisk with a delicious exhilaration. Down in the camps he could see the black dots moving, where great ostriches stalked, and every now and then the triple boom, several times repeated, from the throat of one or other of the huge birds, rolled out upon the morning air. The song of a Kaffir herd, weird, full-throated, but melodious, arose from the further hillside, where a large flock of Angora goats was streaming forth to its grazing ground.
“What would you like to do to-day, Blachland?” said his host, joining him. “I’ve got to ride over to Theunis Nel’s about some stock, but it means the best part of the day there, so I don’t like suggesting your coming along. They’re the most infernal boring crowd, and you’d wish yourself dead.”
Hilary thought this would very likely be the case, but before he could reply there came an interruption – an interruption which issued from a side door somewhere in the neighbourhood of the kitchen, for they were standing at the end of the stoep, an interruption wearing an ample white “kapje,” and with hands and wrists all powdery with flour, but utterly charming for all that.
“What’s that you’re plotting, father? No, you’re not to take Mr Blachland over to any tiresome Dutchman’s. No wonder he talks about going away. Besides, I want to take him with me. I’m going to paint – in Siever’s Kloof, and Fred isn’t enough of an escort.”
“I think I’ll prefer that immeasurably, Miss Bayfield,” replied he most concerned.
“I shall be ready, then, in half an hour. And – I don’t like ‘Miss Bayfield’ – it sounds so stiff, and we are such old friends now. You ought to say Lyn. Oughtn’t he, father, now that he is quite one of ourselves?”
“Well, I should – after that,” answered Bayfield, comically, blowing out a big cloud of smoke.
But while he laughed pleasantly, promising to avail himself of the privilege, Hilary was conscious of a kind of mournful impression that the frank ingenuousness of the request simply meant that she placed him on the same plane as her father, in short, regarded him as one of a bygone generation. Well, she was right. He was no chicken after all, he reminded himself grimly.
“I say, Lyn, I’m going with you too!” cried Fred, who was seated on a waggon-pole a little distance off, putting the finishing touches to a new catapult-handle.
“All right. I’ll be ready in half an hour,” replied the girl.
One of the prettiest bits in Siever’s Kloof was the very spot whereon Blachland had shot the large bushbuck ram, and here the two had taken up their position. For nearly an hour Lyn had been very busy, and her escort seated there, lazily smoking a pipe, would every now and then overlook her work, offering criticisms, and making suggestions, some of which were accepted, and some were not. Fred, unable to remain still for ten minutes at a time, was ranging afar with his air-gun – now put right again – and, indeed, with it he was a dead shot.
“I never can get the exact shine of these red krantzes,” Lyn was saying. “That one over there, with the sun just lighting it up now, I know I shall reproduce it either the colour of a brick wall or a dead smudge. The shine is what I want to get.”
“And you may get it, or you may not, probably the latter. There are two things, at any rate, which nobody has ever yet succeeded in reproducing with perfect accuracy, the colour of fire and golden hair – like yours. Yes, it’s a fact. They make it either straw colour or too red, but always dead. There’s no shine in it.”
Lyn laughed, lightheartedly, unthinkingly.
“True, O King! But I expect you’re talking heresy all the same. I wonder what that boy is up to?” she broke off, looking around.
“Why, he’s a mile or so away up the kloof by this time. Do you ever get tired of this sort of life, Lyn?”
“Tired? No. Why should I? Whenever I go away anywhere, after the first novelty has worn off, I always long to get back.”
“And how long a time does it take to compass that aspiration?”
“About a week. At the end of three I am desperately homesick, and long to get back here to old father, and throw away gloves and let my hands burn.”
Blachland looked at the hands in question – long-fingered, tapering, but smooth and delicate and refined – brown indeed with exposure to the air, but not in the least roughened. What an enigma she was, this girl. He watched, her as she sat there, sweet and cool and graceful as she plied her brushes, the wide brim of her straw hat turned up in front so as not to impede her view. Every movement was a picture, he told himself – the quick lifting of the eyelid as she looked at her subject, the delicate supple turn of the wrist as she worked in her colouring. And the surroundings set forth so perfectly the central figure – the varying shades of the trees and their dusky undergrowth, the great krantz opposite, fringed with trailers, bristling with spiky aloes lining up along its ledges. Bright spreuws flashed and piped, darting forth from its shining face; and other bird voices, the soft note of the hoepoe, and the cooing of doves kept the warm golden air pleasant with harmony.
“What is your name the short for, Lyn?” he said, picking up one of her drawing-books, whereon it was traced – in faded ink upon the faded cover.
