The Triumph of Hilary Blachland

“Well, I had that to say to you, and have said it. In fact I brought you with me now on purpose to say it. Now, good-bye my boy, and God bless you.”

Chapter Three.

Bayfield’s Farm

There is a rustling in the cover, faint at first, but drawing nearer. As it does so, the man with the gun, who has been squatting half concealed by a shrub in one corner of the little glade, picks himself up stealthily, noiselessly, and now widely on the alert. A fine bushbuck ram leaps lightly into the open, and as its large protruding eye lights on this unusual object, its easy, graceful bound becomes a wild rush. Then the gun speaks. The beautiful animal sinks in his stride and falls, a frantic, kicking heap, carried forward some six or eight yards by the impetus of his pace. Twirling, twisting, now attempting to rise, and almost succeeding, then rolling back, but still fighting desperately for life – the blood welling forth over his black hide where the deadly loepers have penetrated – the stricken buck emits loud raucous bellowings of rage and fear and agony. But the man with the gun knows better than to approach too near, knows well the power of those long, needle-pointed horns, and the tenacity of life contained within the brain beneath them; knows well that a stricken bushbuck ram, with all that life still in him, can become a terribly dangerous and formidable antagonist, and this is a very large and powerful unit of the species.

The crash of the shot reverberates, roaring from the overhanging krantz – dislodging a cloud of spreuws from its rocky ledges. These dart hither and thither, whistling and chattering, their shrill din mingling with the bellowings of the wounded buck. But upon this arises another din and it is that of canine throats. Two great rough-haired dogs leap forth into the glade, following upon the line taken by the buck. Then ensues a desperate game. The stricken animal, summoning all his remaining strength to meet these new foes, staggers to his feet, and, with head lowered and menacing, it seems that no power on earth can stay the foremost of the dogs from receiving the full length of these fourteen-inch horns in his onward rush. These, however, are no puppies, but old, well-seasoned dogs, thoroughly accustomed to bush-hunting. Wonderfully quick are they in their movements as, just avoiding each deadly thrust, they leap, snapping and snarling, round their quarry – until one, seeing his chance, seizes the latter just below the haunch in such fashion as promptly to hamstring him. The game antelope is done for now. Weakened, too, by the jets of blood spurting from his wounds, he totters and falls. The fight is over.

With it the man with the gun has deemed it sound policy not to interfere. To encourage the dogs would render them too eager – at the expense of their judgment – and to fire a second shot would be seriously to imperil them. Besides, he is interested in this not so very ill-matched combat. Now, however, it is time to call them off.

To call is one thing, but to be obeyed is quite another. The two great dogs, excited and savage, are snarling and worrying at the carcase of their now vanquished enemy – and the first attempt to enforce the order is met with a very menacing and determined growl, for this man is not their master. Wisely he desists.

“Confound it, they’ll tear that fine skin to ribbons!” he soliloquises disgustedly. Then – “Oh, there you are, Bayfield. Man, call those brutes off. They don’t care a damn for me.”

A horseman has dashed into the glade. He, too, carries a gun, but in a trice he has torn a reim from the D. of his saddle, and is lashing and cursing with a will among the excited hounds. These draw off, still snarling savagely, for he is their master.

“Magtig! Blachland, but you’re in luck’s way!” he exclaimed. “That’s the finest ram that’s been shot here for the last five years. Well done! I believe it’s the same one I drove right over that Britisher last month, and he missed it clean with both barrels. That young fellow stopping with Earle.”

“Who’s he? A jackaroo?”

“No. A visitor. I don’t know who he is. By the way, I must take you over to Earle’s one of these days. He’s got a good bit of shoot. Look here, Jafta,” turning to a yellow-skinned Hottentot, also mounted, who had just arrived on the scene, “Baas Blachland has shot our biggest bushbuck ram at last.”

“Ja. That is true, Baas,” grinned the fellow, who was Bayfield’s after-rider, inspecting the edge of his knife preparatory to the necessary disembowelling and loading up of the quarry.

“We may as well be getting along,” said Bayfield. “Jafta, go and fetch Baas Blachland’s horse.”

“I thought an up-country man like you would turn up his nose at our hunting, Blachland,” said Bayfield as they rode along. “But what you can’t turn up your nose at is our air – eh? Why, you’re looking twice the man you were a fortnight ago even. I suppose that infernal fever’s not easily shaken off.”

