The Triumph of Hilary Blachland

“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.

Chapter Six.

Concerning the Unexpected

“How do, Earle?” cried George Bayfield, pulling up his horses at the gate of the first named.

“So, so, Bayfield. How’s all yourselves? How do, Miss Bayfield? Had a cold drive? Ha – ha! It must have been nipping when you started this morning. Just look at the frost even now,” with a comprehensive sweep of an arm terminating in a pipe over the dew-gemmed veldt, a sheeny sparkle of silver in the newly risen sun. “But you – it’s given you a grand colour anyway.”

“Yes, it was pretty sharp, Mr Earle, but we were well wrapped up,” answered Lyn, as he helped her down. Then, as an ulster-clad figure disentangled itself from the spider – “This is Mr Blachland, who is staying with us.”

“How do, sir? Pleased to meet you. Not out from home, are you?” with a glance at the other’s bronzed and weather-beaten countenance.

“No. Up-country,” answered Bayfield for him. “Had fever, obliged to be careful,” – this as though explaining the voluminousness of the aforesaid wrapping.

“So? Didn’t know you had any one staying with you, Bayfield.”

“By Jove! Didn’t I mention it? Well, I wrote that brievje in a cast-iron hurry, I remember.”

“That’s nothing. The more the merrier,” heartily rejoined Earle, who was a jolly individual of about the same number of years as Blachland. “Come inside. Come inside. We’ll have breakfast directly. Who’s this?” shading his eyes to look down the road.

“That’s Fred and Jafta, and a spare horse. The youngster won’t be in the way, will he, Earle? I don’t let him shoot yet, except with an air-gun, but he was death on coming along.”

“No – no. That’s all right. Bring him along.”

Their hostess met them in the doorway. She was a large, finely built woman, with a discontented face, but otherwise rather good-looking. She was cordial enough, however, towards the new arrivals. They constituted a break in the monotony of life; moreover, she was fond of Lyn for her own sake.

“Let’s have breakfast as soon as you can, Em,” said Earle. “We want to get along. I think we’ll have a good day. There are three troops of guinea-fowl in those upper kloofs, and the hoek down along the spruit is just swarming with blekbuck.”

During these running comments a door had opened, and someone entered.

“How d’you do, Mrs Fenham?” said Bayfield, greeting the new arrival cordially. He was followed by Lyn, somewhat less cordial. Then arose Earle’s voice:

“Mrs Fenham – Mr – There now, I believe I didn’t quite catch your name – ”

“Blachland.”

“Ah, yes, I beg your pardon – Blachland. Mr Blachland.”

Hilary bowed – then obliged by that other’s outstretched hand to put forth his, found it enclosed in a tolerably firm clasp, by that of – Hermia.

Thus they stood, looking into each other’s eyes, and in that brief glance, for all his habitual self-control, he would have been more than human had he succeeded in concealing the unbounded surprise – largely mingled with dismay – which flashed across his face. She for her part, if she had failed to read it, and in that fraction of a minute to resolve to turn it to account – well, she would not have been Hermia Saint Clair.

To both the surprise was equal and complete. They had no more idea of each other’s propinquity than they had – say, of the Sultan of Turkey suddenly arriving to take part in the day’s sport. Yet, of the two, the woman was the more self-controlled.

“Are you fond of sport?” she murmured sweetly, striving not to render too palpable to other observers the dart of mingled warning and defiance which she flashed at him.

“Yes, as a rule,” he answered indifferently, taking his cue. “Been rather off colour of late. Touch of fever.”

There was a touch of irony in the tone, to the only one there who had the key to its burden. For the words brought back the long and helpless bout of the dread malady, when this woman had left him alone – to die, but for the chance arrival of a staunch comrade.

“Well, lug that big coat off, old chap,” said Earle, whose jovial nature moved him to prompt familiarity. “Unless you still feel it too cold, that is. We’re going to have breakfast.”

