Chapter Nine.
A Way Out
Postal delivery at Haakdoornfontein was, as an institution, non-existent; and when old Hesketh desired communication with or from the outside world he obtained it by dispatching a boy to the nearest field-cornet’s, some sixteen or seventeen miles away. This, for obvious reasons, he did not do very often.
Harley Greenoak was seated on a stone, on the shaded side of the shearing-house, thinking. The shade was almost too cool, for there was a forecasting touch of crisp winter in the clear atmosphere and vivid blue of the cloudless sky. He could see the long, gaunt figure of his host, pottering about down at the lands, and every now and then from the kitchen at the back of the house, there came to his ears the clear tones of Hazel’s voice endeavouring to convey instruction into the opaque mind of the yellow-skinned cook. The sounds in no wise interrupted his train of thought; rather they fitted in with it, for in it the utterer of them bore her share.
From his pocket he drew forth a letter. This he spread out open before him, and began to study, not for the first time. It had arrived the previous evening, and was several days overdue, owing to Hesketh’s erratic postal provisions as set forward above. The writing was not easily decipherable, and the contents, well – they were commonplace on the surface, but beneath, to one well acquainted with the writer, meaning enough could be read. Now Harley Greenoak and the Commandant of the Frontier Armed and Mounted Police were very old friends indeed.
There was restlessness on and beyond the border. The Transkeian tribes needed watching, and some careful handling, and the Police might have work cut out for them. And, by-the-by, where was Greenoak now, and what was he doing; because if nothing in particular, added the writer, why shouldn’t he come up to the border and stay with him a bit, and have some talks over old times?
Such was the gist of the letter, but its recipient read deeper than that. Few men understood natives and their ways more thoroughly than himself, few men were as well known to and as thoroughly trusted by them, and none better. He foresaw a possibility of usefulness, of great usefulness; and when such was the case, it must be a very grave impediment indeed that Harley Greenoak would allow to stand in his way.
Hazel Brandon had not exaggerated in her estimate of his character; and time after time his natural gifts had found for him the opportunity of being of service to his friends – often to the saving of life – and that without hope or thought of reward. And here stood forth another such opportunity; but – how would it fit in with the charge he had undertaken? As it happened it would so fit in.
Every day of late he had been growing more anxious; every day he had seen reason for desiring to get Dick Selmes away from Haakdoornfontein. Every day seemed to draw the two young people together more and more. This, under other circumstances would have been nothing but satisfactory, but – what of his own responsibility towards the father of his charge? If the affair was more than skin deep, if it had reached a serious stage on both sides, why they could both very well afford to wait; Dick until he had consulted his father, and so until his – Greenoak’s – charge was at an end. Then he could return, on his own responsibility, and if he succeeded in winning this girl, why in the thinker’s estimation he would be very lucky, as we have said. That would be the only straight and satisfactory solution of the difficulty, decided Greenoak.
And towards such solution the Commandant’s letter seemed now to open a way. If he read Dick’s character aright, the prospect of a certain amount of adventure would irresistibly appeal. They would respond to the invitation and join his old friend; and he would show his charge some of the phases of border life, as in any case he had intended eventually to do.
“Well, Mr Greenoak, and have you decided the knotty point yet? It must be a very knotty one.” And the speaker’s winsome face, framed within an ample and snowy kapje, sparkled with sheer light-heartedness.
“That’s just what I believe I have done,” he answered, looking up at her. He had of course been aware of her approach, but he was one of those who can concentrate their powers of thought independently of external distractions.
“It must have been an extremely knotty one,” she went on, her glance resting on the sheet still grasped in the brown muscular hand, “because for nearly an hour you might as well have been a statue.”
“Does a statue fill and light a pipe two or three times an hour, Miss Brandon?” he asked drily.
“You’ve got me there,” she laughed. “But you were so absorbed that you don’t seem to have noticed that the shade has gone off this side of the shed long ago. Why, the sun’s coming down full upon you.”
“Is it? Why, so it is,” he said, rising. “I suppose I didn’t notice it because I’m so used to it. Lovely morning though.”
“Isn’t it? Well, I want you to do me a favour, Mr Greenoak. Will you?”
“Certainly. I shall be delighted.”
