Renshaw Fanning's Quest: A Tale of the High Veldt

“Yes; but I don’t like it.”

“That can’t be helped. Do you suppose I like it? But it will not be for long. I am going away very soon – it might be any day now – home again. Then we can make up for the present hateful restraint. What is to prevent you returning by the same steamer? You will, Maurice, darling – you will – will you not?” she urged, clinging closer to him, and looking up into his eyes with a piteously hungering expression, as though fearing to read there the faintest forestalment of a negative. But her fears were groundless.

“Will I? I should rather think I would. Listen, Violet. This mad expedition of poor Fanning’s has turned up trumps. I have that about me at this moment which should be worth two or three hundred thousand pounds at least. Only think of it. We have the world at our feet – a new life before us. You are, as you say, going home. But it will be to a real home!”

She looked into his eyes – her gaze seemed to burn into his – her breast was heaving convulsively.

They understood each other.

“Do you mean it, Maurice?” she gasped. “My darling, do you really and truly mean it?”

“Mean it? Of course I do. It was with no other object I went risking my life a dozen times a day in that ghastly desert. With the wealth that is ours we can afford to defy all the world – that she-devil included. And we will.”

“Yes, we will.”

Their lips met once more, and thus the compact was sealed. Alas – poor Violet! She had given herself over, bound, into the enemy’s hand. She had sold herself, and the price paid was the price of blood – even the blood of him who had sacrificed his own life for her sake.

Chapter Thirty Six.

Sellon’s Last Lie

But that he held the key to it in the shape of Violet’s communication, the reserve, not to say coldness, of his reception by the family, would have astonished Sellon not a little. Now, however, it in no wise disconcerted him; rather, it struck him in the light of a joke. He had got his cue, and meant to act up to it.

So when his somewhat involuntary host asked if he would mind giving him a private interview, he replied with the jolliest laugh in the world —

“Certainly, certainly, my dear fellow. Delighted, Well, Miss Effie” – as that young person ran against them in the hall – “here I am, back again to tease you, you see.”

“Where’s Uncle Renshaw, Mr Sellon?” said the child.

Maurice stared. The straight question – the straight look accompanying it, disconcerted him for a moment.

“Renshaw! Oh, coming on,” he answered quickly, “coming on. Be here soon, I dare say.”

He had made the same sort of reply to the same inquiry on the part of his host. He thought he had done with the subject. It irritated him to be called upon to repeat the same lie over and over again.

“By the way, Mr Sellon,” began the latter, “did you get the letter I sent you at Maraisdorp?”

“Mister Sellon!” Maurice started. Old Chris, was taking the thing seriously indeed, he thought with an inward laugh.

“Not I,” he answered. “Probably for the best of all possible reasons. I didn’t come through Maraisdorp, or anywhere near it.”

“Before going any further, I want you to look at this,” said Selwood, unlocking a small safe and taking out the unfortunate missive. “Wait – excuse me one moment, I want you to look attentively at the direction first.”

He still held the envelope. Maurice took one glance at the address – the handwriting – and as he did so his face was not pleasant to behold.

“All right. I know that calligraphy well enough. Ought to by this time. Ha, ha! So she has been favouring you with her peculiar views on things in general and me in particular. You ought to feel honoured.”

“I? Favouring me?” echoed the other, in a state of amazement.

“Yes – you. I suppose the communication is an interesting one.”

“My dear Sellon, look at the address again,” said Christopher, handing him the envelope.

“By Jove! It’s for me, after all,” looking at it again. “What a treat! Why the devil can’t the woman write legibly!” he muttered. Then aloud: “Why, it looks exactly as if it was addressed to you, Selwood.”

“Ha! I am very glad indeed to hear you say that. I thought the same. You see, I’d got it mixed up among a crowd of other letters, and opened it by mistake.”

“The devil you did!”

“Yes. I can only tell you how sorry I am, and how I have spent life cursing my blundering asinine stupidity ever since. But there is another thing. I feel bound in honour to tell you that I didn’t become aware of the mistake until I had run my eye down the first page. You will notice there is no beginning. I turned to the signature for enlightenment; but between the first page and the signature I did not read a word.”

Sellon burst into a roar of laughter – apparently over the mistake, in reality as he realised how quickly he would be in a position to turn the enemy’s flank.

“My dear fellow, don’t say another word about it. The joke is an exceedingly rich one. See what comes of our names being so infernally alike. Two Sells – eh? But you don’t suppose I am going to share in your entertainment over this charming epistle? Not much. Just oblige me with a match.”

“Wait, wait,” cried the other. “Better read it this time – or, at any rate, as much of it as it was my misfortune to see.”

“H’m! Well, here goes,” said Maurice, jerking the letter out of the envelope as though it would burn his fingers, “Quite so,” he went on, with a bitter sneer, running his eye down the sheet. “That’s about enough of this highly entertaining document, the rest can be taken as read, like a petition to the House of Commons. That match, if you please. Thanks. I need hardly remind you, Selwood,” he went on, watching the flaming sheet curling up in the grate, “I need hardly remind you how many men there are in this world who marry the wrong woman. I dare say I needn’t remind you either that a considerable percentage of these are entrapped and defrauded into the concern by lies and deception, against which it is next to impossible for any man to guard – at all events any young man. When to this I add that there are women in this world who for sheer, gratuitous, uniform fiendishness of disposition could give the devil points and beat him at an easy canter. I think I’ve said about enough for all present purposes.”

