Wild Honey Part 15

So he sang Tosti's _Adieu_; and then Schubert's _Serenade_. Such sounds, such words had perhaps never before been heard in the vicinity of the little farmhouse. Yet who can tell! Carden's Irish imagination evolved the idea that many beautiful things must have been spoken and thought before the flower-like girl by his side had been born. He stirred a little on the old bench at the thought, and the girl stirred too, putting her hand down beside her as if to rise. Carden did not see her movement, but by some strange instinct his hand went down too and found hers there, and finding it took it. She left it for an instant in his, then tried to draw it away; but he held it closely as he always held things he once took a grip on, whether they belonged to him or not, and she left it there. So they sat listening hand in hand while Talfourd sang his last song to them.

I want no star in Heaven to guide me, I need no sun, no moon to shine, While I have you, dear love, beside me, While I know that you are mine.

I need not fear whate'er betide me, for straight and sweet my pathway lies, I want no star in Heaven to guide me, while I gaze in your dear eyes.

I hear no birds at twilight calling, I catch no music in the streams, While your golden words are falling While you whisper in my dreams.

Every sound of joy enthralling, speaks in your dear voice alone While I hear your fond lips calling, while you speak to me, my own.

Again the girl's strong little hand fluttered like a bird under his, but he held it fast. He liked things that tried to flutter away and escape from him.

I want no kingdom where thou art, love, I want no throne to make me blest While within thy tender heart, love, Thou wilt take my heart to rest.

Kings must play a weary part, love, thrones must ring with wild alarms, But the kingdom of my heart, love, lies within thy loving arms.

At last, Talfourd proposed to go to bed, but first he wanted to know what the plans were for the morning. Swartz was called up and a discussion held. There were no horses to be had at the farm, for it appeared that old de Beer had taken away the only two he possessed.

Swartz's plan was to take the best horse of the four, ride on to Webb's and bring back a fresh span in the evening; and Carden thought it a good plan, if Miss de Beer would allow them to encroach so far upon her hospitality.

"We'll earn our dinner, if there is any shooting to be got about here,"

he said.

"Oh, yes; plenty of red-wing partridge, stem buck, and duiker." She was standing opposite him now, having escaped in the general movement.

"Much _matatendela_ also," volunteered the old native man Yacop who had come up to take part in the indaba. Carden laughed.

"They'll do for you, Tal; guinea-fowl need a sprinting athlete after them, and you are younger than I am." He looked very boyish and happy as he spoke.

"All the more reason why I should go to bed at once," said Talfourd.

"Good-night, Miss de Beer, and many, many thanks for pouring oil and wine upon us the way you have done. You have been a good Samaritan indeed!"

"No; it was you who found me by the roadside," she answered with a grave little smile, but she looked at Carden only. He lingered behind with her, hoping she would come and sit beside him again, but she did not move from where she stood leaning against the verandah pole. Swartz and Yacop had gone back to squat by the fire, and the former had produced the inevitable concertina that every Cape boy knows how to manipulate.

Carden and the girl stayed listening to his melancholy strains, though it seemed to the man that it was the surging of waves in his ears that he heard, and little drums in all his pulses beating a call to arms.

Dark Carden had been loved many times and loved carelessly back, but never had he met the woman he wanted to take and keep for ever in his life. He had an idea that such a woman existed, in Ireland, if anywhere. Certainly he had long ago decided that he would never marry any but a woman from his own land; and she must be beautiful, accomplished, well-bred, and virtuous at that. Nothing but the best was good enough for Dark Carden. But he was in no great hurry to find this ideal wife. Life and women had treated him too well for him to be in any hurry to change his ways and curtail his liberty. In the meantime he had put away all such thoughts for awhile.

The spell of the wilderness was on him and it was stronger than any spell he had ever felt. Pa.s.sing strange to find this flower of a girl blossoming here on the very edge of the wild! and more than pa.s.sing sweet to linger awhile, sharing the moonlight night with her, stirred by the forbidden magic of her girlhood. For girls to him represented forbidden fruit. Everything else in the orchard might be reached after, or climbed for, by those who like himself had the nerve and taste for the pastime. But girls, however ripe and inviting, however close they leaned to the gathering hand, were not for this orchard thief. It was the one clause in his code concerning women which he had never broken.

True he had not been greatly tempted, for girls had never held any extraordinary allure for him. The more astonishing then to find himself so troubled by the sight and sound of this one. When he thought of that something which had come winging its way from her eyes to his, and of how her hand had fluttered under his and then lain still, content, the blood tingled through his veins; he was glad to be alive.