“It’s the very devil to shake off, but if anything will do it, this will.” And the speaker glanced around with a feeling of complete and restful enjoyment.

The kloof they were threading afforded in itself a noble and romantic scene. Great krantzes soaring up to the unclouded blue, walls of red ironstone gleaming like bronze in the sun-rays – or, in tier upon tier, peeping forth from festoons of creeper and anchored tree and spiky aloe. Yonder a sweep of spur on the one hand, like a combing wave of tossing tumbling foliage, on the other a mighty cliff, forming a portal beyond which was glimpsed a round, rolling summit, high above in the distance – but everywhere foliage, its many shades of green relieved here and there by the scarlet and pink of the wild geranium, the light blue of the plumbago, and half a dozen other splashes of colour, bright and harmonising; aglow, too, with the glancing of brilliant-winged birds, tuneful with their melodious piping and the murmuring hum of bees. And the air – strong, clear, exhilarating, such as never could be mistaken for the enervating steaminess of up-country heat – for the place was at a good elevation, and in one of the settled parts of the Cape Colony.

Gazing around upon all this, Hilary Blachland seemed to be drinking in new draughts of life. The bout of fever, in the throes of which we last saw him lying, helpless and alone, had proved to be an exceptionally sharp one; indeed, but for the accident of Sybrandt happening along almost immediately after the Matabele raid, the tidings of which had reached England, as we have seen – it is probable that a fatal termination might have ensued. But Sybrandt had tended him with devoted and loyal camaraderie, and when sufficiently restored, he had decided to sell off everything and clear out. “You’ll come back again, Blachland,” Sybrandt had said. “Mark my words, you’ll come back again. We all do.” And he had answered that perhaps he would, but not just yet awhile.

He had gone down country to the seaside, but the heat at Durban was so great at the time of year as to counteract the beneficial effect of the sea air. Then he had bethought himself of George Bayfield, a man he had known previously and liked, and who had more than once pressed him to pay him a visit at his farm in the Eastern Province. And now, here he was.

A great feeling of restfulness and self-gratulation was upon him. He was free once more, free for a fresh clean start. The sequence of his foolishness, which had hung around his neck like a millstone, for years, had been removed, had suddenly fallen off like a load. For he had come to see things clearer now. His character had changed and hardened during that interval, and he had come to realise that hitherto, his views of life, and his way of treating its conditions, had been very much those of a fool.

George Bayfield had received him with a very warm welcome. He was a colonial man, and had never been out of his native land, yet contrasting them as they stood together it was Blachland who looked the harder and more weather-beaten of the two, so thorough an acclimatising process had his up-country wanderings proved. Bayfield was a man just the wrong side of fifty, and a widower. Two of his boys were away from home, and at that time his household consisted of a small son of eleven, and a daughter – of whom more anon.

The kloof opened out into a wide open valley, covered mainly with rhenoster brush and a sprinkling of larger shrubs in clumps. From this valley on either side, opened lateral kloofs, similar to the one from which they had just emerged, kloofs dark with forest and tangled thickets, very nurseries for tiger and wild-dogs, Bayfield declared – but they had the compensating element of affording good sport whenever he wanted to go out and shoot a bushbuck or two – as in the present case. His boundary lines ran right along the high rand which shut in the broad valley on either side, and the farm was an excellent one for sheep and ostriches. In fact the valley portion of it was a perfect network of wire fencing, and in their respective “camps” the great black bipeds stalked to and fro, uttering their truculent boom, or lazily picking at the aromatic grasses, which constituted their natural and aboriginal food. And the name of the place was Lannercost.

“These confounded ostriches spoil half the shooting on the place, and, for the matter of that, anywhere,” remarked Bayfield, as they ambled along through one of the large camps, where one exceptionally fierce bird hung about their flank, only kept from a nearer approach by the presence of the two dogs. “You flush a covey of partridges or a big troop of guinea-fowl, and away they go and squat in complete security under the wing of some particularly ‘kwai’ bird in the next camp. It’s beastly tantalising. Ever shot any wild ostriches up-country, Blachland?”

