Chapter Eleven.
Dreams—and a Visit.
“I wonder why Mr Wyvern never comes over to see us now,” remarked small Frank Le Sage, one morning.
“I believe he and Lala have had a row,” rejoined smaller Charlie; for thus were they wont at times to abbreviate their sister’s uncommon, and to them high-sounding name.
She for her part smiled. She would not “shut them up,” she liked to hear them talk about him.
“Man, but he’s a fine chap,” went on the first speaker. “I seem to miss him no end.”
“Rather,” assented the other. “And doesn’t he just know how to make stunning catapults!”
“And to use them too,” came the rejoinder.
Lalanté, who had been contemplating the small speakers with a smile of tender approval, burst out laughing at this ingenuous and whole-hearted appreciation of the absent one’s claim to esteem.
“And so that’s all he’s a ‘fine chap’ for, is it?” she said.
“Oh, no. He’s a jolly fine chap all round, you know.”
“Rather,” confirmed the other. Then, insinuatingly, “I say, Lalanté. Let us off that beastly catechism this morning, won’t you? It’s such a jolly morning to go down the kloof and humbug about.”
It was Sunday, and the form of instruction thus irreverently qualified, was wont on that day to take the place of the “three R’s” already referred to.
“Yes, and get yourselves into a nice mess, and tear yourselves to pieces. Supposing any visitors were to turn up—you wouldn’t be fit to be seen,” answered the girl. But her tone was, for the object they had in view, anything but hopeless.
“We shan’t get any visitors except Mr Wyvern, and he won’t care,” replied he who had made the request.
“I hope he will turn up,” declared the other. “He does spin such ripping good yarns. Do let us off, Lala.”
For answer they were encircled by an arm apiece, and upon each eager, pleading face was bestowed a hearty kiss.
“You darlings, I will then,” she said, releasing them. “But—go and put on your old clothes. I’m not going to have you running wild in those.”
Away they sped rejoicing. The condition was not a hard one. It is only fair to say, however, that their hymn of praise to the absent Wyvern was in no way inspired by ulterior motive. Their admiration for him was whole-souled and genuine.
Lalanté looked after them with something of a sigh. They could be happy enough—a small trifle would accomplish that. But she? However cheerful and sanguine and comforting she might be in the presence of her lover, there were times, when alone, that her heart failed her. And now that presence was withdrawn.
Nearly a month had gone by since her father had fixed an open quarrel upon him, which quarrel, for all its tragic potentialities, had found a somewhat tame and commonplace outcome at the time, to all outward seeming, that is. She had, as Wyvern had foreseen, come out to welcome him on that eventful morning; and while obliged to bid him good-bye then, had assured him openly and unmistakably, and in the presence of her father, that she had no more intention of giving him up than she had of jumping off the nearest krantz; a declaration which caused Le Sage to snarl and curse. Then Wyvern, having the good sense to see that no good purpose could be served by further irritating his quondam friend, had bidden her good-bye—not less affectionately than usual we may be sure—and had ridden off.
Since then a frost had set in between Lalanté and her father, but it was of his own creation and nursing, for after the first soreness, the girl had shown him the same affection as before, possibly even more; for, strange to say, she was capable of seeing the matter from his point of view; moreover she knew that his own soreness was largely a matter of jealousy in that he was no longer first. But she would not promise not to see Wyvern again, and this rankled in Le Sage’s mind more than ever, especially as he felt certain she would find opportunities of seeing him.
As a matter of fact she did so find them, but they were few and far between—and only then, when her father’s business necessitated his absence from home. Now of this Le Sage was aware, or at any rate more than suspicious. He was too proud to question Lalanté, she having frankly declared that she could not defer to his wishes in the matter. But his hatred of Wyvern became almost an obsession, dangerous alike to himself and its object. He had one satisfaction, however, out of which he gleaned grim comfort—he held the power now to eject Wyvern from Seven Kloofs within the space of a few months; in the acquisition of which power Vincent Le Sage had made the first bad bargain he had ever been known to make in his life.
Her small brothers having skipped off down the kloof, clad in their old garments and armed with a catapult apiece—to the latter extent supremely happy, Lalanté dropped into a roomy cane chair upon the stoep and let herself go in meditation. Let it not be supposed, however, that hers was any mere contemplative life; far from it. Her strong, capable young nature was eminently cut out for the discharge of everyday duties, and the discharge of them well, too. We have seen how she managed her two small brothers, but her father’s comfort came second to nothing, and into all that concerned him, and occupied his daily interest, she entered thoroughly. Whereby it is manifest that from his point of view there was a good deal of excuse to be made for his soreness now. And if, as we have said, she had no “accomplishments,” and no high opinion of mere schooling, of which, by the way, she had undergone her full share, she had what was better, tact and the capability of rendering the lives of those belonging to her happy and comfortable.
