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Chapter Twenty.
Manamandhla’s Escape

The horses were caught and saddled up. As they rode forth from their resting place, Edala was exchanging banter with Elvesdon, and in the ring of her dear merry laugh there was no suggestion of a sufferer from headache.

“Now then,” said Thornhill, reining in at the head of a long, deep, wild ravine. “We must arrange our strategy.” And he looked from the one to the other.

“I’ll go and see Mr Elvesdon miss,” said Edala, unhesitatingly. “I know exactly where to place him, and he’ll have the best chances of missing he’s ever had in his life.”

There was a laugh at this, led by the victim himself.

“Then who’ll take care of Miss Carden?”

Prior looked up eagerly, but before he could say anything, Evelyn remarked quietly: —

“Do let me ride with you, Mr Thornhill. It will be just as interesting to see how the things are driven out, as to see how they are shot.”

“But, I’m going down into the thick of the kloof this time. How about skirts?”

“Oh, that’s all right. I’ll keep behind you when it gets thick.”

“Very well then if you do that. There’s a tolerable attempt at a path down there. Prior, you keep along the top, on the right – hundred yards in front of us, or a little more.”

Thornhill was pleased. He was glad to have Evelyn with him. There was something about her that was both congenial and restful. And then she was so tactful and considerate. As a matter of fact he had been meditating whether to ask her to accompany him, but had decided not to. Why should she be bored with an old fogey, while there were young ones in the party? And she – well she must have read his thoughts, and of her own initiative had offered to accompany him. This was the sort of thing that Edala never did. Time had been, when as a child she had adored him, when his every word was law, when she would give up anything and everything to be with him. Now, all this was reversed. In these days she never thought of consulting his wishes, let alone of forestalling them; and the change had caused him many an hour of bitter reflection and disappointment.

“We can start now,” he pronounced. “Those two will have had time to get into position.”

They moved forward and downward, keeping near the bottom of the kloof, while the three natives, spread out on each side, whooped and rapped with their sticks. The way lay now through growth of some denseness, now beneath overhanging trees, or a cliff in miniature, its brow lined with a row of straight stemmed euphorbia. It was hot down here in the kloof, in spite of the abundant shade.

But Evelyn Carden’s thoughts were all upon the man riding in front of her, and she had all but lost sight of the object of their being there at all, sport to wit. This new relative of hers was clean outside all her experience. She admired his strength, his decisive downrightness, his easy refinement of speech and thought; and that in the teeth of the fact that his earlier life had been rough and hard, and, not infrequently perilous. Yet, throughout, those instincts of culture had not only been retained but had developed, and she was forced to own to herself that he was the most delightful companion she had ever met.

And Edala? She was fond of the girl – very – yet there were times when she could not but feel secretly angry with her; she had too much savoir faire, however, to let any trace of it appear. Edala did not appreciate her father in the least: on the contrary she treated him with coldness, even bordering upon repulsion. Of course, of any actuating cause underlying such behaviour she was absolutely ignorant, for they saw no neighbours except perhaps Elvesdon; nor even had they, it is certain that to a stranger and a relative of those concerned, nothing would have been whispered. Besides, was not the whole thing now matter of ancient history?

As they rode along in the bosky shadiness of the deep kloof bottom, the shouts of the beaters on either side, the sudden clangour of the dogs as they struck the spoor of a recently alarmed buck, then the crack of a shot down at the farther end, it seemed to Evelyn Carden that the experience was wholly delightful and exhilarating. She could hardly have told why – but it was so. She was not so very young, and she had had some experiences of life. Perhaps she preferred not to tell herself the ‘why.’

Thornhill, on his part, was not thinking of her at all by this time, or if so it was only to wish she had elected to accompany someone else, which at first sight seems blackly ungrateful of him. Still less was he thinking of the sport, unless in a mechanical way. But Manamandhla, moving parallel with himself some forty yards distant through the thick, high bush; Manamandhla visible to himself, but both invisible to the rest of the on-driving line, how easy to have mistaken him for a buck – to have mistaken him. It would be rather the act of a Johnny Raw, but then, men of ripe judgment and lifelong experience had been known to make similar mistakes. Surely such a chance would not occur again. If only Evelyn had not volunteered to accompany him.

A fell, lurid obsession had seized upon this man’s mind, yet not so as to obscure his judgment, only to do away utterly with all sense of ruth or compunction. This calm, patient savage, who had reappeared – had risen, as it were, from the very dead, to blood-suck him – to batten upon him for the rest of his natural life – had got upon even his strong nerves. He was ageing, he told himself, and all through this. Again the Zulu’s broad back presented a magnificent mark for a charge of Treble A. There would be an end of the incubus, and ‘accidents will happen.’ But then – there was Evelyn riding immediately behind him.