“Yes, on two occasions – and I enjoyed it for that very reason. I was held up once on top of a rail for nearly two hours besieged on each side by an infuriated tame one. Had to wait until dark to get down. So you see it was a kind of poetic justice to turn the tables on the wild ones.”

“Rather. These are good game preservers though, in that they keep the niggers from killing the small bucks in the camps. Look at those few springbuck I’m trying to preserve. They’d all have been killed off if it wasn’t for the ‘kwai’ birds in the camp. By George! the sun’ll be down before we get home. That isn’t good for a man with fever still in his system at this time of year.”

“Oh, that’s no matter. I’m a good deal too tough.”

“Don’t you be so sure about that. We’d better push the nags on a bit.”

The house stood at the head of the valley, and had been growing larger and larger as they drew near. The sun was dropping, and that wondrously beautiful glow which heralds his departure from the vivid, clear South African day was upon the surroundings, softening, toning everything. Hundreds of doves cooed melodiously from the sprays, and as they passed through a gateway, ascending a winding path between high quince hedges, clouds of twittering finks and long-tailed mouse-birds scattered with a whirr on either side of the way. Spreuws, too, whistling among the tall fig-trees in the orchard, helped to swell the chorus of Nature’s evensong.

“There are a sight too many of these small birds,” observed Bayfield. “They want keeping down. Sonny’s getting lazy with that air-gun of his. They’ll play the mischief with the garden if he gives them much more rope. There he is, the schepsel. Hi! Sonny!” he called out, as a good-looking boy came down the path to meet them. “Why don’t you thin off some of these birds? Look at ’em all. No one would think you’d got an air-gun and half a dozen catapults.”

“The gun’s out of order, father,” answered the boy.

“It’s always getting out of order. Those air-guns are frauds. Where’s Lyn?”

“She was about just now. We watched you from beyond the third gate. There she is.”

Following his gaze they descried a white-clad feminine form in front of the house, which they were now very near.

Chapter Four.

Lyn

“Well, Mr Blachland, what luck have you had?”

The speaker was standing on the stoep, whither she had come out to meet them. She was rather a tall girl, with a great deal of golden hair, arranged in some wonderful way of her own which somehow enhanced its volume without appearing loose or untidy. She had blue eyes which looked forth straight and frank, and an exquisite skin, which even the fierce glare of the summer sun, and a great deal of open-air life had not in the least roughened, and of which a few tiny freckles, rather adding piquancy to a sweetly pretty face, oval, refined and full of character, were the only trace. If there was a fault to be found in the said face, it was that its owner showed her gums slightly when she laughed – but the laugh was so bright, so whole-hearted, and lighted up the whole expression so entrancingly that all but the superlatively hypercritical lost sight of the defect altogether.

“He’s bowled over that thundering big bushbuck ram we’ve been trying for so often in Siever’s Kloof, Lyn,” answered her father for his guest.

“Well done!” cried the girl. “You know, Mr Blachland, some of the people around here were becoming quite superstitious about that buck. They were beginning to declare he couldn’t be killed. I suggested a silver bullet such as they had to make for those supernatural stags in the old German legends.”

“A charge of treble A was good enough this time – no, I think I used loepers,” laughed Blachland.

“I almost began to believe in it myself,” went on the girl. “Some of our best shots around here seemed invariably to miss that particular buck, Mr Earle for instance, and Stephanus Bosch, and, I was nearly saying – father – ”

“Oh don’t, then,” laughed Bayfield. “A prophet has no honour in his own country. Keep up the tradition, Lyn.”

“And, as for the Englishman, the one that came over here with the Earles, why he missed it both barrels, and they drove it right over him too.”

“By the way, Lyn,” said her father, “what was that Britisher’s name? I’ve clean forgotten.”

“That’s not strange, for you’ll hardly believe it, but so have I.”

“Um – ah – no, we won’t believe it. A good-looking young fellow like that!”

“Even then I’ve forgotten it. Yes, he was a nice-looking boy.”

“Boy!” cried her father. “Why, the fellow must be a precious deal nearer thirty than twenty.”

“Well, and what’s that but a boy?”

“Thanks awfully, Miss Bayfield,” said Blachland. “The implication is grateful and comforting to a battered fogey of a precious deal nearer forty than thirty.”

