A Veldt Vendetta

“Right you are; I’ll tell them to keep Bontebok up,” came the ready response. “He’ll be livelier in the morning.”

The young villain, you see, was not going to let me down so easily.

“But I may not be. Those circus tricks are all very well for an unfledged young monkey like you, George, but a middle-aged buffer isn’t always on for that sort of game.”

“Middle-aged buffer! That’s good,” jeered the young rascal. “Why, you and Brian were at school together.”

“Oh, George, will you scoot?” interrupted Iris, emphasising the injunction with a far from gentle push. “You’re getting such a bore, you know. Go and make yourself useful in some way, if you can. Get the air-gun and go and shoot some mouse birds. Brian and dad both want some tails to clean their pipes with.”

“Can’t. Dad’d object. It’s Sunday.”

“Well, anyhow – scoot. I don’t want you. So long.”

“I’m on for a swim in the dam,” was the answer. “I’ll go and rout out Brian.”

Iris, you see, ruled the house, including George. Including me, I might add; but for me her rule was light. She was almost more grateful to me for keeping my own counsel upon it than for getting her out of her perilous predicament. Anyhow, we were great friends, and she teased me with the same freedom and whole-heartedness that she teased Brian, who idolised her; but in her bright, pretty, engaging little ways there was none of the covert impudence that characterised Master George’s attempts at banter.

“I hear you are going to stay with us altogether, Mr Holt,” she broke out suddenly an hour later as we were resting, having gained the objective of our Sunday afternoon stroll – a beautiful spot deep down in a kloof, where a pile of rocks all festooned with maidenhair fern overhung a large water-hole, and on the lower side steep upsweeping slopes of foliage cut a sharp V of green and gold against the azure of an unclouded sky, while the varied call and whistle of birds kept up a continuous echo of melody. Whoever it was who gave rise to the saying that South African birds have no song is guilty of libel, for the varying and melodious cheeriness of the bird voices, at any rate in bush country, constitutes one of its greatest charms, and the very unfamiliarity of these is in effective keeping with the wildness of the surroundings.

“Well, for some little time, at any rate,” I answered.

“I’m glad. You’re rather a good chap, you know, Mr Holt.”

Beryl and I exchanged glances, she intensely amused, while I laughed outright.

“I didn’t know it, Iris; but am delighted to learn the fact on your indisputable authority,” I answered.

She flung a handful of grass sprays at me, which she had been absently plucking.

“Don’t use those beastly long words,” she said. “No, but really I am glad.”

The straight glance of the pretty blue eyes full upon my face expressed all a delightful child’s genuine liking. I own to having felt in my innermost self considerably moved thereby.

“I must take off my hat this time,” I said, suiting the action to the word with a sweep of mock elaboration. “Miss Matterson, will you second the resolution just proposed?” I added, turning to Beryl.

“Ah, why do you always say ‘Miss Matterson’?” interrupted Iris decisively. “It’s so stiff. Why don’t you say ‘Beryl’?”

“May I?” was the obvious rejoinder – indeed, the only possible one.

“Why not, Mr Holt? I’m sure if there is anybody whom we have every reason to look upon as one of ourselves it is you.” Yet with the words, frank and friendly as they were, ever so slight a colour had come into the sweet calm face. But before I could make any reply Iris emitted a loud whistle.

“Look at that, Beryl,” she cried derisively. “And then you call him ‘Mr Holt.’”

“The very thing I was going to remark upon,” I said.

“Very well, then,” said Beryl. “Then I won’t do it again.” This time the colour had disappeared, but I could have sworn I caught a momentary look in those soulful eyes that would have justified me, had I been alone, in throwing my hat in the air and hooraying, or executing any other frantic and maniacal manoeuvre indicative of delirious exaltation.

“Then it’s a bargain,” I said.

“Yes,” smiled Beryl.

Now what had given rise to that dear child’s original remark was a certain conversation that had been held that morning over at the kraals at counting-out time.

“Why don’t you make up your mind to stop out here altogether, Holt?” Brian had said, as, the job aforesaid over, we were leaning against a gate watching the flocks streaming away to their respective pasture grounds. “You seem to take to the life, too. Man, you’ll never feel at home in one of those beastly stuffy offices again after this, grinding away at figures. Why don’t you cut loose from it all, and fix up out here? You can do it. Don’t you think he ought, dad?”

“I think he might do worse,” was the answer. “As you say, he seems to take readily enough to it.”

With the words an idea had flashed into my brain, an idea that was as a veritable illumination.