“Well, Mr Thornhill. We seem to have drawn this fairly blank, too,” said her cheerful, pleasing voice, as the bush thinned out in front of them. “Let’s see what they’ve got There was a shot in front, wasn’t there?”

Elvesdon and Edala were standing, waiting for them. On the ground lay a dead bushbuck ewe.

“‘Diane chasseresse’ again,” cried the former, gaily. “Neat shot too. Going like the wind.”

“Well, you made me do it, you know,” protested Edala. “I said I didn’t want to shoot any more just yet.”

“Of course,” laughed Elvesdon. “It was the first opportunity I’ve had of witnessing your prowess, and I preferred that to your witnessing my lack of it.”

As a matter of fact the speaker was a first-rate shot, but there were days when he was ‘off’ – and this was one of them, he said.

“Well, it’s better than nothing,” pronounced Thornhill. “Still, we ought to have got more out of there. We’ll take the next kloof down, then sweep round for home.”

“All right,” cried Edala. “Now Mr Elvesdon, we’ll lay voer again, and this time I’m really going to see you miss.”

“That’ll be a new and delightful experience,” said Elvesdon with his usual imperturbability. As a matter of fact he meant every word he said. He would have this girl to himself for the best part of another hour, in the sweet sunshine of the golden afternoon. What did he care for the business of the day. He could always get sport – but this – no.

So the pair started off once more by a circuitous way, to reach the bottom of the kloof where they should conceal themselves. Thornhill, watching them, felt well satisfied. Things were going just as he would have them. Things sometimes went that way, and when they did there was no point in interfering with them, or hurrying them from outside. At any rate such was his philosophy.

“Now, Evelyn, I daresay Prior will take care of you,” he said. “This kloof is confoundedly tangled and difficult. There are klompies of haakdorrn too, here and there, which would tear that pretty skirt of yours into tatters.”

“But – are you going to drive on again? You don’t ever get a shot down there in that thick bush,” she urged, half reproachfully.

“Oh, don’t I? I’ve an idea I shall this time. You get up along the top side with Prior.”

The fell significance of his words was apparent only to his own mind, as indeed how should it be otherwise? Evelyn obeyed the order unquestioningly. She only said, in a half undertone, “You take care that everybody else gets the lion’s share of the fun, anyhow.”

The foremost pair were hurrying along the ridge, now cantering, now walking. At length they reached their allotted station at the bottom of the kloof. The latter was steep, like the other, only the bush was less thick.

“I don’t care for this end at all,” said Edala, when they had dismounted, and having hidden the horses, returned to take up their position. “Look. I’m sure we’ll be better up there,” pointing to a spot about a hundred yards higher up. “Let’s stand there.”

“Won’t it be a bit risky? You see, your father will expect us to be here, and supposing he were to fire at anything just at that point on the strength of it?”

“That’s not likely. Everything will have run out too far ahead of him by the time he gets there. Come.”

“Oh, all right.”

They dived into the bush, penetrating it higher up into the kloof. By the time they halted it was not the hundred yards it looked, but over two.

“This will do,” she said. “Now you’re not to miss.”

Their position was a little plateau, whence they could see without being seen. First-rate shots could be obtained of everything that ran out – and everything that did run out would pass within easy range, by reason of the narrowness of the way. Above, too, they would have ample warning of anything coming, for the bush though just thick enough, was not too dense.

“Diane chasseresse, you are splendid to-day,” whispered Elvesdon as they took up their position. She looked straight into his face, and on hers came a half resentful expression.

“Oh now, now. That’ll do,” she answered, half pettishly. “I suppose you think because I’m a girl I’ve no business in this sort of thing at all. I know I’m about the only one who goes in for it – except in England. There you get the Duchess of this and the Countess of that, and Lady Tom Noddy and all the rest of them placarded in the illustrated weeklies in shooting costume, with their guns, and so on; but here – oh no, the ordinary she-mortal mustn’t touch sport, just because she is a she. What?”

“Nothing. Don’t be so petulant.”

“Ah – ah! That’s what you were thinking. I know it.”

“Don’t crow now. You’re not a thought-reader. And,” – he added to himself, “I sometimes wish you were.”

She made an impatient movement – something, we believe, of the nature of that which our grandmothers called a ‘flounce.’

“Why shouldn’t I shoot bushbucks?” she said, defiantly. “Tell me.”

“When you have told me when I said you shouldn’t. Now why on earth have you raised all this bother about nothing in the world? Tell me.”

