The Triumph of Hilary Blachland

“I say, West!” cried Bayfield. “That old ram we drove over you the other day has come to a bad end at last. Blachland’s knocked him over.”

“Oh, well done, Hilary, old chap. I suppose you’ve had a great time with big game, eh? Shocked over no end of lions and elephants, and all that sort of thing?”

“A few, yes,” answered the other, rising, for a signal for a move had been given.

A few minutes of filling up cartridge-belts and fastening reims to saddles, and other preparations, and the sporting party was ready.

“Good luck, father. Good luck, Mr Blachland,” said Lyn, as she stood watching them start.

“That ought to bring it,” answered the latter, as he swung himself into his saddle. But Hermia was not among those who were outside. Percival, who had been, had dived inside again Blachland did not fail to notice. He emerged in a moment, however, looking radiantly happy and brimming over with light-hearted spirits.

“Now, Hilary, old chap, we can have a yarn,” he said, as they started, for the others had the start of them by a hundred yards or so. “So you’re stopping with Bayfield? If only I’d known that, wouldn’t I have been over to look you up. Good chap Bayfield. Nice little girl of his too, but – not much in her, I fancy.”

“There you’re wrong, Percy. There’s a great deal in her. But – how did you fall in with Earle?”

“Knew him through another Johnny I was thick with on board ship, and he asked me over to his place. Had a ripping good time here, too. I say, what d’you think of that Mrs Fenham? Fancy a splendid woman like that spending life hammering a lot of unlicked cubs into shape. Isn’t it sinful?”

“Why didn’t you say you were coming out, Percy? Drop a line or something?” went on his relative, feeling unaccountably nauseated by what he termed to himself the boy’s brainless rattle.

“Drop a line! Why, that’s just where the joke comes in! We none of us knew where on earth you were exactly. In point of fact, I came over here to find you, and by George I have! Never expected to find you so easily, though.”

“Nothing wrong, eh?”

“No. But Uncle Luke is dying to see you again. He said I must be sure and bring you back with me.”

The other looked surprised. Then his face softened very perceptibly.

“Is that a fact, Percy? Why, I thought he never wanted to set eyes on me again as long as he lived.”

“Then you thought jolly well wrong. He does. So you must just make up your mind to go home when I do.”

“Why are you so keen on it, Percy? Why, man, it might be immeasurably to your advantage if I never went back at all.”

“Look here, Hilary, if you really mean that, I’m not a beastly cad yet.”

“Well, I don’t really mean it,” said the other, touched by the young fellow’s chivalrous single-heartedness. “Perhaps we may bring off your scheme all right. I would like to see the dear old chap again. I must have treated him very shabbily. And the old Canon – is he still to the fore?”

“Rather, and as nailing good an old sort as ever. He wants to see you again too – almost as much as Uncle Luke does.”

“Ah, he always was a straight ’un – not an ounce of shoddy or humbug about him – ”

“Come on, you fellows, or we’ll never get to work,” shouted Earle’s voice, now very far ahead of them.

And leaving their home talk and reminiscences for the present, they spurred on their steeds – to join the rest of the party.

Chapter Seven.

“It cannot be.”

In the conjecture that his cousin had fallen into an infatuation for Hermia, Hilary Blachland was right – the only respect in which he had failed to grasp the full situation being that he had not fathomed the depth of that infatuation.

He knew her little ways, none better; knew well how insidiously dangerous she could be to those who did not know them, when she saw fit to lay herself out to attract. That she was laying herself out to entrap Percy was the solution of the whole problem.

Yet not all of it. She had been with the Earles before Percy’s arrival, before she could even have known he was in the country at all. And what had become of Spence? Well, this, too, would be cleared up, for he knew as well as though she had told him in so many words, that before they parted again she meant to have a private talk with him, and an understanding, and to this he was not averse. It would probably be a stormy one, for he was not going to allow her to add young West to her list of victims; and this he was going to give her emphatically to understand.

A rustle and a rush in front, and a blekbuck leaped out of the long grass almost at his horse’s feet, for they were riding in line – a hundred yards or so apart. Up went his gun mechanically – a crack and a suspicion of a puff of smoke. The graceful little animal turned a complete somersault, and lay, convulsively kicking its life away. Another started up, crossing right in front of Percival. The latter slipped to the ground in a moment, got a sight on, and turned it over neatly, at rather a long distance shot.

