_She_ to be discussed according to the clod-hopping ideas of louts and scullery-maids. He turned away disgusted. Suddenly he heard himself hailed in loud and jovial tones, and, looking up, found himself in the vicinity of the refreshment table, where three or four ancient settlers were exchanging reminiscences, and occasionally clinking gla.s.ses.
Prominent among them was old Garrett, his rubicund visage now nearly purple.
"I sh-shay, C-Claveringsh!" called out this worthy. "C-come and have a what-sh-may call a eye-opener--hic!"
"All right."
"Thas righ"sh. Told yer "ee ain"t proud," cried the old fellow, beaming triumphantly on the rest, and attempting to bestow upon Claverton a friendly slap on the back, which the latter quietly evaded. He contemplated the individual before him with vast amus.e.m.e.nt, and speculated as to how soon this worthy"s early retirement would become imperative.
The rout went on, and presently Naylor and his violin were pressed into the service to second the piano. In the pa.s.sage outside a number of the Hottentot servants, emulative of their betters, had got up a dance of their own and waxed merry, and laughed and chattered exceedingly, till at last Jim Brathwaite, hearing the row, sallied forth and cleared them all out summarily.
The hours wear on apace. In the silence of the garden the air is fragrant with the cool breaths of night distilling from the myrtle and the flowering pomegranate. High in the heavens hangs a gold half-moon whose l.u.s.tre pierces a leafy canopy, scattering a network of filmy light upon the shaded earth. In and out of the gloomy shadows of the orange trees a firefly or two trails in mid air a floating spark. All is rest.
Now and again a burst of voices and music is borne from the house, yet here it penetrates but feebly, and Night--silver, moon-pierced, star-studded Night--is queen amid the mysterious silence of her witching court.
Two figures wandering down the orange walk in the alternate light, and gloom, and dimness. Listen! That low, melodious voice can belong to no other than Lilian Strange.
"I am so glad we came out here for a little. I had no idea there could be such a night as this except in books."
"Perhaps it strikes you the more, contrasted with the row and junketing indoors," said her companion.
"No. In any case it would be delicious. And yet there is something of awe about a night like this--don"t laugh at me--it always seems a mysterious shadow-land connecting us with another world."
"Laugh at you! Why won"t you give me credit for a capability of entering into any of your ideas?"
"But I do. You are more capable of it than any one I know. There."
"Thanks for that, anyway."
"Don"t stop my rhapsodies, but listen. Doesn"t it seem--standing here in this stillness--as if the world lay far beneath one"s feet; that all the littlenesses and prosaic worries of every-day life could not enter such an enchanted realm? Ah-h!"
She uttered a little cry and instinctively drew closer to him as the sudden, yelping bark of a jackal sounded from the bush apparently within fifty yards of them, but really much further off, the stillness and a slight echo adding loudness to the unlooked-for and ill-sounding "bay."
"Don"t be afraid," he said, rea.s.suringly. "It"s only a jackal. What would you have done if it had been a wolf?"
"I should have been dreadfully frightened. What a coward I am!"
"At any rate, this time I am not the author of the scare, which is subject-matter for gratulation," he said.
She laughed. "No; but the interruption came in most opportunely, in time to stay my flights. Here am I, inveighing against, and thinking to rise superior to the prosaic commonplaces of life, when a sound, a mere sound, fills me with an overwhelming impulse to rush headlong back into the despised prose. What a step from the sublime to the ridiculous!"
"I was thinking something of the kind," replied Claverton, with a half smile; and his voice grew very soft as he looked at her sweet, serious face. "But don"t be in the least afraid. A jackal is about as formidable or aggressive as a tabby cat, though he does make a diabolical row; and as for wolves, they are very scarce, and even more cowardly; and a yet bolder animal would flee from two such unwonted apparitions in the South African bush," he added, with a laugh, as he glanced at the regulation "evening-dress" of his companion and himself.
"Come this way."
He opened a small gate in the high quince hedge, and they pa.s.sed out into a narrow bush path which, wound along through the _spekboem_ and feathery mimosa.
"Don"t be in the very least afraid," he repeated, as they wandered on.
"I want you thoroughly to appreciate and enjoy about the most perfect night I ever knew--and I"ve seen a good many--and you can"t do so if you"re expecting a wolf or a tiger to spring out of every bush."
She laughed. "I"ll try and be less of a coward, and keep my too-vivid imagination under control." Yet the light hand which rested on his arm seemed to lean there with ever so increased a pressure of trust or dependence, or both.
