A Secret of the Lebombo Part 6

The "leaving me" had softened the girl, but the opprobrious term applied to her _fiance_ had been as the one nail that driveth out another.

"Don't call him names," she said, coldly, not angrily, thanks to her power of self-control. "He has been unfortunate, but he is the most honourable man who ever lived. The word 'waster' doesn't apply."

"Oh, I'm not saying anything against his honour," snapped her father.

"But the fact remains that he has never done any good for himself and never will. He's no chicken, mind; he can't be so very many years younger than myself. And when a man of his age gets to that age and is--well, where Wyvern is, the chances are a thousand to one he never picks himself up again. How's that?"

"How's that? It isn't."

"Isn't it. Well, then, Lalante, now we're well on the subject I want you to understand that this affair between you and him had better be broken off. In fact it must be broken off."

The girl was standing erect and her face had gone white. The large, dark-lashed grey eyes had something of a snap in them.

"It's too late for that now," she answered. "It cannot and shall not be broken off, no never. As long as he lives I will cling to him, and the more unfortunate he is the more I will cling to him. He is--my life."

Le Sage's face had gone white too--at least as far as the weather-beaten bronze was capable of doing--white with anger.

"So that's your answer?" he said.

"That's my answer."

For a moment they gazed at each other. Then, before a reply could come, a sound without struck upon the ears of both. It was the creaking sound made by the swing of a gate upon its hinges. Both faces turned to the window. Coming up the path between the orange trees was Wyvern himself.

Whereby it is manifest that infinite potentialities lay within the s.p.a.ce of the next half-hour.

CHAPTER SIX.

WHAT THEY DID NOT FIND.

"How are you, Le Sage?" said Wyvern, as his father-in-law elect met him in the doorway. "You look worried. Anything wrong?"

"Don't know. No--er, well no," as they shook hands. They had been very friendly before Lalante had appeared upon the scene, and even afterwards, Le Sage had a sneaking weakness for the other, but what he could not pardon was what he termed the other's incapacity. A man might have ill-luck and pick himself up again, but this one, he told himself, was incapable of that. Nor did it carry any soothing effect that Lalante went straight to him and kissed him openly and affectionately.

"How glad I am to see you, darling," she said, a sunny light in her eyes as she looked at him. Le Sage grunted to himself, but it did not escape Wyvern. Something of warning too in Lalante's eyes did not escape him either.

"Father is only just back from the sale at Krumi Post," she went on, "and although he did a good stroke of business there he's come back grumpy. Well now it's just dinner-time and you'll all be better after that."

Wyvern was quick to take in that something was wrong, but it never occurred to him to connect it with the doings of the day before. He set it down rather to the general disapproval of himself which had become more and more manifest of late in the demeanour of his quondam friend.

There might have been an awkwardness but that Lalante took care never to leave them alone together.

"Did anyone take your horse, dear?" she said. "Because, if not, I can send someone to shout for Piet."

"That's all right, Piet took him from me at the gate. Well, Le Sage-- what did you do at the sale?"

The other told him, thawing a bit. Then, when they sat down to table, Wyvern opened the story of the slaughtering incident, and the tragic end of one of the actors therein. But of the attack of both upon himself he said nothing.

"A most infernal nuisance," grumbled Le Sage. "I don't know why I was fool enough to allow myself to be nominated Field-cornet. Well, if one of the _schepsels_ has cheated the 'cat' the other's all there for it, that's one consolation."

"Oh, I don't know. I'm going to let the poor devil off."

"Going to--what?" snapped Le Sage. "Oh, look here, Wyvern, really you're getting past a joke. A fellow like you is a nuisance to the whole community. Why it's putting a premium on 'slaag-tag.' You catch this swine red-handed--a clear case for the 'cat'--and then say you're going to let him off. It isn't fair to the rest of us. Don't you see that?"

As a matter of fact Wyvern did see it; and felt a little uncomfortable.

"Perhaps you're right, Le Sage," he said. "But I'm too soft-hearted I suppose, and the sight of that other wretched devil, with that beastly snake tied round his leg, squirting blue death into him with every bite, is a sight I shan't get rid of all in a hurry. And one human life, even that of a Kafir, is about expiation enough for a miserable sheep, worth eighteen bob or a pound at the outside. Eh?"