“I say, Bayfield. Those two Britishers are leading off well,” said Earle, as they pulled in their horses and lighted pipes, to wait till the other two should be ready to take the line again.

There are more imposing, but few more enjoyable forms of sport, than this moving over a fine rolling expanse of bontebosch veldt, beneath the cloudless blue of the heavens, through the clear exhilarating air of an early African winter day; when game is plentiful, and anything may jump out, or rise at any moment; blekbuck or duiker, guinea-fowl or koorhaan, or partridge, with the possibility of a too confiding pauw, and other unconsidered trifles. All these conditions held good here, yet one, at any rate, of those privileged to enjoy them, keen sportsman as he was, felt that day that something was wanting – that a cloud was dimming the sun-lit beauty of the rolling plains, and an invisible weight crushing the exhilaration of each successful shot.

Blachland, pursuing his sport mechanically, was striving to shake off an unpleasant impression, and striving in vain. Something seemed to have happened between yesterday and to-day. Or was it the thought that Lyn Bayfield would be more or less in Hermia’s society throughout the whole of that day? Yet, even if such were the case, what on earth did it matter to him?

The day came to an end at last, but there had been nothing to complain of in the way of the sport. They had lunched in the veldt, in ordinary hunter fashion – and in the afternoon had got in among the guinea-fowl; and being lucky enough to break up the troop, had about an hour of pretty sport – for scattered birds lie well and rise well – and by the time they turned their faces homeward, were loaded up with about as much game – buck and birds – as the horses could conveniently carry.

A flutter of feminine dresses was visible on the stoep, as they drew near the house, seeing which, an eager look came into Percival West’s face. It was not lost upon his kinsman, who smiled to himself sardonically, as he recalled how just such a light had been kindled in his own at one time, and by the same cause. What a long while ago that seemed – and to think, too, that it should ever have been possible.

A chorus of congratulation arose as the magnitude of the bag became apparent.

“Those two Britishers knocked spots out of us to-day!” cried Earle. “Bayfield and I can clean take a back seat.”

“You wouldn’t call Mr Blachland a Britisher, surely, Mr Earle?” struck in Hermia. “Why, he’s shot lions up-country.”

“Eh, has he? How d’you know?” asked Earle eagerly – while he who was most concerned mentally started.

“Didn’t he tell us so this morning?” she said, and her glance of mischief was not lost upon Blachland, who remarked:

“Does that fact denationalise me, Mrs Fenham? You said I couldn’t be counted a Britisher.”

“Well, you know what I meant.”

“Oh, perfectly.”

There was a veiled cut-and-thrust between these two: imperceptible to the others – save one.

That one was Lyn. Her straight instinct and true ear had warned her.

“She is an adventuress,” was the girl’s mental verdict. “An impostor, who is hiding something. Some day it will come out.” Now she said to herself, watching the two, “He doesn’t like her. No, he doesn’t.” And there was more satisfaction in this conclusion than even its framer was aware of.

Throughout the evening, too, Hilary found himself keenly observing new developments, or the possibility of such. At supper, they were mostly shooting all the day’s bag over again, and going back over the incidents of other and similar days. Percival, in his seat next Hermia, was dividing his attention between his host’s multifold reminiscence and his next-door neighbour, somewhat to the advantage of the latter. A new development came, however, and it was after they had all got up from the table, and some, at any rate, had gone out on to the stoep to see the moon rise. Then it was, in the sudden transition from light to darkness, Blachland felt his hand stealthily seized and something thrust into it – something which felt uncommonly like a tiny square of folded paper. Hermia’s wrap brushed him at the time, and Hermia’s voice, talking evenly to Percival on the other side, arrested his ear. There was a good deal more talk, and lighting of pipes, and presently it was voted too cold to remain outside. But, on re-entering, the party had undergone diminution by two. Mrs Earle was looking more discontented than ever.

“What’s the odds?” chuckled her jolly spouse, with a quizzical wink at his two male guests. “They’re a brace of Britishers. They only want to talk home shop. Fine woman that Mrs Fenham, isn’t she, Blachland?”

“Yes. How did you pick her up?” he replied, noticing that the discontented look had deepened on the face of his hostess, and bearing in mind Bayfield’s insinuations, thought that warm times might be in store for Hermia.

