He wondered if Hesketh—sly old fox—had brought about the situation with deliberate design, in order to do a good turn to his kinsfolk. It might well have been—and one could hardly blame him if it were so. Instinctively Greenoak realised that it would be useless for him to interfere at this stage. He had tried it at an earlier one, though “interfere” is too strong a word for the easy, natural, tactful way in which he had suggested they should move somewhere else. His charge, equally and naturally, but quite good-humouredly, had scouted the idea. Hesketh would be hurt, he had declared. He was no end of a jolly old chap, and he, Dick, wouldn’t offend him for the world. And then Haakdoornfontein was no end of a jolly place, with a different shoot, by Jingo, for every day in the year. And Greenoak had laughed drily, as he reflected that his charge’s enthusiasm for that form of sport had flagged perceptibly of late. But like a wise man and a tactful one he had known better than to push the suggestion further. Things must just take their course, he decided. A matter of this kind was a delicate one, and one in which the man most concerned must judge for himself. At any rate, it was clean outside his own province.
“These young ’uns, you know, will have their heads,” now went on old Hesketh, puffing out smoke. “I suppose we took our doses of foolishness, Greenoak, when we were at their time. Though, I dunno about me. It was just ‘yes or no’ with the old woman, ‘take it or leave it.’ She took it, and managed the place. I don’t know, either, that things haven’t been quieter—well, since I’ve managed it myself,” he added drily.
There lay the summing up of a lifetime; a hard, lonely, matter-of-fact, out-of-the-world lifetime. Greenoak nodded. He was not going to make any comment on the situation. He was not going to ruffle his old friend’s susceptibilities by any suggestion that Dick’s father might object, more or less strongly, to the said situation and its logical outcome. Old Hesketh’s social creed was simplicity itself: “Black’s black and white’s white, and one white man’s as good as another, and no better.” This Greenoak knew.
Again he wondered whether Hesketh had brought about the situation with a purpose. Hesketh was a mine of natural shrewdness, and here was scope for it. Dick Selmes had spent some three weeks on this wild and remote place, roughing it as he had probably never dreamed of roughing it, his sole companions one old and one elderly man—Greenoak was modest, you see. Then, enter a bright, pretty, taking girl, who makes the rough places, as by magic, smooth, imports the refinement to which his charge has been accustomed, with one sweep of the wand, and whose personality is in itself a supplement to the sunshine. No contrast could be more strongly marked. Assuredly if Hesketh had of his own intuition brought off such a dramatic stroke, why, Hesketh was more of a genius than the acquaintance of that rugged old recluse would have given him credit for being. But this reflection did not tend to lighten Harley Greenoak’s private disquietude.
Chapter Seven.
Good News.
“When are you going to shoot another back for us, Mr Selmes?” Hazel Brandon was saying. “As officer in charge of the Commissariat Department, it’s my duty to tell you that if you don’t we shall have to begin on mutton, and it’s your especial mission to keep us in game. So—when are you?”
“When you come and help me do it.”