Aïda Sewin’s eyes met mine and I could see that she was bubbling over with the humour of the situation. We broke into a hearty laugh, yet not loud enough to reach those within.
“There. Now I hope you’re duly flattered,” she said. “A fresh unconsidered outburst like that must be genuine. We don’t often hear so much good of ourselves even without being listeners.”
“But consider the qualifying adjective. That, you know, is rather rough.”
“Not necessarily. Only a term of good fellowship, I expect. No. You ought to feel brotherly towards him after that.”
Somehow the whimsicality of it did avail to restore my good humour, or the words and tone of her utterances that went before may have had something to do with it. Had she been reading my thoughts as I sat silent among the rest? Well, what if she had?
The storm had passed us by and a haze of continuous lightning in the loom of a receding cloud together with an occasional mutter away over the further ridge of the Tugela valley was all that remained of it. She had moved towards the end of the stoep as though to obtain a nearer view of this.
“I have something on my mind, Miss Sewin,” I began, “and it is this. You are good enough to say I have been of use to you all, needless to say how delighted I am to have been able to be. Well now, I shall be right out of the way for a time, and I am trying to puzzle out a plan of letting me know in case you might urgently want me.”
I don’t know what on earth moved me to say this. Why should they want me—urgently or otherwise? To my surprise she answered:
“It would be a great relief to my mind if you could. I don’t know what you’ll think of me, Mr Glanton, but there are times when our isolation frightens me, and then I think we never ought to have come here. And now you are going away, and Falkner, too. And—do you know, I have an uneasy feeling that I couldn’t account for to save my life, but it’s there, unfortunately. I believe it has something to do with the witch doctor, and that eerie affair down at the pool.”
“As to that don’t let it affect you. Ukozi is a clever specimen of a witch doctor but not a malevolent one. For the rest you are as safe here as you would be in any country part of England, and a good deal safer than in some.”