Renshaw Fanning's Quest: A Tale of the High Veldt

(“Allamaghtag!” “Almighty!” A common ejaculation among the Boers. It and similar colloquialisms are almost equally frequent among their colonial brethren.)

Then Marian appeared – her sweet face lighting up with a glow of glad welcome for which many a man might have given his right hand – and then the children, who had been amusing themselves diversely after the manner of their kind, anywhere outside and around the house, came crowding noisily and gleefully around “Uncle Renshaw,” as they had always been in the habit of calling him. To the lonely man, fresh from his rough and comfortless sick-bed, this was indeed a home-coming – a welcome to stir the heart. Yet that organ was susceptible of a dire sinking as its owner missed one face from the group, – realised in one quick, eager glance that the presence he sought was not there.

Violet’s room was at the back of the house, consequently she had heard but faintly the sounds attendant on the arrival of the visitors. She instinctively guessed at the identity of the latter, but it was clean contrary to Violet Avory’s creed to hurry herself on account of any man. So having sacrificed a few moments of curiosity to this principle, and, needless to say, taken the indispensable look at herself in the glass, she issued leisurely forth.

Now, as she did so, Selwood was ushering in his stranger guest – was, in fact, at that moment standing back to allow the latter to enter before him. Thus they met face to face.

Then was her self-possession tried in such wise as no member of that household had yet witnessed. She halted suddenly, her face deadly white. A quick ejaculation escaped the stranger’s lips.

It died as quickly, and his half-outstretched hand dropped to his side in obedience to her warning glance; for her confusion was but a momentary flash. It entirely escaped Selwood, who was walking behind his guest, the broad shoulders and fine stature of the latter acting as an opportune screen, and all the others were still outside.

“Miss Avory,” introduced honest Chris, becoming aware of her presence. “Mr – er – I really beg your pardon, but I’m afraid I didn’t quite catch your name just now – and Renshaw didn’t happen to mention it in his letter?”

“Sellon,” supplied the other.

“By Jove! We hold half our names in common. We are both ‘Sells,’ but there we branch off – ho – ho! Sellon and Selwood, both ‘Sells,’” repeated Chris, who was fond of a joke.

An unimportant, not to say trivial remark. But like many such, it was destined in the fulness of time to be brought back pretty vividly to the memory of its originator and his hearers.

Violet acknowledged the introduction with a queenly sort of bow, and turning preceded them into the sitting-room.

“Where’s Mr Fanning?” she asked, rising almost as soon as she was seated. “I must go and say ‘How do you do?’ to him.”

Sellon muttered an oath to himself as she slipped from the room, not loud enough to be heard by his host, however, who proceeded to ply him with questions as to his journey – and brandy-and-water.

Meanwhile Violet, in pursuance of her expressed intent, was greeting the other arrival with a pretty cordiality that was perfection itself, and when she tuned her voice to the requisite minor key as she asked all manner of questions and expressed all manner of sympathy with regard to his late illness, and whether he ought to have undertaken such a long journey so soon, and if he had taken great care of himself during the same, the effect on her victim was such a reaction from his first feeling of dismay at her non-appearance that he could have thrown up his hat and hoorayed aloud. Whereby we fear it is only too obvious that friend Renshaw was as big a fool as the general run of his fellow-men.

“Well, and what do you think of this country, Mr Sellon?” came the inevitable query, as they were gathered together after the first fuss and flurry of greeting.

“I think various things, Mrs Selwood,” was the ready reply. “Parts of it are lovely, and parts of it are grand, and one gets a fine opportunity of seeing it all during a fortnight’s journey behind three horses. But other parts, on the other hand, and notably the latitudes inhabited by friend Fanning here, reminded me forcibly of the Yankee’s reply to the same question.”

“And what was that?”

“Why, he was travelling in that awful Karroo during a drought, and somebody asked him what he thought of the country, ‘What do I think of your country?’ says he. ‘See here, stranger, if I owned a section of your country I guess I’d enclose that section well around, and send out for a paint-pot and paint it green.’”

This tickled Selwood amazingly, and he burst into a roar.

“Well, that wouldn’t hold good of our part,” he said when he had recovered.

