Chapter Twenty Five.
Dumela’s defection
“What do you think of this, Kenrick?” said Brian, as I went into the cattle kraal at milking time a couple of mornings after. “Here’s old Dumela saying he wants to leave.”
The old cattle-herd was squatted on his heels on the ground. Brian and his father were seated on a log listening to what he had to say. This was not much. His brother’s son had got into trouble at Gangelizwe’s “Great Place,” away beyond the Tsomo, and had involved his brother too. He must go and help them at once, taking with him the several head of cattle he had running on the farm. He was getting old, and thought he would not work any more.
“Why, he’s been with you close on twenty years, hasn’t he?” I said.
“Rather more,” answered Brian. “But that’s always the way with these chaps. The longer they’ve been with you the more keen they are on clearing out for a change: for I don’t swallow over-much of that brother’s son yarn. Well, he’ll have to go, I suppose – eh, dad?”
“Oh, yes.” Then it was put to Dumela that he was behaving shabbily in taking himself off at a moment’s notice after all these years, and that, too, just at a time when we were in need of a thoroughly trustworthy man to fill his position, after our friction with Kuliso. This he deprecatorily admitted. Still, if his relatives stood in need of him, what else could he do? And he was not leaving us entirely in the lurch, for he had found a man who was ready to take his place now at once, and who was a good man with cattle. In fact, he was over in his hut now.
“Well, we’d better see him, at any rate,” said Brian, and calling one of the boys, despatched him to Dumela’s hut to fetch the stranger. The boy reappeared in no time followed by – Maqala.
This fellow saluted us gravely, but showed no sign of ever having seen any of us before. I own his sudden appearance startled me. Was this part of the game, I wondered, and if so how on earth could it be that an old and faithful servant like Dumela could aid and abet any mischief that might be brewing against us? Yet having good reason to bear in mind this rascal’s excellent knowledge of English, I could utter no word of warning. It was, however, unnecessary, for Brian had recognised him at once as the man I had pointed out in the street at Fort Lamport.
“Why, that is one of Kuliso’s people,” he said. “You are a Tembu, Dumela; how then can you bring me a man of another tribe, and vouch for him as good?”
Dumela’s reply to this seemed lame, and deepened my suspicions more and more. Would it be well, I wondered, to engage Maqala, and thus have him more under our own observation? But Septimus Matterson cut the knot of the difficulty.
“I won’t have him,” he said. “I won’t have him at any price. I’ve seen him before, and I don’t want to see him again. He is one of the people who raided us that day, one of the foremost of them too. I wouldn’t trust him further than I could see him, so he may take himself off.”
There was no getting round the straight directness of this reply. Maqala said nothing. He just flung his blanket round him, and lounged away; but as he did so the look he turned on me was not a pleasant one. On me. I was conscious of a feeling of relief. I, then, was the object of his hostility. Whatever nefarious scheme he was hatching, I was the destined victim of it – I and not the boy. Well, that simplified the situation, for I was flattered to think I knew how to take care of myself. Yet, even then his implacability was not quite comprehensible, for Kafirs, as a rule, have a strong sense of justice and are not vindictive when they realise that they have deserved whatever punishment they may have got, and if this one did not deserve the somewhat rough treatment I had twice meted out to him, why I didn’t know who did. Physically he was a tall, lithe specimen of his race, rather light-coloured, and had an evil cast of countenance. The expression of that countenance now, as he darted that quick parting glance at me, reminded me of nothing so much as a roused snake.
Well, Dumela took himself off. He made no profuse apologies or extravagant expressions on the strength of thus terminating his twenty years’ service. He just bade us farewell, collected his two wives, his cattle, and such pay as was due to him, and went. We had to put on one of our farm boys in his place, and were to that extent short-handed, necessitating more general supervision, which, as Brian was obliged to be away from home on a matter of business, considerably tended to enlarge my own sphere of energy. But for this I was not sorry, as it took me more and more away from the house.
Sometimes Pentridge would accompany me on my rides abroad, and I was glad to have him, for he was always good company, and, liking the man for his own sake, I could not feel mean enough to hate him for being more fortunate than myself. On one such occasion – Beryl having laughingly but firmly ordered him out of the schoolroom where she was giving Iris, and now George, their morning lessons, and thus throwing him for refuge on me – he said something that set me thinking.
“D’you know, Holt, I’m beginning to feel beastly jealous of you.”
