Harley Greenoak's Charge Part 7

And Hazel Brandon was all that. Such sunshine did her presence and merry spirits and winning ways create in this sober male household, that the two older members of the same felt almost uneasy, so incongruous did it seem to the quiet and somewhat sombre life of the place. The younger--well, he was in something of a whirl. One thing about the girl puzzled him, and that was how she could be so nearly related to his host. The latter he was very taken with. He was a dear old chap, as he was wont to say; but with all his sterling qualities, old Hesketh was certainly not quite his equal from a social standpoint. Yet this girl looked absolutely thoroughbred; was, too, in all her ways and ideas.

She must have got it on her father's side, conjectured d.i.c.k, perhaps correctly.

There was one thing about her that appealed to him if only that he believed he had encountered it in her for the first time. She was so absolutely natural and devoid of self-consciousness. True he had seen the counterfeit of this in other girls of his acquaintance, but it had not seemed to ring true. He had felt sure--again perhaps correctly-- that they were doing it for effect; "crowding it on," as he more tersely put it. But here he detected no trace of any such thing.

"Do you think I am such a feeble tottering creature, Mr Selmes, that I can't even turn a door handle for myself?" she said one day, when he had bounded across the room--upsetting one chair and barking his shin against another in his anxiety to perform that onerous undertaking for her.

The words were said with a bright smile. d.i.c.k mumbled something.

"Well, I can, then. I'm not one of your helpless English girls who can't even stick a stamp on a letter for themselves."

"Oh, you've been in England, then?"

"Haven't I! For three years. Not long, but still I went about a good deal."

"Where?" he asked eagerly.

She named several places; one at which he himself had stayed on the occasion of a shooting party. Here was an additional link in common.

"Has our young buffalo hunter shot all the game on the farm, Greenoak?"

said old Hesketh, one day as the two sat smoking on the stoep.

"Why?"

"Because he don't seem over keen on going after it these days. His gun'll get rusty if he don't mind," chuckled the old man, reaching a handful of tobacco out of his pocket and cramming his pipe.

"The young folks seem to have cottoned to each other," he went on, between puns. The other had no need to follow the glance--for "the young folks" aforesaid had been visible to him for some time away down the kloof, and the sight, even before his companion's remark, had set Harley Greenoak thinking.

So far his charge had given him no trouble. Twice he had got him out of a situation which would certainly have cost him his life; in other words, had saved his life twice. That, however, was all in the bond.

He thought nothing of that. But here loomed a complication which neither himself nor Sir Anson had foreseen. Both had only taken into consideration mere difficulties or dangers of field and flood; but here was a new side to his responsibility. With his keen insight into character he had sized up old Hesketh's niece on very short acquaintance; and his private opinion was that whoever succeeded in winning the affections of this girl--whether d.i.c.k Selmes, or anybody else--would be a very lucky fellow. But would Sir Anson be likely to share this opinion? That was the question, and in all probability one to be answered with a negative. He might have other views for his son, or he might object to the latter contracting any tie for the present--or all sorts of reasons. Harley Greenoak realised that he had some cause for anxiety.

If anything should come of this matter, and Sir Anson considered that he had failed in his responsibility, he would unhesitatingly forego any remuneration; but his anxiety rested on higher grounds than pecuniary loss. He had a great liking for his charge, and for his charge's father, and, worse still perhaps, his reliability would stand impugned.

Now, it was precisely for reliability that Harley Greenoak enjoyed a reputation little short of infallible, and of this he himself was aware, and, though secretly, was intensely proud.

He wondered if Hesketh--sly old fox--had brought about the situation with deliberate design, in order to do a good turn to his kinsfolk. It might well have been--and one could hardly blame him if it were so.

Instinctively Greenoak realised that it would be useless for him to interfere at this stage. He had tried it at an earlier one, though "interfere" is too strong a word for the easy, natural, tactful way in which he had suggested they should move somewhere else. His charge, equally and naturally, but quite good-humouredly, had scouted the idea.

Hesketh would be hurt, he had declared. He was no end of a jolly old chap, and he, d.i.c.k, wouldn't offend him for the world. And then Haakdoornfontein was no end of a jolly place, with a different shoot, by Jingo, for every day in the year. And Greenoak had laughed drily, as he reflected that his charge's enthusiasm for that form of sport had flagged perceptibly of late. But like a wise man and a tactful one he had known better than to push the suggestion further. Things must just take their course, he decided. A matter of this kind was a delicate one, and one in which the man most concerned must judge for himself. At any rate, it was clean outside his own province.

"These young 'uns, you know, will have their heads," now went on old Hesketh, puffing out smoke. "I suppose we took our doses of foolishness, Greenoak, when we were at their time. Though, I dunno about me. It was just 'yes or no' with the old woman, 'take it or leave it.' She took it, and managed the place. I don't know, either, that things haven't been quieter--well, since I've managed it myself," he added drily.

