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

Returning through the garden they came upon Renshaw himself, who, with Marian and Effie, was strolling around. Now, the latter, for all her tender years, knew quite as much as was good for her, and in the present instance was prompt to recognise a case of “spoons,” as her abominably precocious young mind did not hesitate to define it. It happened that she disliked Violet, so she fixed her eyes maliciously upon the pair, and her mouth expanded into a knowing grin – which made Violet ardently desire to box her ears soundly there and then – and resolved to store up the incident for future use; in fact, to improve upon the discovery.

“Hallo, Fanning,” cried Sellon, as they met, “you’re looking rather seedy, old chap. Been legging it around too much all the morning.”

“Not I. I feel all right. You won’t have to do doctor again, Sellon – no fear,” was the genial reply.

Now, Sellon’s words had caused Marian to steal a very quick and anxious glance at her companion’s face, which at that moment was certainly destitute of its normal healthy colour.

“Renshaw, you have been overdoing it,” she said warningly. “You have come here to be set up, not to be made ill again. So luckily it’s just dinnertime, and we must all go in.”

So the parties fused, and, merged into one, retraced their steps towards the house, chatting indifferently. But that glance of Marian’s had drawn, as it were, a curtain from before Violet’s eyes. She, too, thought she had made a discovery, and she, too, resolved to turn it to future account – should the necessity arise.

“I say, Renshaw,” said Selwood, sotto voce, and with a characteristic nudge, as they entered the passage a little way behind the rest of the party, “that chum of yours is a knowing dog, eh? Miss Avory has soon managed to cure his headache. Ho – ho – ho!”

Thus did everybody combine to turn the steel, already sticking deep enough, in this unfortunate man’s heart.

Dinner over, the heat of the afternoon was got through in delightfully easy and dawdling fashion. Christopher Selwood, in a big armchair, sat in a cool corner absorbed in the ill-printed columns of the local sheet, the Fort Lamport Courier, which set forth how brandziekte had broken out in one end of the district, and how a heavy hailstorm had peppered the other, and how “our esteemed townsman, Ezekiel Bung, Esquire, the genial landlord of the Flapdoodle Hotel,” had, “we deeply regret to say, fallen off the stoep of his house and injured his leg,” the fact being that the said Bung, Esquire, had walked straight into space while as drunk as a blind fiddler, and intent on kicking out a Fingo who had contumaciously reckoned on quenching his thirst at the public bar, instead of among his compatriots in the canteen. This and other news of a like interesting and intellectual nature, Selwood scanned. Suddenly an exclamation escaped him.

“By Jingo! This is good!” he cried. “I say, Marian, you remember those two black chaps who were round here with all that stock two or three weeks back? That one-eyed cuss who was inclined to be so cheeky?”

“Yes. What about them?”

“You remember the names on their pass?”

“Perfectly. Muntiwa and Booi.”

“All right. The whole of that stock was stolen, and they’ve been run in at Fort Lamport and committed for trial at the Circuit Court, which’ll be held in a week or two.”

“That’s good business,” said Renshaw. “How were they nobbled?”

“Why, a Dutchman spotted them just outside Fort Lamport, and recognised some of the cows as belonging to his uncle or somebody. He said nothing at the time, but just trotted up to the court and swore an affidavit, and they were all run in.”

“But didn’t you say they had a pass?” said Renshaw.

“Of course they had. But therein lies the cream of the whole situation. The pass turns out a forged one, cooked up by a mission-station Kafir, and well done it was, too. So much for educating the niggers. It turns out, too, that the police have discovered these chaps’ hiding-place, away up among the thick bush and caves in Slaagter’s Hoek. It was a regular vultures’ nest, chock full of bones of stolen stock. They must have been at it for years. And then to think of them marching openly through the country on the strength of that forged pass. Let’s hope they’ll get it stiff now they are quodded.”

“Who’s the circuit judge this time?” asked Renshaw.

“Van Reneen, I expect. Judge Sherrington was round on circuit last time, so we are sure to have the other man; and a good thing, too. Old Sherrington loves a black fellow as if he was his father, and lets him down about as lightly as he comfortably can, and that’s very lightly indeed.”

“You are sure to be subpoenaed to give evidence, Chris,” said Marian, mischievously.