A longing to hear the voice which charmed him in spite of the jarring Dutch accent made him break the spell of silence that had fallen on them.

"I do not even know your name," he said in the gentle way he had with women.

"Frances," she answered as gently. "Frances de Beer."

"But you are not Dutch?" he said, though it mattered little to him if she declared herself Siamese or a native of Timbuctoo. The important thing was that she was _she_, a beautiful, alluring, and forbidden thing.

"No; my mother was an Englishwoman who married a Boer. I am the love child of an Irishman."

A wave of astonishment mingled with pity surged through him at her strange words, and all the tragedy they implied both for her and the mother who had borne her in suffering and sorrow.

And now he knew why this girl's eyes were deep and full of dreams, why her hair framed her face like the spread wings of a raven, why her mouth was curved to the shape of a kiss incarnate.

She was the child of two eternal things: Love and Sorrow.

He sat very still thinking. The pity of it all took hold of his heart and an impulsive longing rose in him to do something to set things aright as they should be, for this beautiful child. Yet the sins of the fathers! Who can pay for them but the flesh and blood of those who made the debt? Who can set aright what has been wrong from the first? What place in the world was there for this love flower of the desert?

Supposing he, Wilberforce St. John Carden were to marry her! The tingle came into his veins again at the thought, and a song sang in his blood.

But his brain knew that it was a fool's idea. What place in his life for the simple untaught child?

It never occurred to him to doubt whether she would marry him. He was too trained a student in the school of women's looks not to know what gift she had given him with her eyes whether consciously or unconsciously, at their first encounter. And every instinct urged him to lay hot impulsive hands on it, to take and keep it, as he had taken and kept her hand. But his brain remained cool and clear. He had his code to keep. The girl was impossible to marry. That fact put her out of his reach definitely.

He sighed deeply. He did not know that he sighed, but the girl heard him. It seemed to him that he had come a long way, and pa.s.sed through some extraordinarily poignant ordeal. As a matter of fact it was only a minute or two since she had last spoken that the girl spoke again, continuing her narrative.

"My mother lived in this house with her Boer husband who was very cruel to her. The only pleasure she had was to sit here sometimes and watch the road. One day when her husband was away in the Transvaal an Irishman came along the road. He was a hunter and an adventurer, and my mother said there was a magic in him that no woman could resist--unless _she were of his own country_; for all others he was one of those who _must_ be followed when they call, and I think he must have been, for one so sweet and good as my mother to have forgotten all for him. He took her away to his waggons, and they were going away together to the Interior but a lion killed him over there by the river."

"What was his name?" asked Carden, though he already knew. He knew now whose musical voice had echoed up old memories when first he heard her speak.

"Francis Kavanagh. My mother told me when she was dying, but no one else has ever known, except Grietje--and now you."

"Why do you tell me?" he asked, though he knew the answer to that too.

Perhaps she did not hear, for she gave no response, only made a little foot-note to her tragic tale.

"She made me swear a solemn promise, by her sin and his." A moment later she added:

"But I can never help being glad that I am not the child of a Boer."

"Yet you have stayed on? You still live with the Boer who was so cruel to your mother?" Somehow it was difficult to reconcile this strange fact with her, but doubtless she could explain. She could.

"I do not. He is long ago dead. I live here with Johannes de Beer my husband."

It seemed to Carden that the night changed and turned cold. The stars looked faint and dim, and the moonlight that had been so beautiful erstwhile grew a strange dull grey, the colour of death.

He too felt cold, and old. All the fatigue of the day descended upon him in a heavy cloud, and he suddenly had a great longing for sleep and forgetfulness.

"Ah, yes--your husband," he said in a vague way, like a man whose thoughts are elsewhere.

"He used to pa.s.s this way often with his waggons, and my mother thought he would make me a good husband. When she was dying and I had no one in the world he promised her to marry me and take care of me. I try to mind him well, and he is not unkind."

Later she said:

"He bought this farm and came to live here because it has always been my home--and I like to watch the road."

He did not ask her why. The boys by the fire got up and shuffled away to their blankets. The old woman was long since gone. These two were left alone in the silence and the moonlight.

"Did you think that someone for you would come along the road some day?"

he asked at last, coming very near her and looking at her mouth. After a moment she answered with a little sobbing sigh in her throat:

"But I must always remember the promise I made to my mother."

He came close to her and gripped her hands; his eyes full of hunger, and longing, and caresses searched hers; his lips were almost on her lips.