The White Hand and the Black Part 19

"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 and _savoir faire_ about 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 p.r.o.nounced. "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 mult.i.tudinous 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 gra.s.s 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."