“So? And why?”
“Why, the way you seem to have captured every one here.”
“Didn’t know it.”
“But you have. Why, it’s ‘Holt says this’ and ‘Kenrick thinks that’ on all hands, till I believe if you weren’t such a good chap I’d rather dislike you.”
“‘You do me proud,’ Pentridge – unless, that is, you’re pulling my leg. Otherwise I hadn’t the faintest idea of anything of the kind, and don’t see why it should be so now.”
I believe I spoke with needless bitterness, but at the moment I could not help thinking how much greater reason I had for disliking him.
“Well, but it is. Good old Matterson isn’t effusive, as you know, and I’ve never heard him boom any one before. But he’s always booming you. That time the Kafirs made that raid on you, he swears you stood by him like a brick.”
“Well, I could hardly turn tail and run away, could I?”
“Not only that, but he said he was astonished at the judgment you showed on the occasion. And only this morning he was thanking his stars you were so good at bossing up things, now that he was seedy, and rheumatic, and Brian had to be away a lot.”
Here was some practical cause for self-satisfaction, I thought. In view of my utter ruin financially, it was gratifying to know that I was deemed worth my salt in any one line of livelihood. But I answered —
“Well, if you’ve put your hand to the plough it’s satisfactory to know that you’re driving a straight furrow.”
“Rather. Brian, too, is always booming you, and as for those two kids, why they don’t cheek you a bit.”
“Is that a sign of esteem?” I laughed, for the idea tickled me. Further, I admit a littleness – in the shape of an anxiety to hear whether Beryl had added her quota to the general testimonial, and if so on what terms. But, by accident or design, he forebore to gratify me.
“I should say so,” he rejoined. “Knowing their natural temperaments, it means that they must hold you in profound respect – especially George.”
“Poor little devil! He’s had the cheek considerably taken out of him of late,” I said. “He used to be rather an outrage.”
“So I should imagine. By the way, Holt, they were telling me about how you got Iris out of the sea that time at East London. It was – ”
But whatever “it was” I didn’t want to hear.
“Stop there, Pentridge,” I said. “That’s a forbidden topic and one I’m completely sick of. It was mere child’s play to a fellow who is as thoroughly at home in the water as I am, so don’t talk about it.”
“Oh, all right, old chap,” he answered good-humouredly, and then he went on to tell me something about himself. He had been some years in a slow Dutch township on the border line between the Eastern and Western Province, and had come to Fort Lamport to try and set up a practice there if he could buy out the District Surgeon, who was old and inclined to be shaky. “Yes,” I thought somewhat bitterly, “and his reasons for coming to that particular place are not difficult to fathom.”
For it was obvious to my mind that things were coming to a head. He and Beryl were a great deal together, and more and more of an excellent understanding seemed to exist between them, and in the light of this it seemed equally obvious that, apart from the catastrophe which had overtaken myself, I had been indulging in false hopes before – living in a fool’s paradise, and I don’t know whether the discovery rendered the situation any better for me or not.
One day I came upon them out riding. I had been doing an exhaustive round of the place and struck the main road. The bush grew right down to this on each side, and as I gained it I could see two other riders approaching. Even then I would have withdrawn, not wishing to be the one too many, but they had seen me. Yet I had seen them a little before: had seen how happy they looked together, and, with a jealous pang, how well they looked together, how completely they seemed to match.
Beryl was looking lovely, the warm paleness of her face just suffused by the exercise, and the generous kiss of the free open air with just a sparkle of crisp keenness in it. She looked splendid in the saddle, too, as she always did, sitting her horse with the most perfect ease and grace – Meerkat, that very horse I had risked my life to recover and restore to her. Many a similar ride had we had together, she and I. And ah! how little I had appreciated it then, I found myself thinking; yet now to look back upon those times! But they would not bear looking back upon.
Pentridge seemed, I thought, ever so slightly put out as I joined them, yet he need not have, for whatever my failings I flattered myself I was not quite such a fool as Trask, and consequently knew when I was not wanted. Beryl, on the other hand, did not give even the most subtle indication of disturbance; but then, after all, women are much better actors than we are.
“Had a good ride?” I asked carelessly, dropping the bridle rein on the horse’s neck, and shielding a match with my hands to light a pipe.
“Er – yes. Jolly,” answered Pentridge. But Beryl said —
“I don’t think there’s much chance of anything going wrong on the place while you’re about, Kenrick. Why, you’re as good as ten policemen.”