She looked at him for a moment as though not knowing whether to be angry or not. But the insidious imitation of her tone in the last two words was too much, and she burst out laughing.

“Ssh!” he said, reprovingly. “We mustn’t make such a row, or Prior will get all the shots. Nothing will come our way.”

Hardly were the words out of his mouth than the dogs burst into cry again. But the sound did not come their way, whatever had been roused had broken away at right angles. Then away back and above there rang out a shot.

“Prior again,” whispered Elvesdon. “What did I tell you?”

They waited in silence. Then Edala whispered:

“Poor chance now. There’s Manamandhla just underneath. The drive is nearly over.”

The Zulu was, as she had said, just beneath. He had halted, and bending down seemed to be trying to get a thorn out of his foot. At the same time Thornhill appeared in sight riding slowly down the other side. Suddenly he caught sight of Manamandhla.

He was barely a hundred yards away. The very expression of his face, the quick, stealthy manner in which he had dismounted – was apparent to the two watchers – and then – Thornhill was taking deliberate aim at the unconscious Zulu. At that short distance he could not miss.

The sharp, warning cry that escaped the pair came too late – yet not, for the bullet just grazed its intended mark, and glancing off a rock hummed away right over Edala’s head, so near, indeed, that she involuntarily ducked.

“Father. It’s Manamandhla,” she cried. “You nearly shot him.”

“Did I. Serve him right if I had,” came back the answer. “What’s the fool doing stalking on all fours instead of keeping on his hind legs? That’s the way to get shot by mistake in thick bush.”

Edala and her companion had exchanged glances. Neither had meant to do so, wherefore the glance of each was quick, furtive, involuntary. And the glance of each revealed to the other that both knew that that shot had not been fired by mistake at all.

“You nearly shot me too, father,” Edala said, as he joined them, and there was an unconscious coldness in her tone. Thornhill’s face lost colour.

“You had no business to be where you are,” was all he said whatever he may have felt. “Your position was quite two hundred yards further down. Nothing brings about shooting accidents so much as people changing the positions they arranged to take up.”

“Lucky we did or Manamandhla would have been shot,” she returned, and felt angry with herself for being unable to restrain a certain significance in her tone.

“That he most assuredly would. You sang out just too late to keep me from firing but not too late to spoil my aim.”

But the man most concerned, was the least concerned of all. Manamandhla himself to wit. From his demeanour he need not have just experienced the narrowest shave he was ever likely to have in his life. When Thornhill rated him he merely smiled and said nothing.

“Well, we can reckon the day as over,” said Thornhill, as Prior and Evelyn joined them at the bottom of the kloof – the latter had bagged what had been driven out in front of him, a duiker ram to wit. “We might have done better, and we might have done worse. Five bushbucks and a duiker among four guns – ”

“And a vaal koorhaan,” put in Elvesdon. “Don’t forget the vaal koorhaan, Thornhill. Diane chasseresse has the honours of the day.”

“Hear, hear!” cried Prior.

Thornhill laughed – easily, carelessly. He instinctively felt that both his daughter and Elvesdon were aware that if his last shot had been successful Manamandhla would have met his death by no accident at all. But he was not the man to give himself away.

“Sorry for your ill luck, Elvesdon,” he said. “We may get another chance on the way home, even now.”

“Oh that’s all right. I’m a bit ‘off’ to-day, I suppose. Better luck next time.”

Chapter Twenty One.
Peace – and Potentialities

“If I had had such a father as yours, Edala, I should simply have worshipped him.”

“I daresay. In fact it strikes me that that’s just about what you’re doing with regard to mine.”

The retort was crisp, not to say scathing. Evelyn Carden was angry with herself for changing colour slightly, the while those clear blue eyes were pitilessly searching her face. But she was not going to quarrel with Edala, so she answered conciliatorily: —

“Now dear, you know I never meant to offend you. Why should I? We have got on so well together. What I said was for your own happiness; that and nothing else. Of course I’ve no earthly right to even seem to ‘lecture’ you.”

“Not yet,” was the still more scathing retort which arose to the other girl’s lips. Fortunately she checked it. She looked up, as though waiting for more.

“I am not a gushing person, Edala dear, but I have grown very fond of you since I have been here. I would not have said anything about this estrangement but that it suddenly struck me – and struck me with horror – that I might have been the unconscious cause of deepening it, or at any rate that you thought I had been. So I think I will find some excuse and – move on.”

Edala softened. She was really fond of the other, and did not, in her heart of hearts, wish to see the last of her.