Is it the movement of bird or beast in the adjoining brake, or is it the tread of a stealthy foot, that makes Claverton suddenly turn and gaze behind him? "I could swear I heard some one," he thinks to himself; but not a word of this does he say to his companion. Then he laughs at himself for a fool. But he sees not a tall, shadowy figure standing back beneath the shelter of a mimosa tree, watching them over the sprays of the lower scrub. He hears not again that cautious footfall following--following silently as they wend their way along the moonlit path. And what should be farther from his thoughts than danger, real or imaginary?
Presently the plash of falling water is heard, and they emerge from the path on to a high, open bank. Beneath, the moon is reflected in the depths of the still, round pool, whose rocky sides throw a black shadow on the surface, while a small cascade slides from a height of ten or twelve feet, and, glancing like a silver thread through festoons of delicate maidenhair fern fringing the polished face of the rock, plunges, with a bell-like plash, into the gla.s.sy depths.
"That"s pretty, isn"t it?" said Claverton. "In the daytime it isn"t much to look at, but by moonlight it shows up rather well."
"It"s lovely! A perfect picture!"
"I thought you"d like it. Sit down there," he continued, pointing to the smooth, sloping sward, which he has narrowly scrutinised to make sure that no noxious reptile, whether serpent or centipede, is at hand.
Yet may he have overlooked the presence of deadlier foe than serpent or centipede, ay, and wolf or leopard, in that peaceful retreat. "How do you think you"ll like being here?"
"Very much. I like it already. It is so different to any kind of life I have ever known before--so strange, and wild, and interesting. And then every one here is so kind. Why, I might be a very near relative instead of only a recent acquaintance! The worst of it is, I fear it will spoil me by the time I have to go back to my work."
Her listener bit his lip until the blood flowed. His quick perception had detected the faintest possible sigh of wearyful import which escaped her.
"It shall be no fault of mine if you do go back to that same miserable drudgery," he thought. But it was too early yet to utter the thought aloud, even he felt that. So he only said--and there was a world of tender sympathy in his tone:
"I"m afraid you have been working much too hard, and I don"t believe you are in the least fitted for it."
"You must not try and make me discontented, Mr Claverton," was the answer, with a sad little smile. "The fact is, I do feel the change a great deal more than I ought. Only lately I had a very dear and happy home, now I am entirely alone in the world."
Again that irresistible impulse came over her auditor. Was it really too soon? Why, it seemed as though he had known her for ages. Yet forty-eight hours ago he had not set eyes upon her. For a few moments he could hardly trust himself to speak. Then he said, gently:
"Tell me about your old home." The bush behind them parts, suddenly, noiselessly. A head rises; a great grim black head, with distended eyeb.a.l.l.s rolling in the moonlight. Then it sinks again and disappears, but they have not seen it.
"I suppose I have no right to feel leaving the old place as I did," went on Lilian. "We were in a way interlopers, for it belonged to my stepfather, not to our family. I lived there, though, ever since I can remember, and my mother died there. We were very happy but for one thing: I had a stepsister about my own age who detested me. In short, we couldn"t get on together, hard though I tried to like her. So when Mr Dynevard died--"
"Who?"
"Mr Dynevard. My stepfather," repeated Lilian.
"Of Dynevard Chase, near Sandcombe?"
"Yes. Why, you don"t mean to say you know it?" cried Lilian, lost in wonder.
"I wish I did. I"m afraid my utmost acquaintance with it lies in having driven past the place once or twice. Some distant relatives of mine lived not far from Sandcombe years ago. So that"s where you used to live?"
"Yes. This is a surprise. I shall make you talk to me such a lot about it," she cried, gleefully. "You will soon be heartily tired of the subject, and will wish you had preserved a discreet silence."
Claverton remembered the reluctance to dwell upon home topics which she had expressed when the two of them were driving up from the town, and it was with an extraordinary sense of relief that he did so. There was nothing more behind it than the painfulness of her change of circ.u.mstances to a proud and sensitive nature.
"After my stepfather"s death," went on Lilian, "I thought it best to relieve Eveline Dynevard of my presence, and did so. There you have the whole of my history."
"And then you struck out a line for yourself, and thought to open that miserably hard old oyster, the world, with the blade of a miniature penknife. How enterprising of you!"
"No, not at once--at least--at the first, that is--" and she hesitated slightly and the colour rose to her face, as at some painful recollection. Her trepidation was not lost upon her listener, on whom it threw a momentary chill.
Again that grim head rises from the bushes, ten yards behind the unsuspecting couple, followed this time by a pair of brawny dark shoulders bent forward in an att.i.tude of intense watchfulness--the att.i.tude of a crouching tiger. Again the moonbeams fall upon a fierce visage and eyes glaring with vengeful hate. They fall on something more--on the gleaming blade of a great a.s.segai, and then the mighty frame of a gigantic savage slowly begins to emerge from the covert.