The Triumph of Hilary Blachland Part 19

CHAPTER FIVE.

AN EPISODE IN SIEVER'S KLOOF.

The days sped by and still Hilary Blachland remained as a guest at George Bayfield's farm.

He had talked about moving on, but the suggestion had been met by a frank stare of astonishment on the part of his host.

"Where's your hurry, man?" had replied the latter. "Why, you've only just come."

"Only just come! You don't seem to be aware, Bayfield, that I've been here nearly four weeks."

"No, I'm not. But what then? What if it's four or fourteen or forty?

You don't want to go up-country again just yet. By the way, though, it must be mighty slow here."

"Now, Bayfield, I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings, but you're talking bosh, rank bosh. I don't believe you know it, though. Slow indeed!"

"Perhaps Mr Blachland's tired of us, father," said Lyn demurely, but with a spice of mischief.

"Well, you know, you yourselves can have too much of a not very good thing," protested Hilary, rather lamely.

"Ha-ha! Now we'll turn the tables. Who's talking bosh this time?" said Bayfield triumphantly.

"Man, Mr Blachland, you mustn't go yet," cut in small Fred excitedly.

"Stop and shoot some more bushbucks."

"Very well, Fred. No one can afford to run clean counter to public opinion. So that settles it," replied Blachland gaily.

"That's all right," said Bayfield. "And we haven't taken him over to Earle's yet. I know what we'll do. We'll send and let Earle know we are all coming over for a couple of nights, and he must get up a shoot in between. Then we'll show him the pretty widow."

A splutter from Fred greeted the words. "She isn't pretty a bit," he p.r.o.nounced. "A black, ugly thing."

"Look out, sonny," laughed his father. "She'll take it out of you when she's your schoolmissis."

But the warning was received by the imp with a half growl, half jeer.

The prospect of that ultimate fate, which had already been dangled over him, and which he only half realised, may have helped to prejudice him against one whom he could not but regard as otherwise than his natural enemy.

The unanimity wherewith the household of three voted against his departure was more than gratifying to Hilary Blachland. Looking back upon life since he had been Bayfield's guest, he could only declare to himself that it was wholly delightful. The said Bayfield, with his unruffled, take-us-as-you-find-us way of looking at things--well, the more he saw of the man the more he liked him, and the two were on the most easy terms of friendship of all, which may best be defined that neither ever wanted the other to do anything the other didn't want to.

Even the small boy regarded him as an acquisition, while Lyn--well, the frank, friendly, untrammelled intercourse between them const.i.tuted, he was forced to admit to himself, the brightness and sunshine of the pleasant, reposeful days which were now his. He had no reason to rate himself too highly, even in his own estimation, and the last three or four weeks spent in her daily society brought this more and more home to him. Well, whatever he had sown, whatever he might reap, in short, whatever might or might not be in store for him, he was the better now, would be to the end of his days, the better for having known her.

Indeed it seemed to him now as though his life were divided into two complete periods--the time before he had known Lyn Bayfield, and subsequently.

Thus reflecting, he was pacing the stoep smoking an after-breakfast pipe. The valley stretched away, radiant in the morning sunshine, and the atmosphere was sharp and brisk with a delicious exhilaration. Down in the camps he could see the black dots moving, where great ostriches stalked, and every now and then the triple boom, several times repeated, from the throat of one or other of the huge birds, rolled out upon the morning air. The song of a Kaffir herd, weird, full-throated, but melodious, arose from the further hillside, where a large flock of Angora goats was streaming forth to its grazing ground.

"What would you like to do to-day, Blachland?" said his host, joining him. "I've got to ride over to Theunis Nel's about some stock, but it means the best part of the day there, so I don't like suggesting your coming along. They're the most infernal boring crowd, and you'd wish yourself dead."

Hilary thought this would very likely be the case, but before he could reply there came an interruption--an interruption which issued from a side door somewhere in the neighbourhood of the kitchen, for they were standing at the end of the stoep, an interruption wearing an ample white "kapje," and with hands and wrists all powdery with flour, but utterly charming for all that.

