Chapter Seven.
A Scare – And a Home Circle

“Well, Lalanté. Wyvern’s snake-bitten Kafir has not only killed himself, but he has performed his own funeral into the bargain – at least, he must have, because there’s no sign of him down there. Why – what’s the row?”

There was a curious, startled look upon the girl’s face – hearing the sound of their voices she had come forward to meet them. She was pale, too, as from the effects of a fright.

“What scared you, dearest?” said Wyvern anxiously – he was at her side in a moment. “Not another snake?”

“No. I believe it was a Kafir.”

“A Kafir?” echoed Le Sage. “Hullo, Wyvern. Your snake-bitten chap has not only performed his own funeral but he has already begun to walk.”

“Come over to where I was sitting,” said the girl. “I can show you better from there.”

“But hang it, Lalanté, you’re not the one to be scared by the sight of a Kafir,” said her father, incredulously.

“This one had an awful look,” she answered, with a little shudder. “Hardly human – almost like someone dead.”

She had been leading the way – it was only a few yards – to where she had been seated under the shade of some willows.

“Look,” she said. “It was over that prickly pear stem. Something made me look up and I saw a head – a fearful-looking black head, not like anything in life. It was glaring at me with such an awful expression, I wonder I didn’t scream, but I believe I was afraid even to do that. Then it sank down again and disappeared.”

The point indicated might have been a couple of dozen yards distant Wyvern, pressing her hand, felt that she was in a state of tremble.

“Come along, Wyvern. We’ll look into this,” said Le Sage irritably. He was a man who hated mystery, and was incredulous as regarded this one. “If there is any mad Kafir hanging about here a touch of stirrup iron’ll be the best remedy should he prove obstreperous.” And so saying he went to his horse’s side and detached one of the stirrups. Now a stirrup iron in the hands of one who knows how to use it, is a very formidable weapon of offence or defence.

“But I’ll go too,” said the girl, quickly. “I’m dead off staying here by myself after that experience.”

“Quite sure it was an experience?” queried her father, somewhat sourly.

But reaching the place she had pointed out, there was no sign of anybody having stood there. Le Sage’s first instinct was to examine the ground. He looked up again, baffled.

“No trace of any spoor whatever,” he said irritably. “No living being could have stood there and left none – let alone coming here and getting away again. Your imagination is very much on the warpath to-day, Lalanté.”

“Just as you like,” she answered, piqued. “Only, I was never credited with such a vivid imagination before.”

She felt hurt. She really had been badly frightened. The comforting pressure of Wyvern’s hand was inexpressibly sweet to her at that moment.

“Oh, well. We’ll just take a cast further round,” said Le Sage… “No, just as I thought;” he added, after this operation. “My dear child, your spectral Kafir must have vanished into thin air. He certainly couldn’t have done so over hard firm ground and left no trace whatever.”

“Well, here are two deuced odd things,” pronounced Wyvern. “First of all, the chap who was bitten again and again by a puff-adder, and should have been lying down there in an advanced stage of – well – unpleasantness, isn’t there at all. The next, Lalanté, who isn’t easily frightened, meets with a bad scare at sight of something which sounds uncommonly like the deceased defaulter when last I saw him.”

“Yes – it’s rum – very,” declared Le Sage drily, replacing the stirrup he had taken off his saddle. “Well, good-bye, Wyvern.”

“What’s that?” said Lalanté, decisively. “Goodbye? But he’s going back with us. Aren’t you, dear? I shall be most frightfully disappointed if you don’t.”

The glance she shot at him – her father was busy lighting his pipe – expressed love, entreaty, the possibility of disappointment, all rolled into one. Wyvern would not have been human if he had withstood it. As a matter of fact he had no wish to, but Le Sage’s manner was such that the words seemed to convey a broad hint that to that worthy at any rate his room was preferable to his company. But he was not going to take any marching orders from Le Sage.

“Then that you most certainly shall not be,” he said, cheerfully, returning, to the full, the girl’s loving glance.

“Of course not,” she rejoined, brightly. “I had arranged a little programme in my own mind, and you are to stay the night. It seems to me we have not seen half enough of each other lately. Well, it’s time to remedy that and I propose we begin now.”

Inwardly Le Sage was furious. He rode on in front grimly silent, but it was little enough those two minded that as they wended over the golden glory of the sunlit plains – together. Together! Yes, and the word covered a haven of rest to both, for then it was that all the world – with its worries and anxieties and apprehensions – was a thing outside. Yet from the point of view of Le Sage there was a good deal to be said. He was not a demonstrative man, this one, who enjoyed the repute of never having made a bad bargain in his life; yet in his heart of hearts he had a very soft place for this beautiful only daughter of his, and the secret of his rancour lay in the fact that he resented her leaving him at all – or at any rate for some time to come. It was unreasonable, he would candidly allow to himself – but the feeling was there. She had brightened his home and his life, and now she was prepared – even anxious – to cease doing both – to leave him at the call of an outside stranger of whose very existence barely a year ago she had hardly been aware. Had it been a man of solid gifts and substantial position upon whom she had bestowed her love, it would have been a gilding of the pill; but she had chosen to throw herself away upon a “waster” – as his favourite and wrathful epithet put it – one on the verge of insolvency, and without the requisite faculties for righting himself – ah, that rendered the potion a very black and nauseous one to the universally successful man.