“No, you won’t, Evelyn,” she answered with characteristic decisiveness. “You’ll stay where you are. Never mind me. If I said anything beastly I’m more than sorry.”

What Thornhill had half welcomed in advance had come about. Edala was jealous. All that she might have done for her father, and had neglected to do, was done by their visitor. Did he want anything found for him – from some article mislaid, to some quotation in the course of his recreative studies – Evelyn was the one to do it, not Edala. Or did he want a companion in his semi-professional rides about the farm, Evelyn never by any chance refused or made excuse, but Edala often did, not only of late but when they had been alone together. In short, at every turn he met with far more consideration from this stranger than from his own child.

The incident which had led to the present discussion had occurred the day before, and was of just such a nature. Edala did not care to go out; it was too hot; besides, she had something else to do. But Evelyn had made no such excuse.

“I’m afraid I’m straining your good nature to cracking point,” Thornhill had more than once remarked on such occasions. “It’s rather more cheerful having some one with you than not, but I believe you never say ‘No’ because you think it a duty not to.”

“In that case a duty becomes a pleasure,” she had answered with a laugh.

Now of late Edala had been set thinking, and as the result of her searchings of heart a certain soreness had set in. Their visitor seemed to be taking her place, and yet she could not blame the visitor. If she would not do things for her father herself she could not fairly blame another person for doing them instead; yet none the less did she feel sore.

But since the incident at the wind-up of the bushbuck hunt the estrangement had widened. That her father had intended to shoot Manamandhla dead, she entertained not the slightest doubt. In the first place a man of his judgment could by no possibility be guilty of such a clumsy blunder as mistaking a human being for a buck under any circumstances whatever. In the next place the expression of his countenance had told its own tale, not only to herself but to the other witness, Elvesdon. What was it, then, but an act of cold-blooded, deliberate murder – in intent? Clearly there existed the strongest reasons for silencing the Zulu? And then a ghastly thought came into her mind. Could it be that he had been an accomplice in that terrible tragedy whose shadow had so early darkened her young life? Her first repulsion for the Zulu – which had begun to give way to a reaction in his favour since his narrow escape from death – returned a hundredfold with this new idea. Should she question him, she asked herself? What was the use? He would tell her nothing.

“Don’t think any more about it, dear,” Evelyn now rejoined. “It was only that I can see how bitterly your father feels your attitude towards him that moved me to refer to a matter which you have every right to tell me is no business of mine at all.”

Edala hardened again.

“Has he been – complaining then?” she said, with a return of bitterness.

“Is it likely? Is he that sort of man, do you think? Ah child, you don’t know what you are doing when you are throwing away the affection of such a father as yours, and repelling and wounding him at every turn. And some day, when it is too late, you may – ”

She stopped. The other had put out a hand and stopped her. Those were just her father’s own words, and now, for the first time, they struck her as horribly prophetic. Her eyes filled.

“I’m several years older than you, Edala, and I’ve seen a very great deal of life from all its sides. Mind, I’m not saying this to patronise or talk down to you, only to emphasise what an appallingly scarce thing real affection is. And I can’t bear to go away without having made some effort towards making you realise it too. That’s all that lies at the bottom of my ‘beastly interference,’ as you are calling it within your own mind,” she added with a smile.

“‘To go away’!” repeated Edala, with scornful emphasis, and dropping a hand upon that of the other. “But you’re not going away, so don’t let’s hear any more about it.”

“I’ve not come to live here, you know,” was the laughing rejoinder. “Well then, we won’t talk any more about parting company just yet since you’re not quite so anxious to get rid of me as I thought. Do you know, Edala, I have hardly any friends, almost none – acquaintances, yes,” – in reply to the look of astonishment evoked by the statement – “plenty of them. I am not exactly poor either – not in these days, though I have known the meaning of cruel straits – and can do what I like and go where I like, within modest limits. But I have been very happy here – I don’t know when I have enjoyed any time so much.”

“I should have thought you’d have found it beastly slow,” said Edala, wonderingly, and speaking in the light of her own unsatisfied aspirations. Her new relative was a great enigma to her. Why, for instance, with all her advantages had she never married? though this to her was nothing very wonderful, for she herself, given the same advantages, would have thought of that time-honoured institution as so remote a contingency as not to be worth consideration. Again she seldom said much about her people, or her earlier life, except in a vague and generalising sort of way.

“Anything but that,” answered Evelyn. “Why I feel in twice the form I was in when I came.”

“You look it too.”

This was bare fact. The joyous, healthy, outdoor life in a splendid and genial climate, had set its mark upon Evelyn Carden; had heightened her outward attractions, at the first not inconsiderable, as we have shown.