“Eh! By Jingo, I never thought of that. I hope not, though!” cried Selwood, in dismay at the prospect of an enforced absence from home, involving, moreover, two long and tiresome journeys, and Heaven knew how many days of kicking up his heels in Fort Lamport, in hourly expectation of being called. “Well, likely enough they’ll have plenty of evidence without mine. Sellon – Renshaw – how about a stroll round? it’s turning cool now. But we’ll do a glass of grog first.”

Chapter Twelve.

“He does not Ring True.”

Three weeks had gone by since the arrival of our two friends at Sunningdale, and yet, although he expected great things – everything – from the change, Renshaw seemed to find it impossible altogether to throw off the effects of his recent illness.

Now, to one member of the Sunningdale household this was a source of great, though secret anxiety. That one was Marian Selwood.

With growing concern she noticed an unwonted dejection settling over him – a kind of physical and mental languor and loss of appetite totally unlike his former self. Sometimes she ascribed it to the baleful witcheries of Violet Avory, at others to the consciousness of his hard, uphill struggle to make headway at all; sometimes, again, to both causes combined. Still there was no getting over the fact that he did not gain in convalescent strength, notwithstanding that his surroundings were in every way favourable and congenial to that end.

They had ever been great allies, these two. It is strange that they had not become greater – even for life; it is possible that this might eventually have come about but for two obstacles – Renshaw’s poverty and – Violet.

We do not commit ourselves to the assertion that Marian was in love with Renshaw. But that, in her opinion, he was absolutely faultless, we do freely admit, and her remarks upon him to Violet Avory earlier in this narrative lifted merely a corner of the curtain which veiled her predilection. Wherefore now she was mightily exercised on his account.

He did too much. For instance, what earthly necessity was there for him to have turned out so early that morning and gone right away up the mountain to look for half a dozen wretched sheep left out overnight, riding back by the vij-kraal to count Umsapu’s flock? Or what business had he toiling hard all day yesterday in the broiling sun, helping to pack a stone wall for a new “land” which was to be laid under cultivation, and he just through a return of a deadly malarial fever? It was too bad of Chris to allow it.

All this and more she took the opportunity of putting before Renshaw himself one hot morning as the two sat together in a delightfully cool and shady corner of the stoep.

“It won’t kill me yet, Marian,” he replied to her expostulations. “But do you seriously think I should get back my old form the sooner by just loafing around all day doing nothing?”

“Yes, I do,” she rejoined decisively. “Yes, I do – even though you put it that way. You do far too much.”

“Pooh! Not a bit of it. Why, it’s quite a treat to be able to do something. Bless my life, on my dried-up old place it’s a case of vegetating day after day – counting out – looking around – counting in. I’m like the jolly nomad moving around with his flocks, except that, mine being stationary, I have less trouble even than he has.”

“You certainly are nomadic in that you are wandering from the point, Renshaw, which is very crafty of you, but useless. As I am continually telling you – we feel bound to see that you get well and strong while you are with us, and how can you do either when day after day you are over-exerting yourself?”

There was just a soupçon of tenderness in her voice – and Marian Selwood had a beautiful voice – as she thus reasoned with him. Her head was partly bent down over her work, throwing into prominence the glorious masses of her golden hair, which, swept up into an artistic coronal, lent an additional dignity to her calm, sweet beauty. Renshaw lounged back in his cane chair, idly watching the supple, shapely fingers plying the needle in rhythmic regularity – every movement one of unconscious grace. The boom of bees floated upon the jessamine-laden air, varied by the shriller buzz of a long, rakish-looking hornet winging in and out of his absurd little clay nest, wedged, like that of a swallow, beneath the eaves of the verandah. Great butterflies flitted among the sunflowers, but warily and in terror of the lurking amantis – that arrant hypocrite, so devotional in his attitude, so treacherously voracious in his method of seizing and assimilating his prey – and a pair of tiny sugar-birds, in their delicate crimson and green vests, flashed fearlessly to and fro within a couple of yards of Renshaw’s head, dipping their long needle-like bills into the waxen blossoms of the fragrant jessamine.