“This is an awkward and most unpleasant business,” said Selwood. “Excuse me if I feel bound to refer once more to that letter. The – er – writer makes reference by name to Miss Avory, who is a guest in my house, and a relation of my wife’s – and that, too, in a very extraordinary manner, to put it as mildly as I can.”

“My dear fellow, that’s a little way of hers. I can assure you I am most awfully put out that you should have been annoyed about the business. As to the mistake, don’t give it another thought.”

“How did Mrs – er – the writer – know Miss Avory was here?”

This was a facer – not so much the question as the fact that the knowledge of Violet’s whereabouts on the part of the writer implied that he, Sellon, had not met her there at Sunningdale for the first time. But he hoped the other might not notice this side of it.

“That’s beyond me,” he answered. “How did she know I was here? For I need hardly tell you we don’t correspond every mail exactly. I can only explain it on the score that more people know Tom Fool than T.F. knows; that there are, I suppose, people in this neighbourhood who hail from the old country, or have relations there, and the postage upon gossip is no higher than that upon business.”

“You will not mind my saying that it is a pity we did not know you were a married man.”

“‘Had been,’ you should have said, not ‘were.’ Not but what legally I am still tied up fast enough – chained and bound – which has this advantage, that it keeps a man from all temptation to make a fool of himself a second time in his life. Still, it doesn’t count otherwise.”

“No, I suppose not,” said the other, significantly. “Perhaps it doesn’t keep a man from making a fool of other people, though.”

“Now, my dear Selwood, what the very deuce are you driving at? For Heaven’s sake let us be straight and open with each other.”

“Well, I mean this. It’s a most unpleasant thing to have to say to any man. But, you see, Miss Avory is our guest, and a relation as well. You must know as well as I do that your attentions to her were very – er – marked.”

One of those jolly laughs which has so genuine a ring, and which Maurice knew so well when to bring in, greeted this speech.

“Look here, Selwood,” he said, “I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but the fact is you don’t understand women in the least. You are quite on the wrong tack, believe me. Miss Avory doesn’t care the ghost of a straw for me, or my ‘attentions.’ You must remember that we both knew – er – the same people in England. There, you must fill in the outline. I am not at liberty to say more. But there won’t be much time to put the matter to the test, for I’ve got to leave you again to-morrow.”

To Christopher Selwood’s honourable mind no doubt suggested itself as to the genuineness of this explanation. There was a frank straightforwardness about it which, with a man of his character, was bound to tell. He felt intensely relieved. But to this feeling there succeeded one of humiliation. Had he not made an inordinate fuss over the concern at the start? Had he not raised a veritable storm in a teapot, and set everybody by the ears for weeks? Had he not in his anxiety to unburden himself abdicated his own mature judgment in favour of the less reliable decision of his wife? In short, had he not made a consummate ass of himself all round? Of course he had.

“By the way, Selwood, there is one thing I want to tell you about now we are together,” said Maurice, after a pause. “You and the others were asking about Fanning just now. The fact is, he is not with me, but I couldn’t say so without entering into further explanations, which would certainly have alarmed the ladies. We found our ‘Valley of the Eye’ all right, and a deuce of a job it was. Pheugh! I wouldn’t go on that jaunt again for twice the loot. The ‘Eye’ is a genuine concern, I can tell you – a splendid stone – Fanning has got it. Well, we spent the day picking up a few other stones, and just as we were clearing out we were attacked by a lot of Bushmen or Korannas, or whatever they were, and had to run. By Jove! it was touch and go. They pressed us hard until dark, and then we had to separate – to throw them off the scent, don’t you see? We agreed to meet at his place – that is, if we were to meet anywhere again in this world. Well, I had an awful time of it in those infernal mountains, dodging the niggers. I couldn’t show my nose in the daytime, and didn’t know the country well enough to make much headway at night, and I nearly starved. It took me more than a week before I could fetch the river, and get through to Fanning’s place, and when I got there he hadn’t turned up. But I found a letter which had been sent by special messenger, requiring me at Cape Town, sharp, about some infernal but important law business, and I’m on my way there now. I left a note for Fanning, telling him what to do with my share of the swag when it came to dividing, for we hadn’t had time to attend to that then, and except a few small stones he has it all on him. It’ll be something good, I guess. I dare say he’s turned up at home again long before this. He was just laughing in his sleeve at the idea of a few niggers like that thinking to run him to earth. And he seems to know that awful country like ABC. I never saw such a fellow.”

“That’s bad news, Sellon, right bad news,” said the other, shaking his head. “Renshaw has been all his life at that sort of thing, so we must hope he’ll turn up all right. But – the pitcher that goes too often to the pump, you know.”