“But you don’t know what it is yet.”
“I know that you would not ask me, or anybody, to do what is absurd or impossible.”
“Thanks, that’s quite pretty, really it is. I thought you up-country men never went in for making compliments.”
“Mayn’t we tell the truth? That is only straightforwardness, you know.”
“There is another compliment,” laughed the girl. “Why, Mr Selmes himself could hardly go on piling them up like that.”
“Ah, he’s young. They come more naturally from him, like the difference between the roll of a well-greased waggon wheel and that of a creaking one,” rejoined Greenoak, with a good-natured smile.
“Now that’s a delightfully quaint and characteristic simile,” laughed the girl. “I must really store it in mind for future use.”
“Is it worth it? But aren’t we getting a bit off the road? What is this ‘favour’?”
“I want you to take me for a walk, if you have nothing better to do – or think about,” she added mischievously.
“If I were to say ‘How could I have?’ you would tax me with making compliments again, I suppose. But wouldn’t you rather ride?”
“No. Sandy’s a bit lame, and Bles is away down the kloof, and by the time he was got up I should have lost all inclination to do either. And there’s no other horse on the place that’ll stand a skirt. We’ll take the path by Goba’s vee-kraal to Bromvogel Nek. There’s a lovely view from there, and this is just the day to sit and enjoy it.”
“When will you be ready?”
“I’m ready now if you are. Are you? Well then, come along.”
Hazel chatted briskly as they took their way along the winding and somewhat stony bush-path, but her companion said little. He preferred to hear her talk. There was that in the light-hearted gaiety of this bright, sweet-natured child that appealed powerfully to the strong, lonely, self-contained man, that almost made him sigh for his past youth. He liked to hear her talk, and simply talk. That in itself was a pleasure to him. At the same time he was wondering with what object she had persuaded him to accompany her; the last thing in the world that would have occurred to Harley Greenoak being that it was simply for the pleasure of his own company. He supposed she wanted to talk about Dick Selmes, to “draw” him perhaps, as to his charge’s general character. Well, if that were so, Dick should have a good one. And, as though to fit in with the idea, at that moment, from the further side of the great crater-like hollow that constituted the bulk of Hesketh’s farm, there rolled forth a distant and double report. Both stopped to gaze in the direction of the sound.
“Wonder if Dick’s getting any luck,” said Greenoak. “It’s astonishing how his keenness in that direction has thawed off of late,” he added slily.
“Yes, it has,” came the ready answer. “He’s getting quite lazy. In fact, I sent him out to hunt this morning, told him if he didn’t bring back a bush-buck ram I shouldn’t speak to him until he did. He’s much too young to be hanging about the house all day.”
With this sentiment Greenoak agreed, but – was that the speaker’s only object? Well, it would come out in time.
“For all that he’s a thorough sportsman, and as nice a young fellow as ever lived,” he said.
But Hazel did not take this opening. She plunged into other topics as they resumed their way; in none of which did the absent and venatorial Dick by any chance come in.
They passed the vee-kraal, where a wheezy and decrepit cur came forth and huskily vociferated at them – Hesketh would not allow any of his “hands” to keep an able-bodied canine on the place – and the two wives of the absent herd, profusely anointed with red clay, came out to greet them and requisition tobacco. Greenoak gave them some, as they knew he would.
“I suppose you can manage Kafirs thoroughly?” said Hazel as they walked on.
“Well, I’ve had to do it all my life.”
“Of course. What an idiotic question! Fancy my asking it you. But I don’t know whether I like them or not. I don’t see much of them.”
“No, I suppose there aren’t many round your father’s place. Mostly Hottentots?”
“Yes. But I don’t like them at all. By the way, Mr Greenoak, do you think we are going to have a Kafir war? The newspapers all seem to say we are. What is your opinion?”
“Newspapers must say something. I can’t form any opinion – as yet. I may be going up to the Transkei soon, and then I’ll be in a better position to do so.”
“Soon? Then you won’t be here much longer?”
Greenoak’s quick ear caught a shade of disappointment in the tone, almost of consternation. Then Dick’s departure would cause a blank; for of course she knew that the two were moving about together.