For answer the girl only laughed – that bright, whole-hearted laugh of hers. It was a musical laugh too, full-throated, melodious. She and her father’s guest were great friends. Though now living somewhat of an out-of-the-world life, she had been well-educated, and her tastes were artistic. She drew and painted with no mean skill, and her musical attainments were above the average. So far from feeling bored and discontented with the comparative isolation of her lot, she had an affection for the free and healthy conditions of her surroundings, the beauties of which, moreover, her artistic temperament rendered her capable of perceiving and appreciating. Then this stranger had come into their life, and at first she had been inclined to stand somewhat in awe of him. He was so much older than herself, and must have seen so much; moreover, his quiet-mannered demeanour, and the life-worn look of his firm dark countenance, seemed to cover a deal of character. But he had entered so thoroughly and sympathetically into her tastes and pursuits that the little feeling of shyness had worn off within the first day, and now, after a fortnight, she had come to regard his presence in their midst as a very great acquisition indeed.

“I say, Lyn,” struck in her father. “Better take Blachland inside – yes, and light up some logs in the fireplace. There’s a sharp tinge in the air after sundown, which isn’t good for a man with up-country fever in his bones, as I was telling him just now. I must just go and take a last look round.”

“Did you do any more to my drawing to-day?” asked Hilary, as the two stood within the sitting-room together, watching the efforts of a yellow-faced Hottentot girl to make the logs blaze up.

“I’ve nearly finished it. I’ve only got to put in a touch or two.”

“May I see it now?”

“No – not until it is finished. I may not be satisfied with it then, and tear it up.”

“But you are not to. I’m certain that however it turns out it will be too good to treat in that way.”

“Oh, Mr Blachland, I am surprised at such a speech from you,” she said, her eyes dancing with mischief. “Why, that’s the sort of thing that English boy might have said. But you! Oh!”

“Well, I mean it. You know I never hesitate to criticise and that freely. Look at our standing fight over detail in foreground, as a flagrant instance.”

The drawing under discussion was a water-colour sketch of the house and its immediate surroundings. He would treasure it as a reminder after he had gone, he declared, when asking her to undertake it. To which she had rejoined mischievously that he seemed in a great hurry to talk about “after he had gone,” considering that he had only just come.

Now the entrance of George Bayfield and his youngest born put an end to the discussion, and soon they sat down to supper.

“Man, Mr Blachland, but that is a mooi buck,” began the boy. “Jafta says he never saw a mooi-er one.”

“Perhaps it’ll bring you luck,” said Lyn, looking exceedingly reposeful and sweet, behind the tea-things, in her twenty-year-old dignity at the head of the table.

“I don’t know,” was the reply. “I did something once that was supposed to bring frightful ill-luck, and for a long time it seemed as if it was going to. But – indirectly it had just the opposite effect.”

“Was that up-country, Mr Blachland?” chimed in the boy eagerly. “Do tell us about it.”

“Perhaps some day, Fred. But it’s a thing that one had better have left alone.”

“These children’ll give you no peace if you go on raising their curiosity in that way,” said Bayfield.

“I’ll go up-country when I’m big,” said the boy. “Are you going again, Mr Blachland?”

“I don’t know, Fred. You see, I’ve only just come down.”

The boy said no more on the subject. He had an immense admiration for their guest, who, when they were alone together, would tell him tales of which he never wearied – about hunting and trading, and Lo Bengula, and experiences among savages far wilder and more formidable than their own half-civilised and wholly deteriorated Kaffirs. But he was sharp enough to notice that at other times the subject of “up-country” was not a favourite one with Blachland. Perhaps the latter was tired of it as he had had so much. At any rate, with a gumption rare in small boys of his age, Fred forbore to worry the topic further.

This was one of those evenings which the said guest was wont to prize now, and was destined in the time to come to look back upon as among the very happiest experiences of his life. He regarded his host indeed with a whole-hearted envy, that such should be his daily portion. There was just enough sharpness in the atmosphere to render indoors and a bright, snug fire in a well-lighted room especially reposeful and cosy, as they adjourned to the sitting-room where Lyn’s piano was.

“Fill up, Blachland,” said his host, pushing over a large bladder tobacco-pouch. “Where’s my pipe? No – not that one. The deep one with the wire cover.”

“I’ve got it, father,” cried Lyn. “I’m filling it for you.”