“Oh no, no,” assented the stranger, hurriedly. “Let me clear myself of that charge of heresy without delay. Words are inadequate to describe the beauties of the road as soon as we got into these mountains. I’m serious, mind.”

“Well, we must contrive to show you more of them,” said his hostess. “Are you fond of shooting, Mr Sellon?”

“He just is,” put in Renshaw. “He kept us in game all along the road, and in chronic hot water with all the Dutchmen whose places we passed, by knocking over springboks under their very windows without so much as a ‘by your leave.’”

“Well, it’s better to be the shooter than the shootee, eh, Fanning? But that joke’ll keep,” laughed Sellon, significantly.

“We can show you plenty of fun in that line here,” said Christopher. “The mountains are swarming with rhybok, and there are any amount of partridges and quail. Plenty of bushbucks, too, in the kloofs, and guinea-fowl. Hallo, by Jove! it’s time to go and count in,” he added, jumping up from his chair.

Then the three men started off to do the regulation evening round of the kraals, while the ladies went their ways, either to give a supervising eye to the preparation of supper, or to while away an idle half-hour prior to that comfortable repast.

“Well, Violet, and what do you think of the stranger?” said Marian, when they were left to themselves.

“Oh, I think him rather a joke. Likely to turn out very good fun, I should say,” was the careless reply.

“Sure to, if you take him in hand, you abominable girl. But I’ve a sort of idea the ‘fun’ will be all on one side. I suppose you think you can reduce him to utter and insane subjection in less than a week.”

For response Violet only smiled. But the smile seemed to convey more plainly than words the conviction that she rather thought she could.

Chapter Ten.

On Thorns

When Maurice Sellon awoke the next morning it took him some little while to remember exactly where he was.

The cool delicious air was wafting in at the open window – the murmur of leaves, and the plash of running water – the half-rasping, half-whistling call of the yellow thrush, and the endless chattering of finks – the lowing of cattle, and the deep bass hum of Kafir voices – all struck upon his ears as strange after the exhausting heat; the treeless, waterless wastes, the burnt-up silent plains so destitute of bird and animal life, which were the leading features of the scene of his late sojourn. Then with all the strong animal rejoicing of a mercurial temperament combined with a sound constitution, he leaped out of bed, and snatching up a towel, sallied forth in quest of a convenient place for a swim.

It was early yet, but the household was astir – seemed to have been for some time. Sellon spied his host in the cattle kraal, giving a supervising eye to the milking and other operations therein going forward.

“Want to swim, eh?” said the latter. “Well, follow that fence a couple of hundred yards till you come to a big tree-fern on the hedge of the bush; turn in there and you’ll find a grand hole.”

Away went Sellon, looking about him as he walked. What a fine place this was, he thought, and what a rattling good time of it he was going to have. The shooting must be splendid. It was a lovely morning, and the man’s spirits rose over the prospect of present enjoyment, and a brightening future. And there was another cause at work tending to send up the mercury, as we shall see anon.

He had no difficulty in finding the water-hole – a fine ‘reach’ of the river about a hundred yards by twenty, thickly shaded with overhanging scrub. In he went with a header and a splash, and after a couple of vigorous swims up and down was just coming out when something caught his eye.

A long rakish narrow object lying along the almost horizontal trunk of a half-fallen tree, not more than a yard from the ground – so motionless that were it not for the scintillation of the eye you could hardly have told the creature was alive. The squab, clinging paws, the hideous crocodile head, the long tapering tail, seemed all exaggerated in the half-gloom of the thick scrub, and in the start which the sight inspired in the beholder.

Sellon stood transfixed, and a cold chill of horror and repugnance ran through him. In his newness to the country it occurred to him that the river might contain a fair population of alligators. Anyway, the beast looked hideous and repulsive enough – even formidable. And it lay almost between himself and the spot where he had left his clothes.

Just then he could have sworn he heard a smothered splutter of laughter. The reptile must have heard it too, for it raised its head to listen. Then a crack and a puff of smoke. The creature rolled from the trunk, and lay snapping and writhing, and making every effort to reach the water.

“Stop him, Mr Sellon. Don’t let him get into the water,” cried a shrill boy’s voice, and the youthful shooter came crashing through the brake, armed with a saloon rifle, and followed by another youngster about the same age.