She laughed. “It isn’t a name at all really. It’s only my initials. I have three ugly Christian names represented under the letters L.Y.N., and it began with a joke among the boys when I was a very small kiddie. But now I rather like it. Don’t you?”
“Yes. Very much… Why, what’s the matter now?”
For certain shrill shouts were audible from the thick of the bush, but at no great distance away. They recognised Fred’s voice, and he was hallooing like mad.
“Lyn! Mr Blachland! Quick – quick! Man, here’s a whacking big snake!”
“Oh, let’s go and see!” cried the girl, hurriedly putting down her drawing things, and springing to her feet. “No – no. You stay here. I’ll go. You’re quite safe here. Stay, do you hear?”
She turned in surprise. Her companion was quite agitated.
“Why, it’s safe enough!” she said with a laugh, but still wondering. “I’m not in the least afraid of snakes. I’ve killed several of them. Come along.”
And answering Fred’s shouts she led the way through the grass and stones at an astonishing pace, entirely disregarding his entreaties to allow him to go first.
“There! There!” cried Fred, his fist full of stones, pointing to some long grass almost hiding a small boulder about a dozen yards away. “He’s squatting there. He’s a big black ringhals. I threw him with three stones – didn’t hit him, though. Man, but he’s ‘kwai.’ Look, look! There!”
Disturbed anew by these fresh arrivals, the reptile shot up his head with an ugly hiss. The hood was inflated, and waved to and fro wickedly, as the great coil dragged heavily over the ground.
“There! Now you can have him!” cried Fred excitedly, as Blachland stooped and picked up a couple of large stones. These, however, he immediately dropped.
“No. Let him go,” he said. “He wants to get away. He won’t interfere with us.”
“But kill him, Mr Blachland. Aren’t you going to kill him?” urged the boy.
“No. I never kill a snake if I can help it. Because of something that once happened to me up-country.”
“So! What was it?” said the youngster, with half his attention fixed regretfully on the receding reptile, which, seeing the coast clear, was rapidly making itself scarce.
“That’s something of a story – and it isn’t the time for telling it now.”
But a dreadful suspicion crossed the unsophisticated mind of the boy. Was it possible that Blachland was afraid? It did not occur to him that a man who had shot lions in the open was not likely to be afraid of an everyday ringhals – not at the time, at least. Afterwards he would think of it.
They went back to where they had been sitting before, Fred chattering volubly. But he could not sit still for long, any more than he had been able to before, and presently he was off again.
“You are wondering why I let that snake go,” said Blachland presently. “Did you think I was afraid of it?”
“Well, no, I could hardly think that,” answered Lyn, looking up quickly.
“Yet I believe you thought something akin to it,” he rejoined, with a curious smile. “Listen now, and I’ll tell you if you care to hear – only don’t let the story go any further. By the way, you are only the second I have ever told it to.”
“I feel duly flattered. Go on. I am longing to hear it. I’m sure it’s exciting.”
“It was for me at the time – very.” And then he told her of the exploration of the King’s grave, and the long hours of that awful day, between two terrible forms of imminent death, told it so graphically as to hold her spellbound.
“There, that sounds like a tolerably tall up-country yarn,” he concluded, “but it’s hard solid fact for all that.”
“What a horrible experience,” said Lyn, with something of a shudder. “And now you won’t kill any snake?”
“No. That mamba held me at its mercy the whole of that day – and I have spared every snake I fell in with ever since. A curious sort of gratitude, you will say, but – there it is.”
“I don’t wonder the natives had that superstition about the King’s spirit passing into that snake.”
“No, more do I. The belief almost forced itself upon me, as I sat there those awful hours. But, as old Pemberton said, there was no luck about meddling with such places.”
“No, indeed. What strange things you must have seen in all your wanderings. It must be something to look back upon. But I suppose it will go on all your life. You will return to those parts again, until – ”
“Until I am past returning anywhere,” he replied. “Perhaps so, and perhaps it is better that way after all. And now I think it is time to round up Fred, and take the homeward track.”
“Yes, I believe it is,” was all she said. A strange unwonted silence was upon her during their homeward ride. She was thinking a great deal of the man beside her. He interested her as nobody ever had. She had stood in awe of him at first, but now she hoped it would be a long time before he should find it necessary to leave them. What an ideal companion he was, too. She felt her mind the richer for all the ideas she had exchanged with him – silly, crude ideas, he must have thought them, she told herself with a little smile.
But if she was silent, Fred was not. He talked enough for all three the rest of the way home.