There lay the summing up of a lifetime; a hard, lonely, matter-of-fact, out-of-the-world lifetime. Greenoak nodded. He was not going to make any comment on the situation. He was not going to ruffle his old friend's susceptibilities by any suggestion that d.i.c.k's father might object, more or less strongly, to the said situation and its logical outcome. Old Hesketh's social creed was simplicity itself: "Black's black and white's white, and one white man's as good as another, and no better." This Greenoak knew.

Again he wondered whether Hesketh had brought about the situation with a purpose. Hesketh was a mine of natural shrewdness, and here was scope for it. d.i.c.k Selmes had spent some three weeks on this wild and remote place, roughing it as he had probably never dreamed of roughing it, his sole companions one old and one elderly man--Greenoak was modest, you see. Then, enter a bright, pretty, taking girl, who makes the rough places, as by magic, smooth, imports the refinement to which his charge has been accustomed, with one sweep of the wand, and whose personality is in itself a supplement to the sunshine. No contrast could be more strongly marked. a.s.suredly if Hesketh had of his own intuition brought off such a dramatic stroke, why, Hesketh was more of a genius than the acquaintance of that rugged old recluse would have given him credit for being. But this reflection did not tend to lighten Harley Greenoak's private disquietude.

CHAPTER SEVEN.

GOOD NEWS.

"When are you going to shoot another back for us, Mr Selmes?" Hazel Brandon was saying. "As officer in charge of the Commissariat Department, it's my duty to tell you that if you don't we shall have to begin on mutton, and it's your especial mission to keep us in game.

So--when are you?"

"When you come and help me do it."

"Help you? Yes--like the other evening when we went to _voor-ly_ for a bush-buck over Slaang Draai, and you talked so much that although we sat there till it was dark none came out. Now what sort of 'help' is that?"

He looked down into the bright, teasing face, and thought he had seldom--or was it ever?--looked upon any sight which delighted him more.

"Well, you helped me to talk anyhow," he said. "Now didn't you?"

One form of sport was to gain a point overlooking this or that bushy kloof about an hour before sundown and sit still, waiting till the bush-bucks began to move. Thus a shot was to be obtained when one showed upon an open s.p.a.ce. d.i.c.k Selmes, who had become a very fair rifle shot, had bagged several this way. The occasion to which the girl had referred was one on which he had persuaded her to accompany him-- with the remit described.

"Never mind," he went on, without waiting for her answer. "It was no end jolly all the same. Wasn't it?"

"I don't know. I seem to remember it became no end cold," she laughed.

"But you're trying to get away from the point. You must go and shoot a buck for me this afternoon. Why, you hardly ever hunt now. You're getting quite lazy."

It was a coincidence that her uncle should be making substantially the same remark about a quarter of a mile away.

"Lazy! I like that. How about all those jolly rides we've been having?

Lazy!"

"Well, I didn't mean it in its strictly literal sense," she answered.

"Yes, I have enjoyed those rides."

Hazel had been about a fortnight at Haakdoornfontein, and during that time she and d.i.c.k Selmes had become very friendly indeed. It was the old story--youth, mutual attraction and propinquity, and but for the fact that she was the stronger minded of the two, and adhered to a rigid resolution not to neglect her self-imposed household duties, it is probable that their elders would have seen very little of her or of either of them.

"You know, it was quite a surprise to me to find you and Mr Greenoak here," she went on. "You know Uncle Eph by this time. Well, he never writes a word that he isn't obliged to; so when mother sent a boy with a note to say I was coming, he just returned for answer 'Glad to see her.'

That and no more."

"By Jove!" cried d.i.c.k. "And you didn't know we were here."

"Not an atom. I expected to find him alone, as usual. He never has people here."

"We ought to be flattered then. Greenoak thinks your uncle got him here on purpose to try and clear up that Slaang Kloof mystery. But that's ancient history now, and he doesn't seem to want us to go. He objected, quite strongly for him, when I suggested moving on."

"Did he? He has taken quite a fancy to you. I never knew him so gracious to any _man_ under about fifty before. He's usually grim."

"I think him a dear old chap," said d.i.c.k, decisively. "Such a character too. Well, I'm jolly glad he didn't take me at my word," with a meaning look at the sweet sparkling face beside him; which look the owner of the said face chose utterly to ignore. But from the foregoing dialogue it is obvious that Harley Greenoak's suspicions as to his host's complicity in any possible complications with regard to his charge were without foundation in fact.

"I shouldn't be surprised if Mr Greenoak was right, and that Uncle Eph did get him up here to clear up the mystery," said Hazel. "Though none of you--not even you--will ever tell me what that mystery is," she added reproachfully. "Well, never mind. I'm not going to press you to. I believe I'll ask Kleinbooi though."

Whereby it will be seen that Harley Greenoak's advice to the other two concerned, to keep silence as to the nature of the Slaang Kloof mystery, had been rigidly adhered to.

d.i.c.k laughed. "You might as well ask that tree."

"Does he know?"