Aletta Part 16

"Why, Mr Kershaw, we were thinking you were dead," said Mrs Wenlock, in her cordial, breezy way. "It is a long time since we saw you last."

"So Frank was saying, Mrs Wenlock. But I am not. Death has not given me a call yet."

None there knew how very near truth their jesting words came--save one.

One knew it, and with her Colvin, for the life of him, could not help exchanging a look. It was an exchange, and, swiftly as it flashed between them in its fulness of meaning, it did not go un.o.bserved--by one.

"Hallo, Colvin, you've got your rifle along this time," cried Frank, through the open window, who was examining the piece. "Why, I thought you never carried anything but a shot-gun down here."

"I don't generally. But I might be going up into the Wildschutsberg,"

and again he brought his eyes round to those of Aletta. "Now and then you get a long shot at a reebok up there."

"Why, this is the same old gun you had up in Matabeleland," went on Frank, sighting the weapon and pointing and recovering it. "Nothing like these Lee-Metfords with the Martini block. By George, Miss De la Rey, how he used to make the n.i.g.g.e.rs skip in the Matopos with this same pea-shooter!"

"Yes?" said Aletta, brightly, with simulated interest, but with a dire chill at her heart. What if this weapon should come to be pointed at others than dark-skinned barbarians, and that soon? Truth to tell for some occult reason the patriotic enthusiasm had cooled a little of late.

"Adrian had one of the new guns round at our place the other day," said Jan. "A Mauser. He said it would shoot three miles. It is wonderful.

I can hardly believe it."

"Well, try a shot or two out of that, Jan," said Colvin. "Only leave a few cartridges, in case I should come in for a good chance, riding along."

Jan did--making some excellent practice, at ant-heaps scattered at varying distances over the veldt. Then his sisters declared that he had better see about inspanning, for it was time they were getting home.

"I shall have to be moving soon myself," said Colvin. "I want to be in Schalkburg to-night."

"In Schalkburg?" echoed Mrs Wenlock. "Why, you are in a hurry--and we haven't seen you for such a time."

"Yes; it's a pity. But I have to do some business there first thing in the morning, so it's as well to get there over-night."

"I thought you said you might be going up to the Wildschutsberg," said Aletta, with a spice of mischief. "Isn't that rather a long way round?"

"It is rather. Only in the opposite direction. But I won't go that way."

And then, the cart being inspanned, they exchanged farewells. The handclasp between Colvin and Aletta was not one fraction more prolonged than that which he exchanged with the other two girls--if anything shorter. May, watching, could not but admit this, but did not know whether to feel relieved or not.

"So that is 'the only English girl'!" said Aletta to herself as they drove off. "Old Tant' Plessis was both right and wrong. They are not engaged, but still there is a sort of something between them, and that something is all, or nearly all, on her side. She would not make him happy, either--or be happy with him. She is pretty, very pretty, but common. She is gusty-tempered, has no self-command, and would be horribly jealous. No. She could never make him happy."

Those whom she had left, however, were at that very moment formulating their opinions upon her, but aloud.

"What a nice girl Aletta has grown into!" Mrs Wenlock was saying.

"She used to be shy and awkward, and nothing to look at, before she went away, and now she's so bright, and smart, and stylish, and almost pretty. It's wonderful what her stay at Cape Town has done for her."

"I don't think she's pretty at all," said May decisively. "I call her ugly."

"No, I'll be hanged if she's ugly," said Frank.

"No, indeed," agreed his mother; "look what pretty hair she has, and pretty hands, and then her manner is so delightful. And there is such a stylish look about her, too! Don't you agree with me, Mr Kershaw?"

"Yes; I do," was the reply, made as evenly as though the subject under discussion had been Andrina or Condaas, or any other girl in the district.

"Well, I think she's a horrid girl," persisted May. "Style, indeed?

What you call style, I call 'side.' She puts on a kind of condescending, talk-down-to-you sort of manner. These Dutch girls,"

with withering emphasis on the national adjective, "are that way. They go away from home for a little and come back as stuck-up as they can be.

That one is too grand for anything--in her own estimation. A horrid, stuck-up thing."

Colvin, listening, winced. The idea expressed, the very wording of its expression, grated upon him horribly, apart from the ident.i.ty of the subject thereof. In such wise would May from time to time lapse, and become, as Aletta had put it to herself, "common."

He made no comment upon her vehement and ill-natured dictum, knowing perfectly well that it was uttered quite as much as a challenge to himself as to relieve the utterer's feelings; and he was far too old and experienced to be drawn by any such transparent device. But as they re-entered the sitting-room the jarring effect of the words was intensified, bringing back in vivid contrast the last time he was there; that evening when he had been so near turning the most momentous corner which could meet him within the career of life. He had not turned it.

