Renshaw Fanning's Quest Part 3

"Hot or cool, I vote we stroll somewhere," cried Violet, starting up from her chair with a restlessness and energy she seldom displayed at that time of the day, when the sun made himself very definitely felt, even at that elevation.

"Very well," acquiesced the other, gathering up her work. Then she added, with a smile, "You had better get a sunshade, Violet, or you'll be taking back quite a stock of freckles. The now disconsolate ones will all cry off then."

"Will they! But--are you not going to take one?"

"No. I'm about burnt enough already. Besides, there are no disconsolate ones in my case to doom to disillusion, so it doesn't matter."

"Oh yes! Very likely! I'm sure to believe that."

"Go away, and get your hat on," interrupted Marian.

"Come now, Marian," said Violet, as the two girls wandered down the shady walk under the fruit-trees. "It's all very well for you to affect the solemn, and all that kind of thing; but I don't believe in it a bit, let me tell you. No--not one bit."

"Oh, don't you?"

"No, I don't. I believe, for all that quiet way of yours, you are just as dangerous as they pretend I am. You're deep; that's what you are.

Now, there's that nice Mr Fanning. You flirted with him shockingly.

You know you did!"

"I wasn't aware of it," was the calm response. And then came a pause.

It was finally broken by Marian.

"Poor Renshaw! He and I were--well, not exactly children together, for he is about a dozen years my senior, but we have known each other all our lives. And, by the way, Violet, I hope you have not been intentionally adding him to the list of your captives; but I am tolerably certain he has fallen a victim. Whether it is your doing, or pure accident, I don't undertake to guess. But he is not the sort of man you ought to make a fool of."

Violet laughed--mockingly, maliciously.

"Why, Marian, you're jealous. I've struck the right chord at last.

Never mind; it isn't too late now. I won't stand in your light, I promise you."

Most women under the circ.u.mstances would have fired up--repelled the insinuation angrily. But Marian Selwood was not of that sort.

"Poor Renshaw is quite unlucky enough, without having a--well--damaged heart thrown into the scale," she went on. "His life is hard enough in all conscience, and is just now a well-nigh hopeless struggle, I don't mind telling you in confidence. I dare say you think there isn't much in him because he is reserved; but more than once his cool courage has been the means of saving not one life, but many. I have heard men say, not once, not yet twice, that in any undertaking involving peril or enterprise there is no man they would rather have at their side than Renshaw Fanning. And he is the most unselfish of men. His is a splendid character, and one not often met with in these days."

"Well done! Well done, Marian!" cried Violet, mischievously. "The secret is out at last. I know where Mr Fanning's trumpeter lives.

But, joking apart, he is awfully nice, only a trifle too solemn, you know, like yourself; in fact, you would suit each other admirably.

There now, don't get huffy. I a.s.sure you I quite missed him for ever so long after he left. How long is it since he left?"

"Just over five weeks."

"As long as that, is it? Well, I wish he'd come again; there, is that an adequate tribute to your Bayard? But I suppose he won't be able to come all that distance again--hundreds of miles, isn't it?--for ever so long--and then I shall be gone--Oh! Look there! Look, Marian, look!"

she broke off, her voice rising to a scream, as she pointed, terror-stricken, to an object rising out of the gra.s.s some twenty yards distant.

CHAPTER FIVE.

A SUSPICIOUS TREK.

Marian, startled by the terrified shriek of her companion, followed the latter's gaze, and the object that met her own produced a qualm of repulsion mingled with involuntary alarm.

They had reached a secluded corner of the garden where the suns.h.i.+ne fell in a network of light through the overshadowing foliage of a group of tall fig-trees, which cast quite a semi-gloom in contrast to the glare without. On one side was a thick pomegranate hedge. The cause of Violet's terror became unpleasantly manifest in the shape of a hideous black head rearing itself up from the ground. It was followed by the gliding sinuous body of a huge snake.

Shriek after shriek arose from Violet's lips.

"It's coming straight at us!" she screamed, and mastering an impulse to faint, she turned and fled from the spot as hard as she could run.

It certainly was coming straight at them, and that with a velocity and determination abnormal to its kind. Another peculiarity was that it came on in a straight, smooth glide, without a writhe, without even a wrathful hiss. In fact, the reptile's behaviour, to anybody but a brace of badly frightened women, was singular to a degree.

"It's only a rinkhaals," cried Marian, bravely standing her ground.

"Lend me your Sunshade, Violet."

But the latter was already a hundred yards off, where, half ashamed of her panic, half secure in the distance she had covered, she turned to see what would happen. Suddenly a sound of suppressed laughter reached Marian's ears. It seemed to come from the pomegranate hedge.

Simultaneously the snake came to an abrupt standstill, and lay motionless.

Any misgivings Marian may have felt vanished on the instant. She knew that laugh, and recognising it became alive to something which in her not unnatural alarm had escaped her before. The snake was as dead as a pickled herring, and there was a noose of thin twine round its neck.

"Chris! How can you?" she cried. "You have nearly frightened Violet to death!"

"Have I?" laughed Christopher Selwood, emerging from his hiding-place.

"No, no! That won't do. Why, wasn't it Miss Avory who was sticking out the other day that no snake in this country could scare her? Ho, ho, ho!"

The speaker was a well-built, good-looking man of middle age, with a heavy brown beard, just beginning to show a streak of grey here and there, and keen, fun-loving eyes. His face was tanned and burnt, likewise his hands, which latter were rough and h.o.r.n.y through much hard manual labour. He was dressed in cord trousers and a flannel s.h.i.+rt, and carried his jacket under his arm.

"Ho, ho, ho!" he roared again! picking up the dead snake by its late motive power--the twine to wit. "Where's the young lady who isn't afraid of snakes?"

"Really, Chris, what a great schoolboy you are!" said his sister. "If I were Violet, I should never forgive you. You had no business to frighten her like that!"

"No, you hadn't," said Violet, who now came up. "But I'll forgive you, Mr Selwood, because--I'll be even with you yet."

"Hallo! That's a rum sort of forgiveness. Well, Miss Avory, I won't grumble; you shall work your wicked will, how, when, and where you please."

"Ugh! What a hideous thing!" said Violet, contemplating the dead reptile with a shudder, "But--joking apart--they can't be very plentiful, can they? Ever since I've been here I've only seen one, and it was dead."

"There's a proverb here, Miss Avory," said Selwood, with a twinkle in his eye, "that if you come across one snake, you are dead certain to run against at least two more in the course of the day. So be careful."

"Nonsense, Violet. Don't believe a word of it," said Marian. "Chris, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. Where did you get that rinkhaals from?"

"This end wall of the land. He was coiled up, basking in the sun. Saw him before he saw me--slunk round t'other side of the wall, and dropped a stone bang on the top of him. Like to have the skin to hang up in your bedroom, Miss Avory?"

"Ugh! No, I wouldn't. But wait a bit, Mr Selwood. You'll live to wish you hadn't played me this trick yet," retorted Violet, mischievously.

Selwood laughed again.

"Hallo! What's all this?" he exclaimed, as the lowing of cattle, mingled with the bleating of sheep and goats, together with a considerable cloud of pungent dust, announced the arrival of a trek of some sort.

They had reached the garden-gate and emerged close to the group of huts forming the quarters of the native farm servants. Before and around these were about twenty head of cattle, old and young, and quite a considerable number of sheep and goats, upon all of which Selwood's experienced eye fell with no approving gaze.

Two Kafirs, arrayed in red blankets and tattered trousers, stepped forward.