“Stop him! How am I to stop him, you young dog?” growled Sellon, who was standing up to his middle in water.

But the boys had wrenched up a stout stick, and deftly avoiding alike snapping jaws and lashing tail, managed to hold the great lizard on the bank where he lay, until his struggles had entirely ceased.

“Gave you rather a schrek, didn’t it, Mr Sellon?” said the elder of the two, maliciously, with a wink at his brother, and there was a broad grin on each face that made Sellon long to cuff the pair. For the average colonial urchin has scant respect for his elders as such; scantier still if those elders happen to be “raw Englishmen.”

“An ugly brute, anyhow,” he answered, wading out to look at the carcase. “What is he, eh?”

“Only an iguana, Mr Sellon. My! but he’s a big un; five feet at least, I expect. I don’t wonder you took him for a crocodile.”

“Took him for – You cheeky young dog, how do you know what I took him for?”

“Come now, that’s good!” retorted the urchin, unabashed, “My! Mr Sellon, but if you could only have seen yourself standing there in the water in a blue funk!” and both cubs thereupon burst into shrill and undisguised laughter.

“I tell you what, youngster, that was an uncommonly good shot of yours,” said wily Sellon, on the principle of agreeing with his adversary quickly, for he guessed the young scamps would presently go in full of the story, and equally was conscious of having truly been in something of a funk, as they had said. “But how did you manage to get it in?”

“Oh, we spotted him long before you did; Fred cut back for the saloon gun while I waited here. My, though, but he’s about the biggest lygovaan (Iguana) I’ve ever seen.”

But although by the time they returned home Sellon and the boys had become great friends; a number of swimming dodges which he taught them having in a measure established him in their respect; yet when he appeared at the breakfast-table he found the joke public property already. But he was a man who could stand chaff – which was fortunate – for he was destined to hear enough of it on the subject of the iguana episode.

But he had matters to think of this morning beside which the above incident was the merest thistledown for triviality; an undertaking on hand, the key to which lay snug in his pocket in the shape of the tiniest of notes; slipped into his hand, deftly and surreptitiously, though under everybody’s nose, during the process of exchanging good-nights the evening before. Thus it ran —

“To-morrow. The garden. Middle of the morning. Watch me. – V.”

The barest outline, but sufficient for all purposes. It had come, too, just at the right time. He had felt nettled, annoyed, sore, at Violet’s light-heartedness. She had treated him as the merest stranger, and when she talked to him, had rattled away at the veriest commonplaces. All her captivating glances, all her dangerous modulations of tones, he had kept for Fanning. Fanning it was who had engrossed the lion’s share of her attention throughout the evening. He had mentally cursed Fanning. He could not make it out. He began to hate Fanning. Then, sore and angry, that tiny bit of paper had come in the nick of time, and he had slept soundly and risen in the best of spirits, as we have seen.

Yet as the time drew near his spirits sustained a check. That Violet would find her opportunity he had no sort of doubt. Let her alone for that. But would he be equally fortunate?

After breakfast he was taken possession of by his host. With accurate instinct he realised that at any rate during the earlier half of the morning, when the ladies were busy with household details, the presence of a man and a stranger whom they would feel more than half bound not to neglect, could be nothing other than an unmitigated nuisance. So he submitted to his host’s “showing around” with the best grace he could muster, and the three men hindered forth, strolling around in that easy, pleasant, dawdling fashion, dear to the heart of the prosperous colonial farmer who can afford to take it easy from time to time when he has a congenial guest and an appreciative listener – and Christopher Selwood had both on his hands that morning.

Yes, it was pleasant enough wandering around in the sunshine, looking at this and looking at that, stopping every now and then for a lounge against a wall, or in some shady nook while fresh pipes were filled and lighted. It was all pleasant enough, but by the time they had inspected the stables and the kraals, the garden and the cultivated lands, and had visited certain traps and spring-guns placed along the fences of the latter for the benefit of invading bucks or porcupines, and had, moreover, talked stock and wild sport unlimited, it was uncommonly near the “middle of the morning,” and they were some distance from the house. Sellon began to feel at his wits’ end.

“The middle of the morning. Watch me. V.” It was already the first, and as for the second, how could he watch her when he was nearly a mile away, pinned fast on the top of a stone wall, listening to an otherwise interesting disquisition from his host upon the habits of certain wild game? Renshaw it was who came to the rescue.

