The White Hand and the Black Part 24

"Then you'll have all the fun of being an eye-witness."

She laughed.

"Yes, you'd have to be on your mettle then. Well I'll come and encourage you. I don't think I'll shoot just yet, myself. I believe I've ever so slight a touch of headache. Later, perhaps--when it gets cooler."

Then Prior had begun to express unbounded concern. Why of course Miss Thornhill ought to keep quiet, and as much out of the sun as possible.

A headache! Fancy that! and no wonder, since it had been so jolly hot-- and so on, and so on--till his official chief experienced a savage desire to kick him soundly, in that the blundering idiot was drawing attention to a little arrangement he was wanting to bring off quite unostentatiously.

However, that had soon pa.s.sed, and now Elvesdon lay there, puffing out smoke, and in full enjoyment of life and this situation therein. He was not overmuch inclined to talk, either; a deficiency for which his subordinate seemed abundantly inclined to make up. He was watching the girl, as she moved about; the erect poise of the gold-crowned head, the swift play of the thick lashes, the straight glance of the clear blue eyes, the full throat, the mellow, clear, whole-hearted laugh.

Everything about her, every movement, so natural and unstudied; the flash of each smile which lighted up her face--ah, all this had had too large a share in his dreaming and waking hours of late.

Then he found himself comparing her with Evelyn Carden. The latter-- sweet, gracious, reposeful--would have appealed--appealed powerfully to many men; but there was no comparison between the two, decided this one.

He looked at Thornhill, now as he had done since the doctor's revelation, in a new light. How could it be true? How could such a man as this have been by any means led into the committal of a cold-blooded murder. No. The idea could not be entertained--not for one single moment could it, he decided. And yet--!

The place where they rested was an ideal of sylvan loveliness, the green glade overhung by the rugged face of the cliff, from whose ledges and interstices jutted here and there the spider-like spikiness of sprouting aloes, or the slender stiff stem of the Kafir bean. Away on three sides swept the tumbled ma.s.ses of bush verdure; here a ridge, there a rift; in whose cool, shaded depths the melody of bird voices made music without ceasing. Beyond, a towering mountain cone, its steep sides shimmering in the mid-day heat against the deep blue of an unclouded sky, and the splendid air, warm yet invigorating, hummed to the music of harvesting-bees. Even the group of natives, squatted a little distance off, lent a picturesque feature as they talked in a drowsy undertone, and the great, rough-haired dogs lying on their sides panting in the shade bore their part in the picture. And the day was but half through--and there was that gold-crowned head dazzling his glance as though he were gazing at the sun--and life was very well worth living indeed--and there, not so very many miles away, in just such a sweet and restful spot as this, lay the mangled body of dead Teliso; for so do the tragic and the idyllic run side by side on parallel rails. By and bye these might be destined to converge.

CHAPTER TWENTY.

MANAMANDHLA'S ESCAPE.

The horses were caught and saddled up. As they rode forth from their resting place, Edala was exchanging banter with Elvesdon, and in the ring of her dear merry laugh there was no suggestion of a sufferer from headache.

"Now then," said Thornhill, reining in at the head of a long, deep, wild ravine. "We must arrange our strategy." And he looked from the one to the other.

"I'll go and see Mr Elvesdon miss," said Edala, unhesitatingly. "I know exactly where to place him, and he'll have the best chances of missing he's ever had in his life."

There was a laugh at this, led by the victim himself.

"Then who'll take care of Miss Carden?"

Prior looked up eagerly, but before he could say anything, Evelyn remarked quietly:--

"Do let me ride with you, Mr Thornhill. It will be just as interesting to see how the things are driven out, as to see how they are shot."

"But, I'm going down into the thick of the kloof this time. How about skirts?"

"Oh, that's all right. I'll keep behind you when it gets thick."

"Very well then if you do that. There's a tolerable attempt at a path down there. Prior, you keep along the top, on the right--hundred yards in front of us, or a little more."

Thornhill was pleased. He was glad to have Evelyn with him. There was something about her that was both congenial and restful. And then she was so tactful and considerate. As a matter of fact he had been meditating whether to ask her to accompany him, but had decided not to.

Why should she be bored with an old fogey, while there were young ones in the party? And she--well she must have read his thoughts, and of her own initiative had offered to accompany him. This was the sort of thing that Edala never did. Time had been, when as a child she had adored him, when his every word was law, when she would give up anything and everything to be with him. Now, all this was reversed. In these days she never thought of consulting his wishes, let alone of forestalling them; and the change had caused him many an hour of bitter reflection and disappointment.

"We can start now," he p.r.o.nounced. "Those two will have had time to get into position."

They moved forward and downward, keeping near the bottom of the kloof, while the three natives, spread out on each side, whooped and rapped with their sticks. The way lay now through growth of some denseness, now beneath overhanging trees, or a cliff in miniature, its brow lined with a row of straight stemmed euphorbia. It was hot down here in the kloof, in spite of the abundant shade.

But Evelyn Carden's thoughts were all upon the man riding in front of her, and she had all but lost sight of the object of their being there at all, sport to wit. This new relative of hers was clean outside all her experience. She admired his strength, his decisive downrightness, his easy refinement of speech and thought; and that in the teeth of the fact that his earlier life had been rough and hard, and, not infrequently perilous. Yet, throughout, those instincts of culture had not only been retained but had developed, and she was forced to own to herself that he was the most delightful companion she had ever met.