“Oh, the wife found her. I hadn’t anything to do with it. But she’s first-rate in her own line: gets the nippers on no end. Makes ’em learn, you know.”

Would surprises never end? thought Hilary Blachland. Here was an amazing one, at any rate, for he happened to know that Hermia’s mind, as far as the veriest rudiments of education were concerned, was pretty nearly a blank. How on earth, then, did she contrive to impart instruction to others? He did not believe she could, only that she had succeeded in humbugging these people most thoroughly.

Then they had manoeuvred Lyn to the piano, and got her to sing, but Hilary, leaning back in his chair, thought that somehow it did not seem the same as up there in her own home, when night after night he had sat revelling in the sweet, clear, true notes. And then the other two, entering from their moonlight stroll, had subsided into a corner together. The sight reminded him of Spence, who must needs make an open book of his callow, silly face. Percival was doing the same.

“Just as I thought,” he said to himself, an hour later, as under cover of all the interchange of good nights, he managed to slip away for a moment to investigate the contents of the mysterious paper. “‘Meet to-morrow and have an explanation, or I may regret it all my life.’ Um – ah! very likely I shall do that in any case. Still, I’m curious about the explanation part of it myself, so meet we will.”

“Come along, old chap,” said Percival, grabbing him by the arm. “You’ve got to doss down in my diggings, and we’ll have a good round jaw until we feel sleepy. Phew! it’s cold!” he added, as they got out on to the stoep – for Percival’s room was at the end of the stoep, and was quite shut off from the house. The moonlit veldt stretched away in dim beauty around, its stillness broken by the weird yelp of hunting jackals, or the soft whistle of the invisible plover overhead.

They had been talking of all sorts of indifferent things. Blachland knew, however, that the other wanted to talk on a subject that was not indifferent, and was shy to lead up to it. He must help him through directly, because he didn’t want to be awake all night. But when they had turned in and had lit their pipes for a final smoke, Percival began —

“I say, Hilary, what do you think of that Mrs Fenham?”

“Rather short acquaintance to give an opinion upon, isn’t it?”

“No. Skittles! But I say, old chap, she’s devilish fetching, eh?”

“So you seem to find. It strikes me, Percy, you’re making a goodish bit of running in that quarter. Look out.”

The other laughed good-humouredly, happily in fact.

“Why ‘look out?’ I mean making running there. By Jove, I never came across any one like her!”

Blachland smiled grimly to himself behind a great puff of smoke. He had good reason to believe that statement.

“It’s a fact,” went on Percival. “But I say, old chap, she doesn’t seem to fetch you at all. I’m rather glad, of course – in fact, devilish glad. Still, I should have thought she’d be just the sort of woman who’d appeal to you no end. You must be getting blasé.”

“My dear Percy, a man’s idiocies don’t stay with him all his life, thank Heaven – though their results are pretty apt to.”

“Well, Hilary, I’m mortal glad to have the field clear in this case, because I want you to help me.”

“I don’t think you need any help. Judging from the very brief period of observation vouchsafed to me, the lady herself seems able and willing to help you all she knows.”

“No, but you don’t understand. I mean business here – real serious – ”

“Strictly honourable – or – ”

The young fellow flushed up.

“If any one else had said that – ” he began, indignantly.

“Oh, don’t be an ass. You surely don’t expect me – me, mind – to cotton to heroics in a matter of this kind. What do you know about the woman? Nothing.”

“I don’t care about that I can’t do without her.”

“She can do without you, I expect, eh?”

“She can’t. She told me so.”

“Did she? Now, Percy, I don’t want to hurt your feelings. But how many men do you suppose she has told the same thing to – in her time?”

“None. Her marriage was only one of convenience. She was forced into it.”

“Of course. They always are. Now, supposing she had told me, for instance, she couldn’t do without me? What then?”

“You? Why, you never set eyes on her till this morning.”

“No. Of course not. I was only putting a case. Again, she’s rather older than you.”

“There you’re wrong. She’s a year or two younger. She told me so.”

Blachland, happening to know that she was, in fact, five or six years the young fellow’s senior, went on appreciating the humours of the situation. And really these were great.

“By Jove! Listen!” said the other suddenly, as a chattering and clucking of fowls was audible outside. “There’s a jackal or a bushcat or something getting at the fowls. They roost in those low trees just outside. I’ll get the gun, and if we put out the light, we may get a shot at him from the window.”

