“It won’t be so long again, Mrs Wenlock. But I must be at Stephanus De la Rey’s to-night, because, over and above the delegate, I made an appointment with Piet Lombard over a stock deal.”
“Not to mention other attractions,” cut in May, with a mischievous look in her blue eyes. “Which is the favoured one—Andrina or Condaas?”
“How can one presume upon a choice between two such dreams of loveliness? Both, of course,” was the mirthful rejoinder. But there was no real merriment in the mind of the girl. She had hoped he would stay, had mapped out a potential afternoon’s stroll—it might be, by great good luck, the two of them alone together. And things were so slow, and times so dull, there where they saw no one month in month out, save an occasional Boer passer-by, or a travelling smaus, or feather-buyer, usually of a tolerably low type of Jew—and therefore, socially, no acquisition. Yes, after all, that was it. Times were so dull.
“Don’t be so long finding your way over again,” was the chorus of God-speed which followed the departing guest as his steed ambled away.
He, for his part, seemed to find a good deal to think about as he held on over the wide brown plains, dismounting absently to let himself through a gate every few minutes, for the whole veldt was a network of wire fencing. Ostriches, grazing, lifted their long necks, some in half-frightened, some in half-truculent curiosity, to gaze at him, then dropped them again to resume their picking at the dried sprigs of Karroo bush.
His acquaintance with the Wenlocks dated from just a year back: with the family that is, for he and Frank had, as we have said, campaigned together in Rhodesia. On returning to the Colony at the close of the rebellion he had come to visit his former comrade-in-arms at the latter’s own home, and had spent three months there while looking about for a place of his own. He had soon found one to his liking, and now owned a 5,000-morgen farm in the Wildschutsberg range, where report said he got through more game-shooting than farming. If so, it didn’t seem to matter greatly, for Colvin Kershaw was one of those phenomena occasionally encountered—an habitually lucky man. What he undertook in a small and careless way was wont to turn out better results than ten times the carefully prepared labour and forethought exercised by other people. Furthermore he was uncommunicative as to his own affairs, and whatever was known about him among his neighbours amounted to just nothing at all.
“Come again soon,” had been May’s parting words, and the blue eyes uplifted to his during that last handclasp had been wondrously soft and appealing.
Was it upon this his thoughts were dwelling so intently as he rode along mile after mile? Perhaps. Yet he had often bidden her farewell before.