“Don’t know if that’s to be taken as a compliment after the way I’ve heard some of you talk of that useful force,” I answered with a laugh.
“Why, of course it is. But you are really too good about it. You might take it easy now and then.”
“Oh, that’s all right,” I rejoined in would-be airy tone. “Best thing in the world for me. I enjoy it.”
Beryl’s large eyes, deep with one of those strange, unfathomable glances in which she sometimes indulged, were full on my face. I fancied Pentridge was making an effort not to fidget uneasily. Well, I was not going to be a marplot; and flattered myself there was nothing of the dog-in-the-manger about me, as I replied —
“Well, I shall have to leave you now. By the time I get to the vee-kraal it will be counting-in time. And the oftener Notuba’s sheep are counted, the better, in my opinion.”
I fancied that Pentridge’s face cleared, for he knew that the course I now proposed to pursue would take me away at right angles from their line of march, viz. the main road. But the same did not hold good of Beryl.
“I thought you were going to ride home with us,” she said; and if the tone was not one of genuine disappointment, why then she was even a better actress than I had at first reckoned her.
“I wish I could,” I answered. “But now Brian’s away, you know! You see it’s a matter I take a pride in.”
“Yes, I know you do,” she said; and there was that in her way of saying it that brought back all the old time.
“Well then, ‘duty calls,’” I rejoined, forcing a laugh. “So long. We shall meet again in the vast length of an hour or so.”
As I turned my horse and struck into the bush path I prided myself on my own acting powers. In point of fact, I had no intention of going to the vee-kraal – none whatever. There was no necessity to, seeing I had counted out there that same morning and had found the count correct. But ‘two’s company, three’s a crowd’ if a threadbare, is eke a wholesome axiom, and I did not choose, under the circumstances, to constitute the crowd. But it was time I broke off from them if I wanted to keep up my rôle; yet I could not help speculating as to what had transpired during that ride. Had anything? From their looks as I joined them, it might have. Or from Pentridge’s look when I branched off, it might yet be to come. But then in that case, why did Beryl so genuinely wish me to accompany them the rest of the way? Well, well. Time would show.
Chapter Twenty Six.
Opportunity?
“By the way, what have I done to you, Kenrick?”
We were walking together, Beryl and I, in the garden, just as we had walked on the evening of my arrival, only that now the shade had nearly vanished with the fall of leaves. We had not walked together thus alone since prior to the tragedy, but to-day it happened that Pentridge was out with Septimus Matterson, and as I had mentioned an intention of doing something to the garden, Beryl had joined me. We had walked on thus together, chatting about the piece of work I had in hand, when she suddenly faced round on me with the above query.
“Done to me?” I echoed rather blankly. “Done to me? What do you mean, Beryl?”
“Well, why have you avoided me so of late – rather markedly, too?”
Rather markedly? Great heaven! And here I had been priding myself all this while upon having played my part so well, above all so unobtrusively. And this was what it had amounted to – that I had avoided her “rather markedly.” But there was no trace of resentment, of temper, in her tone. It was merely that of one desiring information, and her great eyes were bent straight and searchingly upon my face.
What was I to say? I became conscious that I was staring stupidly at her, but if only she could have read my mind! Yet I could hardly read it myself. All sorts of whirling confused thoughts were chasing each other through it, as I looked at her standing there, sweet, and cool, and graceful, and wholly alluring, but – not for me, ah no! not for me. How could I tell her of the bitter upheaval of the last couple of weeks? How could I tell her the truth without telling her the whole truth? How could I tell her that I, a beggared pauper, had been striving to stifle and live down the love I had been on the point of declaring? It was too late for that, and, over and above, would not such a declaration now be simply a cheapening of myself; now that I had assured myself that, in any event, whatever love she had to give was not for me? What was I to say? I could not deny that I had avoided her. Her natural quick-wittedness and woman’s instinct were not to be set aside in any so light a fashion, yet I shrank from laying my own wounds bare.
“Why, don’t you see what a lot I’ve had to do, Beryl?” I said. “Rather more than usual of late. And you’ve had a visitor to entertain, too. Pentridge is a good chap, isn’t he?”
All this I rattled out airily, and in the most natural manner in the world, as I thought. But she was not taken in.
“You haven’t been yourself at all for some time, Kenrick,” she went on, “not since we came back, anyhow. I’m not the only one who has noticed it.”