And here we frankly admit losing patience with our friend Renshaw. Had we been in his place, with that exquisitely modulated voice talking to us, and fraught with that tender solicitude for our well-being, we feel sure we should in our own mind have sent a certain outrageous little flirt to the right-about then and there, and have dismissed her from our thoughts outright. But then, after all, we must remember that these two had known each other intimately all their lives, had been almost like brother and sister, which, we suppose, counts for something.

“Well, I’m taking it easy enough this morning, in your sweet society, Marian,” he rejoined, “so you mustn’t be too rough upon me. And – it is Paradise.”

“What is? My society?”

He laughed.

“That, of course. Understood. Didn’t need specifying. But – all this,” with a wave of the arm that caused the sugar-birds to dart away in terror and a couple of flashes of sheeny light, a result he certainly had not intended, “All this. To lounge here at ease like this, literally bathed in the scent of flowers, with a sound of running water in one’s ears, and of bird life, animal life, every sort of life, after the dead, burnt-up, famine-stricken waste, watching day after day, month after month, for the rain that doesn’t come – seeing one’s stock snuffing out like flies with daily increasing regularity. Bah! It’s enough to drive a man mad.”

“Why don’t you give it up, Renshaw? Sell off your place and come and try this part? Chris is always saying you could do much better somewhere down here.”

“And Chris is right. But selling off is easier said than done, let me tell you. No one will so much as look at land investment up there – and – I’m about cleaned out. As soon as I’ve picked up a little more in form I’m off up country again. The interior. It’s the only thing left.”

Marian’s head bent down lower over her work, for her eyes were brimming. Renshaw, busily engaged at that moment knocking the ashes out of his pipe against the post of the verandah, was half turned away from her, and, for good or for ill, the teardrop which fell upon her work escaped him altogether. When he turned round again she had entirely recovered her self-control.

“If that is your idea, you had better follow my advice and do all you can to get strong again,” she said. “For you cannot think of launching out into an undertaking of that sort for some time to come. But – are you going to make another attempt to find ‘The Valley’?”

Renshaw nodded.

“That’s it!” he said. “By the way, you haven’t let drop anything about it to any one, Marian.”

She felt hurt.

“I should have thought you knew me better than that. Ah, I see. Only a woman, after all!” she added, with a smile. “That’s what you were thinking?”

“No. It came out instinctively. You must forgive me, Marian. I really believe I’m half crazed on the subject of that confoundedly elusive Golconda. Well, we shall find it this time.”

“We?”

“Yes. I’m going to cut Sellon into the scheme. It’s an undertaking that’ll carry two. Besides, he’s a good fellow, and I owe him a turn for pulling me through that fever.”

“I’m sorry to tread upon your quixotic susceptibilities, Renshaw,” said Marian, after a brief pause, “but if you were not as astoundingly unselfish as most of us are the other way, it might strike you that if Mr Sellon has done you one good turn, you have done him several. If he saved your life by nursing you through that fever, as you say – though it is by no means certain you would not have pulled through it without him – you have saved his on another occasion. Where would he have been with that snake crawling over him, for instance? – Ugh!”

“I say, Marian. It isn’t like you to be so ungenerous,” was the astonished reply. “Wasn’t it awfully good of the chap to stick there in my hovel all those weeks, boring himself to death just for the sake of looking after me? Come now!”

“Where would he have been if your ‘hovel’ had not come so opportunely in sight when he was lost in the veldt, exhausted and without food or water?” came the calm, ready rejoinder.

“Oh, I say, come now. We can’t count that. It wouldn’t be fair. But – look here, Marian. You don’t like Sellon? Now, why not?”

“There you’re wrong,” she answered after a pause. “Within the ordinary meaning of the word, I do ‘like’ him. I think him a very pleasant, well-informed man, and good company. But he is not a man I should trust.”

“Not, eh? But, in the name of all conscience, why not?”

“That I can’t tell you, Renshaw. I don’t quite know myself, except that somehow or other he doesn’t seem to ring true. It’s a question of ear, like a false note. There, though, this is shameful. Here I am taking away a person’s character in the most reckless way, with nothing more definite to go upon but my woman’s instinct. I wouldn’t mention such a thing to any one else in the world – not even to Chris or Hilda. But I always did make a father-confessor of you,” she added, with a smile.

