Chapter Twenty One.
Peace—and Potentialities.
“If I had had such a father as yours, Edala, I should simply have worshipped him.”
“I daresay. In fact it strikes me that that’s just about what you’re doing with regard to mine.”
The retort was crisp, not to say scathing. Evelyn Carden was angry with herself for changing colour slightly, the while those clear blue eyes were pitilessly searching her face. But she was not going to quarrel with Edala, so she answered conciliatorily:—
“Now dear, you know I never meant to offend you. Why should I? We have got on so well together. What I said was for your own happiness; that and nothing else. Of course I’ve no earthly right to even seem to ‘lecture’ you.”
“Not yet,” was the still more scathing retort which arose to the other girl’s lips. Fortunately she checked it. She looked up, as though waiting for more.
“I am not a gushing person, Edala dear, but I have grown very fond of you since I have been here. I would not have said anything about this estrangement but that it suddenly struck me—and struck me with horror—that I might have been the unconscious cause of deepening it, or at any rate that you thought I had been. So I think I will find some excuse and—move on.”
Edala softened. She was really fond of the other, and did not, in her heart of hearts, wish to see the last of her.
“No, you won’t, Evelyn,” she answered with characteristic decisiveness. “You’ll stay where you are. Never mind me. If I said anything beastly I’m more than sorry.”
What Thornhill had half welcomed in advance had come about. Edala was jealous. All that she might have done for her father, and had neglected to do, was done by their visitor. Did he want anything found for him—from some article mislaid, to some quotation in the course of his recreative studies—Evelyn was the one to do it, not Edala. Or did he want a companion in his semi-professional rides about the farm, Evelyn never by any chance refused or made excuse, but Edala often did, not only of late but when they had been alone together. In short, at every turn he met with far more consideration from this stranger than from his own child.
The incident which had led to the present discussion had occurred the day before, and was of just such a nature. Edala did not care to go out; it was too hot; besides, she had something else to do. But Evelyn had made no such excuse.
“I’m afraid I’m straining your good nature to cracking point,” Thornhill had more than once remarked on such occasions. “It’s rather more cheerful having some one with you than not, but I believe you never say ‘No’ because you think it a duty not to.”
“In that case a duty becomes a pleasure,” she had answered with a laugh.
Now of late Edala had been set thinking, and as the result of her searchings of heart a certain soreness had set in. Their visitor seemed to be taking her place, and yet she could not blame the visitor. If she would not do things for her father herself she could not fairly blame another person for doing them instead; yet none the less did she feel sore.
But since the incident at the wind-up of the bushbuck hunt the estrangement had widened. That her father had intended to shoot Manamandhla dead, she entertained not the slightest doubt. In the first place a man of his judgment could by no possibility be guilty of such a clumsy blunder as mistaking a human being for a buck under any circumstances whatever. In the next place the expression of his countenance had told its own tale, not only to herself but to the other witness, Elvesdon. What was it, then, but an act of cold-blooded, deliberate murder—in intent? Clearly there existed the strongest reasons for silencing the Zulu? And then a ghastly thought came into her mind. Could it be that he had been an accomplice in that terrible tragedy whose shadow had so early darkened her young life? Her first repulsion for the Zulu—which had begun to give way to a reaction in his favour since his narrow escape from death—returned a hundredfold with this new idea. Should she question him, she asked herself? What was the use? He would tell her nothing.
“Don’t think any more about it, dear,” Evelyn now rejoined. “It was only that I can see how bitterly your father feels your attitude towards him that moved me to refer to a matter which you have every right to tell me is no business of mine at all.”
Edala hardened again.
“Has he been—complaining then?” she said, with a return of bitterness.
“Is it likely? Is he that sort of man, do you think? Ah child, you don’t know what you are doing when you are throwing away the affection of such a father as yours, and repelling and wounding him at every turn. And some day, when it is too late, you may—”
She stopped. The other had put out a hand and stopped her. Those were just her father’s own words, and now, for the first time, they struck her as horribly prophetic. Her eyes filled.
“I’m several years older than you, Edala, and I’ve seen a very great deal of life from all its sides. Mind, I’m not saying this to patronise or talk down to you, only to emphasise what an appallingly scarce thing real affection is. And I can’t bear to go away without having made some effort towards making you realise it too. That’s all that lies at the bottom of my ‘beastly interference,’ as you are calling it within your own mind,” she added with a smile.
“‘To go away’!” repeated Edala, with scornful emphasis, and dropping a hand upon that of the other. “But you’re not going away, so don’t let’s hear any more about it.”
“I’ve not come to live here, you know,” was the laughing rejoinder. “Well then, we won’t talk any more about parting company just yet since you’re not quite so anxious to get rid of me as I thought. Do you know, Edala, I have hardly any friends, almost none—acquaintances, yes,”—in reply to the look of astonishment evoked by the statement—“plenty of them. I am not exactly poor either—not in these days, though I have known the meaning of cruel straits—and can do what I like and go where I like, within modest limits. But I have been very happy here—I don’t know when I have enjoyed any time so much.”
