Chapter Thirteen.Manamandhla’s Beef.“Yes, it’s a feminine hand,” he echoed, gazing critically on the envelope. “There’s character in it too. Now I wonder who the deuce it can be from.”“Father,willyou open it? Can’t you see I am dying with curiosity?”“Now, I’m not—not one little bit,” he answered, delighted to tease her. “In fact I wouldn’t mind postponing the further investigation of this mysterious missive for at least a week. Letters in unknown hands are generally of that character. For the matter of that, only too often so are those in known ones.”For answer she suddenly snatched the letter from his hand and tore it open. “There now. Will you read it?” she said, giving it back.“Certainly.” Then as the name at the end caught his eyes, a whistle of surprise escaped him. His fun sobered down while he read:“The Royal Hotel,“Durban.“My dear distant Relative,“We are related, but I believe distantly, at any rate poor mother always gave me to understand so, and latterly she talked a great deal of you. You may or may not have heard that we lost her between five or six months ago; but towards the last, when she was talking about you so often, she made me promise that I would find you out, and renew our acquaintance; though I don’t know about the ‘renewing’ part of it, for I was much too small in those days to remember anything of you now. However she gave me your address, and though it is an address of ever so many years ago it may still hold good, or at any rate be the means of finding you out eventually.”Thornhill paused in his reading, and frowned. The reference to an address of ‘ever so many years ago’ awoke unpleasant memories. His address at that time was fairly public property, and it was the same one that he owned now.“I have not been many days here,” the letter went on, “but it seems a delightful country, and I should like to see more of it. Can you take me in for a little while, and if so, please write or wire how I can get to you, and when. I have always heard that colonial ways are unconventional, and colonial houses ‘elastic,’ which sounds perfectly delightful, and emboldens me to sink ceremony. Hoping this will find you,“Yours very truly,“Evelyn Carden.”“Read that, and tell me what you think of it, Edala,” said Thornhill, handing over the letter.The girl took it eagerly.“I don’t know,” she said, when she was through with it. “It sounds as if she might be nice. I see she writes from the Royal in Durban. But—when? She gives no date.”“Of course not—being a female. Nor does the postmark help any, as I said before.”“Well, the postmark is neither designed nor executed by ‘females’,” retorted Edala.“True, O Queen. You have me there. Well? What do you think of it?”“Wire her to come, by all means. I like her free and easy style. She ought to be nice. But what’s she like, and who is she, when all’s said and done?”“First for the wire. Gomfu is waiting as it is. Then we can enter into explanations.”He got out a telegraph form and wrote:“Miss Carden Royal Hotel Durban Train to Telani will meet you there only give a day or two for reply wire very welcome address Care of Elvesdon Kwabulazi: Thornhill.”“Wa Gomfu!” he hailed.“Nkose!”The boy was round in a moment.“Here. See that this goes directly you get back. Have they given you coffee in the kitchen, for the night is cold?”“Nkoseis my father. Ramasam is a very induna of the fire. Never have I met such coffee as his.”“Well, here isgwai,” handing him a span of Boer tobacco. “Now go—and here is yet a letter to take.”“Nkose!”The boy disappeared and soon the retreating hoofs of his undersized pony could be heard splashing through the sludgy surface of the saturated veldt. The dogs growled again, presumably because having seen the same postboy appear regularly twice a week and go away again those sagacious animals must needs sustain their world-wide reputation for sagacity by doing something, though quite unnecessary—or possibly to vary the monotony of a wet and very dismal day. Anyhow they growled.“You wanted to know about this new and distant relative,” said Thornhill, coming back into the room. “Well, I can’t tell you anything about her personally, because, as she says, she was too much of a kid to remember me, and I, for my part, just remember her as an ordinary kid, usually smeared with jam or some other sticky form of nastiness. Just that and nothing more.”“But this mother she talks about—who was she?” went on Edala.“Poor Mary Carden. Oh, we got rather friendly. She was a bit older than me though. I had something to do with the settling up of her affairs when she was left a widow—not that there was much to settle up, poor thing. By the bye, and yet this girl writes in rather an independent way, and dates from the Royal at Durban. Well, you know, hotels in this country aren’t cheap, and the Royal isn’t one of the cheapest by any means, although it’s good. They may have had a windfall since I knew them; probably have, since she seems to be out here for fun.”“How old would she be, father?”“Let me think now. Let me think back. She must be some years older than you, child. But it’ll be a good thing for you to have a companion for a time, who isn’t an old fogey. Of course we are both talking round our hats, as neither of us have the ghost of a notion what she’s like, and won’t have till we see her.”“Well, we’ll chance it,” said Edala.“That’s the best way. And now I think I’ll get on a horse and take a turn round. Old Patolo may be letting his cattle stray in this mist.”Manamandhla the Zulu strode over the sopping veldt quite indifferent to the rain which beat down upon his bare head, and strove to permeate the thick folds of his green blanket, and while he walked he was thinking out a plan.The subject of his thoughts was not tragical, not even weighty except as regarded his own immediate wants. He was tired of goat, he wanted beef and plenty of it. How should he get it? He thought he knew.He could not expect Thornhill to kill a full grown beast, or any kind, even for him. But beef he hankered for, and have it he must. So now he held straight on over the veldt to where he knew he should find the cattle.The mist was all in his favour, in fact it had suggested his plan, which was an ingenious one. He ascended the nearest ridge of the Sipazi mountain, his ears open. Presently both sound and scent told him he had come upon the object of his quest. In a moment more the forms of grazing cattle all round him, told that he was in the middle of the herd.Some of the beasts snuffed and started, showing a tendency to canter away; others merely raised their heads and went on grazing as though nothing had happened. But this was not how he proposed to obtain beef. He had a broad assegai beneath his blanket, but he would not use it—not yet.He crooned a milking song in a low tone as he went through the herd This had the effect of keeping quiet any of the wilder animals which might have been disposed to panic and stampede at the suddenness of his appearance in their midst. But he kept on edging more and more to the left; with the result that the animals on that side gave way more and more in the same direction, as he intended they should.The cloud wreaths on this side took the form of spiral twirls, and a fresh, cold draught struck Manamandhla on the left ear. This was as it should be. Here the ground ended and the cliff began.It was not the great overhanging cliff at the summit of the mountain, but the beginning of the same, and might have meant a sixty or seventy feet drop. But between the apparent brow of the krantz and the actual one was about ten feet of grass slope—a slope so steep as to be well-nigh precipitous, and in weather like this, deadly slippery. Now, as Manamandhla uttered a quick bark, at the same time flapping his blanket, the suddenly terrified animals between him and the brow, started at a run, plunging wildly, some this way, some that, to gallop off in wild panic. Not all though—all save one—and that a nearly full grown call It, he saw disappear over the brow, instinctively seeking safety upon the precipitous slope.The Zulu chuckled. Crouching low, he was upon the brink in a moment, and peering over. There stood the poor stupid beast—a white one—its head down, and with difficulty keeping its footing. Manamandhla sprang up suddenly, again uttering a bark and flapping his blanket downwards. The poor animal, frenzied now with panic, made a wild frantic plunge, lost its footing and slid over the brink of the sheer cliff. Manamandhla had obtained his beef.He emitted a chuckle of glee as the dull thud of the fallen carcase came up from below, then turned—to find himself face to face with—Thornhill.The latter was standing some twelve or fifteen yards away, his right hand in his right pocket. Ever quick of perception, the Zulu grasped this fact and its significance. Instinctively he dropped into a half crouching attitude—the attitude of a wild beast preparing for its spring—and the grip of the broad assegai beneath his blanket tightened.“No use, Manamandhla. You would be dead before you had taken five steps.”The Zulu knew this. Even were it otherwise he had no wish for the other’s death—not just yet, at any rate. It was more profitable to himself to keep him alive. But for the moment he felt like a cornered animal, quick, desperate, dangerous.“One of the beasts has gone over, Inqoto,” he said. “I would have prevented it, but when I tried to drive it back I drove it over instead. It is a pity.”“It is. You were in want of beef, I think, Manamandhla,” was the answer, faintly mocking.“Whau! Inqoto has not a very open hand, and I was tired of goat. There are ‘mouths’ on this mountain that do not return that which—those whom—they swallow. But there is one which can be got into by men with long lines. And—what would they find? Ah—ah! What would they find?”The Zulu felt secure now, and yet, had he only known it, he had never stood in more deadly peril in his life. Thornhill had been waiting for some such chance as this and now it had come. For, from the moment he had arrived unobserved upon the scene all its opportunities had flashed upon his mind. The Zulu had deliberately driven one of his cattle over the krantz, and on being detected in the act had rushed upon him with an assegai; for he could pretty shrewdly guess what the other held concealed beneath the blanket. He had shot his assailant dead, in self defence, as he had no other alternative than to do. Thus he would be rid of this incubus, this blackmailer, and once more would be at peace. The time and opportunity had come.Manamandhla must have read his thoughts. Hard and desperately, yet with the quickness of lightning, he was calculating his chances. A sudden zig-zagging spring might cause his enemy to miss, and he would be upon him before he had time to fire again. The two—the white man and the dark man—thus stood fronting each other in the spectral wreaths of the drear mist, each resolved that one or other of them should not leave that spot alive. Thornhill spoke again.“I am tired of you, Manamandhla. You can leave this place, do you hear? and it will not be well for you to come near it again. You are of no further use to me. So you may go.Hamba gahle.”But these last words of farewell, which the speaker intended should signal Manamandhla’s departure in a very different sense, were scarcely uttered. A dark form, the form of a man, immediately behind the Zulu, and in a direct line with him, loomed through the mist; and the voice of old Patolo, the cattle-herd, was raised in greeting to his master. The latter knew that his opportunity had passed. He could not shoot Manamandhla in the presence of a witness, and of course the could not shoot old Patolo at all.“Nkose,” said the latter. “I fear that the cattle will be difficult to collect in the thickness of this cloud. But those that remain out will not stray far, and we can collect them in the morning.”“One has fallen over this cliff, Patolo,” said Manamandhla, as calmly as though no deadly tragedy had been averted by a mere moment of time. Then to Thornhill: “Nkose, had I not better go over to the location and collect some boys to skin and cut up the beef? It may be that there is some of it yet uninjured and good enough for the Great House.”“That you had better do, Manamandhla,” answered Thornhill, with equalsang-froid. “And lose no time, before it grows dark.”And, turning, he left them, to go back to where he had left his horse.This was how Manamandhla obtained the beef he hankered after—and plenty of it.
“Yes, it’s a feminine hand,” he echoed, gazing critically on the envelope. “There’s character in it too. Now I wonder who the deuce it can be from.”