“So? Who else has?” I asked laughingly.
“Well, Dr Pentridge for one. We were talking about you the other day, and he said you gave him the idea of a man who had something on his mind. He’s a doctor, you see.”
“Ho-ho! Quite so; and now he’s trying to capture a fee out of consulting hours,” I laughed. “Never mind, Beryl. We won’t call in Pentridge professionally just yet.”
I had a spade in my hand, and with it I set to work to clear away a slight obstruction in the furrow beneath the quince hedge; and while I did so I realised that my laugh did not ring true, that it no more imposed upon Beryl than it did upon myself.
“By the way,” I went on, “he’s coming to practice in Fort Lamport, he tells me. That’ll be handy if I want to put him in charge of my case.”
“Kenrick, will you stop joking and be serious,” she said. “First of all, answer my first question. Have I done or said anything to offend you?”
“Why, good heavens! of course not. How on earth could you?”
“That’s a weight off my mind, at any rate,” she answered with a little smile.
I stood and faced her.
“Look here, Beryl,” I said. “To prevent any misunderstanding I’ll tell you this much. I have something on my mind just now, but it relates to matters of business. I had some rather nasty news from England the day before you came back, and it has worried me a good bit. That’s all.”
But she shook her head.
“I doubt if that is all,” she said, and my pulses were set a-hammering as I wondered whether she was going to get the rest of it out of me too. “I believe it is worse than you are admitting. I don’t want to pry into your affairs, Kenrick, but you are like one of ourselves now, and I can’t bear to see you going about looking as you have been doing of late. And – and – you might do worse than consult father or Brian about it. They are both very shrewd in that line you know, and might be of use to you.”
“Well, it may come to that,” I answered. “But meanwhile, Beryl, what I have told you is between ourselves. You made me tell you, you know. Heaven knows I never intended to whine to you about my sordid grievances.”
“Kenrick, don’t,” she said, impulsively putting forth her hand to rest on mine. “‘Whine,’ indeed! That isn’t you anyway. Why, I am proud of your confidence, and sorry – oh, so sorry – for its cause. But you must cheer up. I have an instinct that everything will come right. It sometimes does, you know.”
Would it? I thought I knew better, but I had done enough grizzling already, so was not going to say so. And I thought with a certain bitterness that her sympathy, sweet as it was, was not of the nature I could have wished it to be. Even then the concern in her tone, the softening of her eyes, the touch of her hand as she stood facing me, scattered my resolution to the winds. She should know all, then and there – all – all.
“So you think that everything will come right, do you?” I said, pretending to do something with the spade so as not to be obliged to look at her.
“Yes. I have an instinct that way.”
“But if it can’t?”
“That is an ‘if’ in which my belief is somewhat feeble,” she answered confidently.
“Supposing I – er, supposing a man had lost all he had in the world, and that beyond all possibility of recovery – what then?”
“He might remedy the loss. Energy, some resourcefulness, and a great deal of common sense, constitute not a bad foundation for a fresh start – say in a country like this.”
The cool, practical, matter-of-fact tone of this reply fairly startled me – and then – Great Scott! the remarks that Pentridge had let fall during our conversation a day or two back, gratifying to myself in that they reflected the estimation in which I seemed to be held, flashed across my mind. Beryl’s words were spoken with a purpose – were meant to be taken home, and with the idea came another. Could I, without anything definite passing between us, turn the key of her mind as regarded herself?
“Yes, he might remedy the loss – after a time,” I said, still pretending to work with the spade – still not looking at her. “After a time. But what if that time were too late?”
“Could it ever be?”
“Why, yes. Because by that time what would have made success worth striving for might be no longer attainable; might have passed out of reach irrevocably and for ever.”
She did not answer. In the tensity of the silence the clink of my spade in the dry dusty furrow seemed to my wrought-up mind to sound as with a loud hammering. A network of sunlight, from the deep blue of an early winter sky, fell through the nearly denuded boughs upon the earth around, and the screech of crickets and the far-off melodious shout of a hoepoe hardly seemed to break the stillness. What would she answer? Or would she even understand? And as to this I almost hoped not, for here had I, under cover of this veiled talk, been saying to her in effect: “Beryl, I am a ruined man, a beggar, but – how would it be to throw away the best years of your life and wait for me on the off chance of my ever being able to rise substantially above that most unenviable position?”
“Of course I am only putting a case,” I appended with conscious lameness.
