"Thanks awfully, Miss Bayfield," said Blachland. "The implication is grateful and comforting to a battered fogey of a precious deal nearer forty than thirty."
For answer the girl only laughed--that bright, whole-hearted laugh of hers. It was a musical laugh too, full-throated, melodious. She and her father"s guest were great friends. Though now living somewhat of an out-of-the-world life, she had been well-educated, and her tastes were artistic. She drew and painted with no mean skill, and her musical attainments were above the average. So far from feeling bored and discontented with the comparative isolation of her lot, she had an affection for the free and healthy conditions of her surroundings, the beauties of which, moreover, her artistic temperament rendered her capable of perceiving and appreciating. Then this stranger had come into their life, and at first she had been inclined to stand somewhat in awe of him. He was so much older than herself, and must have seen so much; moreover, his quiet-mannered demeanour, and the life-worn look of his firm dark countenance, seemed to cover a deal of character. But he had entered so thoroughly and sympathetically into her tastes and pursuits that the little feeling of shyness had worn off within the first day, and now, after a fortnight, she had come to regard his presence in their midst as a very great acquisition indeed.
"I say, Lyn," struck in her father. "Better take Blachland inside--yes, and light up some logs in the fireplace. There"s a sharp tinge in the air after sundown, which isn"t good for a man with up-country fever in his bones, as I was telling him just now. I must just go and take a last look round."
"Did you do any more to my drawing to-day?" asked Hilary, as the two stood within the sitting-room together, watching the efforts of a yellow-faced Hottentot girl to make the logs blaze up.
"I"ve nearly finished it. I"ve only got to put in a touch or two."
"May I see it now?"
"No--not until it is finished. I may not be satisfied with it then, and tear it up."
"But you are not to. I"m certain that however it turns out it will be too good to treat in that way."
"Oh, Mr Blachland, I am surprised at such a speech from you," she said, her eyes dancing with mischief. "Why, that"s the sort of thing that English boy might have said. But you! Oh!"
"Well, I mean it. You know I never hesitate to criticise and that freely. Look at our standing fight over detail in foreground, as a flagrant instance."
The drawing under discussion was a water-colour sketch of the house and its immediate surroundings. He would treasure it as a reminder after he had gone, he declared, when asking her to undertake it. To which she had rejoined mischievously that he seemed in a great hurry to talk about "after he had gone," considering that he had only just come.
Now the entrance of George Bayfield and his youngest born put an end to the discussion, and soon they sat down to supper.
"Man, Mr Blachland, but that is a _mooi_ buck," began the boy. "Jafta says he never saw a _mooi-er_ one."
"Perhaps it"ll bring you luck," said Lyn, looking exceedingly reposeful and sweet, behind the tea-things, in her twenty-year-old dignity at the head of the table.
"I don"t know," was the reply. "I did something once that was supposed to bring frightful ill-luck, and for a long time it seemed as if it was going to. But--indirectly it had just the opposite effect."
"Was that up-country, Mr Blachland?" chimed in the boy eagerly. "Do tell us about it."
"Perhaps some day, Fred. But it"s a thing that one had better have left alone."
"These children"ll give you no peace if you go on raising their curiosity in that way," said Bayfield.
"I"ll go up-country when I"m big," said the boy. "Are you going again, Mr Blachland?"
"I don"t know, Fred. You see, I"ve only just come down."
The boy said no more on the subject. He had an immense admiration for their guest, who, when they were alone together, would tell him tales of which he never wearied--about hunting and trading, and Lo Bengula, and experiences among savages far wilder and more formidable than their own half-civilised and wholly deteriorated Kaffirs. But he was sharp enough to notice that at other times the subject of "up-country" was not a favourite one with Blachland. Perhaps the latter was tired of it as he had had so much. At any rate, with a gumption rare in small boys of his age, Fred forbore to worry the topic further.
This was one of those evenings which the said guest was wont to prize now, and was destined in the time to come to look back upon as among the very happiest experiences of his life. He regarded his host indeed with a whole-hearted envy, that such should be his daily portion. There was just enough sharpness in the atmosphere to render indoors and a bright, snug fire in a well-lighted room especially reposeful and cosy, as they adjourned to the sitting-room where Lyn"s piano was.
"Fill up, Blachland," said his host, pushing over a large bladder tobacco-pouch. "Where"s my pipe? No--not that one. The deep one with the wire cover."
"I"ve got it, father," cried Lyn. "I"m filling it for you."
"Thanks, darling," as she brought it over. "You know, Blachland, my after-supper pipe never tastes so good unless this little girlie fills it for me. She"s done so ever since she was a wee kiddie so high."
Blachland smiled to himself, rather sadly, as he watched the long tapering fingers pressing down the tobacco into the bowl, and wondered how his friend would feel when the time came--and come it must, indeed any day might bring it--when he would have no one to render this and a hundred and one other little services of love, such as he had noticed during his stay--when Bayfield should be left lonely, and the bright and sweet and sunny presence which irradiated this simple home should be transferred to another. Somehow the thought was distasteful to him, vaguely, indefinably so, but still distasteful.
