Chapter Eighteen.
The Mating.
“Yes, I have to be a bit careful,” Ben Halse was saying. “You see, I’ve got up a bit of a name—well, all we old-time traders were tarred with the same brush. I could name more than one who made his pile on the same terms; I could also name a big firm or two in Natal who has made a bigger pile on the same terms. However, we’re not running this load into the country, but out of it.”
The speaker and Alaric Denham were helping to load up a waggon, part of the contents of which were consigned for shipment at Durban. One important item of the load was a case containing the record koodoo head. There were other specimens, too, which Denham had collected.
The latter had been Ben Halse’s guest about three weeks now, and as he had only just got up his outfit, and luggage in general, from the coast port it looked as though he were destined to prolong his sojourn for some time. And, indeed, from his point of view, there was every inducement for doing so. He and the trader had taken greatly to each other, and once when he had mooted the idea of leaving the other would not hear of it.
“We seem all jolly together,” Ben Halse had said, in his bluff, straightforward way. “You take us as you find us, and you seem to me a man who would fit in anywhere. Further, you have got into a queer part of the world such as you may never get into again. You are collecting new things every day. So why hurry? You are welcome as long as you can stick it.”
To which Denham had replied that he had enjoyed every day of his stay as he had seldom if ever enjoyed anything; and he would give himself plenty of time to wear out his welcome. And he and his host had sealed the compact then and there over a glass of grog.
Now he said—
“I shall be relieved when this load is fairly on board. That head, you know, is a sort of a nightmare. All the rest put together isn’t in with it.”
“Oh, you can trust Charlie Newnes,” said the trader. “He’s a straight, reliable man as ever was—a darn sight more so than lots of men who are quite white—and stands well with those who baas this show now. I was shooting what I chose here in these parts when these new officials—damn them!—were being licked at school, before ever they dreamed of coming here to tell an old up-country man like me that he mustn’t shoot this and mustn’t shoot that. I don’t know what the devil we’re all coming to. Oh, here is Charlie.”
A tall, well-set-up young fellow appeared on the scene. He was the son of a well-known old-time trader by a Zulu wife, but in him the European had predominated to such an extent that outside Africa he might have passed for a white man. There was, however, a certain lithe suppleness about his walk and movements that would have given him away in a moment to any South African not of the town born and bred.
“Well, Charlie,” said Ben Halse; “it’s all loaded up now. Mr Denham says he won’t close his eyes until he knows his cargo’s shipped, so be sure and impress upon Garland that he must send word at once.”
“That’ll be all right, Mr Halse; Mr Denham can rest easy,” answered the young fellow. “If there’s a reliable agent in Durban for anything under the sun, from shipping an elephant to the Zoo to sending a youngster to sea properly equipped, Mr Garland’s the man.”
“Well, then, you can trek. Come in and have a drop of square face first.”
“Well, Mr Halse, I don’t often take anything,” said the young fellow deprecatorily. “But—once in a way.”
The refection was duly consumed, and the waggon rolled its way down the hill.
“Your stuff’ll be all right, Mr Denham, never fear,” said Charlie Newnes, as they shook hands. Then he started to overtake the waggon.
“That’s a fine young fellow,” said Denham, looking after the outfit. “I should think he and his like would count for something in this country, in the long run.”
“Oh, I don’t know. They are rather between the devil and the deep sea,” answered the trader. “There are quite a lot of them about—decent, respectable chaps for the most part. Neither one thing nor the other. I knew his father well in the old days. Bob Newnes ran the whole north-western part of this country before and after the war of ’79. He made his pile a good bit.”
“Father, you are giving yourself away,” laughed Verna.
“Oh, I’ve done that already before. Well, what does it matter? Any fool can see I’m no chicken.”
“You’re a jolly well-preserved one, Halse,” said Denham. “No one would have given you credit for such far-back experiences if you hadn’t told them yourself.”
“They used to call me a gun-runner, you know, Denham—do still, in fact. We were all gunrunners in those days, as I was telling you just now. But what the devil did it matter? No one was damaged by any gunshot during the war of ’79, except in a couple of stray instances, for the average Zulu is such a wretched shot he couldn’t hit a cathedral. Since then—well, when they fought each other, there was no harm in supplying them with as many as they wanted.”
Verna was beginning to feel uncomfortable, and some mysterious telepathy made Denham aware of the fact.
“Of course,” he answered cheerily. “Don’t we build war-ships on the Clyde and Tyne and at Belfast for foreign Powers to use against ourselves if they want to? It seems to me there’s precious little difference, if any at all.”
“Bless your soul, no. Well, I raft up some pretty good loads for the Usutu in the mid-eighties, when they were at each other’s throats here. The Usutu paid the best, you see. The other side had got their own white men—John Dunn and others. We weren’t over-ridden with officialdom in those days. Those were times, but they’ve all gone. Verna, if you’re still on to that picnic, suppose you give us breakfast.”
“That picnic” was a ride which she and Denham had planned down into the forest country in search of specimens. They had taken several of the kind already.