“Father,willyou open it? Can’t you see I am dying with curiosity?”
“Now, I’m not—not one little bit,” he answered, delighted to tease her. “In fact I wouldn’t mind postponing the further investigation of this mysterious missive for at least a week. Letters in unknown hands are generally of that character. For the matter of that, only too often so are those in known ones.”
For answer she suddenly snatched the letter from his hand and tore it open. “There now. Will you read it?” she said, giving it back.
“Certainly.” Then as the name at the end caught his eyes, a whistle of surprise escaped him. His fun sobered down while he read:
“The Royal Hotel,“Durban.“My dear distant Relative,“We are related, but I believe distantly, at any rate poor mother always gave me to understand so, and latterly she talked a great deal of you. You may or may not have heard that we lost her between five or six months ago; but towards the last, when she was talking about you so often, she made me promise that I would find you out, and renew our acquaintance; though I don’t know about the ‘renewing’ part of it, for I was much too small in those days to remember anything of you now. However she gave me your address, and though it is an address of ever so many years ago it may still hold good, or at any rate be the means of finding you out eventually.”
“The Royal Hotel,
“Durban.
“My dear distant Relative,
“We are related, but I believe distantly, at any rate poor mother always gave me to understand so, and latterly she talked a great deal of you. You may or may not have heard that we lost her between five or six months ago; but towards the last, when she was talking about you so often, she made me promise that I would find you out, and renew our acquaintance; though I don’t know about the ‘renewing’ part of it, for I was much too small in those days to remember anything of you now. However she gave me your address, and though it is an address of ever so many years ago it may still hold good, or at any rate be the means of finding you out eventually.”
Thornhill paused in his reading, and frowned. The reference to an address of ‘ever so many years ago’ awoke unpleasant memories. His address at that time was fairly public property, and it was the same one that he owned now.
“I have not been many days here,” the letter went on, “but it seems a delightful country, and I should like to see more of it. Can you take me in for a little while, and if so, please write or wire how I can get to you, and when. I have always heard that colonial ways are unconventional, and colonial houses ‘elastic,’ which sounds perfectly delightful, and emboldens me to sink ceremony. Hoping this will find you,“Yours very truly,“Evelyn Carden.”
“I have not been many days here,” the letter went on, “but it seems a delightful country, and I should like to see more of it. Can you take me in for a little while, and if so, please write or wire how I can get to you, and when. I have always heard that colonial ways are unconventional, and colonial houses ‘elastic,’ which sounds perfectly delightful, and emboldens me to sink ceremony. Hoping this will find you,
“Yours very truly,
“Evelyn Carden.”
“Read that, and tell me what you think of it, Edala,” said Thornhill, handing over the letter.
The girl took it eagerly.
“I don’t know,” she said, when she was through with it. “It sounds as if she might be nice. I see she writes from the Royal in Durban. But—when? She gives no date.”
“Of course not—being a female. Nor does the postmark help any, as I said before.”
“Well, the postmark is neither designed nor executed by ‘females’,” retorted Edala.
“True, O Queen. You have me there. Well? What do you think of it?”
“Wire her to come, by all means. I like her free and easy style. She ought to be nice. But what’s she like, and who is she, when all’s said and done?”
“First for the wire. Gomfu is waiting as it is. Then we can enter into explanations.”
He got out a telegraph form and wrote:
“Miss Carden Royal Hotel Durban Train to Telani will meet you there only give a day or two for reply wire very welcome address Care of Elvesdon Kwabulazi: Thornhill.”
“Miss Carden Royal Hotel Durban Train to Telani will meet you there only give a day or two for reply wire very welcome address Care of Elvesdon Kwabulazi: Thornhill.”
“Wa Gomfu!” he hailed.
“Nkose!”
The boy was round in a moment.
“Here. See that this goes directly you get back. Have they given you coffee in the kitchen, for the night is cold?”
“Nkoseis my father. Ramasam is a very induna of the fire. Never have I met such coffee as his.”
“Well, here isgwai,” handing him a span of Boer tobacco. “Now go—and here is yet a letter to take.”
“Nkose!”
The boy disappeared and soon the retreating hoofs of his undersized pony could be heard splashing through the sludgy surface of the saturated veldt. The dogs growled again, presumably because having seen the same postboy appear regularly twice a week and go away again those sagacious animals must needs sustain their world-wide reputation for sagacity by doing something, though quite unnecessary—or possibly to vary the monotony of a wet and very dismal day. Anyhow they growled.
“You wanted to know about this new and distant relative,” said Thornhill, coming back into the room. “Well, I can’t tell you anything about her personally, because, as she says, she was too much of a kid to remember me, and I, for my part, just remember her as an ordinary kid, usually smeared with jam or some other sticky form of nastiness. Just that and nothing more.”
“But this mother she talks about—who was she?” went on Edala.
“Poor Mary Carden. Oh, we got rather friendly. She was a bit older than me though. I had something to do with the settling up of her affairs when she was left a widow—not that there was much to settle up, poor thing. By the bye, and yet this girl writes in rather an independent way, and dates from the Royal at Durban. Well, you know, hotels in this country aren’t cheap, and the Royal isn’t one of the cheapest by any means, although it’s good. They may have had a windfall since I knew them; probably have, since she seems to be out here for fun.”
“How old would she be, father?”
“Let me think now. Let me think back. She must be some years older than you, child. But it’ll be a good thing for you to have a companion for a time, who isn’t an old fogey. Of course we are both talking round our hats, as neither of us have the ghost of a notion what she’s like, and won’t have till we see her.”
“Well, we’ll chance it,” said Edala.
“That’s the best way. And now I think I’ll get on a horse and take a turn round. Old Patolo may be letting his cattle stray in this mist.”
Manamandhla the Zulu strode over the sopping veldt quite indifferent to the rain which beat down upon his bare head, and strove to permeate the thick folds of his green blanket, and while he walked he was thinking out a plan.
The subject of his thoughts was not tragical, not even weighty except as regarded his own immediate wants. He was tired of goat, he wanted beef and plenty of it. How should he get it? He thought he knew.
He could not expect Thornhill to kill a full grown beast, or any kind, even for him. But beef he hankered for, and have it he must. So now he held straight on over the veldt to where he knew he should find the cattle.
The mist was all in his favour, in fact it had suggested his plan, which was an ingenious one. He ascended the nearest ridge of the Sipazi mountain, his ears open. Presently both sound and scent told him he had come upon the object of his quest. In a moment more the forms of grazing cattle all round him, told that he was in the middle of the herd.
Some of the beasts snuffed and started, showing a tendency to canter away; others merely raised their heads and went on grazing as though nothing had happened. But this was not how he proposed to obtain beef. He had a broad assegai beneath his blanket, but he would not use it—not yet.
He crooned a milking song in a low tone as he went through the herd This had the effect of keeping quiet any of the wilder animals which might have been disposed to panic and stampede at the suddenness of his appearance in their midst. But he kept on edging more and more to the left; with the result that the animals on that side gave way more and more in the same direction, as he intended they should.
The cloud wreaths on this side took the form of spiral twirls, and a fresh, cold draught struck Manamandhla on the left ear. This was as it should be. Here the ground ended and the cliff began.
It was not the great overhanging cliff at the summit of the mountain, but the beginning of the same, and might have meant a sixty or seventy feet drop. But between the apparent brow of the krantz and the actual one was about ten feet of grass slope—a slope so steep as to be well-nigh precipitous, and in weather like this, deadly slippery. Now, as Manamandhla uttered a quick bark, at the same time flapping his blanket, the suddenly terrified animals between him and the brow, started at a run, plunging wildly, some this way, some that, to gallop off in wild panic. Not all though—all save one—and that a nearly full grown call It, he saw disappear over the brow, instinctively seeking safety upon the precipitous slope.
The Zulu chuckled. Crouching low, he was upon the brink in a moment, and peering over. There stood the poor stupid beast—a white one—its head down, and with difficulty keeping its footing. Manamandhla sprang up suddenly, again uttering a bark and flapping his blanket downwards. The poor animal, frenzied now with panic, made a wild frantic plunge, lost its footing and slid over the brink of the sheer cliff. Manamandhla had obtained his beef.
He emitted a chuckle of glee as the dull thud of the fallen carcase came up from below, then turned—to find himself face to face with—Thornhill.
The latter was standing some twelve or fifteen yards away, his right hand in his right pocket. Ever quick of perception, the Zulu grasped this fact and its significance. Instinctively he dropped into a half crouching attitude—the attitude of a wild beast preparing for its spring—and the grip of the broad assegai beneath his blanket tightened.
“No use, Manamandhla. You would be dead before you had taken five steps.”
The Zulu knew this. Even were it otherwise he had no wish for the other’s death—not just yet, at any rate. It was more profitable to himself to keep him alive. But for the moment he felt like a cornered animal, quick, desperate, dangerous.
“One of the beasts has gone over, Inqoto,” he said. “I would have prevented it, but when I tried to drive it back I drove it over instead. It is a pity.”
“It is. You were in want of beef, I think, Manamandhla,” was the answer, faintly mocking.
“Whau! Inqoto has not a very open hand, and I was tired of goat. There are ‘mouths’ on this mountain that do not return that which—those whom—they swallow. But there is one which can be got into by men with long lines. And—what would they find? Ah—ah! What would they find?”
The Zulu felt secure now, and yet, had he only known it, he had never stood in more deadly peril in his life. Thornhill had been waiting for some such chance as this and now it had come. For, from the moment he had arrived unobserved upon the scene all its opportunities had flashed upon his mind. The Zulu had deliberately driven one of his cattle over the krantz, and on being detected in the act had rushed upon him with an assegai; for he could pretty shrewdly guess what the other held concealed beneath the blanket. He had shot his assailant dead, in self defence, as he had no other alternative than to do. Thus he would be rid of this incubus, this blackmailer, and once more would be at peace. The time and opportunity had come.
Manamandhla must have read his thoughts. Hard and desperately, yet with the quickness of lightning, he was calculating his chances. A sudden zig-zagging spring might cause his enemy to miss, and he would be upon him before he had time to fire again. The two—the white man and the dark man—thus stood fronting each other in the spectral wreaths of the drear mist, each resolved that one or other of them should not leave that spot alive. Thornhill spoke again.
“I am tired of you, Manamandhla. You can leave this place, do you hear? and it will not be well for you to come near it again. You are of no further use to me. So you may go.Hamba gahle.”
But these last words of farewell, which the speaker intended should signal Manamandhla’s departure in a very different sense, were scarcely uttered. A dark form, the form of a man, immediately behind the Zulu, and in a direct line with him, loomed through the mist; and the voice of old Patolo, the cattle-herd, was raised in greeting to his master. The latter knew that his opportunity had passed. He could not shoot Manamandhla in the presence of a witness, and of course the could not shoot old Patolo at all.
