A Veldt Vendetta

“Yes. But it hasn’t. I mean not for me.”

“How? Instead of being ruined, as you thought, you are just where you were before. Isn’t that coming right?”

“No. I want a great deal more than that. I want – you.”

I was looking her straight in the face. A flush came into it, and there was the sweetest, tenderest glow in her eyes. It seemed that the hand which rested in mine returned the pressure.

“Beryl – darling – my love for you has been steadily growing since we first became inmates of the same house. I was on the point of telling you so when that idiot Trask came clattering in upon us that day we were riding back from Stacey’s. Then, afterwards, as you know, there were other things that made the time not an opportune one; and the day before you returned home I got the news that made me think I was a beggar.”

“Yes. And you took to behaving very strangely towards me then, as I think I told you.”

“Shall I tell you something, dearest? I was beastly jealous of Pentridge.”

“Were you? Well, you needn’t be ever again. Shall I tell you something, dearest – only as a secret? He asked me to marry him.”

“The day he left?”

She nodded.

“I thought he would,” I said. “And – why didn’t you?”

“Because I greatly preferred some one else.”

“Who is the ‘some one else’?”

“If you will promise not to talk any more – you have already talked a great deal too much – I’ll tell you. You will? Well, then – ” and the look upon her face was to my eyes simply heavenly, as she bent down her sweet lips to my ear, touched it with them, and whispered just one word: “You.”

I hardly know what the next few moments contained, except that it was far too radiantly blissful to put into mere words. Then looking down upon me, her cool hand lovingly moving over my forehead and temples, she said —

“Now you will be quick and get well – for my sake, won’t you, Kenrick dear?”

“Rather! Pentridge may consider the cure complete. My mind is clear now, at any rate.” And then I stopped, feeling rather ashamed of my exhilaration and happiness, considering how recent was the blow which had fallen, and said so. But she reassured me.

“It is just as the dear old dad would have wished,” she said. “He had such an opinion of you, Kenrick. Now – where is your promise? You were not to talk any more, do you remember?”

“But I have hardly said anything yet. And – I want to.”

“Haven’t you? You have been delirious, remember, dearest, and when people are delirious they say a great deal.” And with a glad, mischievous laugh, again she bent down her lips to mine.

I gained strength daily now, almost hourly. But Pentridge wondered not at the sudden change when he learned how it had been brought about. He congratulated us in a cordial, manly way, poor chap. Yes, he was a fine fellow, was Pentridge.

We had a sad and painful time of it, Beryl and I, at the trial of the three murderers, for we had to give evidence, and that meant a re-opening of the old wounds. But Sibuko and Maqala and the other Kafir were sentenced to be hanged; and hanged they were, in the gaol at Fort Lamport, a couple of weeks or so afterwards. With their richly-deserved fate the vendetta which culminated in this last tragedy was closed; for Kuliso, strange to say, conceived such a vast admiration and respect for Beryl’s magnificent intrepidity on that fatal night, that he made it known among his tribesmen that all further acts of hostility or molestation towards us, of any kind, were to cease; and as he still emphatically disclaimed any knowledge of or complicity in the sad tragedy, we gave him the benefit of the doubt, and dwelt side by side, at any rate on neighbourly terms.

For after Beryl and I were married – quietly, by reason of what had gone before – as Brian showed not the smallest intention of following our example, we continued to make our home at Gonya’s Kloof, and our partnership in farming concerns prospered exceedingly, and in our home circle we were as happy as the still lingering shadow of bereavement would allow us to be. And it was a shadow. Poor little George! We missed his merry impudence a good many times a day, and as for the wise, kind father and friend – why, for long the recollection of him was blank indeed; and long it was before Time even began to heal the wound which that recollection had left.

Well, that is my story. I don’t know that it is much of a story, but it’s a true one, and that I, Kenrick Holt, should ever have been brought to write a story at all seems passing strange, most of all to myself; indeed, I never should have, had it not been for a friend of mine who used to come and stay at our place, and shoot. He was always keen on reminiscences – if local and tragic all the better – and my own romance appealed to him to such an extent that he was continually urging me to turn it into a book; which was sporting of him, for he was very much in the book-writing line himself – especially with reference to my now adopted country – and might easily have used it himself, turning it to account on behalf of his own pocket. However, he was too much of a sportsman for that, so – here it is.

Finis.