He loved the country too, spending hours roaming about the veldt till nightfall, when, with cheeks aglow and eyes alert he would return to his quarters and bury himself in his reading till dinner. A most respectable meal consumed—for him—he would seek his room once more, read again for an hour, and then tumble into bed and sleep dreamlessly till dawn. With reveille he was up, and away to the riding maneges to take his place amongst the young horsemen, a situation for which, to speak truth, Graeme was not qualified, being as a rider deficient in both "hands" and patience.
All this time Lucy's letters were weekly growing more insistent for his return. Did he not want to see her again, she wrote? The house too, Cuddingfold Hall, she had taken, relying on his coming, though only for a year, in case he should not like it. She had, however, the option of a long lease, though goodness knew when another prospective tenant might appear. If he did not, after all, now wish to retire, and from his last letters it seemed he did not, at least he could come home on leave; they would not refuse him that after three years' absence.
Lucy's appeals remained disregarded, and probably would have remained so but for another event that took place about this time, namely, the sudden death of his father. Hector thus becoming owner of a small property in Scotland.
The announcement of the death was accompanied by a letter from his lawyers, requesting his immediate presence at home; and though this also was for a time ignored, Messrs. Quill & Screw became so urgent in their demands—hinting at serious pecuniary loss did he fail to return at once—that Graeme was at length forced to comply, and submitted an application for six months' leave of absence.
This was gladly forwarded by Colonel Royle, who had secret hankerings after the control of his own regiment, and equally gladly approved by General Banks, who jumped at the chance of getting rid of Hector, if only for a time; and a week later, his passage secured, Graeme was comfortably seated in a first-class compartment of the famous train de luxe, on his way to Capetown, where the mail steamer, Dunrobin Castle, 12,000 tons, was already waiting alongside the quay.
CHAPTER XII
Through the shining tropic sea sped the Dunrobin Castle, homeward bound, a speck of scarlet and grey in a waste of still, oily blue. Canvas awnings glared white in the morning sunlight; pitch bubbled in the seams of the holystoned decks; from metal-work and fitting, flashes of light smote blindingly on the eye. Over the towering oval-shaped funnels a faint shimmer hovered; from clanging engine-room rose the reek of oil and steam mingling with the hot air above; wire stays quivered dizzily to the dull throbbing of the screw.
On one side of the ship, where a faint breeze blew, a row of chairs stretched along the deck, their occupants reading, chatting, or lazily looking on at games of deck billiards, quoits, or bull, played by the more energetic of the passengers; on the other, now invaded halfway across by the glare of the slanting sunlight, there were only two figures, the one that of Hector Graeme, the other—the length of the deck away—of a girl, Stara Selbourne.
Both were apparently reading, but neither had turned a page for an hour, their thoughts being of one another. Stara wondered why, since this man was so obviously interested in her, he declined to avail himself of board-ship licence and speak instead of staring. Hector revolved in his mind for the hundredth time suitable words with which to begin, and cursed the curious awkwardness that inevitably assailed him when in her vicinity, impelling him to pass her by without a word when he had approached her with the object of commencing the attack.
This stupidity on his part, moreover, apart from its novelty, was the more galling, as for the first time in ten years he found himself desirous of talking to a woman other than his wife; in fact, even in the short space of two days this desire had begun to take possession of him to the exclusion of all else, even to that of the perusal of a parcel of new books with which he had intended to occupy his whole time when on board.