“I expect we are boring Sellon to death, with all the ‘shop’ we’ve been talking,” he said, noting the “cornered” expression in the latter’s face.

“Not a bit – not in the least,” was the hurried reply; “quite the contrary. Only – the fact is, though I don’t like owning to it, I’m a trifle headachy this morning.”

“Well, you were out rather early, which I dare say you’re not much used to,” said Christopher. “Look here, now, Sellon. If you’re tired cut off to the house and take it easy. You’ll find the drawing-room cool and quiet, and there’s a lot of stuff to read in the shelves.”

“Well, I think I will, if you don’t mind.”

“Mind – mind? No. Make yourself at home, man – make yourself at home. That’s what you’ve got to do here,” was the hearty reply.

Now, skirting the way our artful manoeuvrer has to travel is a high quince hedge, and in this hedge is a gate, and not very far inside this gate is a rustic bench, and upon this rustic bench is a cool, tasteful dress of light material, surmounted by a very broad-brimmed straw hat. There is also upon the said bench a book, but it is not altogether lying on it, for it is still held by a well-shaped little hand. But for the thoroughfare aforesaid the spot is a secluded one, as it certainly is a pleasant one, and shady withal; thanks to the foliage of the large, well-grown fruit trees. Now, what does our manoeuvring scamp do but steal softly up behind this attractive figure, and throw both arms around it, while with equal want of ceremony the scampish countenance is inserted beneath that very broad-brimmed straw hat, and there it remains during the few moments of faint, because feigned, scuffle in which its wearer sees fit to indulge.

“At last, my darling!” he exclaims gleefully, seating himself on the bench beside her. “At last!”

Chapter Eleven.

“Amoris Integratio.”

“On, Maurice, how could you be so imprudent?”

“Imprudent be – somethinged! If you only knew the difficulty I’ve had to cut loose from the other fellows at all.”

“Yes, imprudent,” she went on, ignoring the last remark. “Supposing any of those wretched children had been about – and they’re just like little savages, always jumping out upon you unexpectedly from nowhere. And we are quite by a pathway, too.”

“Then the sooner we get away from it the better, for I intend repeating the operation with interest before we rejoin the merry crowd.”

“How did you find me out, Maurice? How did you know where I was?”

“Aha, you couldn’t hide from me, you see,” he replied. “No good, was it?”

She made no answer. She seemed to be undergoing a struggle with herself. Then at last —

“Why did you break through our agreement? We were not to see each other for six months. It is not four yet.”

“Violet! Do you mean to tell me you are sorry I have not kept that boshy arrangement of ours. Look me straight in the face and tell me you are – if you can.”

He turned her face towards him. The dark soft eyes were brimming, the delicate features were working with a wild yearning, which its owner was in vain striving to suppress.

“Sorry to see you? Oh, Maurice, my darling, I have thought of late I should never see you again,” she cried, breaking into a storm of sobs as she threw herself on his breast.

And this was the girl who, but a few days before, and almost on that very spot, had made an utter mock of all that savoured of real feeling. “I almost wish it would come true. It would be such a novel sensation,” had been her words to Marian. Ah, but it had come true – and that long before she uttered them. Certain it is that none there at Sunningdale had ever seen this side of Violet Avory; had ever suspected this secret chapter in her history.

“Don’t cry, little one,” said Maurice, soothingly, drawing her further within the recesses of the garden, and away from the obnoxious quince hedge, which might shelter prying eyes. “We are going to have such a happy time together now.”

“Now, yes,” she answered. “But – after? Nothing but misery.”

“Not a bit of it. We can go on waiting. Patience – that’s the word. When I used to get my ‘cast’ hung up or otherwise tangled while fishing, instead of blowing off a volley of cuss words, and tearing and tugging at the stuff, I made it a rule to remark aloud, ‘Pazienza!’ That answered, kept one in a cool and even mind, and saved further tangle and a lot of cussing. Well, that must be our watchword – ‘Pazienza!’”

“I have got you now, at all events,” she murmured, pressing his arm. “But now, don’t you see why I met you as a perfect stranger last night?”