Now as he rode, in gloomy silence, the laugh, and quip, and tender tone of the pair behind him, was as fuel to the fire of his anxiety to give Wyvern his congé, and that in unmistakable terms. He had made up his mind to do this, from the moment he had looked and had seen him coming in at the gate, but Lalanté had taken care they should never be alone together. Well, he would do it – not to-day but to-morrow morning, and if no opportunity occurred he would make one; point-blank if need be. A “waster” like that, who couldn’t even keep himself!

“Hullo, Le Sage. You seem a bit off colour,” cried Wyvern genially, ranging up alongside, as they topped the last rise, wherefrom the homestead came into view about a mile in front. “It really was a beastly shame to lug you off on that fool’s errand after the long ride of it you had had.”

“Oh, I’m all right. It’s all in the day’s job, and I’m as tough as wire, thank the Lord. Is that confounded vermin-preserve behind your place as full as ever, Wyvern? It’s about time you killed some of it off, isn’t it?”

The reference was to the network of rugged bushy kloofs of which mention has been made, and which were specially adapted for the harbouring of various forms of wild life, antipathetic and detrimental to stock.

“Well, I think it is, now you mention it,” was the answer. “We might get up a big hunt next week. You’ll come, won’t you? Come the day before and sleep the night. Bring Lalanté too, and the youngsters.”

“Don’t know. I’m going to be jolly busy next week,” was the answer, the speaker grimly wondering whether their relations even next day would still be such as to render any arrangement of the kind possible.

And so they reached home.

It must be recorded of Lalanté Le Sage that she had no “accomplishments.” She could not play three notes, she declared, neither did she sing, though the voice in which she trilled forth odd snatches naturally and while otherwise occupied, seemed to show that she might have done so had she chosen. Drawing and painting too, were equally out of her line. She had had enough of that sort of thing at school she would explain, and was not going to be bothered with it any more. On the other hand she had a remarkably shrewd and practical mind, and her management of her father’s house was perfect. So also was that of her two small brothers, who, by the way, were only her half brothers, Le Sage having twice married – the first time at an unusually early age. Them she ruled with a rule that was absolute, and – they adored her. Her orders admitted of no question, and still they adored her. Was there one of their boyish interests and pursuits – from the making of a catapult to the most thrilling details of the last blood-and-thunder scalping story they had been reading – into which she did not enter? Not one. And when the question arose of sending them away to school, it was Lalanté who declared in her breezy, decisive way that they were still too small, and what did it matter if they were behind other kiddies of their age in matters of history and geography? They would soon pick it all up afterwards. For her part she never could see what was the advantage of learning a lot of stuff about all those rascally old kings who chopped off everybody’s head who had ever been useful to them. That was about all that history consisted of so far as she remembered anything of it. Geography – well, that of course was of some use – might be, rather, for as taught in school it seemed to consist of what were the principal towns of all sorts of countries none of them were ever likely to see in their lives, and whether this particular place was noted for the manufacture of carpets, or that for the production of bone-dust. As for the “three R’s” she herself had given the youngsters an elementary grounding there, which was about all she was capable of doing, she declared frankly, with her bright laugh – indeed, she wondered that she was even capable of doing that.

Lalanté’s order of beauty was extremely hard to define, but it was there for all that. Hers were no straight classical features; the contour of the face was rather towards roundness, and the cupid-bow mouth was not small, but it was tempting in repose, and perfectly irresistible when flashing into a frequent and brilliant smile. It was a face that was provoking in its contradictoriness – the lower half, mobile, mischievous, fun-loving: while the steady straight glance of the large grey eyes, and the clearly marked brows, spelt “character” writ in capitals. It seemed, too, as if Nature had been undecided whether to create her fair or dark, and had given up the problem half way, for there was a golden sheen in the light brown hair, which the warmth of colouring that would come and go beneath the clear skin almost seemed to contradict.

All of which Wyvern was going over in his own mind, for the hundredth time, as on this particular evening he sat watching her, deciding, not for the first time either, that if there was one situation more than another in which she seemed at her very best, it was here in her home circle. He was not talking much; Le Sage was drowsy and inclined to nod. However, he was more than content to sit there revelling in the sheer contemplation of her – now helping to amuse the small boys, now running a needle through a few stitches of work, now throwing a bright smile or some laughing remark across to him. Then, having at length packed the youngsters off to bed, she was free for a long, delightful chat – Le Sage was snoring audibly by this time. It was an evening – one of many – that he would remember to the end of his life, and no instinct or presentiment seemed to warn him that it might be the last of the kind he was destined to experience. At last Le Sage snored so violently that he woke himself, and, jumping up, pronounced it time to turn in – which indisputably it was. But the announcement brought a certain amount of relief to Lalanté, for she had not been without anxiety on the ground of leaving the two alone together.

“I have been simply adoring you all the evening, my darling,” whispered Wyvern passionately, as he released her from a good-night embrace.

She did not answer, but her eyes grew luminous, as she lifted her lips for a final kiss. A word of love from him was sufficient to make her simply lose herself. A pressure of two hands, and she was gone.