“Nkose,” said the latter. “I fear that the cattle will be difficult to collect in the thickness of this cloud. But those that remain out will not stray far, and we can collect them in the morning.”
“One has fallen over this cliff, Patolo,” said Manamandhla, as calmly as though no deadly tragedy had been averted by a mere moment of time. Then to Thornhill: “Nkose, had I not better go over to the location and collect some boys to skin and cut up the beef? It may be that there is some of it yet uninjured and good enough for the Great House.”
“That you had better do, Manamandhla,” answered Thornhill, with equalsang-froid. “And lose no time, before it grows dark.”
And, turning, he left them, to go back to where he had left his horse.
This was how Manamandhla obtained the beef he hankered after—and plenty of it.
Chapter Fourteen.Manamandhla’s Strategy.A week went by, and Thornhill got an answer to his letter. His son could not possibly get away just then. His partner was seriously ill, and as for business—why, if not as brisk as might be wished, there was quite enough of it to keep one man’s hands full. He was awfully sorry, but would take a run down as soon as ever he could break away. So wrote Hyland.Thornhill was bitterly disappointed. He seemed to feel it far more than he had thought it possible for him to do. He would have given much at that juncture to have had the boy at his side, he told himself. He felt very isolated, very much alone. Edala, though now and then she broke out into fits of playfulness—and these, he suspected, were, more often than not, forced—yet kept up a sort of dutiful reserve towards him. There was no spontaneity in her affection, even when any sign of possession of any such sentiment did appear. Well, ingratitude was ingrained in the female. No one had better reason to realise that than himself.And this unknown relative who had written to announce her being—nothing more had been heard of—or from—her. He had expected a wire by return notifying her start, but a week had gone by, ten days, then a fortnight and no wire, not even a letter. Did every member of the feminine persuasion imagine that the universe was built for her sole convenience? was his comment upon the omission to Edala.The latter suggested that the telegram might have been twisted into a wrong meaning by some chuckle-headed operator; would it not be as well to send another? But her father was in no mood for doing anything of the kind.“I don’t believe in that theory,” he said. “Here’s a feminine person who writes to know if I can take her in. I reply post haste that I can and welcome, and I hear no more about it. Well, she can stop away if she prefers it. I’m not going routing around to beseech her to come.”Edala answered that she didn’t care either way. As a matter of fact though enthusiastic enough on the arrival of the unknown’s letter the thing had hung fire. And then, deep down in her innermost mind lay another reason. She would not have admitted it even to herself, but it was there for all that and—it spelt Elvesdon.The latter had been a good deal over at Sipazi. He was an excellent and astute official, but somehow, while neglecting none of his duties, he had found time and opportunity to make frequent visits, and he was always welcome. Thornhill and his daughter treated him, in fact, as if they had known him all their lives, which caused him intense satisfaction.He was interested in this girl—indeed by that time powerfully attracted. The fair refined face, the straight fearless eyes, the smile that would light up the whole expression, the merry peal of spontaneous laughter—all this had an effect upon him that was inexpressibly bewitching. He had never seen anyone like her before—no, not in the least like her. That picture of her, standing erect, wide-eyed and fearless, waiting to be of use in the struggle with the monster serpent, had never even begun to fade in his mind. She was grand.Towards himself Edala for her part was undoubtedly attracted. She looked forward to his visits, and greeted him with unfeigned pleasure when he appeared. He talked so well, and never failed to interest and amuse her. He had been about and had seen so much, and moreover there was a subtle suggestion of strength about him that appealed to her vividly. To most of her male acquaintance Edala assumed a sort of unconscious attitude of stiffening up. The youthful side of it represented to her so many puppies whose eyes had yet to open; the more mature side so many prigs who bored or patronised her. This man did neither. He neither talked up to her, nor down—she would have despised him for the first and resented him for the second. He simply treated her as a rational being with a full share of intelligence and ideas—and no surer road could he have taken towards her approval.Having said so much it is not surprising that Edala’s feelings as regarded her new relative’s proposed visit should, by this time, have undergone some degree of modification. This stranger—of whose very outward appearance she was entirely ignorant—might conceivably prove one too many, the more so that the stranger was what her father had just described as “a member of the feminine persuasion.” She was not in the least in love with Elvesdon; she was far too evenly balanced to let herself go like that at such short notice. But she felt a strong proprietary interest in him as a friend worth having; wherefore in the background lurked that cloud of half unconscious jealousy. Yet that very jealousy itself ought to have warned her.Thornhill, watching developments, was anything but displeased. As a Civil servant Elvesdon was not likely to amass wealth, but he was a good official and likely to get on. His personal opinion of the man we have already set forth, and it he had seen no reason to modify. If the present excellent understanding between him and Edala came to anything more permanent, why so much the better.A fortnight had gone by since Manamandhla’s craving for beef had so nearly brought that enterprising savage to an untimely end: and the Zulu had been comfortably dwelling on the place ever since and showed not the smallest symptom of moving. He made a show of helping here and there, as an excuse for drawing his—plentiful—rations, nor was he ever out of snuff, and he frequently enjoyed other luxuries. But for all this he knew he was living on a volcano.Thornhill was getting desperate. For hours he would lie awake at night devising some scheme for ridding himself of his oppressor. If only that plan had been carried out on the mountain that day! If only old Patolo had arrived upon the scene half a minute later! It was no murder, he decided. A blackmailer was a pest to the human race. Extermination was only the just fate of such. This one was robbing him of his peace, therefore his destruction was as nothing to the price he had paid to purchase that peace. One day Manamandhla said:“Nkose, my brother’s son is payinglobolafor a girl, over there, in Zululand. He still needs two cows to complete the price, but the son of a richer man has offered one cow and a goat beyond the price he can pay. Shall he not therefore have the two cows—asNkosehas known me so long and is as our father?”The outrageous impudence of this demand hardly surprised Thornhill, who, of course, was fully aware that the needs of the ‘brother’s son’ did not exist. He gazed fixedly at the Zulu for some moments and the faces of both men were like stone.“I think I will give you the two cows, Manamandhla, but you can take them away yourself and—not come back. Do you hear—not come back?”The speaker’s expression was savage and threatening. He felt cornered.“Au! Not come back?” repeated the Zulu, softly.“Not come back. Go all over the world, but this place is the most deadly dangerous spot in it—for you. I solemnly advise you not to return to it. This evening I will give you the two cows—for your brother’s son’slobola”—he interpolated with a sneer, “and you can go back to Zululand and stay there.”“Nkose!”This conversation took place at the back of the house and the concluding remarks were overheard by Edala. She had never heard her father’s voice raised in that tone for many years, and now as she connected the circumstance a dreadful suspicion came into her mind. This Zulu knew too much, and now he was being bribed and threatened in about equal proportions in order in induce him to make himself scarce. Her father’s reply that the man was useful, had struck her as hollow and half-hearted at the time it was made.“I have a bit of good news for you, child,” said Thornhill that evening. “Your aversion, Manamandhla, is going—if he hasn’t already gone.”“A good thing too,” answered the girl, to whom it was no news. “I hope you won’t let him come back.”“I think not,” said Thornhill, with a dry laugh. “We have had enough of each other.”Edala had been observing the change in her father of late, and now she studied him more closely than ever. The harassed, worried look that had been upon him had suddenly dropped off; simultaneously with the departure of Manamandhla—she did not fail to observe. He became his old calm, even-minded self. But a week later the Zulu returned.“I would like to serveNkosea little longer,” was his tranquil explanation, when tackled by Thornhill. The latter looked at him in silence for a few minutes. To the Zulu this deliberation gave no anxiety.“You can stay then,” was the reply, uttered grimly.“Nkoseis my father. He will care for me. Were I dead there are two others, two of my own blood, who know that there are ‘mouths’ on Sipazi which swallow up men—who know which one it is that gives not back that which it swallows—but yet that which it swallows could be brought back with long lines. And I—whau, I know of one of these ‘mouths’ which gives back that which it swallows, but gives them back lame for the rest of life.”Here was a contingency that had clean escaped Thornhill’s calculations. However, he showed no sign of being perturbed by the statement. Was it true? A little reflection convinced him that in all probability it was not. Manamandhla would never be such a fool as to share a momentous secret—a, to him, valuable secret—with another, let alone with two others. But he would pretend to believe it, all the same; so would the blackmailer be thrown the more off his guard.“Did your brother’s son succeed with the additional two cows, Manamandhla?” he said, airily, taking no notice of the Zulu’s last remark.“Nearly. Not quite. It is in the air still.Nkose, two more would complete thelobola, for the girl is fine and much sought after, and her father—whau! he is miserly and loves cattle much.”“Yet I think one more will content him. We will talk further about it.” And Thornhill laughing to himself turned away.“So we have got that beast back again? I thought he had gone for good,” said Edala, her straight, clear glance full on her father’s face.“Meaning Manamandhla? So did I, but I don’t think he’ll stay long—no, not long.”Still she kept her glance upon him, and though the words were spoken easily, naturally, and without any outward intonation of significance, it seemed to Thornhill that the girl read his thoughts, his intent. She, like himself, could school her face, yet not altogether. Its expression now seemed to reveal horror, loathing, repulsion—yet not for Manamandhla. Reading it, something moved him to say:“I have been thinking things over, Edala, and perhaps, after all, I can see my way towards letting you carry out your cherished wish—that of going to Europe to study art seriously. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”She made no answer. He had expected her to brighten up at the suggestion.“You are not happy here, and I—well perhaps I am getting more than a little tired of living in an atmosphere of chronic suspicion and repulse. And yet, child, the time may come—and come too late—when you will bitterly regret the care of a father who has been to you as very few fathers within my experience have ever been to their children—in fact, I can hardly recall the case of one. But there—ingratitude is only to be expected, in fact nothing else could be under all the circumstances.”This with intense bitterness. His self control had momentarily broken down. The girl, who had begun to soften, grew hard again.“I don’t know that I’ve anything to be so thankful and appreciative over—under all the circumstances,” she said, with a scathing emphasis on the echo of his words. He looked at her fixedly, sadly.“Not now, but that will come. That will come—perhaps when it is too late.”His tone was quiet, and there was a sad conviction of prophecy in the words that again softened her—almost frightened her—as he turned away. In a moment a huge impulse moved her to go after him and declare that she had no wish whatever to leave him; that she would give no thought in the world to any consideration but himself; that she had been horribly hard and ungrateful and selfish; but assuredly some demoniacal influence was floating in the air just then, for the impulse passed. And her father, too, was striving to harden his heart. Why not? A man never ceased to gain in experience of life and human nature even if he lived to a hundred; and he himself was only in his prime. Why then break his heart over that which was only to have been expected?By an effort he dismissed the subject from his mind. The latter then reverted to the subject of Manamandhla, and the result of his meditations boded no good to that ill-advised Zulu.