“Not altogether. It annoyed me a good bit – in fact, worried me all the evening. I should have thought it would have been better to have let them know we were old acquaintances, at any rate. They would have left us more to ourselves.”

“Not a bit of it. They would have set up a romance on the spot. As soon as a woman gets wind of a romance, she can’t for the life of her, with the best intentions in the world, help watching its progress. It would have been a case of every one hurrying to écarter themselves as soon as they saw as together, doing it, too, in the usual blundering and clumsy manner. I know it all so well – I’ve seen it so often, and, I may as well add, gone through it.”

“That was the reason, was it? Well, you do know a thing or two, little one,” he said admiringly. “But look here. We must snatch a little time together as often as we can. We’ll make Selwood get up rides and expeditions, and pair off, lose ourselves by accident, and all that sort of thing. But mind, I can’t go on talking to you day after day, only as one of a crowd. I can’t stand it. We must manage somehow.”

“Do you think I am a bit less anxious to than you? But, Maurice darling, do mind what I’m going to say. You must be on your guard before people, you always were such an awful old blunderer. You mustn’t go letting slip any ‘Violets,’ for instance, and you’re quite as likely to as not.”

“I’m not going to let one slip at the present moment, anyway,” he replied with a laugh. “And so you thought you were never going to see me again?”

“Ah, I have sometimes feared so. The agonies I have gone through! I know what you are going to say – that it was my own doing. I did it to test you, Maurice. Six months is not a long time, but ah, I have at times thought I should die long before it was over! Day after day, week after week, no news, not a word from you, or even of you. And every one here thinks I am utterly heartless. I never try to undeceive them; in fact, I rather encourage them in the idea.”

No one would have thought so could they but have seen her there that morning, slowly wending through the mimosa brake encircled by her lover’s arm; for they had left the somewhat precarious refuge of the garden. The restless, eager face, the quick, passionate tones, as though she were talking against time, and grudged every one of the too swiftly flying moments which were bringing this doubly sweet, because surreptitious, interview to its end.

They had reached the river-bank. The cool water bubbling along beneath the shade of the trees, the varying call of birds in the brake, the chirruping tree-crickets, the hum of bees dipping into the creamy cups of snow-white arums which grew in the moist shade, the melodious shout of the hoopoe echoing from the black kloofs that rent the mountain side – all made an appropriate framework, a fitting accompaniment of harmonious sounds to this sweet stolen interview. High overhead the hoary crest of a great mountain frowned down from the dazzling blue.

“You haven’t told me yet how you managed to find me out,” said Violet at length, after a good deal of talk that we feel under no special necessity to reproduce, because, given the circumstances, the reader should have no difficulty in guessing its nature.

“Oh, that was the most astonishing piece of luck that ever came about,” he answered. “You had better call it a fatality. I had started to look for you in quite the wrong direction, and fell in with that queer fellow, Fanning. Came down here with him, as you know.”

“Did Mr Fanning talk about – er – tell you about – me?” she said hesitatingly.

Maurice Sellon was not the man to betray poor Renshaw’s involuntary and delirious confidences, even to Violet herself – at least, not unless some strong motive existed for doing so, which at present was not the case. So he answered —

“Talk about you? Not he! He’s much too deep a dog. He just barely mentioned that you were here, which drove me pretty well wild, for it was long enough before I could get him to make a start, and of course I couldn’t let him suspect the reason.”

Strict veracity was not one of Sellon’s strong points. He did not choose to let her into the fact that the wild surprise of their meeting in the hall on the occasion of his arrival was absolutely and impartially mutual.

“But look here, Violet,” he went on. “Talking of Fanning, you were almost – well, carrying on with him last night. I began to get quite angry. You mustn’t make a fool of the poor chap – if you haven’t already, that’s to say.”

Violet laughed – her old, heartless, mocking laugh.

“Fancy being jealous of Mr Fanning!” she said scornfully.

“That be hanged!” cried Maurice, gaily, “But, darling, I grudge seeing you talking too much to any one.”

Thus, womanlike, secure in the possession of her own heart’s desire, she spoke contemptuously of one for whom she really entertained a great and deep-laid respect. Her own love, outside its special object, had not availed to render her more considerate, more tender, towards the man whose heart she had made a plaything of.