“And I hope you always will. Still, Marian, with all due deference to your woman’s instinct, it’s just on the cards it may in this instance be erroneous.”

“Perhaps so. I hope so. I mean it sincerely, not ironically. But, Renshaw – how much do you know of this Mr Sellon? Who is he?”

“Well, the fact is, I don’t know much – beyond that he’s knocking around here on the look-out for anything that may turn up trumps – like a good many of us. He’s a man who seems to have seen a good deal of the world – and, as you say, he’s good company. Seems well bred, too.”

“Oh yes,” acquiesced Marian, half absently. “But we had better forget that I ventured an unfavourable opinion on him.” And as at that moment they were invaded by twelve-year-old Effie, the subject perforce dropped.

“Is Violet inside, Effie?” asked Marian.

“Inside? Not she. Not when somebody else is outside. She’s spooning away somewhere – as usual.”

“That’s a nice way for little girls to talk,” said Marion, severely.

“Well, so she is,” went on Precocity, with the abominable straightforwardness of her tender years. “Wasn’t it always too hot to move, if any one suggested going out in the morning, until ‘somebody’ came? Now – ahem!”

“You’re talking nonsense, you naughty child,” said Marian, angrily. “In fact, you don’t know yourself what you’re talking about.”

“Eh? Don’t I? If you had seen what I saw – only the day before yesterday – ”

“But we didn’t see it, and we don’t want to know anything about it,” struck in Renshaw, sternly. “I never expected you to turn into a little mischief-maker, Effie.”

“You needn’t be so cross, Uncle Renshaw,” whimpered Miss Precocity, in whose affections the speaker held a prime place. “I only thought it rather good fun.” (Boo-hoo-hoo!)

“I didn’t mean to be hard upon you, dear – but spreading stories is generally anything but fun – not unusually least of all to those who spread them. Never repeat anything, Effie. Half the mischief in life comes out of tittle-tattle.”

But at that very moment, as though to turn the edge of the above highly salutary and not uncalled-for precept, who should heave in sight but the very pair under discussion, though in fact Christopher Selwood made up a third. The sight seemed to dry up Effie’s snivelling as if by magic.

“There! Didn’t I say so?” she muttered maliciously, and judiciously fled indoors.

“Still at work, Marian?” cried Violet, as the trio came up. “Why, what a regular Darby and Joan you two look,” she added, with a mischievous sparkle in her eyes. For although she laid herself out to keep well in with Marian, yet it was characteristic of her that she could not refrain from launching such a shaft as this – no, not even though her life depended on it.

And to her quick eye it seemed that there was ever so faint an indication that the bolt had struck home.

Chapter Thirteen.

A Tale of Blood

The town of Port Lamport was picturesquely situated on a wide bend of the Umtirara River. It contained a population of about fifteen hundred – whites, that is – and was the seat of magistracy for the surrounding district.

In former times Fort Lamport had been one of the more important of a chain of military posts extending along what was then the Kafir frontier, but after a series of long and harassing wars, resulting in the removal of those troublesome neighbours further eastward, Fort Lamport, in common with other military posts, was abandoned as such. A town, however, had sprung up around it, and this, as a centre of commerce, and also of native trade – for there were still large native locations in the surrounding district – throve apace.

It was not much of a place to look at; and in its main features differed little, if at all, from any other up-country township. The houses, mostly one-storied, were all squat and ugly. There were half a dozen churches and chapels, also squat and ugly. There were several hotels, and four or five native canteens. There were the public offices and gaol, these being the old fort buildings, converted to that use. There were the usual half-dozen streets – long, straggling, and very dusty – and the usual market square, also very dusty; the average number of general stores – dealing in anything, from a pianoforte to a pot of blacking – and the average number of waggons and spans of oxen standing half the day in front of them. As for the good citizens – well, of course, they considered their town the foremost in the Colony, and, on the whole, were not much more given to strife and litigation among themselves than the inhabitants of a small community generally are.

But if the town itself was unattractive, its environment was not, with its background of rounded hills, their slopes covered with dense forest, while above and beyond rose the higher peaks of the Umtirara range.