A week went by, and Thornhill got an answer to his letter. His son could not possibly get away just then. His partner was seriously ill, and as for business—why, if not as brisk as might be wished, there was quite enough of it to keep one man’s hands full. He was awfully sorry, but would take a run down as soon as ever he could break away. So wrote Hyland.
Thornhill was bitterly disappointed. He seemed to feel it far more than he had thought it possible for him to do. He would have given much at that juncture to have had the boy at his side, he told himself. He felt very isolated, very much alone. Edala, though now and then she broke out into fits of playfulness—and these, he suspected, were, more often than not, forced—yet kept up a sort of dutiful reserve towards him. There was no spontaneity in her affection, even when any sign of possession of any such sentiment did appear. Well, ingratitude was ingrained in the female. No one had better reason to realise that than himself.
And this unknown relative who had written to announce her being—nothing more had been heard of—or from—her. He had expected a wire by return notifying her start, but a week had gone by, ten days, then a fortnight and no wire, not even a letter. Did every member of the feminine persuasion imagine that the universe was built for her sole convenience? was his comment upon the omission to Edala.
The latter suggested that the telegram might have been twisted into a wrong meaning by some chuckle-headed operator; would it not be as well to send another? But her father was in no mood for doing anything of the kind.
“I don’t believe in that theory,” he said. “Here’s a feminine person who writes to know if I can take her in. I reply post haste that I can and welcome, and I hear no more about it. Well, she can stop away if she prefers it. I’m not going routing around to beseech her to come.”
Edala answered that she didn’t care either way. As a matter of fact though enthusiastic enough on the arrival of the unknown’s letter the thing had hung fire. And then, deep down in her innermost mind lay another reason. She would not have admitted it even to herself, but it was there for all that and—it spelt Elvesdon.
The latter had been a good deal over at Sipazi. He was an excellent and astute official, but somehow, while neglecting none of his duties, he had found time and opportunity to make frequent visits, and he was always welcome. Thornhill and his daughter treated him, in fact, as if they had known him all their lives, which caused him intense satisfaction.
He was interested in this girl—indeed by that time powerfully attracted. The fair refined face, the straight fearless eyes, the smile that would light up the whole expression, the merry peal of spontaneous laughter—all this had an effect upon him that was inexpressibly bewitching. He had never seen anyone like her before—no, not in the least like her. That picture of her, standing erect, wide-eyed and fearless, waiting to be of use in the struggle with the monster serpent, had never even begun to fade in his mind. She was grand.
Towards himself Edala for her part was undoubtedly attracted. She looked forward to his visits, and greeted him with unfeigned pleasure when he appeared. He talked so well, and never failed to interest and amuse her. He had been about and had seen so much, and moreover there was a subtle suggestion of strength about him that appealed to her vividly. To most of her male acquaintance Edala assumed a sort of unconscious attitude of stiffening up. The youthful side of it represented to her so many puppies whose eyes had yet to open; the more mature side so many prigs who bored or patronised her. This man did neither. He neither talked up to her, nor down—she would have despised him for the first and resented him for the second. He simply treated her as a rational being with a full share of intelligence and ideas—and no surer road could he have taken towards her approval.
Having said so much it is not surprising that Edala’s feelings as regarded her new relative’s proposed visit should, by this time, have undergone some degree of modification. This stranger—of whose very outward appearance she was entirely ignorant—might conceivably prove one too many, the more so that the stranger was what her father had just described as “a member of the feminine persuasion.” She was not in the least in love with Elvesdon; she was far too evenly balanced to let herself go like that at such short notice. But she felt a strong proprietary interest in him as a friend worth having; wherefore in the background lurked that cloud of half unconscious jealousy. Yet that very jealousy itself ought to have warned her.
Thornhill, watching developments, was anything but displeased. As a Civil servant Elvesdon was not likely to amass wealth, but he was a good official and likely to get on. His personal opinion of the man we have already set forth, and it he had seen no reason to modify. If the present excellent understanding between him and Edala came to anything more permanent, why so much the better.
A fortnight had gone by since Manamandhla’s craving for beef had so nearly brought that enterprising savage to an untimely end: and the Zulu had been comfortably dwelling on the place ever since and showed not the smallest symptom of moving. He made a show of helping here and there, as an excuse for drawing his—plentiful—rations, nor was he ever out of snuff, and he frequently enjoyed other luxuries. But for all this he knew he was living on a volcano.
Thornhill was getting desperate. For hours he would lie awake at night devising some scheme for ridding himself of his oppressor. If only that plan had been carried out on the mountain that day! If only old Patolo had arrived upon the scene half a minute later! It was no murder, he decided. A blackmailer was a pest to the human race. Extermination was only the just fate of such. This one was robbing him of his peace, therefore his destruction was as nothing to the price he had paid to purchase that peace. One day Manamandhla said:
“Nkose, my brother’s son is payinglobolafor a girl, over there, in Zululand. He still needs two cows to complete the price, but the son of a richer man has offered one cow and a goat beyond the price he can pay. Shall he not therefore have the two cows—asNkosehas known me so long and is as our father?”
The outrageous impudence of this demand hardly surprised Thornhill, who, of course, was fully aware that the needs of the ‘brother’s son’ did not exist. He gazed fixedly at the Zulu for some moments and the faces of both men were like stone.
“I think I will give you the two cows, Manamandhla, but you can take them away yourself and—not come back. Do you hear—not come back?”
The speaker’s expression was savage and threatening. He felt cornered.
“Au! Not come back?” repeated the Zulu, softly.
“Not come back. Go all over the world, but this place is the most deadly dangerous spot in it—for you. I solemnly advise you not to return to it. This evening I will give you the two cows—for your brother’s son’slobola”—he interpolated with a sneer, “and you can go back to Zululand and stay there.”
“Nkose!”
This conversation took place at the back of the house and the concluding remarks were overheard by Edala. She had never heard her father’s voice raised in that tone for many years, and now as she connected the circumstance a dreadful suspicion came into her mind. This Zulu knew too much, and now he was being bribed and threatened in about equal proportions in order in induce him to make himself scarce. Her father’s reply that the man was useful, had struck her as hollow and half-hearted at the time it was made.
“I have a bit of good news for you, child,” said Thornhill that evening. “Your aversion, Manamandhla, is going—if he hasn’t already gone.”
“A good thing too,” answered the girl, to whom it was no news. “I hope you won’t let him come back.”
“I think not,” said Thornhill, with a dry laugh. “We have had enough of each other.”
Edala had been observing the change in her father of late, and now she studied him more closely than ever. The harassed, worried look that had been upon him had suddenly dropped off; simultaneously with the departure of Manamandhla—she did not fail to observe. He became his old calm, even-minded self. But a week later the Zulu returned.
“I would like to serveNkosea little longer,” was his tranquil explanation, when tackled by Thornhill. The latter looked at him in silence for a few minutes. To the Zulu this deliberation gave no anxiety.
“You can stay then,” was the reply, uttered grimly.
“Nkoseis my father. He will care for me. Were I dead there are two others, two of my own blood, who know that there are ‘mouths’ on Sipazi which swallow up men—who know which one it is that gives not back that which it swallows—but yet that which it swallows could be brought back with long lines. And I—whau, I know of one of these ‘mouths’ which gives back that which it swallows, but gives them back lame for the rest of life.”
Here was a contingency that had clean escaped Thornhill’s calculations. However, he showed no sign of being perturbed by the statement. Was it true? A little reflection convinced him that in all probability it was not. Manamandhla would never be such a fool as to share a momentous secret—a, to him, valuable secret—with another, let alone with two others. But he would pretend to believe it, all the same; so would the blackmailer be thrown the more off his guard.
“Did your brother’s son succeed with the additional two cows, Manamandhla?” he said, airily, taking no notice of the Zulu’s last remark.
“Nearly. Not quite. It is in the air still.Nkose, two more would complete thelobola, for the girl is fine and much sought after, and her father—whau! he is miserly and loves cattle much.”
“Yet I think one more will content him. We will talk further about it.” And Thornhill laughing to himself turned away.
“So we have got that beast back again? I thought he had gone for good,” said Edala, her straight, clear glance full on her father’s face.
“Meaning Manamandhla? So did I, but I don’t think he’ll stay long—no, not long.”
Still she kept her glance upon him, and though the words were spoken easily, naturally, and without any outward intonation of significance, it seemed to Thornhill that the girl read his thoughts, his intent. She, like himself, could school her face, yet not altogether. Its expression now seemed to reveal horror, loathing, repulsion—yet not for Manamandhla. Reading it, something moved him to say:
“I have been thinking things over, Edala, and perhaps, after all, I can see my way towards letting you carry out your cherished wish—that of going to Europe to study art seriously. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
She made no answer. He had expected her to brighten up at the suggestion.
“You are not happy here, and I—well perhaps I am getting more than a little tired of living in an atmosphere of chronic suspicion and repulse. And yet, child, the time may come—and come too late—when you will bitterly regret the care of a father who has been to you as very few fathers within my experience have ever been to their children—in fact, I can hardly recall the case of one. But there—ingratitude is only to be expected, in fact nothing else could be under all the circumstances.”
This with intense bitterness. His self control had momentarily broken down. The girl, who had begun to soften, grew hard again.
“I don’t know that I’ve anything to be so thankful and appreciative over—under all the circumstances,” she said, with a scathing emphasis on the echo of his words. He looked at her fixedly, sadly.
“Not now, but that will come. That will come—perhaps when it is too late.”
His tone was quiet, and there was a sad conviction of prophecy in the words that again softened her—almost frightened her—as he turned away. In a moment a huge impulse moved her to go after him and declare that she had no wish whatever to leave him; that she would give no thought in the world to any consideration but himself; that she had been horribly hard and ungrateful and selfish; but assuredly some demoniacal influence was floating in the air just then, for the impulse passed. And her father, too, was striving to harden his heart. Why not? A man never ceased to gain in experience of life and human nature even if he lived to a hundred; and he himself was only in his prime. Why then break his heart over that which was only to have been expected?
By an effort he dismissed the subject from his mind. The latter then reverted to the subject of Manamandhla, and the result of his meditations boded no good to that ill-advised Zulu.