“Oh, of course,” she answered readily. “But, supposing – ”
“Beryl! Beryl!” rang out a clear, child-voice, crescendo. “Oh, there you are. I thought she had gone to the garden, Dr Pentridge,” this last back over a shoulder, and Iris came tearing along the path, tossing back the wealth of her gold-brown hair. After her, in more leisurely fashion, came Pentridge.
He started on seeing me, so plainly, so unmistakably, that, keenly observant, I at once set up the theory within my own mind that he had come to find Beryl alone, with a purpose of course. The child could easily have been got rid of, but I – well, that was a different matter.
“Ha, Holt! Hard at it as usual?” he said, with rather a forced geniality.
“Not particularly hard. Only filling up an odd moment.”
He told us that he had just received letters by a messenger who had ridden out from Fort Lamport, letters relating to his pending negotiations, which would render it necessary for him to leave as soon as possible; in fact, that very afternoon if it could possibly be managed. He would have to go straight home from there, so supposed it would be a final good-bye, though we should all meet again soon – in fact, quite soon, he hoped.
I don’t know whether I did, and that for obvious reasons. However, it was manifest that he wanted to have a talk with Beryl, and he should have it, so far as I was concerned; to which end I started in on a battle of chaff with Iris, which kept her busy for a few minutes, then craftily manoeuvred her further down the kloof to look at and talk over a couple of bees’ nests we had been planning to take out. This was all right enough, but what does the little fiend do next but splutter out —
“Can you keep a secret, Kenrick? Because if so I’ll tell you one. Pentridge is awfully smashed on Beryl.”
“I should say Dr Pentridge if I was a little girl,” I formulated to the accompaniment of rather a ghastly grin. “Well, is that the secret? because if so I haven’t said I could keep one yet.”
“Ach! Well, you won’t say I said so, hey?”
“I won’t say anything at all about it, Iris,” I answered magisterially. “And little girls oughtn’t to think about such things.”
She opened her big blue eyes wide at the reproof. Then detecting the mirth – such as it was – depicted on my own face, she bestowed such a whole-souled pinch upon my brown and bared forearm, as caused me to sing out and stamp.
“You spiteful little cat. Wait till we get at those bees’ nests. You deserve to be jolly well stung.”
She pranced round me, chuckling maliciously.
“Ha-ha! That’s what you get for coming the solemn old school-baas over me,” she crowed. Then – “There, there. You’re not kwaat with me, are you?”
The insinuating little rogue. As if she didn’t know she could have done anything she liked to me!
We did not take out the bees’ nests that day. My mind was full of what had gone before, and I listened to the sunny child’s chatter, fearful lest her precocious eyes should see through my own secret – wondering, too, whether her interruption of us had been for good or the reverse. She had interrupted us at a critical juncture. What had Beryl been on the point of saying to me? What was she saying even then to that other? Had I let slip an opportunity? And yet – and yet I if so, how could I have seized such opportunity under the circumstances? Of course I could not.
But what she had or had not said to that other seemed likely to remain a mystery, and the same held good of what he had said to her, for neither by word or hint did Beryl let fall any inkling of the matter.
After Pentridge had gone, things seemed to shake down as usual, but for me a line was drawn, and the glowing, idyllic happiness of the last few months seemed shut back as though beyond an iron door.
One day when Septimus Matterson and I were alone together, something moved me to follow Beryl’s advice and tell him of my disaster – though I had hardly done so than I felt it was a more complete burning of my boats. He was very concerned, and said so.
“Don’t lose heart, though, Kenrick,” he said. “Many a man has had a bigger knock than that and has come out smiling. When do you say you will know beyond all doubt whether things are – as bad as you think?”
“Oh, in a month or two.”
“Well, we’ll talk over it again then. But – don’t lose heart. And remember this, Kenrick. You are as one of ourselves now, and if the worst comes to the worst, this place is always your home as long as you like to make it so.”
I mumbled out something that was meant to be appreciative, and then he began to talk about other things. He was rather put out because his plans on George’s account had fallen through. The schools he had been negotiating with delicately but firmly refused to take the boy.
“I’m coming round to the conclusion that there’s no necessity to send him away at all,” he ended up. “The thing has been settled and is now a thing of the past. I believe he’s as safe as you or I.”
To this what answer could I make, remembering that the speaker was nothing if not a man of sound judgment? Yet even the soundest of such may fall into an error – and then!