“But before I could start on my own account I should want a precious deal more experience than I’ve got at present,” I said. “There are heaps of things I should have to learn.”

“Yes, you would have a good deal to learn,” said Septimus Matterson, shading a match with his hands as he lit his pipe.

“Look here, Mr Matterson,” I said, coming straight to the point. “Will you teach me – you and Brian? I am not a man of large means, but anything in the way of a premium that you may think fair, I shall be only too happy – er – er – that I am content to leave entirely to you,” I stuttered.

Septimus Matterson had lit his pipe now, and stood emitting puffs of smoke slowly, while a queer smile deepened upon his strong handsome face. Then he said —

“I don’t often swear, Holt, as I believe you’ll bear me out in saying. But in this case I’m going to make an exception. Premium be damned!”

At this Brian threw back his head and roared, while I, puzzled, grinned idiotically.

“What I mean is,” he went on, “in the first place it’s not likely I’d take any remuneration from you for giving me a helping hand. Even if you hadn’t saved my darling little girl’s life, as a friend of Brian’s you’re heartily welcome to any assistance I could give you. Wait a bit – ” interrupting the protest I was trying to stammer forth. “In the next place, we don’t as a rule take premiums in this country for teaching a fellow to farm – the few who do are generally just the ones who can’t teach him anything at all. And, finally, every word I said to you the other day I meant. So if you’re inclined to stay on here and pick up your knowledge of the life and experience of the country by helping us, why this place is your home for just as long as ever you like to make it so.”

“Rather,” appended Brian in his quietly emphatic way. “Give us a fill, dad,” reaching out a hand for the paternal pouch.

I have but a confused idea of what I said in reply, probably something incoherent, as my way is when genuinely moved, possibly because that is a mental process I so seldom undergo. Anyhow, the matter was settled to the satisfaction of all parties, which was the main thing.

Chapter Eleven.

The Objectionable Trask

Now as I sat there, that still and radiant afternoon, in the sylvan wildness of our shaded resting-place, whose cool gloom contrasted well with the golden warmth of the sunlight beyond, I was rather more disposed for silence than speech. I was thinking, and the subject matter of my thoughts was all unalloyed with any misgiving of foreboding that should tarnish its brightness. I was realising Beryl’s presence, and all that it meant to me. There she was, within a couple of yards of me, and the mere consciousness of this was all-sufficing. I was contrasting, too, this wondrous change which had come into my life – such a joy of living, such a new awakening to its possibilities. It seemed I was hardly the same man. I who had hitherto gone through life in a neutral-tinted sort of way, content to exist from day to day among neutral-tinted surroundings, with, as I thought hitherto, a happy immunity from all violent interests or emotions. And now, by an almost magical wave of a wizard wand, I had been transported to this fair land, to sunlight from gloom, to a golden awakening from a drab slumbrous acquiescence in a bovine state of existence, which supplied the physical wants, leaving all others untouched. And the magic which had wrought this upheaval —

“Well? A penny for your thoughts.”

I turned to the speaker. It was perhaps as well that the child was with us, or I don’t know what I might have been led into saying, probably prematurely, and would thus have tumbled down my own bright castles in the air.

“He’s thinking of his pipe,” said Iris mischievously. “Brian always gets into a brown study too when he’s plunged in smoke. Beryl, I think we must make him put it out.”

“Don’t be a little barbarian, Iris,” I answered, knocking the ashes out of the offending implement. “The fact is, I was thinking of what a blessed instrument of Providence was the prow of the Kittiwake when it knocked my sculling boat to matchwood in mid-Channel and brought me here. That was all.”

“Oh yes. You were thinking you’d like to be back in that smoky old London of yours, and how slow we all are,” retorted Iris. “Trask’s always crowding London down our throats. I hate the very sound of its name. It must be a beastly hole. I always ask him why he doesn’t go back there if he’s so fond of it.”

“I should say Mr Trask, Iris,” I said, with a sly glance at Beryl.

“Ach!” exclaimed the child disgustedly, throwing a handful of grass stalks at me.

After all, we were only enjoying a lazy Sunday afternoon, talking nonsense, as people will at such times – anyhow, indulging in no rational conversation worth chronicling. And Beryl and I would engage in a playful argument on some unimportant trifle, and Iris, with child-like restlessness, would wander about, now throwing a stone into a water-hole to scare a mud turtle floating with its head on the surface, or peer about from bush to bush trying to discover a bird’s nest; and at last as the afternoon wore on we started to retrace our steps homeward.