"I never heard such rot in my life," was the answer. "All the more reason why the other chap's hide should be made to smart for the whole mischief. Eh? Aren't I right, Lalante?"

A spirit of cussedness made him thus appeal to his daughter, a sort of longing to make her espouse his side against this other. But, even as he did so, he realised that he might as well have spared himself the trouble.

"No. I don't think you are, since you put it to me," she answered unhesitatingly. "On the contrary, I think you'd do much better to go and hold your enquiry and leave the other part of the business alone altogether."

"The devil you do!"

"That's it. You've put it exactly, father," laughed Lalante; "You'll be riding over there after dinner, I suppose. Well, I'll go with you."

He expostulated. It was no place for a girl. The sight of a dead Kafir was no sight for her, he pointed out with some show of reason.

"But I've no intention of seeing any such sight," she objected serenely.

"I'll wait for you a little way off while you make your investigations.

That'll be all right."

Wyvern caught one swift look which rejoiced his heart. She had resolved not to let the whole afternoon go by without him if she could be with him. But there was more beneath her plan than he suspected. She did not mean to afford her father any opportunity of quarrelling with him, as he almost certainly would, in his then mood, if they were alone together for any s.p.a.ce of time just then. In most things Lalante contrived to get her own way.

Now with a rush and a racket, two small boys came tumbling in, hot and ruddy with their scramblings about the veldt. Each exhibited, in triumph, a bunch of long feathers from the tail of the mouse-bird, or rather of many mouse-birds; the spoil of their bow and spear--or rather, catapults.

"Here you are, dad. You're set up in pipe-cleaners now for some time to come. Hullo, Mr Wyvern. There'll be enough for you too."

They chucked the feathers down unceremoniously upon the table, and began to draw up chairs. But Lalante interposed.

"No. No you don't, Charlie--Frank--away you go, and do the soap and basin trick. I'm not going to have you sitting down to table straight out of the veldt," she said decisively. "Come--scoot--do you hear?"

"Oh, all right. Man--Mr Wyvern, but there's a big troop of guinea-fowl down by the second _draai_. I hope you brought your gun."

"Did I say 'Scoot'?" repeated Lalante, the disciplinarian.

They lingered no further after that. They were good-looking boys, with their sister's large grey eyes. In a trice they were back again, keeping things lively with their chatter, and the girl encouraged them.

There was thunder in the air, she recognised, and her main anxiety was to avert the impending storm. And afterwards, before she retired to put on her riding-gear, she managed to impress upon the two youngsters that they were to help entertain their guest for all they knew how until her return, which duty--Wyvern being a prime favourite with them--was not an onerous one; moreover with them Lalante's word was law.

Their ride forth was not exactly a success. Lalante, bright, beautiful, sparkling, kept up a flow of laughing quips, but the more she did so, the more gloomy--grumpy she called it--did her father become. Wyvern, riding by her side, felt all aglow with the pride of possession as he noted every fascinating little trick of speech, or manner, or pose, all absolutely natural and unaffected, and all going to make up the very complete charm of her personality. Not for the first time either did he find himself marvelling how this pride of possession should be his at all. Though only in the early twenties Lalante had had time and opportunity for "experiences," but such experiences, however disquieting to the other parties to them, had left her unscathed. She had come to him heart-whole. None before him had ever had power to awaken her.

That had been reserved for him, and the awakening had been mutual from the very first.

"We'd better leave the horses here, Le Sage," suggested Wyvern as they drew near the _donga_ wherein the unfortunate Kafir would be lying.

"It'll be cool for Lalante under these trees, and the place is only a hundred yards further. Moreover we shall have to scramble a bit to get to it."

Le Sage glumly a.s.sented, cursing the bother of the whole business. He had just got home off a journey and here he was, lugged out over miles of veldt because an infernal fool of a n.i.g.g.e.r had got bitten by a snake.

The Field-cornet job wasn't good enough at that price, and he'd chuck it.