Meanwhile Lyn had opened the piano, and after an appeal to them for any preference in the way of songs, which was met by an a.s.surance that any and all were equally acceptable, had begun singing. The two men sat back in their armchairs at the further end of the room, listening in supremest content. From the first Blachland had excused himself from attending her at the piano. He wanted thoroughly to enjoy her performance, which he could not do standing fussing around, and Lyn had appreciated the real and practical compliment thus conveyed. And he did enjoy it. Song after song she sang, now grave and pathetic, now gay and arch, and it seemed to him he could sit there listening for ever. Hers was no concert-hall voice, but it was very sweet and true, and was entirely free from mannerism. She did not think it necessary to roll her r"s in the approved professional style whenever that consonant came at the end of a word, or to p.r.o.nounce "love" exactly according to its phonetic spelling, but every word was enunciated distinctly, and therefore as intelligible as though she had been talking. In short, her singing was utterly without self-consciousness or affectation, and therein lay no small a proportion of its charm.
"There! That"s enough for one night!" she cried at last, closing the instrument.
"Not for us," declared Blachland. "But you mustn"t overstrain your voice. Really to me this has been an immense treat."
"I"m so glad," said the girl brightly. "I suppose, though, you don"t hear much music up-country. Don"t you miss it a great deal?"
"Yes, indeed," he answered, and then a picture crossed his mind of evening after evening, and Hermia yawning, and reiterating how intensely bored to death she was. What on earth was it that made retrospect so utterly distasteful to him now? He would have given all he possessed to be able to blot that episode out of his life altogether. Hermia the chances were as five hundred to one he would never set eyes on again-- and if he did, she was powerless to injure him; for she had not the slightest legal hold upon him whatever. But the episode was there, a black, unsavoury, detestable fact, and it there was no getting round.
"Now, sonny, it"s time for you to turn in," said Bayfield. "By George, I"ll have to think seriously about sending that nipper to school," he added, as the boy, having said good-night, went out of the room. "But hang it, what"ll we do without the chappie? He"s the only one left.
But he ought to learn more than Lyn can teach him now."
"Father, you _are_ mean," laughed the girl. "Reflecting on my careful tuition that way. Isn"t he, Mr Blachland?"
"I wonder how it would be," pursued Bayfield, "to make some arrangement with Earle and send him over there four or five days a week to be coached by that new English teacher they"ve got."
"Who is he?" said Blachland. "A Varsity man?"
""Tisn"t "he." It"s a she," returned the other, with a very meaning laugh. "A regular high-flyer too. Mrs Earle isn"t so fond of her as she might be, but I expect that young Britisher has put Earle"s nose out of joint in that quarter. They say she"s a first-rate coach, though."
"Now, father, you"re not to start talking scandal," said Lyn. "I don"t believe there"s any harm in Mrs Fenham at all. And she isn"t even pretty."
"Ho-ho! Who"s talking scandal now?" laughed her father. "Taking away another woman"s personal appearance, eh, Lyn? By the way, there are several round there you won"t get to agree with you on that head."
"Oh, she"s married, then?" said Blachland, though as a matter of fact the subject did not interest him in the least.
"Has been," returned Bayfield. "She"s a widow--a young widow, and with all due deference to Lyn"s opinion, rather a fetching one. Now, isn"t that a whole code of danger-signals in itself? Get out some grog, little girl," he added, "and then I suppose you"ll want to be turning in."
"Yes, it"s time I did," replied Lyn, as she dived into a sideboard in fulfilment of the last request. "Good night, Mr Blachland. Good night, old father. Now, you"re not to sit filling up Mr Blachland with all sorts of gossip. Do you hear?"
"All right," with a wink over at his guest. "Good night, my little one."
Blachland had long ceased to wonder--even if he had done so at first--at the extraordinary tenderness existing between Bayfield and this child of his. Cudgel his experience as he would, he could find in it no instance of a girl anything like this one. Sunny beauty, grace, and the most perfect refinement, a disposition of rare sweetness, yet withal plenty of character--why, it would require a combination of the best points of any half-dozen girls within that experience to make up one Lyn Bayfield, and then the result would be a failure. To his host he said as much when they were alone together. The latter warmed up at once.
"Ah, you"ve noticed that, have you, Blachland? Well, I suppose you could hardly have been in the house the short time you have without noticing it. Make allowances for an old fool, but there never was such a girl as my Lyn--no, never. And--I may lose her any day."
"Great Heavens, Bayfield, surely not! What"s wrong? Heart?"
"No--no. Not that way, thank G.o.d--by the by, I"m sorry I startled you.
I mean she"s bound to marry some day."
"Ah, yes, I see," returned Blachland, rea.s.sured, yet furtively hoping that the smile wherewith he accepted the rea.s.surance was not a very sickly one. But the other did not notice it, and now fairly on the subject, launched out into a narrative of Lyn"s sayings and doings, as it seemed, from the time of her birth right up till now, and it was late before he pulled up, with profuse apologies for having bored the very soul out of his guest, and that on a subject in which the latter could take but small interest.
But Blachland rea.s.sured him by declaring that he had not been bored in the very least, and so far from feeling small interest in the matter, he had been very intensely interested.
And the strangest thing of all was that he meant it--every word.