A Secret of the Lebombo Part 9

"Look--where?" queried Le Sage, shortly.

"Why, at how suddenly it became light, just as I was talking about my plan--and luck changing. I'm not superst.i.tious, but I'll be hanged if I won't take that as an omen--and a good one."

Le Sage grunted, and shook his head in utter disgust.

"An omen?" he repeated. "Good Lord, Wyvern, what rot. Man, you'll never be anything but a dreamer, and you can't run a farm upon dreams-- no nor anything else. Would you mind letting me into this 'plan' of yours?"

"At present I would. Later on, not now. And now, Le Sage, if you have quite done schoolmastering me, I move that we go back. In fact, I don't know that it was worth while our coming so far just to say all that."

"But you'll think so in a minute. It happens I haven't said all I came to say, and as it has to be said, I may as well say it at once and without beating around the bush. You must cease thinking of Lalante at all. You must consider your engagement to her at an end."

Wyvern had felt nearly certain that some such statement const.i.tuted the real object of their talk, but now that it was made, it was none the less a blow. He felt himself growing a shade paler under the weather worn bronze of his face.

"What does Lalante herself say about it," was his rejoinder.

"Say? Say?" echoed Le Sage, angrily. "She has no say in the matter. I simply forbid it."

"You can't do that, Le Sage. She is of full age, you know," said Wyvern quietly, but with a ring of sadness in his tone. "Look here--no, wait-- hear me out," seeing that the other was about to interrupt with a furious rejoinder. "I've set myself out all through this interview never for a moment to lose sight of the fact that you are her father, consequently have sat quiet under a tone I would stand from no other man alive. But even the authority of a father has its limits, and you have started in to exercise yours a trifle too late."

"Then you refuse to give her up?" furiously.

"Most distinctly. Unless, that is, she herself wished it."

"Oh, you would then?" said Le Sage, quickly, clutching at a straw.

"Certainly. But I must hear it from her own lips, face to face. Not through a third party, or on paper." Le Sage's "straw" seemed to sink.

"I don't want to irritate you further, Le Sage," went on Wyvern after a moment's pause. "But I'm convinced as firmly as that you and I are sitting here that I shall never hear anything of the sort. It is not in Lalante to turn from me in misfortune. Our love is too complete."

"And I don't count. I, her father, am to stand aside as of no account at all?"

The unconscious pathos that welled up in the very bitterness of his tone, reflected what had lain beneath his mind since some time back-- that his child should be so ready and eager to leave him. And Wyvern's instinct was quick to grasp it.

"I quite see your import and sympathise," he said. "Yes, I sympathise, thoroughly. But Nature is nothing if not pitiless, and this is a provision of Nature. And look here, Le Sage, my existing run of ill-luck ought to be a recommendation from your point of view in that you will be able to keep the child longer with you, for of course I don't dream of claiming her until my luck changes."

"That'll be never then," rejoined the other, savagely. "Man, haven't you more sense of honour than to pin a girl to her contract when you know you haven't enough to keep yourself, let alone her? She is very young too. I don't know how I ever gave my consent."

"She has commonsense and capability far beyond her years, and you know it. Now see here, Le Sage. Be reasonable about this, and give me some sort of a show. If I bring off my plan satisfactorily, I shan't be the first man whose luck has turned."

"Oh, d.a.m.n your 'plan' and your 'luck' too!" retorted the other, now completely losing his temper. "The first's a fraud and the other's fudge. Look here, if you weren't so much infernally bigger and stronger than me, I'd start in now to hammer you within an inch of your life, but as you are, it's of no use trying."

"No, it isn't," said Wyvern quietly, but not sneeringly.

Le Sage had got up and was pacing up and down feverishly. Wyvern had never moved. Had he known it, he was at that moment in some considerable peril. He was sitting right on the edge of the _krantz_, and the other was behind him; and Le Sage was one of those men who when they do fairly lose their tempers go nearly mad. Now his face was ghastly, and he snarled like a cornered animal.

"Your plan's a fraud," he repeated furiously, "and you're a fraud yourself. You humbugged me into believing you were a man of solid position, while all the time you were a d.a.m.ned, useless, bankrupt waster. You sneaked my consent under false pretences. Yes, under false pretences," he bellowed, "and now I withdraw it. D'you hear? I withdraw it unconditionally, you--swindler."

Wyvern had risen now, but with no sort of idea of violence, and stood confronting the infuriated man.