“Not much,” returned Blachland decisively. “The window’s at the head of my bed, not yours. I wouldn’t have it opened this beastly cold night for a great deal. Besides, think what a funk you’d set up among the women by banging off a gun at this ungodly hour. The hens must take their chance. Now look here, Percy,” he went on, speaking earnestly and seriously, “take a word of warning from one who has seen a great deal more of the world, and the crookedness thereof, than you have, and chuck this business – for all serious purposes I mean. Have your fun by all means – even to a fast and furious flirtation if you’re that way disposed. But – draw the line at that, and draw it hard.”

“I wouldn’t if I could, and I couldn’t if I would. Hilary – we are engaged.”

“What?”

The word came with almost a shout. Blachland had sat up in bed and was staring at his young kinsman in wild dismay. His pipe had fallen to the ground in his amazement over the announcement. “Since when, if it’s a fair question?” he added, somewhat recovering himself.

“Only this evening. I asked her to marry me and she consented.”

“Then you must break it off at once. I tell you this thing can’t come off, Percy. It simply can’t.”

“Can’t it? But it will. And look here, Hilary, you’re a devilish good chap, and all that – but I’m not precisely under your guardianship, you know. Nor am I dependent upon anybody. I’ve got a little of my own, and besides, I can work.”

“Oh, you young fool. Go to sleep. You may wake up more sensible,” he answered, not unkindly, and restraining the impulse to tell Percival the truth then and there, but the thought that restrained him was the coming interview with Hermia on the morrow. He was naturally reluctant to give her away unless absolutely necessary, but whatever the result of that interview, he would force her to free Percival from her toils. To do him justice, the idea that such an exposure would involve himself too did not enter his mind – at least not then.

“I think I will go to sleep, Hilary, as you’re so beastly unsympathetic,” answered the younger man good-humouredly. “But as to the waking up – well, you and I differ as to the meaning of the word ‘sensible.’ Night-night.”

And soon a succession of light snores told that he was asleep, probably dreaming blissfully of the crafty and scheming adventuress who had fastened on to his young life to strangle it at the outset. But Hilary Blachland lay staring into the darkness – thinking, and ever thinking.

“Confound those infernal fowls!” he muttered, as the cackling and clucking, mingled this time with some fluttering, arose outside, soon after the extinguishing of the light. But the disturbance subsided – nor did it again arise that night, as he lay there, hour after hour, thinking, ever thinking.

Chapter Eight.

“You are in Love with her.”

Bright and clear and cold, the morning arose. There had been a touch of frost in the night, and the house, lying back in its enclosure of aloe fence, looked as though roofed with a sheeting of silver in the sparkle of the rising sun. The spreading veldt, too, in the flash of its dewy sheen, seemed to lend a deeper blue to the dazzling, unclouded vault above. The metallic clatter of milk-pails in the cattle-kraal hard by mingled with the deep-toned hum of Kaffir voices; a troop of young ostriches turned loose were darting to and fro, or waltzing, and playfully kicking at each other; and so still and clear was the air, that the whistling call of partridges down in an old mealie land nearly a mile away was plainly audible.

“Where’s West?” Bayfield was saying, as three out of the four men were standing by the gate, finishing their early coffee.

“Oh, he’s a lazy beggar,” answered Earle, putting down his cup on a stone. “He don’t like turning out much before breakfast-time.”

“I believe you’ll miss some of your fowls this morning, Earle,” said Blachland. “There was a cat or something after them last night. They were kicking up the devil’s own row outside our window. Percy wanted to try a shot at it, whatever it was, but I choked him off that lay because I thought it’d scare the house.”

“Might have been a two-legged cat,” rejoined Earle. “And it isn’t worthwhile shooting even a poor devil of a thieving nigger for the sake of a chicken or two.”

“Who are you wanting to shoot, Mr Earle?”

“Ah! Good morning, Mrs Fenham. Blachland was saying there was a cat or something after the fowls last night, and it was all he could do to keep West from blazing off a gun at it. I suggested it might have been a two-legged cat – ha – ha!”

“Possibly,” she answered with a smile. “I’m going to take a little stroll. It’s such a lovely morning. Will you go with me, Mr Blachland?”

“Delighted,” was the answer.