Chapter Fifteen.A Revelation—with a Vengeance.“Then, it wouldn’t have killed him, Vine?”“I think not. I could not quite locate the stuff. You see I have had no opportunity of making a study of these native drugs. They take precious good care we shan’t,” answered the District Surgeon.Elvesdon was conscious of a sense of relief at this verdict. It would save complications at any rate. He would not now be obliged to open up a serious enquiry at a time when the native pulse had to be fingered very carefully.“But why the deuce should they give him the stuff if it wasn’t to get him out of the way?” he said.“Well, you see, a drug, even of a poisonous nature, may have other uses than to cause death. It may be administered in sufficiently small proportions to cause a sort of waking stupefaction, a semi-consciousness in which the will power lies torpid, and the recipient may be made to do or say anything which others may choose to make him do or say. Now Zavula is an important chief—a very important chief—and respected as a singularly able and level-headed one, consequently his ‘word’ once uttered would carry more weight than that of upstarts like Babatyana and half a dozen others put together. See?”“Yes. In other words he’d be of more use to them alive than dead?”“That’s it. But—by the way, Elvesdon, it’s a pity I didn’t have that bowl a bit sooner. You know traces of some poisons are easier located if investigated early.”“Yes, but we were both of us so infernally busy. And perhaps neither of us took the thing sufficiently seriously.”The two were seated in Elvesdon’s inner office, and were, so to say, holding an inquest on the District Surgeon’s investigation of old Zavula’s drinking bowl. The doctor was a sturdy, thick-set man, of anything from fifty onwards but probably much more; grizzled and red-faced; very downright in manner, but genial and well-liked. He and the new magistrate had taken to each other at once.“Think there’ll be trouble Elvesdon—over the new tax for instance?” said the doctor.“The Lord only knows, and He won’t tell. I’m doing all I can, but this business of Zavula’s looks more than a bit ugly. I don’t mind telling you. Babatyana’s an infernal scoundrel, and he’s practically chief of the Amahluzi. Poor old Zavula is for all practical purposes only a sleeping partner, I’m afraid.”“M-m,” said the other.“Well I think, as you can’t certify that this stuff was enough to constitute an attempt on old Zavula’s life, there’s nothing to be gained by stirring up any mud over the job. He’s cute enough, and obviously able to take care of himself. The jolly old boy sent me quite an affectionate message only the day before yesterday—no—it was the day before that.”The grisly side to this statement lay in the fact that on the day named the said ‘jolly old boy’ was lying in his unknown grave in the rock cleft—had been for some time—and the whole of the Amahluzi tribe was in a simmering state of incipient rebellion.“You see a good deal of the Thornhills, don’t you, Elvesdon?” said the doctor, changing the subject.“Yes. I like them too. It’s a jolly lucky thing, I reckon, to find a man like Thornhill at one’s elbow in a place like this. He’s such a rational, level-headed chap—cultured too, and rattling good company.”“And the girl—what do you think of her?”“She’s charming—so unconventional, and high bred to the finger tips, as the French say, or, to put it literally, ‘to the ends of the nails.’ I don’t mind telling you, Vine, that she’s clean outside my experience.”The older man smiled queerly.“Yes. She’s a nice girl,” he said, “but—peculiar.”Now Elvesdon had just reached that stage with regard to Edala that this damning of her with faint praise rather jarred upon him.“Well but—isn’t she?” he retorted, unwittingly sharply. “Nice—I mean.”“I said so,” answered the other.Still Elvesdon was not satisfied. There was something infernally, provokingly, shut-up-like-an-oyster about the tone. He felt moved to ‘draw’ the utterer.“Peculiar, you said,” he went on. “Yes, that I can believe. Do you know, Vine, the first Sunday I went over there, I had a queer experience. You know that big mountain on their place just opposite the house— Sipazi it is called?” The doctor nodded. “Well then, they took me up there in the afternoon to show me the view. You’ll remember that tremendous krantz that literally overhangs the valley?” Again the other nodded. “Well there’s a beast of a tree that grows out from its brink, horizontally at first, then upwards. There’s just room for one—fool, I was nearly saying—or one and a half, to sit on it. Well what does the young lady do but climb down and sit on it as if she was in an armchair on the stoep at home. It turned me nearly sick to see her do it, I can tell you.”“I daresay.”“That’s not all. She skipped up again, and—invited me to do the same.”“And did you?”“Well I had to. It was in the nature of a challenge, you see. I tell you squarely and as man to man, I would willingly have forfeited a year’s pay to have got out of it—when I got on to the beastly log, I believe I would have forfeited five. But how could I have backed out of doing a thing a girl had just done, and thought nothing of? Ugh! it gives me the cold shivers all down the back even now, to look back on those few moments when I sat, hung out in mid-air, over that ghastly height. And, you must remember the krantz slopes awayinwardsfrom the top just there. Ugh!”Vine sat back in his chair and chuckled. Elvesdon was obviously an imaginative chap, he was saying to himself. Why, as he told the story he was going through the experience again, and part of its horror had taken hold on him.“Well, what did she say when you came back?” he said.“That I was the only one besides herself who had ever done it. She had asked several, and they had all cried off. I don’t say it to brag, mind—in proof whereof I don’t mind adding that she said she could see I was in a beastly funk all the time, because my hand on the branch of the infernal tree shook, and, by the Lord, it did.”“Reminds one of the old yam about the lady and the knight and the jay’s nest on the castle wall,” said the doctor. “Never mind, Elvesdon. I’m one of those who funked going on it. She asked me to once.”“The devil she did.”“Yes. I told her straight I was much too old and fat to launch out in those circus experiments. But that excuse wouldn’t do with an athletic young ’un like you.”“Well, several other ‘athletic young ’uns’ seem to have shied at it anyway. Here, I seem to be bragging again but I don’t mean to. Of course a man’s a fool to try and do a thing of that sort if he knows he can’t. Still, I thought I could—at a pinch.” And again the listener chuckled.“By the way, Vine,” said Elvesdon tentatively, “you’ve been here a long time and I’m only a new broom. Did you know Thornhill’s wife?”“Yes.”“What was she like. You know I’ve been over at their place several times, and have never seen any portrait of her of any kind. Nor have I ever heard her alluded to in any way.”“No. You wouldn’t be likely to.”Elvesdon nodded.“I see,” he said.“No—not that. You’re on the wrong track. Look here, Elvesdon,” went on the doctor, gravely. “You’d better have the real position from me, since you’re sure to have it sooner or later from somebody else, and then probably more or less inaccurately given. The wonder to me is that you’ve heard nothing about it already, but I suppose the few people round here, seeing you were rather thick with Thornhill, concluded to keep their heads shut.”“But, Vine, whatisthe mystery? What the devilisthe mystery? Let’s have it.”He was speaking quickly, excitedly. For the life of him he could not help it.“Thornhill is supposed to have murdered his wife,” answered Vine.“Good God!”Elvesdon had started up in his chair, as if he had suddenly realised the presence of a pin in the cushion, and then sat back, staring at the other; and indeed his amazement was little to be wondered at, for to be suddenly told that a man for whom he had conceived a sincere liking and regard, and a growing friendship, was a probable murderer, was disconcerting, to say the least of it.“‘Supposed’? Exactly. But it was never proved against him?” he said, recovering himself and feeling somewhat relieved. “As, of course it couldn’t have been or he wouldn’t be where he is now. What were the facts?”“Mrs Thornhill disappeared.”“How and where?”“‘How’ is just what nobody knows. ‘Where’—on their own place, same place they’re living on now.”“What would the motive have been?” Elvesdon had collected himself. He was vividly interested but was becoming magisterial again.“Motive? Plenty of that; in fact that’s what made things look sultry against Thornhill. She led him the devil of a life. To put it briefly, Thornhill’s version was that she rushed out of the house one night after a more than ordinarily violent ‘breeze,’ making all sorts of insane announcements. He did not follow her immediately, as he said at the time, partly because he wanted to give her time to come to her senses, partly because—and here he was injudiciously frank, in that he supplied motive and turned public opinion against himself—he honestly did not care what happened to her, so sick was he of the life she had been leading him. He said nothing about her disappearance at first, explaining that he expected her back at any minute, in which case he would have made a fool of himself all about nothing.”“Couldn’t he have taken up her spoor?” said Elvesdon.“Not much. There had been a succession of violent thunder-storms, and the face of the veldt was washed smooth by torrential rains. No spoor to be taken up.”“By Jove, it’s a mysterious affair,” said Elvesdon. “How long ago was it, by the way?”“Eighteen or nineteen years. He was arrested and kept in thetronkfor some weeks, while every hole and corner of his farm was searched. They even dug up the cattle-kraals in search of remains—you know, Elvesdon, like that Moat Farm business in England a year or two ago—only of course in this case they found nothing. Thornhill half laughed when he was told of this, only saying that he had never for a moment imagined they would. Well of course, there was only one way out; for no one knows better than yourself that a man can’t be put upon his trial for murder until it is proved that a murder has been committed, which in this case it seemed impossible to do. So our friend was turned loose again.”“Of course. But what of the general opinion. Was it believed he’d done it?”“That’s just how it was. Not a man Jack or woman Jill but was firmly convinced of it, and for a long time he was practically boycotted. For the matter of that, even now they don’t get many visitors you may have noticed.”“Yes. That has occurred to me. By the way. Vine, what about the children. How did the suspicion affect them as they grew up? Did they believe it?”“The boys didn’t, but the strange and sad part of it is that the girl did, and does still.”Elvesdon started.“And—does still?” he echoed. “I see.”Now the situation stood explained. Edala’s strange behaviour, the cold aloofness with which she treated her father, except at rare intervals. Heavens, what a ghastly shadow to lie between them! Yet, as it did so he, perhaps her behaviour was not altogether unnatural.“The boys didn’t believe it?” he repeated.“No—never. They grew up firmly refusing to believe it. They were fine youngsters. Jim, poor chap, was killed in the Matopos in ’96. He was the eldest. Hyland is broking at the Rand. By the way, Thornhill was telling me the other day that he expected him down on a visit.”“Yes, I know. There was someone else he was expecting, an English relative. She wrote to him from Durban, inviting herself, and he wired her back to roll up as soon as she liked. Then he heard nothing more about her. By theLord, I wonder,” he broke off. “I wonder if she got hold of this yam about him, and concluded to stop away. It might be.”“So it might. But what I wonder at, Elvesdon, is that this affair should be all news to you. Why it caused some considerable kick up at the time.”“At the time. That’s just it. It must have been during the couple of years I was over in England and the States.—Come in,” as a knock came at the door.“Please sir,” said the native constable, who was proud of airing his English, “dere’s one lady—like seeNkose.”“One lady? Look here Isaac. Do you mean a ‘lady’ or somebywoner vrouw, come for a summons against somebody?”“Dis one lady, sir. She ask for Mr Elvesdon, not for de magistrate.”“Oh, show her in. Don’t go, doctor, till we see what she wants.”