"What's that you're plotting, father? No, you're not to take Mr Blachland over to any tiresome Dutchman's. No wonder he talks about going away. Besides, I want to take him with me. I'm going to paint-- in Siever's Kloof, and Fred isn't enough of an escort."

"I think I'll prefer that immeasurably, Miss Bayfield," replied he most concerned.

"I shall be ready, then, in half an hour. And--I don't like 'Miss Bayfield'--it sounds so stiff, and we are such old friends now. You ought to say Lyn. Oughtn't he, father, now that he is quite one of ourselves?"

"Well, _I_ should--after that," answered Bayfield, comically, blowing out a big cloud of smoke.

But while he laughed pleasantly, promising to avail himself of the privilege, Hilary was conscious of a kind of mournful impression that the frank ingenuousness of the request simply meant that she placed him on the same plane as her father, in short, regarded him as one of a bygone generation. Well, she was right. He was no chicken after all, he reminded himself grimly.

"I say, Lyn, I'm going with you too!" cried Fred, who was seated on a waggon-pole a little distance off, putting the finishing touches to a new catapult-handle.

"All right. I'll be ready in half an hour," replied the girl.

One of the prettiest bits in Siever's Kloof was the very spot whereon Blachland had shot the large bushbuck ram, and here the two had taken up their position. For nearly an hour Lyn had been very busy, and her escort seated there, lazily smoking a pipe, would every now and then overlook her work, offering criticisms, and making suggestions, some of which were accepted, and some were not. Fred, unable to remain still for ten minutes at a time, was ranging afar with his air-gun--now put right again--and, indeed, with it he was a dead shot.

"I never can get the exact shine of these red krantzes," Lyn was saying.

"That one over there, with the sun just lighting it up now, I know I shall reproduce it either the colour of a brick wall or a dead smudge.

The shine is what I want to get."

"And you may get it, or you may not, probably the latter. There are two things, at any rate, which n.o.body has ever yet succeeded in reproducing with perfect accuracy, the colour of fire and golden hair--like yours.

Yes, it's a fact. They make it either straw colour or too red, but always dead. There's no shine in it."

Lyn laughed, lightheartedly, unthinkingly.

"True, O King! But I expect you're talking heresy all the same. I wonder what that boy is up to?" she broke off, looking around.

"Why, he's a mile or so away up the kloof by this time. Do you ever get tired of this sort of life, Lyn?"

"Tired? No. Why should I? Whenever I go away anywhere, after the first novelty has worn off, I always long to get back."

"And how long a time does it take to compa.s.s that aspiration?"

"About a week. At the end of three I am desperately homesick, and long to get back here to old father, and throw away gloves and let my hands burn."

Blachland looked at the hands in question--long-fingered, tapering, but smooth and delicate and refined--brown indeed with exposure to the air, but not in the least roughened. What an enigma she was, this girl. He watched, her as she sat there, sweet and cool and graceful as she plied her brushes, the wide brim of her straw hat turned up in front so as not to impede her view. Every movement was a picture, he told himself--the quick lifting of the eyelid as she looked at her subject, the delicate supple turn of the wrist as she worked in her colouring. And the surroundings set forth so perfectly the central figure--the varying shades of the trees and their dusky undergrowth, the great krantz opposite, fringed with trailers, bristling with spiky aloes lining up along its ledges. Bright spreuws flashed and piped, darting forth from its shining face; and other bird voices, the soft note of the hoepoe, and the cooing of doves kept the warm golden air pleasant with harmony.

"What is your name the short for, Lyn?" he said, picking up one of her drawing-books, whereon it was traced--in faded ink upon the faded cover.

She laughed. "It isn't a name at all really. It's only my initials. I have three ugly Christian names represented under the letters L.Y.N., and it began with a joke among the boys when I was a very small kiddie.

But now I rather like it. Don't you?"

"Yes. Very much... Why, what's the matter now?"

For certain shrill shouts were audible from the thick of the bush, but at no great distance away. They recognised Fred's voice, and he was hallooing like mad.

"Lyn! Mr Blachland! Quick--quick! Man, here's a whacking big snake!"

"Oh, let's go and see!" cried the girl, hurriedly putting down her drawing things, and springing to her feet. "No--no. You stay here.