The two left behind nudged each other.

“Old Blachland’s got it too,” quoth Earle, with a knowing wink. “I say, though, the young ’un ’ll be ready to cut his throat when he finds he’s been stolen a march on. They all seem to tumble when she comes along. I say, Bayfield, you’ll be the next.”

“When I am I’ll tell you,” was the placid reply. “Let’s go round to the kraals.”

“Well, Hilary, and how am I looking? Rather well, don’t you think?”

She was dressed quite simply, but prettily, and wore a plain but very becoming hat. The brisk, clear cold suited her dark style, and had lent colour to her cheeks and a sparkle to her eyes – and the expression of the latter now, as she turned them upon her companion, was very soft.

“Yes. Rather well,” he answered, not flinching from her gaze, yet not responding to it.

“More than ‘rather’ well, you ought to say,” she smiled. “And now, Hilary, what have you been doing since we parted? Tell me all about yourself.”

Most men would have waxed indignant over her cool effrontery in putting things this way. This one, she knew, would do nothing of the sort. If anything, it rather amused him.

“Doing? Well, I began by nearly dying of fever. Would have quite, if Sybrandt hadn’t tumbled in by accident and pulled me through it.”

“Poor old Hilary! – What are you laughing at?”

“Nothing much. Something funny struck me, that’s all. But you were always deficient in a sense of the ridiculous, Hermia, so it’s not worth repeating. You wouldn’t see it. By-the-way, when I was lying ill, a squad of Matabele came around, under that swab Muntusi, and looted a little, and assegai-ed the two piccaninnies.”

“What? Tickey and Primrose? Oh, poor little beasts!”

“I couldn’t move a finger, of course – weak as a cat. In fact, I didn’t know what had happened till afterwards.”

Again the humour of the situation struck him irresistibly. The matter-of-course way in which she was asking and receiving the news just as though they had parted quite in ordinary fashion and merely temporarily, was funny. But it was Hermia all over.

“I’d become sick of it by that time,” he went on. “So I sold out everything, and came down country.”

“To think of your being at the Bayfields’ all this while, Hilary. And you didn’t know I was here?”

“Hadn’t the ghost of a notion. Of course I had heard you were here, but there was nothing to lead me to locate you as ‘Mrs Fenham.’ By the way, Hermia, what on earth made you strike out in the line of instructor of youth? No. It’s really too funny.”

“Isn’t it?” she said ingenuously. “It often amuses me too. I did it for a freak – and – a reason.”

“But why ‘Fenham’? You haven’t really married any – er – fool of that name?”

“Not a bit. Thanks for the implied compliment all the same. The name did as well as any other. That’s all.”

“What has become of Spence?”

“I don’t know, and don’t care. He turned out rather a cur,” she answered with a light laugh, showing no more confusion or restraint in alluding to the circumstance, than he had done when first she broached the subject of their parting. “I had more than enough of him in three months, and couldn’t stand the sight of him in five. He had just succeeded to a lot of money, you know, and became afflicted with swelled head there and then; in fact, became intolerably bumptious.”

“Yes, I heard that from Skelsey, just when I was wondering hard how Spence was in a sudden position to undertake a – well, not inexpensive liability.”

She gave him a little punch on the arm – not ill-naturedly, for she was rather amused.

“It’s mean of you to say that, Hilary. Come now, you can’t say you found it an ‘expensive liability.’”

“Well, I’ll concede I didn’t, Hermia – not pecuniarily, that is. But it isn’t to say that Spence would not have. I thought you were going to make a serious business of it that time. Why didn’t you? You had hooked your fish, and seemed to be playing him all right. Then, just when you ought to have gaffed him – up goes the top joint, whipping aloft, and the fish is off.”

“He was a cur, and I’m well rid of him,” she returned, and there was a hard, vindictive gleam in her dark eyes. “I did mean serious business, and so did he – very much so. Do you know what choked him off, Hilary? It was when he learned there was no necessity for you to set me free – that I was free as air already. While he thought I was beyond his reach, he declared he was only living for the day when I was no longer so. But, directly he found I was quite within it, and had been all along, he cooled off with a sort of magical rapidity.”

“Yes. Human nature is that way – and here too, there was an additional psychological motive. The knowledge would be likely to make a difference, you know. Knock a few chips out of your – er – prestige.”