“Then, it wouldn’t have killed him, Vine?”
“I think not. I could not quite locate the stuff. You see I have had no opportunity of making a study of these native drugs. They take precious good care we shan’t,” answered the District Surgeon.
Elvesdon was conscious of a sense of relief at this verdict. It would save complications at any rate. He would not now be obliged to open up a serious enquiry at a time when the native pulse had to be fingered very carefully.
“But why the deuce should they give him the stuff if it wasn’t to get him out of the way?” he said.
“Well, you see, a drug, even of a poisonous nature, may have other uses than to cause death. It may be administered in sufficiently small proportions to cause a sort of waking stupefaction, a semi-consciousness in which the will power lies torpid, and the recipient may be made to do or say anything which others may choose to make him do or say. Now Zavula is an important chief—a very important chief—and respected as a singularly able and level-headed one, consequently his ‘word’ once uttered would carry more weight than that of upstarts like Babatyana and half a dozen others put together. See?”
“Yes. In other words he’d be of more use to them alive than dead?”
“That’s it. But—by the way, Elvesdon, it’s a pity I didn’t have that bowl a bit sooner. You know traces of some poisons are easier located if investigated early.”
“Yes, but we were both of us so infernally busy. And perhaps neither of us took the thing sufficiently seriously.”
The two were seated in Elvesdon’s inner office, and were, so to say, holding an inquest on the District Surgeon’s investigation of old Zavula’s drinking bowl. The doctor was a sturdy, thick-set man, of anything from fifty onwards but probably much more; grizzled and red-faced; very downright in manner, but genial and well-liked. He and the new magistrate had taken to each other at once.
“Think there’ll be trouble Elvesdon—over the new tax for instance?” said the doctor.
“The Lord only knows, and He won’t tell. I’m doing all I can, but this business of Zavula’s looks more than a bit ugly. I don’t mind telling you. Babatyana’s an infernal scoundrel, and he’s practically chief of the Amahluzi. Poor old Zavula is for all practical purposes only a sleeping partner, I’m afraid.”
“M-m,” said the other.
“Well I think, as you can’t certify that this stuff was enough to constitute an attempt on old Zavula’s life, there’s nothing to be gained by stirring up any mud over the job. He’s cute enough, and obviously able to take care of himself. The jolly old boy sent me quite an affectionate message only the day before yesterday—no—it was the day before that.”
The grisly side to this statement lay in the fact that on the day named the said ‘jolly old boy’ was lying in his unknown grave in the rock cleft—had been for some time—and the whole of the Amahluzi tribe was in a simmering state of incipient rebellion.
“You see a good deal of the Thornhills, don’t you, Elvesdon?” said the doctor, changing the subject.
“Yes. I like them too. It’s a jolly lucky thing, I reckon, to find a man like Thornhill at one’s elbow in a place like this. He’s such a rational, level-headed chap—cultured too, and rattling good company.”
“And the girl—what do you think of her?”
“She’s charming—so unconventional, and high bred to the finger tips, as the French say, or, to put it literally, ‘to the ends of the nails.’ I don’t mind telling you, Vine, that she’s clean outside my experience.”
The older man smiled queerly.
“Yes. She’s a nice girl,” he said, “but—peculiar.”
Now Elvesdon had just reached that stage with regard to Edala that this damning of her with faint praise rather jarred upon him.
“Well but—isn’t she?” he retorted, unwittingly sharply. “Nice—I mean.”
“I said so,” answered the other.
Still Elvesdon was not satisfied. There was something infernally, provokingly, shut-up-like-an-oyster about the tone. He felt moved to ‘draw’ the utterer.
“Peculiar, you said,” he went on. “Yes, that I can believe. Do you know, Vine, the first Sunday I went over there, I had a queer experience. You know that big mountain on their place just opposite the house— Sipazi it is called?” The doctor nodded. “Well then, they took me up there in the afternoon to show me the view. You’ll remember that tremendous krantz that literally overhangs the valley?” Again the other nodded. “Well there’s a beast of a tree that grows out from its brink, horizontally at first, then upwards. There’s just room for one—fool, I was nearly saying—or one and a half, to sit on it. Well what does the young lady do but climb down and sit on it as if she was in an armchair on the stoep at home. It turned me nearly sick to see her do it, I can tell you.”
“I daresay.”
“That’s not all. She skipped up again, and—invited me to do the same.”
“And did you?”
“Well I had to. It was in the nature of a challenge, you see. I tell you squarely and as man to man, I would willingly have forfeited a year’s pay to have got out of it—when I got on to the beastly log, I believe I would have forfeited five. But how could I have backed out of doing a thing a girl had just done, and thought nothing of? Ugh! it gives me the cold shivers all down the back even now, to look back on those few moments when I sat, hung out in mid-air, over that ghastly height. And, you must remember the krantz slopes awayinwardsfrom the top just there. Ugh!”
Vine sat back in his chair and chuckled. Elvesdon was obviously an imaginative chap, he was saying to himself. Why, as he told the story he was going through the experience again, and part of its horror had taken hold on him.
“Well, what did she say when you came back?” he said.
“That I was the only one besides herself who had ever done it. She had asked several, and they had all cried off. I don’t say it to brag, mind—in proof whereof I don’t mind adding that she said she could see I was in a beastly funk all the time, because my hand on the branch of the infernal tree shook, and, by the Lord, it did.”
“Reminds one of the old yam about the lady and the knight and the jay’s nest on the castle wall,” said the doctor. “Never mind, Elvesdon. I’m one of those who funked going on it. She asked me to once.”
“The devil she did.”
“Yes. I told her straight I was much too old and fat to launch out in those circus experiments. But that excuse wouldn’t do with an athletic young ’un like you.”
“Well, several other ‘athletic young ’uns’ seem to have shied at it anyway. Here, I seem to be bragging again but I don’t mean to. Of course a man’s a fool to try and do a thing of that sort if he knows he can’t. Still, I thought I could—at a pinch.” And again the listener chuckled.
“By the way, Vine,” said Elvesdon tentatively, “you’ve been here a long time and I’m only a new broom. Did you know Thornhill’s wife?”
“Yes.”
“What was she like. You know I’ve been over at their place several times, and have never seen any portrait of her of any kind. Nor have I ever heard her alluded to in any way.”
“No. You wouldn’t be likely to.”
Elvesdon nodded.
“I see,” he said.
“No—not that. You’re on the wrong track. Look here, Elvesdon,” went on the doctor, gravely. “You’d better have the real position from me, since you’re sure to have it sooner or later from somebody else, and then probably more or less inaccurately given. The wonder to me is that you’ve heard nothing about it already, but I suppose the few people round here, seeing you were rather thick with Thornhill, concluded to keep their heads shut.”
“But, Vine, whatisthe mystery? What the devilisthe mystery? Let’s have it.”
He was speaking quickly, excitedly. For the life of him he could not help it.
“Thornhill is supposed to have murdered his wife,” answered Vine.
“Good God!”
Elvesdon had started up in his chair, as if he had suddenly realised the presence of a pin in the cushion, and then sat back, staring at the other; and indeed his amazement was little to be wondered at, for to be suddenly told that a man for whom he had conceived a sincere liking and regard, and a growing friendship, was a probable murderer, was disconcerting, to say the least of it.
“‘Supposed’? Exactly. But it was never proved against him?” he said, recovering himself and feeling somewhat relieved. “As, of course it couldn’t have been or he wouldn’t be where he is now. What were the facts?”
“Mrs Thornhill disappeared.”
“How and where?”
“‘How’ is just what nobody knows. ‘Where’—on their own place, same place they’re living on now.”
“What would the motive have been?” Elvesdon had collected himself. He was vividly interested but was becoming magisterial again.
“Motive? Plenty of that; in fact that’s what made things look sultry against Thornhill. She led him the devil of a life. To put it briefly, Thornhill’s version was that she rushed out of the house one night after a more than ordinarily violent ‘breeze,’ making all sorts of insane announcements. He did not follow her immediately, as he said at the time, partly because he wanted to give her time to come to her senses, partly because—and here he was injudiciously frank, in that he supplied motive and turned public opinion against himself—he honestly did not care what happened to her, so sick was he of the life she had been leading him. He said nothing about her disappearance at first, explaining that he expected her back at any minute, in which case he would have made a fool of himself all about nothing.”
“Couldn’t he have taken up her spoor?” said Elvesdon.
“Not much. There had been a succession of violent thunder-storms, and the face of the veldt was washed smooth by torrential rains. No spoor to be taken up.”
“By Jove, it’s a mysterious affair,” said Elvesdon. “How long ago was it, by the way?”
“Eighteen or nineteen years. He was arrested and kept in thetronkfor some weeks, while every hole and corner of his farm was searched. They even dug up the cattle-kraals in search of remains—you know, Elvesdon, like that Moat Farm business in England a year or two ago—only of course in this case they found nothing. Thornhill half laughed when he was told of this, only saying that he had never for a moment imagined they would. Well of course, there was only one way out; for no one knows better than yourself that a man can’t be put upon his trial for murder until it is proved that a murder has been committed, which in this case it seemed impossible to do. So our friend was turned loose again.”
“Of course. But what of the general opinion. Was it believed he’d done it?”
“That’s just how it was. Not a man Jack or woman Jill but was firmly convinced of it, and for a long time he was practically boycotted. For the matter of that, even now they don’t get many visitors you may have noticed.”
“Yes. That has occurred to me. By the way. Vine, what about the children. How did the suspicion affect them as they grew up? Did they believe it?”
“The boys didn’t, but the strange and sad part of it is that the girl did, and does still.”
Elvesdon started.
“And—does still?” he echoed. “I see.”
Now the situation stood explained. Edala’s strange behaviour, the cold aloofness with which she treated her father, except at rare intervals. Heavens, what a ghastly shadow to lie between them! Yet, as it did so he, perhaps her behaviour was not altogether unnatural.
“The boys didn’t believe it?” he repeated.
“No—never. They grew up firmly refusing to believe it. They were fine youngsters. Jim, poor chap, was killed in the Matopos in ’96. He was the eldest. Hyland is broking at the Rand. By the way, Thornhill was telling me the other day that he expected him down on a visit.”
“Yes, I know. There was someone else he was expecting, an English relative. She wrote to him from Durban, inviting herself, and he wired her back to roll up as soon as she liked. Then he heard nothing more about her. By theLord, I wonder,” he broke off. “I wonder if she got hold of this yam about him, and concluded to stop away. It might be.”