A warning hand had, so to speak, been held up. This girl--he could see her as she was then, in her sweet alluring beauty, soft-voiced, appealing. He could see her now, hard-eyed, vindictive, and expressing herself in a manner that savoured of the wash-tub. What a near thing it had been--how narrow his escape!

He would have been tied fast, bound hand and foot. Even now there was a certain length of loose coil around him, which would need some care and judgment entirely to cast off. Still there was no hard-and-fast bond, and looking backward over the events of the past three weeks or so, he felt lost in thankfulness because of the trivial, fortuitous incident which had availed to stay his tongue when it had so nearly spoken.

"You are not particularly lively, after all this time, Colvin."

He started, and put down the paper he had pretended to read, while the above reflections were coursing through his brain. They were alone together in the room, he and May. Frank, divested of his coat and waistcoat, could be seen in the distance doing odd jobs, and Mrs Wenlock had withdrawn for an afternoon nap. Her visitors, she declared, although dear girls, had tired her.

"No, I'm afraid I'm not," he said. "I believe I'm tired. Well, let's talk."

Something in the words brought back that last evening they were thus alone together. The recollection softened her, but only for a moment.

"I can imagine it seems dull now that your Dutch friends are gone," she began, in a crisp, gunpowdery way which was more than a declaration of war. It was in fact the firing of the first sh.e.l.l.

"Oh, bother it, May, why will you harp on that insane prejudice of nationality?" he expostulated, but quite good-humouredly, purposely ignoring her real drift. "A good sort is a good sort, no matter what his or her nationality. And I think you'll allow that old Stepha.n.u.s and his crowd come under that heading."

"So you seem to think," was the acid reply. "You have been there a good deal of late, haven't you?"

"Yes, I like them very much, and the shoot is choice." And then he went on to tell her about the bags he had made, and old Tant' Plessis and her absurd perversities, and the ridiculous muddle the old woman had made between his name and that of the sixteenth-century Reformer. His object was to keep her attention away from personalities. But that object she saw through.

"You were not so fond of them three or four weeks ago," she said, half turned away from him, and beginning to speak quickly, while the sea-blue eyes filled. "That is just the time that girl has been back. Goodness!

I never thought to see you--_you_--running after an ugly Dutch girl."

Every word grated upon Colvin's mind--grated intensely, so much so indeed as to leave no room for anger, only disgust and disillusionment.

At that moment, too, there flashed vividly through his mind a vision of the speaker, as contrasted with this "ugly Dutch girl" here in this very room but a few minutes ago, and the contrast was all in favour of the latter--yes, a hundred times over in her favour, he told himself. And now this one was going to make a scene; so much was evident. She was crudely, unsophisticatedly jealous, and had no self-control whatever.

Heavens! what an escape he had had!

"See here, May," he said. "That sort of remark is not to my liking at all. It is--well, exceedingly unpleasant, and really I don't care about listening to all this. I am responsible to n.o.body for my actions, remember, and there is not one living soul who has the slightest right or t.i.tle to call me to account for anything I do or don't do. And I am a little too old to begin to obey orders now. So if you will kindly give up abusing people I like, and with whom I happen to be very friendly, I shall be grateful. I don't like to hear it, and it doesn't come well from you."

But the girl made no answer. She had dropped her face into her hands, and was silently sobbing. He, watching her, was softened directly. His first impulse was to take her in his arms and strive to comfort her. He still had a very weak place for her, although the scales had fallen from his eyes, owing to two causes. But an instinct of prudence and a great deal of cynicism born of experience rose up to restrain him. He had gone through this sort of thing before. He had seen women utterly miserable and heart-broken seemingly, on his account, as they said, meaning it, too, at the time; but six months or a year thence had found them laughing in his face, if not playing the same game with somebody else; but he himself had not taken them seriously, wherefore it didn't matter. Yet it was all part of an education, and of what use was an education save to be applied?

"Don't cry like that, little one," he said gently. "Why should we say hard things to each other, you and I? We never used to."

The gentle tone melted her at once. She dropped her hands. All the hardness had gone out of her face, and the sea-blue eyes were limpid and tender and winning.

"No, we used not. I have become very bad-tempered--very quarrelsome.

But--oh, Colvin, I am so tired of life--of life here. It gets upon my nerves, I think. And I have hardly any friends, and you--you the greatest of them all, hardly seem to care for me--for us--now. I--we-- never see you in these days, and--I feel it somehow."

Colvin's heart smote him. He need not have stayed away so long and so markedly, but there was a reason, and he had acted with the best intentions. Wherein he had blundered, as people invariably do when they suffer their actions to be guided by such tissue-paper motives, instead of by the hard and safe rule of judiciousness, expediency, and knowledge of human nature.