The coat referred to was not without its importance in the situation. With the collar partly turned up, Blachland had congratulated himself that it helped to conceal the effect of this extraordinary and unwelcome surprise from the others, and such, in fact, was the case. For nothing is more difficult to dissemble in the eyes of bystanders, in a chance and unwelcome meeting, than the fact of previous acquaintanceship. It may be accounted for by the explanation of extraordinary resemblance, but such is so thin as to be absolutely transparent, and calculated to impose upon nobody. And of this Hilary Blachland was thoroughly aware.

They sorted themselves into their places. Hilary, by a kind of process of natural selection, found himself seated next to Lyn. Hermia was nearly opposite, and next to her three of the Earle progeny – preternaturally well-behaved. But on her other side was a vacant chair, and a place laid as though for somebody. There was plenty of talk going on, which enabled Blachland to keep out of it and observe.

First of all, what the deuce was she doing there? Hermia masquerading as instructor of youth! Oh, Heavens, the joke would have been enough to send him into a fit, had he only heard of it! But there she was, and it would be safe to say that there was not a living being on the wide earth, however detestable, whose presence would not have been warmly welcome to him in comparison with that of this one seated there opposite. What on earth was her game, he wondered, and what had become of Spence? Here she was, passing as a widow under the name of Fenham. And this was the unknown fair who had been the subject of their jokes, and Lyn’s disapproval! Why, even on the way over that morning, Bayfield had been full of chaff, pre-calculating the effect of her charms upon himself. Great Heavens, yes! It was all too monstrous – too grotesque entirely.

“Are you still feeling cold?”

It was Lyn who had turned to him, amid all the chatter, and there was a sort of indefinably confidential ring in her voice, begotten of close friendship and daily intercourse. Was it something of the kind that softened his as he replied to her? But even while he did so he met the dark eyes opposite, the snap of which seemed to convey that to their owner nothing could go unobserved.

“Oh no, I’m quite all right now,” he answered lightly. And then, under cover of all the fanning talk that was going on between Earle and Bayfield, he talked to Lyn, mostly about matters they had discussed before. A sort of ironical devil moved him. He would let this woman opposite, imperceptibly watching every look, weighing every word, understand that she and her malevolence, whether dormant or active, counted absolutely nothing with him.

There was the sound of a footstep outside, and the door was opened.

“Awful sorry I’m so late, Mrs Earle,” cried a voice – a young and refined English voice – as its owner entered. “How d’you do, Miss Bayfield – Er – how d’you do?”

This to the only one who was personally unknown to the speaker, and who for that very reason seemed to have the effect of a damper upon his essentially English temperament.

“Mr Blachland – Mr West,” introduced their host.

“What?” almost shouted the last-named. “Blachland, did you say? Not Hilary! Why – it is! Hilary, my dear old chap, why, this is real good. By Jove, to think of my running against you here. Where on earth have you dropped from? Earle, you’ve heard me talk about this chap. He’s my first cousin.” And grabbing hold of the other’s hands, he started wringing them as though that newly found relative were the harmless, necessary village pump. “Who’d have thought of running against you here?” went on Percival West volubly. “Why, I thought you were in some out-of-way place up-country. Well, this is a gaudy surprise!”

“Isn’t it? But somebody or other has defined this country as the land of surprises, Percy. So it’s got to keep up its character,” said Blachland, with a queer smile, fully conscious that the irony of the rejoinder would not be lost upon at any rate one other at the table.

“I say, West. Get on with your grub, old chap,” said Earle. “You can have a yarn on the way. We want to make a start, you know.”

“Right you are!” cried Percival, with a jolly laugh, as he slid into the vacant chair beside Hermia. But even amid his surprise, he did not omit to give the latter the good morning in an unconscious change of tone, which in its turn was not lost upon Hilary Blachland; for in it was an unconscious softening, which with the look which came into the young fellow’s eyes as he turned to the woman beside him, caused those of his newly found relative to open – figuratively – very wide indeed. For two considerable surprises had been sprung upon him – enough in all conscience for one morning, yet here was a third. This young fool was already soft upon Hermia. As to that there could be no doubt. Here was a situation with a vengeance, the thinker told himself. How on earth was it going to pan out? And his anticipations on that head were of no pleasurable nature.