Yes, several. And Denham, thrown into the daily society of this girl, had come to the conclusion that such society was necessary to him, daily, and thenceforward. His life since he had been here had been an idyll, he told himself, a sheer idyll. Why should it not be a permanent one? Strangely enough, with all his advantages and experiences Denham was singularly modest. Why should he expect Verna to leave her father at the call of a mere stranger? Why should he expect her father to be ready to part with her? They were so happy together, so wrapt up in each other; and he, after all, what was he but a mere stranger? And then there was something darker at the back of that, but it he put away from his thoughts. Still, it would obtrude.
Sometimes the thought of his wealth and position would come to his aid. But immediately it would strike him that such counted for nothing here. If ever there was an independently-minded man on earth it was his host, and as for Verna, why, she was clean outside all his experience of the other sex. Then again would come in that strange and subtle sympathy, which would well up at times during their close and daily companionship.
The atmosphere of the Lumisana forest was not so stuffy and fever-breathing now. A touch of approaching winter was upon it, and from the blue, unclouded sky the sun no longer shot down rays of torrid heat. So as the pair threaded the narrow path, closely shut in overhead by towering tree-tops, the horses showed no sign of weariness or distress.
“I don’t much like bringing them in here,” Verna said. “There’s tsetse at times. But it has turned so much cooler that I think it’s safe.”
They were riding in single file, she leading. It was a wonderful road. Tall trees shutting out the light; ropes of monkey trailers dangling to the ground, thick undergrowth and long grass making that peculiar translucent hue such as you may see by taking a deep dive into a tropical sea. Not many bird voices, but here and there one, for birds prefer the outskirts of inhabited lands, and the remotest depths of forest are not to their taste.
“Shall we lunch here, Verna?” said Denham, as they came out upon a small open space where a runnel of water flowed into a pool. In the course of their close companionship he had got into the way of calling her by her name. It had come naturally to both of them somehow. She, for her part, had, of late, never called him anything at all.
“Yes; it’s as good a place as any, and, I’ll tell you now, it’s where the record head was shot. I never would bring you here before, you know, but—here we are.”
And she flashed a merry laugh at him.
“By Jove! that’s capital. Now we’ll ‘reconstitute’ the whole performance, as the French police do in a murder case. Now, show me. Where was the koodoo, and where were you?”
“First of all, about the horses,” she said; “we must keep them hitched up, we can’t knee-halter them because it’s swampy the other side of the vlei, and once they got into that, why—good-night. We should have to walk home and break the news as gently as we could to father.”
They loosened the girths only, having first allowed the animals to drink; and then Verna, in as few words as possible, showed him the positions of the whole affair.
“It’s nothing to brag about,” she ended up. “I’ll own to one bit of conceit about it, though. I told father that it seemed a thousand pities my name shouldn’t figure as having shot the record koodoo head of the world, even if it was only in a private collection. He said that it could—however, we’ve settled all that now.”
“Well, he was wrong, for, on second thoughts, it can’t.”
“What’s the joke?” she said, fairly mystified.
“None at all, it’s dead serious,” speaking quickly. “I shan’t label it as shot by Verna Halse, but by Verna Denham. Those are my conditions. How do they strike you—darling?”
Her face flushed, then grew pale, then flushed again. In the world of adoring love in her eyes he read his answer. She put forth both hands, which he seized.
“I don’t know,” she said slowly. “Yes, but, I do know. Yet, listen, Alaric”—it was the first time she had ever used his name, and it came out sweetly—“are you sure you mean what you say? For instance, supposing you were to go away for six months, would you come back and say it all the same?”
“I’ve no intention of trying any such idiotic experiment, and, fortunately, such an utterly unnecessary one. Well?”
“How long have we known each other?” she answered. “Barely a month, certainly not more. We have been thrown together all day and every day. Are you sure that such propinquity has not something to do with it?”
He laughed good-humouredly, tolerantly.
“That’s all very well,” she went on, “but this is serious. What can you see in me, you who have seen so much and so many, the not even half educated daughter of an up-country trader, whose bringing up has given little opportunity for the ordinary refinements, let alone for acquiring accomplishments? And with all these deficiencies I should very soon pall upon you.”
“I shall have to laugh directly,” he answered. “Half educated? Why, you’ve been arguing against yourself with a grip of your points which would be worthy of the smartest K.C., and with a terseness which would not earn him his fee. What can I see in you?”—and his tone became very vehement and very serious. “I can see in you attributes which, taken together, should render any woman irresistible—a rare physical attractiveness, an unbounded power of sympathy, and a staunchness that would stand by a man through the worst that might befall him. Is that sufficient, or must I go on adding to it?”
Verna’s eyes had filled as he was speaking. The words, the tone, seemed to burn through her whole being; but there was a smile upon her lips—very soft, very sweet.
“And can you see—really see all that in me, Alaric?”
“All that, and a great deal more,” he answered vehemently, drawing her to him. “So now give me your first kiss.”
“Darling, I will.”
The sun streamed hotter and hotter into the open space, frogs croaked among the reeds surrounding the burnished surface of the pool; a lemur, swinging and bounding on high among the twisted tree-trunks, stared down, blinking his beady eyes and cocking his pointed snout; a large snake lay coiled in the grass hard by, wondering if safety rested in lying still or beating a retreat; half-a-hundred of the eyes and lives of the forest were witness to the beginning of the mating of these two, witnesses, as they may have been to the darker deeds of blood which these grim shades had so lately contained.