He told us that he had just received letters by a messenger who had ridden out from Fort Lamport, letters relating to his pending negotiations, which would render it necessary for him to leave as soon as possible; in fact, that very afternoon if it could possibly be managed. He would have to go straight home from there, so supposed it would be a final good-bye, though we should all meet again soon--in fact, quite soon, he hoped.
I don"t know whether I did, and that for obvious reasons. However, it was manifest that he wanted to have a talk with Beryl, and he should have it, so far as I was concerned; to which end I started in on a battle of chaff with Iris, which kept her busy for a few minutes, then craftily manoeuvred her further down the kloof to look at and talk over a couple of bees" nests we had been planning to take out. This was all right enough, but what does the little fiend do next but splutter out--
"Can you keep a secret, Kenrick? Because if so I"ll tell you one.
Pentridge is awfully smashed on Beryl."
"I should say _Dr._ Pentridge if I was a little girl," I formulated to the accompaniment of rather a ghastly grin. "Well, is that the secret?
because if so I haven"t said I could keep one yet."
"_Ach_! Well, you won"t say I said so, hey?"
"I won"t say anything at all about it, Iris," I answered magisterially.
"And little girls oughtn"t to think about such things."
She opened her big blue eyes wide at the reproof. Then detecting the mirth--such as it was--depicted on my own face, she bestowed such a whole-souled pinch upon my brown and bared forearm, as caused me to sing out and stamp.
"You spiteful little cat. Wait till we get at those bees" nests. You deserve to be jolly well stung."
She pranced round me, chuckling maliciously.
"Ha-ha! That"s what you get for coming the solemn old school-baas over me," she crowed. Then--"There, there. You"re not _kwaat_ with me, are you?"
The insinuating little rogue. As if she didn"t know she could have done anything she liked to me!
We did not take out the bees" nests that day. My mind was full of what had gone before, and I listened to the sunny child"s chatter, fearful lest her precocious eyes should see through my own secret--wondering, too, whether her interruption of us had been for good or the reverse.
She had interrupted us at a critical juncture. What had Beryl been on the point of saying to me? What was she saying even then to that other?
Had I let slip an opportunity? And yet--and yet I if so, how could I have seized such opportunity under the circ.u.mstances? Of course I could not.
But what she had or had not said to that other seemed likely to remain a mystery, and the same held good of what he had said to her, for neither by word or hint did Beryl let fall any inkling of the matter.
After Pentridge had gone, things seemed to shake down as usual, but for me a line was drawn, and the glowing, idyllic happiness of the last few months seemed shut back as though beyond an iron door.
One day when Septimus Matterson and I were alone together, something moved me to follow Beryl"s advice and tell him of my disaster--though I had hardly done so than I felt it was a more complete burning of my boats. He was very concerned, and said so.
"Don"t lose heart, though, Kenrick," he said. "Many a man has had a bigger knock than that and has come out smiling. When do you say you will know beyond all doubt whether things are--as bad as you think?"
"Oh, in a month or two."
"Well, we"ll talk over it again then. But--don"t lose heart. And remember this, Kenrick. You are as one of ourselves now, and if the worst comes to the worst, this place is always your home as long as you like to make it so."
I mumbled out something that was meant to be appreciative, and then he began to talk about other things. He was rather put out because his plans on George"s account had fallen through. The schools he had been negotiating with delicately but firmly refused to take the boy.
"I"m coming round to the conclusion that there"s no necessity to send him away at all," he ended up. "The thing has been settled and is now a thing of the past. I believe he"s as safe as you or I."
To this what answer could I make, remembering that the speaker was nothing if not a man of sound judgment? Yet even the soundest of such may fall into an error--and then!
CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN.
"THERE WERE TWO LIVES."
"They are late--very late. They ought to be here by now," murmured Beryl, more to herself than to me, as she came out on the stoep, where I was seated alone, admiring the splendid moonlight; "they" being her father and George, who had ridden over to Trask"s early in the afternoon about something, intending to be home by supper-time. Now it was nearly bedtime, and still there was no sign of them.
"Oh, they"ll turn up any minute now," I said. "It"s not likely they"ll stay the night at Trask"s, I suppose?"
"Not in the least likely. But--I wish they"d come."
Brian was away, Iris too; the latter staying with some people at Fort Lamport--so that Beryl and I were alone together. But as she dropped into one of the roomy cane chairs beside me, I could see that she had hardly an ear for half my conversation, and her face, clearly visible in the moonlight, wore a strangely anxious and troubled look. The slightest sound would start her up, listening intently. I watched her with amazement.
"Why, Beryl," I said. "What on earth is the reason of all this anxiety?
They--all of us--have been out as late as this before?"
"And I have never been as anxious as this before. Quite true. But, do you believe in instincts, in presentiments, Kenrick?"
"Well, in a way perhaps. But--I hardly know. They are generally to be traced to overwrought nerves, and that"s a complaint I should have thought would be the last for you to suffer from, Beryl."
"Yes, it seems strange. All the more reason why my instinct in this case is a true one. I feel as if something terrible was about to happen--was happening--and I--we--can do nothing--nothing. Oh, I can"t sit still."
She rose and paced the stoep up and down, then descended the steps and stood looking out into the night. This sort of thing is catching. And that Beryl, the courageous, the clear-headed, the strong-nerved, should be thus thrown off her balance, was inexplicable, more than mysterious.
Something of a cold creep seemed to steal over my own nerves. The night was strangely still; warm too for the time of year, by rights it ought to have been sharp and frosty. Even the intermittent voices of nocturnal bird or insect were hushed, but every now and then the silence would be broken by the dismal moaning and stamping of a herd of cattle gathered round the slaughter place behind the waggon shed. But these impressions promptly gave way to the love which welled up within me a hundredfold as I gazed into the sweet troubled eyes, for I had joined her where she stood in front of the stoep.
"Dearest, don"t give way to these imaginings," I urged. "They will grow upon you till you make yourself quite ill. What can there be to fear?
Nothing."
Great heavens! my secret was out. What had I said? And--how would Beryl take it?
The latter I was not destined to learn--at any rate not then. The dogs, which had been lying behind the house, uttering an occasional sleepy growl when the moaning, scuffling cattle became too noisy, now leaped up and charged wildly forward, uttering such a clamour as to have been heard for miles.
"Here they are, you see. I told you they"d be home directly," I said.
"And here they are."
But the intense relief which momentarily had lighted up Beryl"s face faded, giving way to a look of deepened anxiety and disappointment.
"It is not them at all," she murmured. "Listen!"
By the sound of their barking, the dogs must have gained the further gate. The clamour had ceased--suddenly, mysteriously. Yet, listening intently, we could detect no sound of voices nor yet of hoof strokes, both of which would have been audible a mile or more away in the calm stillness of the night. Yet, from an occasional "woof" or so, which they could not restrain, we could hear that the dogs were returning.
But their tumult broke forth again, though partially and momentarily.
Someone was opening the inner gate.
An exclamation escaped Beryl, low, but intense. A dark figure came towards us.
"Why, it is Dumela!" she gasped.
"_Inkosikazi_," began the old Kafir, whom we all thought considerably more than a hundred miles away at that moment, if we had thought of him at all, that is. "_Inkosikazi_. Where is your father? I would speak with him, now at once."
"He is not here, Dumela. He will be, any moment, though."