In the smoking-room of one of the hotels above mentioned lounged Renshaw Fanning. It was the hot and drowsy hour immediately succeeding luncheon, and he was nodding over the Fort Lamport Courier, a typical sheet, which managed to supply news to its constituent world a week or so after the said news had become public property through other mediums.

Small wonder, then, that Renshaw felt drowsy, and that the paper should slip from his relaxing grasp. Instinctively he made a clutch at it, and the action roused him. His eye fell upon a paragraph which he had overlooked —

“Horrible Murder by Escaped Convicts.”

With the fascination which a sensational subject never altogether fails to inspire, drowsy as he felt, he ran his eye down the paragraph.

“No less than seven desperadoes succeeded in making their escape from the Kowie convict station last Monday under circumstances of considerable daring. While the gang was on its way to the scene of its labours in charge of one white and two native constables armed with loaded rifles, these scoundrels, evidently acting in concert, managed to overpower and disarm their guardians at one stroke. Leaving the latter terribly beaten about the head, and half dead, and taking their rifles and cartridges, they made off into the bush. The remainder of the gang, though they rendered no assistance, seemed not eager to re-taste the sweets of liberty, for instead of following the example of their comrades they returned quietly to the town and reported the incident. Next morning early, the runaways visited an outlying vij-kraal belonging to a Dutch farmer named Van Wyk, and there perpetrated a peculiarly atrocious murder. The vij-kraal was in charge of a Hottentot herd, who, hearing a noise in the kraal, ran out of his hut just as the scoundrels were making off with two sheep. He gave chase, when suddenly, and without any warning, one of them turned round and shot him through the chest. The whole gang then returned, dragged out the unfortunate man’s wife and three children, and deliberately butchered them one after the other in cold blood. The bodies were found during the day by the owner of the place, who came upon them quite unexpectedly. They were lying side by side, with their throats cut from ear to ear; and he describes it as the most horrible and sickening sight he ever beheld. The herd himself, though mortally wounded, had lived long enough to make a statement, which places the identity of the atrocious miscreants beyond all doubt. It may interest our readers to learn that among the runaways were the two Kafirs, Muntiwa and Booi, who were tried at the Circuit Court recently held here, and sentenced to seven years’ hard labour each for stock-stealing. The rest were Hottentots and Bastards. (Half-bloods are thus termed in Cape Colony parlance.) At the same time we feel it a duty to warn our readers, and especially those occupying isolated farms in the Umtirara range, to keep a sharp look-out, as it is by no means unlikely that these two scoundrels may hark back to their old retreat, and with their gang perhaps do considerable mischief before they are finally run to earth.”

Not one atom of drowsiness in Renshaw now. The sting of the above paragraph, like that of the scorpion, lay in the tail. His blood ran cold. Heavens! That household of unprotected women! For Christopher Selwood was away from home on a week’s absence, visiting a distant property of his, and Sellon, by way of a change and seeing the country, had accompanied him. Renshaw himself had ridden into Fort Lamport the previous day on urgent business of his own – nothing less than to interview a possible purchaser of his far-away desert farm. Under ordinary circumstances, it was no uncommon thing to leave the household without male protection for a day or two, or even longer. But now – good heavens!

He glanced at the date of the newspaper. There should be a later one, he said to himself. Feverishly he hunted about for it, trying to hope that it might contain intelligence of the recapture of the runaways. Ah, there it was! With trembling hands he tore open the double sheet, and glanced down the columns.

“The Escaped Convicts.

“Our surmise has proved correct. The runaways have taken refuge in the Umtirara range, from whose dense and rugged fastnesses they will, we fear, long be able to defy the best efforts of the wholly inadequate police force at present at the disposal of the district. They entered a farmer’s house on the lower drift, yesterday, during the owner’s absence, and by dint of threats induced his wife and daughters to give them up all the firearms in the house. They got possession of two guns and a revolver, and a quantity of ammunition, and decamped in the direction of the mountains. It is a mercy they did not maltreat the inmates.”

The cold perspiration started forth in beads upon the reader’s forehead. The event recorded had occurred yesterday; the newspaper was of to-day’s date. He might yet be in time. But would he be? It was three o’clock. Sunningdale was distant thirty-five miles. By the hardest riding he could not arrive before dark, for the road was bad in parts, and his horse was but an indifferent one.