“You must remember we’ve been here a good while already,” he answered, “and there’s such a thing as wearing out one’s welcome. Besides, I want to show the young one some further sides of the life of the country.”
“No fear of your wearing out anything of the kind here,” rejoined Hazel, quickly. “As for the other consideration, well, that counts for something, I suppose. Here we are.”
Their uphill progress was at an end. They had reached a high, stony neck, or saddle, between two great crags. In front the slope fell abruptly away for over a thousand feet to a spread of rolling plains, sparsely bushed, and extending for miles and miles. Here and there, at long intervals, a thread of smoke, rising from homestead or native kraal, ascended, but for an immensity of distance the expanse lay, monotonous in its green-brown roll, intersected, in darker line, by the willow-fringed banks of a nearly dry river-bed. Beyond, in the clear atmosphere, seeming about twenty miles distant, though fully fifty, rose mountain piles, flat-topped, in massive walls, or breaking off into turreted cones. Northward others, more distant still, floating apparently in mid-air, owing to the mirage-like effect of distance and clearness, but everywhere a sense of grand, open, unbounded space. The far-away bark of a dog, or the disturbed crowing of cock koorhaans, came up out of the stillness. On the side from which they had ascended was the vast, crater-like hollow, the tangle of rugged and bush-grown kloofs, and slopes covered with forest trees rising to lap in wave-bound verdure the grim iron faces of red rock walls and castellated crags. It was a scene that in the balmy yet exhilarating air of the cloudless day one could sit there and revel in for ever.
“You can almost see our place from here,” said Hazel. “That kopje just shuts it off, and you wouldn’t think it was forty miles as the crow flies. This is a favourite perch of mine. I often used to climb up here.”
“Did you drag your uncle up, too?”
“Oh yes. He’d ride though. But he doesn’t care a rap for scenery. He’d light his pipe, and in about ten minutes be fast asleep.”
“I’ll light mine, but I promise you I won’t go to sleep.”
“No, don’t. You must talk to me instead. Tell me some of your experiences. You must have had so many, and such wonderful ones.”
Harley Greenoak laughed deprecatorily. This formula was so frequent wherever he went that it had become stereotyped. As a rule it annoyed him; now, however, it was hard to connect such a word with the owner of that sparkling face, of the wide, lustrous, almost admiring eyes turned upon his own.
“One can’t spin yarns to order,” he said. “If something suggests one, out it comes – or doesn’t.”
Chapter Ten.
Drift
She made no answer, at first. They were in shade now, and she had flung off her sun-bonnet, and her glance was turned forth upon the wide veldt lying beneath, while the light breeze stirred the little escaped rings of her dark hair. No wonder he had found it difficult to get his charge away from Haakdoornfontein, thought the only spectator. The thought was quickly followed by another. Was he so unaffectedly anxious to get away from it himself? Well, why should he be? This bright, beautiful child had brought such sunshine into their daily life, why should he not enjoy his share of it simply because he was no longer young? Harley Greenoak had a strong sense of the ridiculous. Now he saw himself, rough, middle-aged, rapidly turning grey, and secretly he laughed; but it was a laugh not altogether free from wistfulness.
“What an experience yours must have been!” she went on. “I suppose you can’t even count the number of people whose lives you have saved?”
“I never tried – er – and excuse me, Miss Brandon, but – you didn’t bring me up here to make me brag, did you?”
“To make you brag?” she repeated. “That would be a feat – one that I don’t believe any one ever accomplished yet.”
“I hope not. I’m only a plain man, Miss Brandon. I don’t know that I ever had much education, but I’ve always held a theory of my own that every one is put into the world to be of some use, and I’ve always tried to act up to it.”
“Haven’t you just, and succeeded too? I suppose all South Africa knows that.”
The soft-voiced flattery, the glance that accompanied it, were calculated to stir the pulses of even so strong a man as Harley Greenoak, and this he himself realised while striving to neutralise their effect.
“When I was young,” he went on, “people used to look on me as a sort of ne’er-do-well, something not far short of a scamp, because I elected for a wandering life instead of what they called ‘settling down to something.’ Perhaps they were right, perhaps not.”
“They were idiots,” broke forth Hazel, impulsively.