“So it might. But what I wonder at, Elvesdon, is that this affair should be all news to you. Why it caused some considerable kick up at the time.”
“At the time. That’s just it. It must have been during the couple of years I was over in England and the States.—Come in,” as a knock came at the door.
“Please sir,” said the native constable, who was proud of airing his English, “dere’s one lady—like seeNkose.”
“One lady? Look here Isaac. Do you mean a ‘lady’ or somebywoner vrouw, come for a summons against somebody?”
“Dis one lady, sir. She ask for Mr Elvesdon, not for de magistrate.”
“Oh, show her in. Don’t go, doctor, till we see what she wants.”
Chapter Sixteen.The New Arrival.The native constable was holding open the door. There was a soft rustle of feminine attire as its wearer crossed the empty Court room, and the newcomer entered.“Mr Elvesdon, I believe?” she said, after a rapid glance at both men, and easily identifying the right one. “I must introduce myself. My name is Carden—Evelyn Carden—and you may have heard of me from Mr Thornhill. He lives near here, does he not?”“Yes. About two hours. Sit down, Miss Carden,” handing her a chair. “As a matter of fact I have heard of you. The Thornhills have been wondering that they did not—after your letter.”The newcomer’s eyebrows went up in surprise.“The Thornhills not heard!” she exclaimed wonderingly. “But they must have. Why I wired from Durban here, just as I was directed; but it was to put off coming just then. And they never received it?”“No. I can answer for that. Er—by the way, did you send it yourself, Miss Carden?”“Well, no. The fact is I didn’t. I gave it, the wire, and also a letter, to a coolie porter at a station just this side of Pinetown—I forget the name—to send for me.”Elvesdon smiled.“That accounts for the whole trouble,” he said.All this time he had been taking stock of the newcomer. She was of fair height, and plainly but unmistakably well dressed. She had straight features and a reposeful expression, an abundance of light brown hair, and clear grey eyes. She had just missed being exactly pretty, yet the face was an attractive one, and there was an atmosphere of refinement andsavoir faireabout her that left no room for doubt as to her standing in the social scale. She seemed about two or three and thirty in point of age—in reality she was not more than twenty-eight. All this he summed up in a flash, as he went through the above preliminary formalities.“This is Dr Vine, our District Surgeon, Miss Carden,” he said in introduction. “Are you travelling alone, may I ask?”“Yes. This time I thought I’d spring a surprise on my unknown relative, so of course I was obliged to hire a cart at Telani—the driver is such a disagreeable old man, by the bye. And the horses are wretched beasts. Why I had to stop the night at a most abominable roadside place—an accommodation house, I think they called it—presumably because ‘accommodation’ in every sense, was the very last thing they had to offer.” She laughed, so did the two men.“Then there was a monster centipede kept appearing and disappearing on the wall above my bed, so that I had to keep the light going all night, and hardly got any sleep at all. And now one of the horses is dead lame, and I am wondering how I am going to get on to Mr Thornhill’s—unless you can help me, Mr Elvesdon.”There was a something in the tone of this tail-off that conveyed to the listeners the impression that she was very much accustomed to being ‘helped’—in things great as well as small—and made no scruple about requisitioning such help.“Certainly I can, Miss Carden,” answered Elvesdon. “If you will allow me I shall be delighted to drive you out to Thornhill’s this afternoon. Meanwhile it is just lunch time—if you will give me the pleasure of your company—you too, doctor? Very well then, we may as well adjourn at once.”During lunch Elvesdon was somewhat silent. He had directed his native servants when to inspan his spider and to transfer the visitor’s baggage to that useful vehicle—further, he had arranged matters with the driver of the hired cart, an unprepossessing specimen of what would be defined in the Southern States as ‘mean white,’ and while doing so, the astounding revelation made to him by Vine had come back to him with all its full force. He did not know what to think. Thornhill seemed to him the last man in the world to commit a cold-blooded murder—and that the murder of a woman—but—what if it was a hot-blooded one? Looking back upon his observation of this new found friend he recalled a certain something that contained the possibilities of such—goaded by the weight of an intolerable incubus. And his sons believed in him and his daughter did not? Well, Elvesdon leaned to the opinion of the sons, and all his official instinct weighed on that side. There was absolutely no evidence that any crime had been effected at all, and did not the legal text-books teem with instances of disappearance for which innocent people had been executed in the ‘good old times’? Why of course. No. He at any rate was going to keep an open mind, and turn into fact the time-worn legal fiction that the accused was innocent until he was proved guilty.So he was rather silent during lunch. The weight of Vine’s revelation was still on him; but the newcomer was quite at her ease and chatted away with Prior and the doctor.But later, when they were bowling away merrily behind a fresh, well trotting pair of horses bound for Sipazi, he was obliged to put this new train of thought out of his head, for the new arrival plied him with all sorts of questions, as to the country and its natives, and other things; then got on to the subject of Thornhill.“I have never seen him, you know, Mr Elvesdon, since I was ever so small. I don’t know anything really about him beyond what my poor mother told me. By the way—did he marry again?”Elvesdon started unconsciously. In his present train of thought he was wondering how much she knew as to the matter about which he had only just heard.“No. He has one girl at home now, and a boy away at the Rand.”“Oh. That’s nice. Tell me. What is the girl like?”“Charming. She’s like no other girl I’ve ever seen.”The reply was made in a perfectly even tone, without any perceptible enthusiasm. The other was interested at once.“What’s her name?”“Edala. Peculiar name isn’t it?”“Rather. Do you think we shall get on?”Elvesdon burst out laughing.“I should think it highly probable that you would. She is very unconventional—and you—well if you don’t mind my saying so, Miss Carden, I should think the same held good as regards yourself.”“Of course I don’t mind your saying so; and it happens to be true. I like being talked to rationally, and not talked down to—as you men are too given to talking to us women. You know—a sort of humouring us, as if we were a lot of spoilt children.”“But you must remember that if we don’t humour you, ‘you women,’ or at any rate the majority of you, vote us disagreeable if not rude; a favourite word with ‘you women’ by the way. It has such a fine, sonorous, roll-round-the-tongue flavour, you know.”Evelyn Carden laughed—and laughed merrily. Elvesdon noticed that her laugh was light, open, free-hearted. There was no affectation, or posing, about it.“I like that,” she said, “the more so that it is absolutely true. I suppose you are often over at the Thornhills’, Mr Elvesdon, as you are so near?”“Oh yes. I put in Sundays with them, and enjoy it. Your relative is a particularly cultured and companionable man, Miss Carden, and in his quiet way, very genial.”“And—Edala?”This with just a spice of mischief, which the other ignored.“I have already given you my opinion on that subject,” he said.“How delightful. I am so glad I came up here. I only put it off because some people whose acquaintance I made on board ship asked me out to stay with them at their place near Malvern. I do hope, though, that Mr Thornhill won’t be offended with me about the non-delivery of the wire, but it really wasn’t my fault.”Here Elvesdon did not entirely agree. He thought she ought to have made more sure. But he said:“You need have no uneasiness on that score. Thornhill is a man with a large up-country experience, and I know of no better training for teaching a man to take things as they come.”“Better and better,” she pronounced. “Why, how interesting he will be. But, you yourself, Mr Elvesdon—you must have some strange experiences too?”“Well, you see, one can’t go through an official life like mine without. But, for the most part, they are experiences of queer and out of the way phases of human nature. I haven’t had any serious adventures if that’s what you mean.”“No?”“No. Never mind. I’m used to that note of disappointment. When I was over in England on leave three years and a half ago, I was always being asked how many lions I’d shot—the impression apparently being that one strolled out after office hours and bagged a few brace—and I answered frankly that I’d never seen a lion outside a cage—though I’ve heard them, by the way, at a long and respectful distance—I went down like a shot in general estimation. At last I began to feel like Clive, when hauled up over the looting business, ‘astonished at my own moderation,’ and thought it time to invent a lion lie or two. But it was too late then.”Again she laughed—heartily, merrily. She turned a glance of unmitigated approval upon the man beside her. He, too, seemed rather unlike other people, with his easy, unconventional flow of talk and ideas; yet whether his life had been spent outside the sphere of adventure or not, she felt certain that given an emergency he would prove the strong, capable official, ready and able to deal with it at the critical or perilous moment.Elvesdon’s mind, too, was running upon her and he was speculating as to the effect her presence would have upon those among whom her lot was to be cast for a time. She was bright, lively, natural; just the very companion for Edala, though somewhat older. Thornhill, too, wanted livening up; and now, seen in the light of the revelation he had heard that morning, Elvesdon thoroughly understood the restraint which had lain upon that household of two. This stranger from the outside world was just the one to take both out of themselves.They left the more open rolling country, where the road suddenly dived down into the bosky ruggedness of a long winding valley, and here Evelyn grew enthusiastic over the romantic grandeur of the black forest-clad rifts sloping down from a great row of castellated crags. Here, too, bird and animal life seemed suddenly to blossom into being. Troops of monkeys skipped whimsically among the tree-tops chattering at the wayfarers, and the piping of bright spreuws flashing from frond to frond among the thorn bushes, and the call of the hoepoe, and the mellow cooing of doves making multitudinous melody throughout the broad valley into which they were descending, together with the quaint, grating duet of the yellow thrush—then, too, the deep boom of great hornbills stalking among the grass and stones, yonder, down the slope—all blended harmoniously in the unclouded evening calm, for the sun was near his rest now, and the stupendous krantz fronting the Sipazi mountain shone like fire.“Why, it is glorious,” declared the newcomer gazing around. “What a lovely country this is.”“There’s our destination,” said Elvesdon, pointing to the homestead lying on the farther side of the valley beneath, whence already the dogs were announcing their arrival in deep-mouthed clamour. “And there are your relatives,” he added, as two figures could be seen coming down from the front stoep, “and they are already taking stock of us through binoculars.”Thornhill’s greeting was quiet but cordial.“Welcome to Sipazi,” he said. “We had about given you up, but better late than never. I am afraid you’ll find it dull here, but after all, it’ll be a new experience I should think.”“Of course it will, Mr Thornhill, and a delightful one. So this is—Edala.” And the two girls kissed each other.“How did you know my name?” said Edala, with a laugh.“Why you don’t suppose I haven’t been ‘pumping’ Mr Elvesdon all about you during our most delightful drive out here, do you? Of course I have.” And then she began entering upon explanations as to the seeming silence in answer to the telegram.“Oh well, no matter. You’re here now, anyhow,” answered Thornhill characteristically. And Evelyn Carden, looking up into the strong, bearded, rather melancholy face, was deciding that she was going to like its owner very much indeed; and Elvesdon superintending the process of outspanning, was wondering whether these two girls were going to take to each other; and Edala was thinking that they were.But—somehow, with the faintest possible twinge of uneasiness, the emphasis on those words ‘our most delightful drive’ jarred on her.