Leaning back in her chair now, in an attitude of meditative ease, her hands knitted behind the soft masses of her sheeny hair, the curving lines of her figure, gowned in cool white, revealed to a sensuous advantage that was wholly unstudied and unconscious, her large grey eyes dilated between their thick lashes, accentuated by the sun-kissed tinge of brown in her clear complexion, the girl made a beautiful picture. In and out beneath the green leaves of the trellised vine which verandahed the stoep, long-waisted hornets winged their way, the winnowing draught of their flight fanning her face; but to such she paid no heed. Her wide gaze was fixed on nothing, but wandered afar—beyond the green and gold of the rolling, spek-boem clad ridges. What was he doing on this heavenly morning? If only he would come over, moved by some afterthought? Why not? Surely a few words need not open so wide a gulf—a few words between men, and one of them angry. But with a sigh she recognised, young as she was, that a few words might open a wider gulf than even a few deeds. If only he would!
There was small chance of it—in fact none. Yet, even then, Lalanté could not be pronounced unhappy. She had all his love, and he had hers. No room was there for any shadow of a doubt or misgiving upon that score, and now she, so to say, bathed herself in its consciousness, even though temporarily reft of the presence of the other of the two thus making to themselves a very paradise within the world!
Strange to say, considering her youth, and the circumstances, after the first natural soreness Lalanté had shown no resentment against her father for the part he had borne in the matter. Him she had treated in the same way as ever, indeed in a manner calculated to soothe rather than feed his rancour. On one or two occasions when he had savagely abused the absent one, she had, with great mastery of self-control, refrained from angry retort, and had begged him, as a matter of consideration for her, to refrain from wounding her. “You would not hurt your little Lalanté, would you, dear?” she had said with an arm round his shoulder. “Well, when you say these things you hurt me as much as you would if you hit me with a stick or a stone. No—more.” And Le Sage had stared, startled, into the moist eyes, and mumbling something, had left the room—hurriedly. But he never abused Wyvern again, at least not in her presence—nor when there was any possibility of her being within earshot. It is even possible that he might have relented, and extended a helping hand to the unlucky one, or at any rate have tolerated a further effort; but the hard, business instinct of the invariably successful man rose, as a bar—as a very bulkhead of hard oak—between him and his more human, and better inclinations.
The hot, dreamy hours of the forenoon flowed on, and still Lalanté sat, to all outward appearance doing nothing, but in reality with racing thoughts. She did not even care to read. You read in order to be taken out of yourself, which was just what she didn’t want. Her father was in a small inner room, with a pipe in his mouth, making up—we regret to say, having previously stated that the day was Sunday—certain accounts, for, in addition to his farming ventures, he did a good deal in the stock-jobbing line. And the girl sat there, dreaming on, reconstituting in her mind a retrospection of all that had passed within that year, which was, if there had ever been such a thing, literally and actually annus amoris.
She recalled, for instance, their first meeting; how she had come in, hot and dishevelled—or at any rate feeling it—after a long scramble with the two small boys away over the veldt—to find, all unexpectedly, the man of whom she had heard so much as her father’s—then—intimate friend. She remembered every line of the expression of the clear-cut, high-bred face, the look of admiration that had momentarily leapt into his eyes directly they rested upon her—hot and dishevelled—in straight, kindly glance; the tall, fine proportions of his frame, the courteous, interested conversation in which he had engaged her. She went over the hiatus of their prompt confidence and growing mutual interest, until—a certain evening, when standing together under the radiant moon amid the fragrant breaths of night—an evening which seemed specially created for such an object—their love had, as it were, rushed together and declared itself as one—yes, as one from the very first. For a brief time life had been a perfectly uninterrupted Paradise, and that to both—and then—and then—trouble, care—black care—had stolen in more and more, but—through it all, love was ever the same, ever undimmed, indeed if possible refined and winnowed by the prospect of adversity. No—assuredly there was no room for unhappiness in Lalanté’s present any more than in her past. The cloud hung heavy, but it would surely lift. It must. It should.
“Who the devil is this?”
The girl started from her day-dream, and turned quickly. In the doorway behind her stood her father, a pair of binoculars in his hand. Then she looked in the direction in which under the circumstance she naturally would look.
Away, where the road topped the ridge, two horsemen were riding; and they were approaching the house. They might have been merely passers-by certainly, but the girl’s true instinct informed her that it was not so, and her heart beats quickened. Yet—why two?
“One of ’em’s Warren,” pronounced Le Sage, with the glasses at his eyes. “And the other—why, damn it! it’s—it’s that fellow, Wyvern.”
This staccato. Lalanté, rising, saw that her father’s face had paled, and the hands that held the binoculars shook.
“Now, dear,” she adjured, putting a hand round his shoulder. “Don’t lose yourself, and remember he may have some particular object in wanting to see you. He has never been here since, and it’s quite possible that he has. Now do receive him with common civility. You must, you know. You can’t be offensive to a man on your own doorstep. Now can you?”
“Oh, can’t I? I seem to remember telling this one never to come near my ‘own doorstep’ again,” snorted Le Sage.
“Never mind. Wait till you hear what he has got to say. You will, won’t you.”
By this time she had got both arms round his neck, and was holding it tight. He looked into her luminous eyes with his own sombre and angry ones, and somehow the anger seemed to die.
“Very well, dear,” he said with an effort, though more gently, and loosening her hold. “I’ll wait and see.”
Meanwhile the two horsemen were drawing very near.