look which deepened upon his face in the brilliant moonlight.
“No – no. Lalanté, love, never that. No. Once you hinted that way before – but – no, that could not be.”
“Now you hurt me.”
“Hurt you – hurt you? Child, if you only knew how I am adoring you at this moment, if possible – I say if possible – more than ever I have done before. Hurt you? You?”
“Now, forgive me. It is I who am hurting you.” And her voice quivered in its tenderness of passion as she reached out her hand to him – they were walking their horses now. “But I thought if two people belonged to each other they had everything in common.”
“Not at this stage, I’m afraid,” he said, with a smile that was meant to be reassuring, but was only sad. “You know I have a certain code of my own.”
“It would be a cruel one if it was not yours,” she answered. But there was nothing of resentment in the tone, only pride, admiration, an intense glory of possession. Nor did she intend to abandon the argument, only to postpone it.
As they had said, they had known from the very first that they belonged to each other. It was as surely a case of coming together as the meeting of two converging rivers; and the process had been as easy, as natural. What had drawn her towards him – apart from his physical attractions, which were not slight, and of which, to do him justice, he was free from any consciousness – was his total dissimilarity to any other man she had ever met. She had told him so more than once – and the reply had been deprecatory. Other men got on, he declared, while he – only seemed to get back; dissimilarity, therefore, was rather a hindrance than a thing to plume oneself upon.
“We are nearly there now,” he said, regretfully, as the track they had been pursuing here merged in a broader main road.
“Yes. But what a day we have had. Hasn’t it been too sweet?”
“Too sweet indeed! A day to look back upon to the very end of one’s life.”
A couple of miles further and they topped a rise. In the stillness the sudden barking of dogs was borne to their ears. It came from where two or three iron roofs glinted in the moonlight some three-quarters of a mile on the further side of the valley. Both dismounted, for the rest of the way she was to finish alone.
“Good-bye now, my own love, my sweet,” he murmured as they stood, locked together in a last long embrace. “I shall see you to-morrow, but it will not be as it has been to-day.”
“Not quite. But we will have other days like this. And – keep up heart – remember, for my sake. When you are disposed to lose it, think of me and feel sure that nothing can part us – as sure as that moon is shining. Good-bye, my love. It is only ‘good-night,’ though.”
No more was said, as he swung her into the saddle. He himself stood there watching her fast receding form, nor did he leave the spot until the sudden subsidence of the canine clamour, told that she had reached her home.
Then he mounted, and took his way slowly back through the moonlit glories of the beautiful slumbering waste.
Chapter Five.
Rebellion
Vincent Le Sage was riding leisurely homeward to his farm in the Kunaga River Valley.
His way lay down a stony bush road, winding along a ridge – whence great kloofs fell away on either side, clothed in thick, well-nigh impenetrable bush. Here and there a red krantz with aloe-fringed brow rose up, bronze-gleaming in the morning sun, and away below, in front, and on either hand, the broad river valley into which he was descending.
He was a middle-aged man, of medium height, but tough and wiry. He had good features and his short beard was crisp and grizzled, but the expression of his eyes was cold and business-like, as indeed it was bound to be if there is anything in the science of physiognomy, for he was a byword as being a hard nail at a deal, and everything he touched prospered. In fact his acquaintance near and far were wont to say that Le Sage had never made a bad bargain in his life. Perhaps they were right, but Le Sage himself, now as a turn of the road brought some objects in sight, was more than inclined to question that dictum.
The said objects were only some cattle, a most ordinary everyday sight, and the cattle were not even his. Yet a frown came over his face. The cattle were poor, and one or two, to his experienced eyes, showed signs of disease.
“Wyvern’s, of course!” he pronounced to himself wrathfully. “Every case of redwater or brand-ziekte in the whole country-side is sure to be traceable to Wyvern’s cattle or sheep. What the devil could have put into such a fellow’s head that he was any good in the world at fanning? He’d better stick to his fusty books and become a damned professor. That’s about all he’s good for. I doubt if he’s even good for that I doubt if he’s even good for anything.”
These wrathful reflections were due to the fact that he had just met with a reminder – one of many – that he had at any rate made one bad bargain, for Wyvern was engaged to his daughter; and now it was a question only of months perhaps, when Wyvern should be sold up.
Then and there he made up his mind again that the engagement should be broken off, and yet while so making it up – we said “again” – the same misgiving that had haunted him on former occasions did so duly and once more, that the said breaking off would be a matter of no little difficulty even were it ever achieved at all. Wyvern might be a bad fanner, a hopeless one in fact, but he would be a hard nut to crack in a matter of this kind, and Lalanté – well, here was a hard and fast alliance for the offensive and defensive, which would require a breaking power such as he could not but realise to himself he scarcely possessed.
On rode Vincent Sage, mile after mile, still frowning. The good bargain he had made at yesterday’s ale had well-nigh faded from his thoughts now, and as he drew near to his home his private worries seemed to oust his professional satisfaction over his own acuteness and the steady but sure accumulation of the goods of this world. He had liked Wyvern well enough during the earlier period of their acquaintance – in fact more than well enough; but he had all the invariably successful man’s impatience of – even contempt for – the chronically unsuccessful; and in this particular instance his oft repeated dictum to himself – and sometimes to others – was “Wyvern will never do any good for himself or for anybody else either.”
Suddenly he pulled up his horse with a jerk, and emitted a whistle. He was scanning the road, scanning it intently.
“Oh-ho! So that’s how the cat jumps!” he exclaimed to himself, grimly.
He had reached the point where the track to Wyvern’s farm joined the wider road leading to his own. The frown became more of a set one than ever.
“One horse spoor coming this way alone,” he pronounced, “and I know what horse made that spoor. Two horse spoors going back – and the same horse made one of these spoors. That’s the game, is it, directly my back is turned? Well, it’s a game that must be stopped, and, damn it – it shall be.”
In spite of which vehemence, however, that same little cold water misgiving returned to render Vincent Le Sage’s mind uncomfortable.
He rode on, slowly now, keeping his horse at a walk; he was near home and there was no occasion for hurry. But as he went, he read that road like the pages of a book. He would find Wyvern at his place? Not a bit of it. For he had marked the returning spoors of the other horse.
Then again