“Thanks, darling,” as she brought it over. “You know, Blachland, my after-supper pipe never tastes so good unless this little girlie fills it for me. She’s done so ever since she was a wee kiddie so high.”

Blachland smiled to himself, rather sadly, as he watched the long tapering fingers pressing down the tobacco into the bowl, and wondered how his friend would feel when the time came – and come it must, indeed any day might bring it – when he would have no one to render this and a hundred and one other little services of love, such as he had noticed during his stay – when Bayfield should be left lonely, and the bright and sweet and sunny presence which irradiated this simple home should be transferred to another. Somehow the thought was distasteful to him, vaguely, indefinably so, but still distasteful.

Meanwhile Lyn had opened the piano, and after an appeal to them for any preference in the way of songs, which was met by an assurance that any and all were equally acceptable, had begun singing. The two men sat back in their armchairs at the further end of the room, listening in supremest content. From the first Blachland had excused himself from attending her at the piano. He wanted thoroughly to enjoy her performance, which he could not do standing fussing around, and Lyn had appreciated the real and practical compliment thus conveyed. And he did enjoy it. Song after song she sang, now grave and pathetic, now gay and arch, and it seemed to him he could sit there listening for ever. Hers was no concert-hall voice, but it was very sweet and true, and was entirely free from mannerism. She did not think it necessary to roll her r’s in the approved professional style whenever that consonant came at the end of a word, or to pronounce “love” exactly according to its phonetic spelling, but every word was enunciated distinctly, and therefore as intelligible as though she had been talking. In short, her singing was utterly without self-consciousness or affectation, and therein lay no small a proportion of its charm.

“There! That’s enough for one night!” she cried at last, closing the instrument.

“Not for us,” declared Blachland. “But you mustn’t overstrain your voice. Really to me this has been an immense treat.”

“I’m so glad,” said the girl brightly. “I suppose, though, you don’t hear much music up-country. Don’t you miss it a great deal?”

“Yes, indeed,” he answered, and then a picture crossed his mind of evening after evening, and Hermia yawning, and reiterating how intensely bored to death she was. What on earth was it that made retrospect so utterly distasteful to him now? He would have given all he possessed to be able to blot that episode out of his life altogether. Hermia the chances were as five hundred to one he would never set eyes on again – and if he did, she was powerless to injure him; for she had not the slightest legal hold upon him whatever. But the episode was there, a black, unsavoury, detestable fact, and it there was no getting round.

“Now, sonny, it’s time for you to turn in,” said Bayfield. “By George, I’ll have to think seriously about sending that nipper to school,” he added, as the boy, having said good-night, went out of the room. “But hang it, what’ll we do without the chappie? He’s the only one left. But he ought to learn more than Lyn can teach him now.”

“Father, you are mean,” laughed the girl. “Reflecting on my careful tuition that way. Isn’t he, Mr Blachland?”

“I wonder how it would be,” pursued Bayfield, “to make some arrangement with Earle and send him over there four or five days a week to be coached by that new English teacher they’ve got.”

“Who is he?” said Blachland. “A Varsity man?”

“’Tisn’t ‘he.’ It’s a she,” returned the other, with a very meaning laugh. “A regular high-flyer too. Mrs Earle isn’t so fond of her as she might be, but I expect that young Britisher has put Earle’s nose out of joint in that quarter. They say she’s a first-rate coach, though.”

“Now, father, you’re not to start talking scandal,” said Lyn. “I don’t believe there’s any harm in Mrs Fenham at all. And she isn’t even pretty.”

“Ho-ho! Who’s talking scandal now?” laughed her father. “Taking away another woman’s personal appearance, eh, Lyn? By the way, there are several round there you won’t get to agree with you on that head.”

“Oh, she’s married, then?” said Blachland, though as a matter of fact the subject did not interest him in the least.

“Has been,” returned Bayfield. “She’s a widow – a young widow, and with all due deference to Lyn’s opinion, rather a fetching one. Now, isn’t that a whole code of danger-signals in itself? Get out some grog, little girl,” he added, “and then I suppose you’ll want to be turning in.”

“Yes, it’s time I did,” replied Lyn, as she dived into a sideboard in fulfilment of the last request. “Good night, Mr Blachland. Good night, old father. Now, you’re not to sit filling up Mr Blachland with all sorts of gossip. Do you hear?”