“I should have thought you’d have found it beastly slow,” said Edala, wonderingly, and speaking in the light of her own unsatisfied aspirations. Her new relative was a great enigma to her. Why, for instance, with all her advantages had she never married? though this to her was nothing very wonderful, for she herself, given the same advantages, would have thought of that time-honoured institution as so remote a contingency as not to be worth consideration. Again she seldom said much about her people, or her earlier life, except in a vague and generalising sort of way.
“Anything but that,” answered Evelyn. “Why I feel in twice the form I was in when I came.”
“You look it too.”
This was bare fact. The joyous, healthy, outdoor life in a splendid and genial climate, had set its mark upon Evelyn Carden; had heightened her outward attractions, at the first not inconsiderable, as we have shown.
“You know,” went on Edala, “there are precious few places in this country where they five the life we live—I mean as far as we womenkind are concerned. Anywhere else you’d have been stuck down to read, and play the piano, and talk gossip—with an occasional ride or drive to some similar and neighbouring place to go through the same exercises within the limit of a day. They wouldn’t have stuck you on a horse, and romped you about over all sorts of rough country, bushbuck hunting and all that. Why they’d be horrified at the bare idea—though, I forgot—we haven’t been able to teach you to shoot, yet.”
Evelyn laughed.
“I’m sorry to say you haven’t, and I’m sadly afraid now that you never will. I suppose I haven’t been caught young enough.”
Both Edala and her father had done all they knew how to impart that instruction. They had assured. Evelyn that within a week at the outside she would be able to turn over her first bushbuck. But it was of no use. She got plenty of chances, but when the rushing, frightened antelope broke covert and bounded by like the wind, her nerve played her tricks, and she would blindly lash off both barrels at anything or nothing. And then, too, the gun would kick, as even the best gun will do if badly held; and after a bruised cheekbone, and a badly aching shoulder she had decided that that form of sport was not at all in her line. They had, however, taught her how to handle a revolver, though she was very far indeed from being able to make prize shooting with the same.
The two were seated in the shade of the tall fig-trees during the hot hours of the forenoon when this conversation had taken place—this conversation which had opened with every sign of storm, and had drifted into calm haven of peace. Edala, for her part, felt all her new born jealousy allayed. She felt compunctious, even inclined to act on the other’s warning and advice. It was in quite a softened mood that she turned to her father, who now joined them, looking hot and tired.
“Here, get into this chair,” she cried, jumping up and pushing him into hers. “You look fagged. I’m going in to get you something to drink. I’m sure you want it.”
“Yes do, darling,” he answered seizing her for a moment to press a kiss on the shining aureole of her gold-crowned head. “Well, what have you two been talking about?” as he subsided thankfully into the comfortable seat.
“Many things more or less interesting. Edala has at last come to the conclusion that I’m a hopelessly bad case because I can’t do anything with that wretched gun. I told her I wasn’t caught young enough.”
“Ho—ho! Not young enough! That’s good.”
“Now don’t you start making compliments, Inqoto, because they aren’t in your line at all,” she answered, placidly. And then Edala reappeared and the golden sparkle in the decanter and the cold gurgle in the porous water ‘monkey’—was grateful sight and sound to a tired and thirsty man. Evelyn often called him by his native name. It was a complimentary one and therefore convenient. They all disliked the prefix of ‘Cousin,’ while if she conferred upon him the brevet rank of uncle why it made him out so old. So this came in handy.
“That’s good!” he cried draining the glass at one pull, and chucking it down in the grass. “You girls look cool and comfy. What have you been doing with yourselves?”
“Taking it easy.”
“So it would seem,” he laughed, looking at them both approvingly. He was thinking how different life had been to him since Evelyn Carden’s arrival. She was so eminently companionable, so tactful and sympathetic. And she looked so soothing and attractive, sitting there opposite him now; and some day she would be going away. The thought was unpleasant. The object of it looked up.
“What is troubling you? You heaved no end of a sigh.”
“Did I, dear? I suppose it was one of contentment. I’m a little tired and I’m resting. That may account for it. Getting old.”
Evelyn laughed pleasantly.
“Don’t fish, Inqoto. I’ve witnessed your prowess at shooting, but never at fishing. I suspect you’d prove as poor a hand at that as you are good at the other.”
“Well, well, if you women won’t take a man seriously, I suppose you won’t. By the way, I fell in with one of Elvesdon’s boys with a brievje for me. I took it from him to save him the trouble of coming any further. Elvesdon’s down at Tongwana’s collecting. He’ll have finished to-morrow, and wants us to go down there in the afternoon. Old Tongwana’s going to turn out a lot of his people and give a war-dance in our honour. What do you say?”
“Say? Why yes—of course,” said Edala decisively. “It’ll be no end of fun.”
“Rather,” said Evelyn.
“Well, I thought that would be the verdict, so I sent back a verbal answer on the chance of it.”
“It’s awfully kind of Mr Elvesdon,” went on Evelyn. “What a fine looking man he is, by the way.”
“Rather; and he’s a smart all round chap as well with no nonsense about him. I took to him from the very first,” answered Thornhill. But Edala said nothing, though it may be that she thought.
So they chatted on, seated there in the secure peace of the golden morning, little recking that the hours of that peace might be already numbered; that this might be the last of such days for a long and terrible time to come—if not for ever.