"Now, Le Sage, don't you think all this is rather cowardly on your part?" he said, in a quiet, expostulatory tone. "I mean because you must know that you're the one man privileged to say such things to me-- in fact, to go on all day calling me all the frauds and swindlers you want to, and still remain absolutely immune from retaliation. It's not fair."

"Not fair, eh?" snarled Le Sage, infuriated by the other's coolness, though there was nothing in this that was in the least offensive or taunting. "Well, now, look here. Get away off my place, d'you see?

This is my ground. A mile further on is my boundary. Well, get across that as soon as ever you like, and don't set foot on my place again, or by G.o.d, I might even blow your brains out."

"Then you'd get hanged or shut up for a considerable time, and would that be good for Lalante?"

"Go--d'you hear," stamped the furious man. "Go. There's the boundary.

Go over it--to h.e.l.l or the devil."

"You don't expect me to walk ten miles when I've got a horse, do you? I left one at your place, and, incidentally, a tooth-brush."

Le Sage by this time was reduced to exhausted speechlessness. He could only glare helplessly. Not wis.h.i.+ng to exasperate him further and needlessly, Wyvern had refrained from saying that he had no intention of going until he had seen Lalante once more. She would be on the look-out for their return, he knew that, would probably come forth to welcome-- him, Le Sage would have no power to prevent their meeting.

So they walked back these two, as they had come, in silence.

CHAPTER NINE.

"NUMBER ONE."

Gilbert Warren, attorney-at-law, was seated in his office looking out upon the main street of Gydisdorp.

He was an alert, straight, well-set-up man, not much on the further side of thirty, handsome, too, in the dark-haired, somewhat hatchet-faced aquiline type. He was attired in a cool, easy-fitting suit of white duck, for the day had been hot, and still wore his broad-brimmed hat, for he had only just come in.

Now he unlocked a drawer in his table, somewhat hastily, impatiently might almost have been said. Thence he extracted a bundle of doc.u.ments, and began eagerly to peruse them. Among them were deeds of mortgage.

"A d.a.m.n rotten place," he said to himself. "These fools have got bitten this time, and serves 'em right. I advised them against touching it.

Now to me it doesn't matter. I don't mind dropping a little on it to get _him_ out. If I take it over, why then he'll have to go--and it's worth it. I will--Come in."

This in reply to a knock. A clerk entered.

"It's Ripton, about that committal judgment. Will you see him, sir?"

"--To the devil, willingly," replied Warren sharply. "Tell him to go there."

The clerk went out, t.i.ttering, to inform the individual in question that Warren was very busy, and couldn't possibly find time to attend to him to-day, an intimation which had the effect of sending that much hara.s.sed and debt-hung waggon-maker slouching down the street, gurgling forth strange profanities, and consigning lawyers in general, and Warren in particular, to the care of precisely the same potentate to whom Warren had just consigned him; only in far more sultry, and utterly unprintable, terms.

"Yes, I'll take it over," the attorney's thoughts ran on, as he scanned the papers. "I can afford a loss on it--rather--and then the stake!

Good G.o.d! I'd cheerfully plank down all I've made, and start life again, _kaal_, [lit: naked] for that. Out he'll have to walk--and not much to take along with him either. He won't show his nose around that neighbourhood again. Le Sage will take care of the rest."

Warren was the leading attorney in Gydisdorp. The district was large, well-to-do, and litigious, wherefore over and above will-drawing and conveyancing, and so forth, he had as much practice as he could take care of. There were other matters he undertook, but on the quiet, which were even more paying. Shafto, who came next to him, used to declare that Warren ought to be struck off the rolls; but as the two were great friends and invariably took a couple of "splits" together _per diem_, in the bar of the Masonic Hotel, n.o.body believed Shafto--only laughed.

Besides, Warren was popular. He was genial and gifted, could tell a good story and sing a good song; moreover, he was a keen sportsman. So life, on the whole, was a rosy thing for him, and more so that Warren's creed could be summed up in a word and a figure. This was it: Number 1.

Pus.h.i.+ng the deeds aside, Warren unlocked a drawer, and produced another enclosure. This he handled carefully, tenderly one might have said.

Undoing the soft paper wrappings, he extracted a--photograph. Propping it up on his writing-table, he began to study it, and as he did so his face softened unconsciously. Then he took up a large magnifying gla.s.s.

The powerful lens threw into relief the seductive lines of the splendid figure, the curve of the smiling mouth, the glad, luminous dilation of the eyes--and--it was identical with the portrait hanging on Wyvern's wall--the one that _was_ dusted and cared for.