“I don’t know,” went on the other, with a smile at the interruption. “Anyhow, I believe in a man taking to what he’s most fitted for, and I’ve lived to know that this is the life I’m the most fitted for. Some might call it an idle life, but if I may say so without bragging, I believe it has been of more service to other people than if I had launched out in the ‘settling down’ line of business.”
“I should think so indeed,” said the girl, her beautiful eyes aglow with sympathy and admiration. Secretly she was delighted. She had made Harley Greenoak talk – and not merely talk, but talk about himself – a thing which, if popular report spoke truly, no one had ever succeeded in doing yet.
“Once I tried farming, but it was no manner of use. The wandering instinct was in my blood, I suppose. Even transport riding – and I was pretty lucky at that while it lasted – was too slow for me. Too much sticking to the road, you see. I’ve been a little of everything, but,” – with a whimsical laugh – “I certainly never expected to turn bear-leader in my old age.”
“Uncommonly lucky for the ‘bear,’” pronounced Hazel.
“Well, the said ‘bear’ is apt to get into hot water rather easily. Otherwise he hasn’t got any vice.”
“And you are apt to get him out of hot water rather easily. Oh, I’ve heard all about it.”
“That was part of my charge. It was all in the day’s work. Over and about that, I’ve grown quite fond of the boy. He’s as taking a lad as I’ve ever known.”
Hazel agreed, and promptly turned the subject from the belauded Dick Selmes to other matters. The while, she was thinking; and if her companion could have read her thoughts – and even his penetration couldn’t do that – why, it is possible that he would have run up against the biggest surprise he had ever experienced in his life.
Even so Harley Greenoak was conscious of some modicum of surprise; and that was evoked by the way in which his companion was making him talk – drawing him, so to say – and, somehow, the experience was a pleasant one. Not until afterwards did it occur to him that he had come near being thrown a trifle off his balance by the soft insidious flatteries of this beautiful girl, reclining there in an attitude of easy grace. The warm, sunlit air, the height of space, looking down, as it were, upon two worlds, the free openness of it all was Greenoak’s natural heritage, and under no other surroundings could he be so thoroughly at his best. So she led him on to talk, and he had a dry, quaint, philosophical way of handling things which amused and appealed to her immensely. Suddenly the report of a gun, just beneath, together with the cry of dogs hot-foot on a quarry.
“That’s Dick. He’s worked round to this side of the farm,” said Greenoak. “Shall we go down and see what he’s been doing, for it strikes me we’ve been sitting here rather a long time?”
“Oh, you have found it long, then?” with mock offended air, then colouring slightly as she realised what an utter banality she had fired off for the benefit of a man of Harley Greenoak’s calibre.
“No, I haven’t,” he answered quite evenly. “I’ve enjoyed the lounge and the talk very much.” And then Hazel felt more disgusted with herself still.
“Let’s go back to the house,” she said. “I believe it’s getting rather hot.”
She chatted as they wound their way downwards along the bush-path, but not so brightly as when they had come up it. Somewhat wonderingly, Greenoak noted that she displayed no interest in the absent Dick. The latter arrived not long after themselves.
“There you are, Miss Brandon, I’ve redeemed my pledge,” he cried. “Got a whacking big bush-buck ram. Do come and look at it.”
“Got him just under Bromvogel Nek – eh, Dick?” said Greenoak.
“Yes. But – how did you know?”
“Heard your shot, and the dogs on to something wounded. We took a walk up there, Miss Brandon and I.”
“Oh – ” And Dick Selmes stopped short, and then thought what an ass he was making of himself. So that was why Hazel had been so anxious for him to go out and hunt! Old Greenoak was coming out of his shell – coming out with a vengeance.
As they went outside Kleinbooi, the Fingo, was in the act of offloading the quarry. It certainly was a fine ram, but Dick noticed with inward disgust and heart-searching that Hazel seemed to show but little interest in it, or in his own doings. And by this time it had become of very great importance to him that she should feel interest in his own doings.
“What would you say to moving on, Dick?” said Greenoak that afternoon. “We’ve been here a good while, you know.”
The other’s face fell.
“Yes, I’m afraid we have,” he said. “But where shall we go next?”
Greenoak gave him some inkling of the bearing of the Commandant’s letter, and the idea caught on, but with half the alacrity wherewith it would have been received had a certain entrancing young person not been a fellow-guest at Haakdoornfontein.
