Chapter Nineteen.
A Good Offer.
Time went by, and weeks slipped into months. Amid congenial surroundings and magnificent air, Renshaw had completely shaken off all lingering remnants of his fever attack. He began to think seriously of starting in quest of “The Valley of the Eye.”
Sellon, too, had begun to wax impatient, though with any less tempting object in view he would have been loth to exchange this delightfully easygoing life for a toilsome and nebulous quest, involving possible risks and certain hardship and privations. Moreover, a still lingering misgiving that the other might cry off the bargain acted like a spur.
“It’s all very well for you, Fanning,” he said one day, “but, for my part, I don’t much care about wearing out my welcome. Here I’ve been a couple of months, if not more, and I shouldn’t wonder if Selwood was beginning to think I intended quartering myself on him for life. I know what you’re going to say. Whenever I mention leaving, he won’t hear of it. Still, there’s a limit to everything.”
“Well, I don’t mind making a start, say, next week,” Renshaw had answered. “I’ve got to go over to Fort Lamport on Saturday. If it’ll suit you, we’ll leave here about the middle of the week. We shall have roughish times before us once we get across the river, mind.”
“Right you are, and hurrah for the diamonds!” was the other’s hearty response; and then he turned away to seek a favourable opportunity of breaking the news to Violet.
If Renshaw had succeeded in shaking off the effects of his fever attack, no such complete success had attended his efforts with regard to that other attack. There was not much healing for his wounds in the sight of the more than ordinarily good understanding existing between Violet and Sellon, and being, in common with the remainder of the household, ignorant of their former acquaintanceship, the thought that he himself had been instrumental in bringing them together, was indeed a bitter pill. And then his disciplined nature would seek for an antidote and find it—find it in the promise Violet had extracted from him to befriend her to the utmost of his power. Well, he was going to do this. He was going to be the means of enriching the man who had, though not unfairly, yet no less certainly, supplanted him. His sacrifice on her account would be complete. Through his instrumentality the pair would obtain the means of happiness. And in this reflection his mind found a degree of consolation.
“Cold consolation this—very much the reverse of consolation!” cries the ordinary mind. Yes, but Renshaw Fanning’s was not an ordinary mind.
Christmas had come and gone—bringing with it much festivity—the visits of friends and relatives, till the house was crammed to the extent of holding no more by any means short of “shaking down” the excess members in the verandah, even as many were already “shaken down” on the floors of the bedrooms. There had been dances and riding parties, and a buck-hunt or two, though the time of year was unfavourable to venatorial pursuits—the sweltering midsummer heat being ill-conducive to scent in the matter of rousing the quarry, though very much conducive to the same, after the slaying of the said quarry, which indeed would hardly keep two hours. There had been much fun and flirtation among the younger section and much jollity among all. Jovial Chris Selwood was never so much in his element as with a crowd of friends about him, and the more the merrier, he would say.
Then as the corner of the year turned, the party had broken up and gone its respective ways—one to his farm, another to his merchandise—the bulk of it, however, literally to the former. And Renshaw began to think a great deal about “The Valley of the Eye.”
“So your faith in this Sindbad valley is as strong as ever, is it, Renshaw?” said Selwood, in comment on a remark of the other’s as they were returning homeward together after a day of riding around the veldt, looking after the flocks and their keepers, and giving an eye to things in general.
“Well, yes, it is. I’m as convinced the place exists as I am that I exist myself. But it’s weariful work, hunting a will-o’-the-wisp.”
“Rather. Throw it up, old man. Now, why on earth don’t you make up your mind to come and settle near us? There are good enough farms around here to be had.”
“For those who have the means,” supplied the other, gaily. “And I’m not one of them. That last drought ‘busted’ me—lock, stock, and barrel. All the greater necessity to find the ‘Eye.’”
Selwood made no immediate reply. He flicked the heads of the grasses with his whip as he rode, in a meditative and embarrassed manner wholly foreign to his genial open nature.
“See here, Renshaw,” he burst forth at last; “we were boys together, and ought to know each other pretty well by this time. Now, I think you’re a touchy fellow on some subjects—but, hang it all, what I want to say is this—you’ve been cursed by ill-luck of late; why not try fresh ground? Now, if a thousand pounds would—er—pull your train back on to the rails again, why, there it is, and you’ve only got to say so. Eh? What? Obligation, did you say?”—the other having said nothing at all. “That be hanged! The boot’s all on the other foot!”
Renshaw was a sensitive man and a proud one, and Selwood knew it—hence the latter’s embarrassment.
“Chris, you are indeed a friend!” he answered. “I don’t know what to say—”
“Say? Say? Say—‘Done with you,’ and consider the matter settled,” fumed Selwood, cutting him short.
“I can’t say that, Chris. Just think what a run of ill-luck I have had. It would be robbing you to borrow on absolutely no security—”
“Ill-luck! Of course you have. So would any fellow who tried to farm Angoras in Great Bushman-land; and I was nearly saying—he’d deserve it,” cried Selwood, testily. “It would be different down here, with decent land and decent seasons. And there isn’t a better farmer in this colony than yourself!”
“Don’t think me ungracious,” said Renshaw, deprecatorily. “As you were saying, Chris, we have known each other all our lives, and ought to be able to speak out to each other. What I was going to say is this: Your offer is that of a true and generous friend; but were I to accept it, I should be robbing you, for I can’t give you a hundred pounds’ worth of security.”
“But I do think you ungracious,” fumed the other. “Robbing me! Security! Tut-tut-tut! Why, old fellow, you needn’t be so punctilious. Remember, you would probably have effected the sale of your place to that speculator chap in Fort Lamport the other day, but for starting off home on the spur of the moment, to protect Hilda and the rest of them against those cut-throats. And one doesn’t like to think what might have happened to them but for you,” he added, very gravely.
Now, this was a most unfortunate allusion, for, needless to say wholly unwittingly, Selwood had thereby imported a “compensation” element into his generous offer—at least, so it seemed to the other’s sensitive pride. And while acquitting his friend entirely of any such idea, Renshaw’s mind was there and then made up that by no possibility, under the circumstances, could he entertain it, and he said as much.
Selwood was deeply disappointed.
A silence fell between the two men.
“By Jove!” said Christopher, suddenly, as they came in sight of the homestead, “your chum there is making the most of his last day.”
Two figures came in sight, strolling by the dam in the sunset glow—Violet Avory and Sellon. Renshaw, recognising them, made no reply. But the dagger within his heart gave one more turn.
“I suppose they’ll make a match of it directly,” went on Selwood. “It won’t be the first that’s been made up at old Sunningdale by any means—ha! ha!”
It was the last day at Sunningdale. Early on the morrow Renshaw and Sellon would start upon their expedition. And what strange, wild experiences would be theirs before they should again rejoin this pleasant home circle. Would they return, rewarded with success, or only to bear record of another failure? Or would they, perchance, not return at all?
This was the reflection that would recur with more or less haunting reiteration to every member of the household that evening. There were serious and saddened faces in that circle; eyes, too, that would turn away to conceal a sudden brimming that it was not wholly possible to suppress.
For what if, perchance, they should never return at all?