The native constable was holding open the door. There was a soft rustle of feminine attire as its wearer crossed the empty Court room, and the newcomer entered.
“Mr Elvesdon, I believe?” she said, after a rapid glance at both men, and easily identifying the right one. “I must introduce myself. My name is Carden—Evelyn Carden—and you may have heard of me from Mr Thornhill. He lives near here, does he not?”
“Yes. About two hours. Sit down, Miss Carden,” handing her a chair. “As a matter of fact I have heard of you. The Thornhills have been wondering that they did not—after your letter.”
The newcomer’s eyebrows went up in surprise.
“The Thornhills not heard!” she exclaimed wonderingly. “But they must have. Why I wired from Durban here, just as I was directed; but it was to put off coming just then. And they never received it?”
“No. I can answer for that. Er—by the way, did you send it yourself, Miss Carden?”
“Well, no. The fact is I didn’t. I gave it, the wire, and also a letter, to a coolie porter at a station just this side of Pinetown—I forget the name—to send for me.”
Elvesdon smiled.
“That accounts for the whole trouble,” he said.
All this time he had been taking stock of the newcomer. She was of fair height, and plainly but unmistakably well dressed. She had straight features and a reposeful expression, an abundance of light brown hair, and clear grey eyes. She had just missed being exactly pretty, yet the face was an attractive one, and there was an atmosphere of refinement andsavoir faireabout her that left no room for doubt as to her standing in the social scale. She seemed about two or three and thirty in point of age—in reality she was not more than twenty-eight. All this he summed up in a flash, as he went through the above preliminary formalities.
“This is Dr Vine, our District Surgeon, Miss Carden,” he said in introduction. “Are you travelling alone, may I ask?”
“Yes. This time I thought I’d spring a surprise on my unknown relative, so of course I was obliged to hire a cart at Telani—the driver is such a disagreeable old man, by the bye. And the horses are wretched beasts. Why I had to stop the night at a most abominable roadside place—an accommodation house, I think they called it—presumably because ‘accommodation’ in every sense, was the very last thing they had to offer.” She laughed, so did the two men.
“Then there was a monster centipede kept appearing and disappearing on the wall above my bed, so that I had to keep the light going all night, and hardly got any sleep at all. And now one of the horses is dead lame, and I am wondering how I am going to get on to Mr Thornhill’s—unless you can help me, Mr Elvesdon.”
There was a something in the tone of this tail-off that conveyed to the listeners the impression that she was very much accustomed to being ‘helped’—in things great as well as small—and made no scruple about requisitioning such help.
“Certainly I can, Miss Carden,” answered Elvesdon. “If you will allow me I shall be delighted to drive you out to Thornhill’s this afternoon. Meanwhile it is just lunch time—if you will give me the pleasure of your company—you too, doctor? Very well then, we may as well adjourn at once.”
During lunch Elvesdon was somewhat silent. He had directed his native servants when to inspan his spider and to transfer the visitor’s baggage to that useful vehicle—further, he had arranged matters with the driver of the hired cart, an unprepossessing specimen of what would be defined in the Southern States as ‘mean white,’ and while doing so, the astounding revelation made to him by Vine had come back to him with all its full force. He did not know what to think. Thornhill seemed to him the last man in the world to commit a cold-blooded murder—and that the murder of a woman—but—what if it was a hot-blooded one? Looking back upon his observation of this new found friend he recalled a certain something that contained the possibilities of such—goaded by the weight of an intolerable incubus. And his sons believed in him and his daughter did not? Well, Elvesdon leaned to the opinion of the sons, and all his official instinct weighed on that side. There was absolutely no evidence that any crime had been effected at all, and did not the legal text-books teem with instances of disappearance for which innocent people had been executed in the ‘good old times’? Why of course. No. He at any rate was going to keep an open mind, and turn into fact the time-worn legal fiction that the accused was innocent until he was proved guilty.
So he was rather silent during lunch. The weight of Vine’s revelation was still on him; but the newcomer was quite at her ease and chatted away with Prior and the doctor.
But later, when they were bowling away merrily behind a fresh, well trotting pair of horses bound for Sipazi, he was obliged to put this new train of thought out of his head, for the new arrival plied him with all sorts of questions, as to the country and its natives, and other things; then got on to the subject of Thornhill.
“I have never seen him, you know, Mr Elvesdon, since I was ever so small. I don’t know anything really about him beyond what my poor mother told me. By the way—did he marry again?”
Elvesdon started unconsciously. In his present train of thought he was wondering how much she knew as to the matter about which he had only just heard.
“No. He has one girl at home now, and a boy away at the Rand.”
“Oh. That’s nice. Tell me. What is the girl like?”
“Charming. She’s like no other girl I’ve ever seen.”
The reply was made in a perfectly even tone, without any perceptible enthusiasm. The other was interested at once.
“What’s her name?”
“Edala. Peculiar name isn’t it?”
“Rather. Do you think we shall get on?”
Elvesdon burst out laughing.
“I should think it highly probable that you would. She is very unconventional—and you—well if you don’t mind my saying so, Miss Carden, I should think the same held good as regards yourself.”
“Of course I don’t mind your saying so; and it happens to be true. I like being talked to rationally, and not talked down to—as you men are too given to talking to us women. You know—a sort of humouring us, as if we were a lot of spoilt children.”
“But you must remember that if we don’t humour you, ‘you women,’ or at any rate the majority of you, vote us disagreeable if not rude; a favourite word with ‘you women’ by the way. It has such a fine, sonorous, roll-round-the-tongue flavour, you know.”
Evelyn Carden laughed—and laughed merrily. Elvesdon noticed that her laugh was light, open, free-hearted. There was no affectation, or posing, about it.
“I like that,” she said, “the more so that it is absolutely true. I suppose you are often over at the Thornhills’, Mr Elvesdon, as you are so near?”
“Oh yes. I put in Sundays with them, and enjoy it. Your relative is a particularly cultured and companionable man, Miss Carden, and in his quiet way, very genial.”
“And—Edala?”
This with just a spice of mischief, which the other ignored.
“I have already given you my opinion on that subject,” he said.
“How delightful. I am so glad I came up here. I only put it off because some people whose acquaintance I made on board ship asked me out to stay with them at their place near Malvern. I do hope, though, that Mr Thornhill won’t be offended with me about the non-delivery of the wire, but it really wasn’t my fault.”
Here Elvesdon did not entirely agree. He thought she ought to have made more sure. But he said:
“You need have no uneasiness on that score. Thornhill is a man with a large up-country experience, and I know of no better training for teaching a man to take things as they come.”
“Better and better,” she pronounced. “Why, how interesting he will be. But, you yourself, Mr Elvesdon—you must have some strange experiences too?”
“Well, you see, one can’t go through an official life like mine without. But, for the most part, they are experiences of queer and out of the way phases of human nature. I haven’t had any serious adventures if that’s what you mean.”
“No?”
“No. Never mind. I’m used to that note of disappointment. When I was over in England on leave three years and a half ago, I was always being asked how many lions I’d shot—the impression apparently being that one strolled out after office hours and bagged a few brace—and I answered frankly that I’d never seen a lion outside a cage—though I’ve heard them, by the way, at a long and respectful distance—I went down like a shot in general estimation. At last I began to feel like Clive, when hauled up over the looting business, ‘astonished at my own moderation,’ and thought it time to invent a lion lie or two. But it was too late then.”
Again she laughed—heartily, merrily. She turned a glance of unmitigated approval upon the man beside her. He, too, seemed rather unlike other people, with his easy, unconventional flow of talk and ideas; yet whether his life had been spent outside the sphere of adventure or not, she felt certain that given an emergency he would prove the strong, capable official, ready and able to deal with it at the critical or perilous moment.
Elvesdon’s mind, too, was running upon her and he was speculating as to the effect her presence would have upon those among whom her lot was to be cast for a time. She was bright, lively, natural; just the very companion for Edala, though somewhat older. Thornhill, too, wanted livening up; and now, seen in the light of the revelation he had heard that morning, Elvesdon thoroughly understood the restraint which had lain upon that household of two. This stranger from the outside world was just the one to take both out of themselves.
They left the more open rolling country, where the road suddenly dived down into the bosky ruggedness of a long winding valley, and here Evelyn grew enthusiastic over the romantic grandeur of the black forest-clad rifts sloping down from a great row of castellated crags. Here, too, bird and animal life seemed suddenly to blossom into being. Troops of monkeys skipped whimsically among the tree-tops chattering at the wayfarers, and the piping of bright spreuws flashing from frond to frond among the thorn bushes, and the call of the hoepoe, and the mellow cooing of doves making multitudinous melody throughout the broad valley into which they were descending, together with the quaint, grating duet of the yellow thrush—then, too, the deep boom of great hornbills stalking among the grass and stones, yonder, down the slope—all blended harmoniously in the unclouded evening calm, for the sun was near his rest now, and the stupendous krantz fronting the Sipazi mountain shone like fire.
“Why, it is glorious,” declared the newcomer gazing around. “What a lovely country this is.”
“There’s our destination,” said Elvesdon, pointing to the homestead lying on the farther side of the valley beneath, whence already the dogs were announcing their arrival in deep-mouthed clamour. “And there are your relatives,” he added, as two figures could be seen coming down from the front stoep, “and they are already taking stock of us through binoculars.”
Thornhill’s greeting was quiet but cordial.
“Welcome to Sipazi,” he said. “We had about given you up, but better late than never. I am afraid you’ll find it dull here, but after all, it’ll be a new experience I should think.”
“Of course it will, Mr Thornhill, and a delightful one. So this is—Edala.” And the two girls kissed each other.
“How did you know my name?” said Edala, with a laugh.
“Why you don’t suppose I haven’t been ‘pumping’ Mr Elvesdon all about you during our most delightful drive out here, do you? Of course I have.” And then she began entering upon explanations as to the seeming silence in answer to the telegram.
“Oh well, no matter. You’re here now, anyhow,” answered Thornhill characteristically. And Evelyn Carden, looking up into the strong, bearded, rather melancholy face, was deciding that she was going to like its owner very much indeed; and Elvesdon superintending the process of outspanning, was wondering whether these two girls were going to take to each other; and Edala was thinking that they were.
But—somehow, with the faintest possible twinge of uneasiness, the emphasis on those words ‘our most delightful drive’ jarred on her.