“When shall we start?” asked Dick, somewhat ruefully.
“How about to-morrow?”
“Couldn’t we make it the day after? Come now, Greenoak. A day more or less can’t make any difference.”
“Well, no more it can – at this stage,” was the enigmatical answer. As a matter of fact, in the speaker’s inner mind it was an ambiguous one, “We’ll break away the day after.”
“Going on, are you?” said old Hesketh, when the announcement was made to him. “Well, I’m sorry. But I suppose our young buffalo hunter’s spoiling to get on to bigger game. Where are you trekking for now, Greenoak?”
“The Transkei.”
“Ho-ho-ho! You may get on to bigger game there,” chuckled the old man, significantly. “Yes, bigger game than ever Slaang Kloof can find you. Think there’s anything in these reports, Greenoak?”
“Never can tell. I happen to know there is a simmer stirring all the border tribes. It’ll depend on how the thing’s handled.”
“If Mr Greenoak has the handling of it, things won’t go very wrong, Uncle Eph,” interrupted Hazel.
“Now, Miss Brandon, you are either chaffing me or giving me credit for powers of magic which I don’t possess,” protested the object of this exordium.
“I’m doing neither,” replied the girl, confidently.
Dick Selmes restrained an impulse to look quickly up – they were at table. Of late Hazel seemed never tired of booming Greenoak, he told himself, and now all her talks with himself came up. These, somehow, always led round to Greenoak.
He looked with renewed interest at his guide and mentor. The latter was a splendid fellow, as the girl had more than once declared, but – elderly; easily old enough to be her father. Now he, Dick Selmes, had been coming to the conclusion that life apart from Hazel Brandon was going to be a very poor affair.
The propinquity had done it – that, and the bright, sweet charms of the girl herself. He had been realising that the time must come when they would have to part, and now that it had come, why, he would put his fortune to the test. Surely it could have but one issue. They had been so much together, long rides, long rambles, or wandering about among the bush solitudes, and they had always agreed so well. She had always shown such pleasure in his company, surely she would accept it for life. And then came the discomforting thought that just of late they had not been so much together. That morning, for instance, she had insisted on him going away from her for half the day, while she rambled off with Greenoak. What did it mean? Poor Dick began to feel very sore, and partly so with Greenoak. Well, he would put matters to the test, and that at once.
But this was not so easy, for the simple reason that he found no opportunity, and did not know how to make one. Hazel was as bright and cordial as ever, but affected to be busy, and there was no means of getting her alone to himself. All the good understanding between them seemed to have evaporated. She was avoiding him – deliberately avoiding him – there could be no doubt about that.
In his soreness and disgust he seized his gun, and started off on foot. He had not gone far when he heard Greenoak’s voice behind him.
“Going alone, Dick? Better not. You seem hipped; man, and I don’t think your own company’s good for you.”
Dick’s first impulse was to make an ungracious reply, but he conquered it.
“Yes, it is,” he said. “Every one’s tired of me now, so I didn’t want to bore anybody.”
“Well, we’ll go and lay up at the draai for anything that’s moving. But it’s early yet.”
It was afternoon, and their departure was fixed for the following morning. Dick felt desperate.
“Hang it, Greenoak,” he burst forth at last. “You don’t know how I hate leaving this place. Had such jolly times here.”
“How you hate leaving somebody on this place, was what you should have said. Eh, Dick?”
“Well, yes, if you put it quite so plainly. The worst of it is, I can’t get an opportunity of speaking to her alone. Couldn’t you manage to make one for me, Greenoak? You can do about everything,” – eagerly.
“Not that. Even if I could I wouldn’t. My dear Dick, I’m responsible to your father; and I won’t help in that sort of thing. You’ve fallen a victim to propinquity, as many another has done before you, and the best thing for you is to go away – as we are going – and see how this – er – fancy stands the test of time and different surroundings. It is evident that the other party to the difficulty is not in a hurry to clench matters, which shows her sterling sense. No. Try my prescription.”
This and other wise doctrines did Greenoak preach, and at last his charge became in some measure reconciled to the plan. Anyway, he was not going to make an ass of himself, he declared.