“You know,” went on Edala, “there are precious few places in this country where they five the life we live – I mean as far as we womenkind are concerned. Anywhere else you’d have been stuck down to read, and play the piano, and talk gossip – with an occasional ride or drive to some similar and neighbouring place to go through the same exercises within the limit of a day. They wouldn’t have stuck you on a horse, and romped you about over all sorts of rough country, bushbuck hunting and all that. Why they’d be horrified at the bare idea – though, I forgot – we haven’t been able to teach you to shoot, yet.”

Evelyn laughed.

“I’m sorry to say you haven’t, and I’m sadly afraid now that you never will. I suppose I haven’t been caught young enough.”

Both Edala and her father had done all they knew how to impart that instruction. They had assured. Evelyn that within a week at the outside she would be able to turn over her first bushbuck. But it was of no use. She got plenty of chances, but when the rushing, frightened antelope broke covert and bounded by like the wind, her nerve played her tricks, and she would blindly lash off both barrels at anything or nothing. And then, too, the gun would kick, as even the best gun will do if badly held; and after a bruised cheekbone, and a badly aching shoulder she had decided that that form of sport was not at all in her line. They had, however, taught her how to handle a revolver, though she was very far indeed from being able to make prize shooting with the same.

The two were seated in the shade of the tall fig-trees during the hot hours of the forenoon when this conversation had taken place – this conversation which had opened with every sign of storm, and had drifted into calm haven of peace. Edala, for her part, felt all her new born jealousy allayed. She felt compunctious, even inclined to act on the other’s warning and advice. It was in quite a softened mood that she turned to her father, who now joined them, looking hot and tired.

“Here, get into this chair,” she cried, jumping up and pushing him into hers. “You look fagged. I’m going in to get you something to drink. I’m sure you want it.”

“Yes do, darling,” he answered seizing her for a moment to press a kiss on the shining aureole of her gold-crowned head. “Well, what have you two been talking about?” as he subsided thankfully into the comfortable seat.

“Many things more or less interesting. Edala has at last come to the conclusion that I’m a hopelessly bad case because I can’t do anything with that wretched gun. I told her I wasn’t caught young enough.”

“Ho – ho! Not young enough! That’s good.”

“Now don’t you start making compliments, Inqoto, because they aren’t in your line at all,” she answered, placidly. And then Edala reappeared and the golden sparkle in the decanter and the cold gurgle in the porous water ‘monkey’ – was grateful sight and sound to a tired and thirsty man. Evelyn often called him by his native name. It was a complimentary one and therefore convenient. They all disliked the prefix of ‘Cousin,’ while if she conferred upon him the brevet rank of uncle why it made him out so old. So this came in handy.

“That’s good!” he cried draining the glass at one pull, and chucking it down in the grass. “You girls look cool and comfy. What have you been doing with yourselves?”

“Taking it easy.”

“So it would seem,” he laughed, looking at them both approvingly. He was thinking how different life had been to him since Evelyn Carden’s arrival. She was so eminently companionable, so tactful and sympathetic. And she looked so soothing and attractive, sitting there opposite him now; and some day she would be going away. The thought was unpleasant. The object of it looked up.

“What is troubling you? You heaved no end of a sigh.”

“Did I, dear? I suppose it was one of contentment. I’m a little tired and I’m resting. That may account for it. Getting old.”

Evelyn laughed pleasantly.

“Don’t fish, Inqoto. I’ve witnessed your prowess at shooting, but never at fishing. I suspect you’d prove as poor a hand at that as you are good at the other.”

“Well, well, if you women won’t take a man seriously, I suppose you won’t. By the way, I fell in with one of Elvesdon’s boys with a brievje for me. I took it from him to save him the trouble of coming any further. Elvesdon’s down at Tongwana’s collecting. He’ll have finished to-morrow, and wants us to go down there in the afternoon. Old Tongwana’s going to turn out a lot of his people and give a war-dance in our honour. What do you say?”

“Say? Why yes – of course,” said Edala decisively. “It’ll be no end of fun.”

“Rather,” said Evelyn.

“Well, I thought that would be the verdict, so I sent back a verbal answer on the chance of it.”

“It’s awfully kind of Mr Elvesdon,” went on Evelyn. “What a fine looking man he is, by the way.”

“Rather; and he’s a smart all round chap as well with no nonsense about him. I took to him from the very first,” answered Thornhill. But Edala said nothing, though it may be that she thought.

So they chatted on, seated there in the secure peace of the golden morning, little recking that the hours of that peace might be already numbered; that this might be the last of such days for a long and terrible time to come – if not for ever.