And Edala? She was fond of the girl--very--yet there were times when she could not but feel secretly angry with her; she had too much _savoir faire_, however, to let any trace of it appear. Edala did not appreciate her father in the least: on the contrary she treated him with coldness, even bordering upon repulsion. Of course, of any actuating cause underlying such behaviour she was absolutely ignorant, for they saw no neighbours except perhaps Elvesdon; nor even had they, it is certain that to a stranger and a relative of those concerned, nothing would have been whispered. Besides, was not the whole thing now matter of ancient history?

As they rode along in the bosky shadiness of the deep kloof bottom, the shouts of the beaters on either side, the sudden clangour of the dogs as they struck the spoor of a recently alarmed buck, then the crack of a shot down at the farther end, it seemed to Evelyn Carden that the experience was wholly delightful and exhilarating. She could hardly have told why--but it was so. She was not so very young, and she had had some experiences of life. Perhaps she preferred not to tell herself the 'why.'

Thornhill, on his part, was not thinking of her at all by this time, or if so it was only to wish she had elected to accompany someone else, which at first sight seems blackly ungrateful of him. Still less was he thinking of the sport, unless in a mechanical way. But Manamandhla, moving parallel with himself some forty yards distant through the thick, high bush; Manamandhla visible to himself, but both invisible to the rest of the on-driving line, how easy to have mistaken him for a buck-- to have _mistaken_ him. It would be rather the act of a Johnny Raw, but then, men of ripe judgment and lifelong experience had been known to make similar mistakes. Surely such a chance would not occur again. If only Evelyn had not volunteered to accompany him.

A fell, lurid obsession had seized upon this man's mind, yet not so as to obscure his judgment, only to do away utterly with all sense of ruth or compunction. This calm, patient savage, who had reappeared--had risen, as it were, from the very dead, to blood-suck him--to batten upon him for the rest of his natural life--had got upon even his strong nerves. He was ageing, he told himself, and all through this. Again the Zulu's broad back presented a magnificent mark for a charge of Treble A. There would be an end of the incubus, and '_accidents will happen_.' But then--there was Evelyn riding immediately behind him.

"Well, Mr Thornhill. We seem to have drawn this fairly blank, too,"

said her cheerful, pleasing voice, as the bush thinned out in front of them. "Let's see what they've got There was a shot in front, wasn't there?"

Elvesdon and Edala were standing, waiting for them. On the ground lay a dead bushbuck ewe.

"'_Diane cha.s.seresse_' again," cried the former, gaily. "Neat shot too.

Going like the wind."

"Well, you made me do it, you know," protested Edala. "I said I didn't want to shoot any more just yet."

"Of course," laughed Elvesdon. "It was the first opportunity I've had of witnessing your prowess, and I preferred that to your witnessing my lack of it."

As a matter of fact the speaker was a first-rate shot, but there were days when he was 'off'--and this was one of them, he said.

"Well, it's better than nothing," p.r.o.nounced Thornhill. "Still, we ought to have got more out of there. We'll take the next kloof down, then sweep round for home."

"All right," cried Edala. "Now Mr Elvesdon, we'll lay _voer_ again, and this time I'm really going to see you miss."

"That'll be a new and delightful experience," said Elvesdon with his usual imperturbability. As a matter of fact he meant every word he said. He would have this girl to himself for the best part of another hour, in the sweet sunshine of the golden afternoon. What did he care for the business of the day. He could always get sport--but this--no.

So the pair started off once more by a circuitous way, to reach the bottom of the kloof where they should conceal themselves. Thornhill, watching them, felt well satisfied. Things were going just as he would have them. Things sometimes went that way, and when they did there was no point in interfering with them, or hurrying them from outside. At any rate such was his philosophy.

"Now, Evelyn, I daresay Prior will take care of you," he said. "This kloof is confoundedly tangled and difficult. There are _klompies_ of _haakdorrn_ too, here and there, which would tear that pretty skirt of yours into tatters."

"But--are you going to drive on again? You don't ever get a shot down there in that thick bush," she urged, half reproachfully.

"Oh, don't I? I've an idea I shall this time. You get up along the top side with Prior."

The fell significance of his words was apparent only to his own mind, as indeed how should it be otherwise? Evelyn obeyed the order unquestioningly. She only said, in a half undertone, "You take care that everybody else gets the lion's share of the fun, anyhow."

The foremost pair were hurrying along the ridge, now cantering, now walking. At length they reached their allotted station at the bottom of the kloof. The latter was steep, like the other, only the bush was less thick.

"I don't care for this end at all," said Edala, when they had dismounted, and having hidden the horses, returned to take up their position. "Look. I'm sure we'll be better up there," pointing to a spot about a hundred yards higher up. "Let's stand there."

"Won't it be a bit risky? You see, your father will expect us to be here, and supposing he were to fire at anything just at that point on the strength of it?"

"That's not likely. Everything will have run out too far ahead of him by the time he gets there. Come."

"Oh, all right."