The Triumph of Hilary Blachland. Mitford Bertram
Park towards feeding time at the Zoo will do just as well. It was the deep, throaty, ravening roar of hungry lions.
“Phew! that accounts for all the shindy!” said Justin. “Now do you want me to go, Hermia? There isn’t much show for one against a lion in the dark, and, judging from the racket, there must be several. Well, shall I start?”
She had drawn closer to him instinctively; not that there was any danger, for the stockade was high and strong – in fact, had been erected with an eye to such emergency. Now they were strained together in a close embrace, this time she returning his kisses with more than his own passion.
“You are mine – mine at last, my heart, my life!” he whispered. And the answer came back, merely breathed —
“Yes, I am. All yours.”
And above, the myriad eyes of the starry heavens looked down; and without, the horrible throaty growl of the ravening beasts rent the night.
Chapter Six.
After-Thoughts
If ever any man was in the state colloquially defined as over head and ears in love, and if ever any man had practical demonstration that his love was returned abundantly by the object thereof, assuredly the name of that man was Justin Spence. Yet when the sun rose upon him on the following morning he somehow did not feel as elate as he should have done.
For, whatever poetic associations may cluster around the hour of sunset, around that of sunrise there are none at all. It is an abominably matter-of-fact and prosaic hour, an hour when the average human is wont to feel cheap if ever, prone to retrospect, and, for choice, retrospect of an unwelcome nature. All that he has ever done that is injudicious or mean or gauche will infallibly strike him as more injudicious and meaner and more gauche in the cold and judicial stare of the waking hour. To this rule Justin Spence was no exception. His passion had not cooled – no, not one whit; yet he awoke feeling mean. His conduct had been weak – the development thereof shady: in short, in the words of his own definition, “it was not playing the game.”
The worst of it was that he was indebted to Blachland for more than one good turn, and now, what had been his requital for such? The other was his friend, and trusted him – and now, he had taken advantage of that friend’s absence. In the unsparing light of early morning the thing had an ugly look – yes, very.
As against that, however, other considerations would arise to set themselves. First of all, he himself was human, and human powers had their limits. Then, again, the other did not in the least appreciate this splendid gift, this matchless treasure which had fallen to his lot: otherwise, how could he leave her all alone as he did, absent himself for days, for weeks at a time? He had not always done so, Justin had gathered; and from Hermia’s reminiscences of camp life she seemed to have enjoyed it. If he, Justin, had been in Blachland’s place, not for a single day should she have been away from him. But then, Justin was very young, and all the circumstances and surroundings went to make him think that way.
He had known these people for some months, but of them he knew nothing. The hard, reticent, self-reliant up-country trader was not the man to make a confidant of one whom he regarded as a mere callow youth. But he had been very kind to Justin, and had held out a helping hand to him on more than one occasion. Hermia, for her part, had merely noted that the young man was very handsome and well set up, and that in about a week he was desperately in love with herself. There were two or three others of whom the latter held good, even in that remote region, but they awakened no reciprocal feeling in her. She would keep them dangling simply as a mere matter of habit; but Justin Spence had touched a responsive chord within her. It was one of a sheerly physical nature, but she had more and more grown to look forward to his visits, and we must admit that she had not long to look.
The more he thought it over the less he liked it. He could not even lay the spurious balm to his soul that “every man for himself” was the maxim which justified everything – that the glorious fascinations of this woman went wholly unappreciated by the man who should have been the one of all others to prize them, and therefore were reserved and destined for another, and that himself. This sort of reasoning somehow would not do. It struck him as desperately thin in the cool judicial hour of waking. He had behaved shabbily towards Blachland, and, the worst of it was, he knew he should go on doing so. And as though to confirm him in that conviction, at that moment the voice of the siren, clear but soft, was borne to his ears.
What had become of all his misgivings now, as he sprang out of bed, his one and only thought that of joining her as soon as possible? The voice, however, was not addressed to him. It was merely raised in commonplace command to the small Mashuna boys. What a lovely voice it was! he thought to himself, pausing to listen, lest the splashing of his tub should cause him to lose a tone of it: and he was right so far. Hermia owned a beautiful speaking voice, and it constituted not the least of her fascinations. Recklessly now Justin cast his self-accusations to the winds.
And Hermia? Well, she had none to cast. Self-accusation was a phase of introspect in which she never indulged. Why should she, when the rule of conduct on which she acted with a scrupulosity of observance worthy of a better cause, was “Get all you can out of life, and while you can”? Never a thought had she to waste on the absent. It was his fault that he was absent. Never, moreover, a misgiving.
Yet when Spence joined her there in the gateway of the stockade, the eager, happy glow in his face met with scant response in her own. She affected a reproachful tone and attitude. They had both done very wrong, it conveyed. It could not be helped now, but the least said, soonest mended. They had been very weak, and very foolish, but it must never occur again. And all the while she was killing herself in her efforts to restrain her laughter, for she fully intended that it should occur again – again and again – and that at no distant period: but she was going to keep her adorer’s appreciation up to fever heat. To this intent, he must be kept well in hand at first.
Well, he was submissive enough even for her, and again she was convulsed with suppressed mirth, for she promised herself keen enjoyment watching his struggles to keep within the bounds of conventionality she had imposed upon him. The whirlings and buzzings of the impaled beetle of her childhood’s days, as the luckless insect spun round and round in his efforts to free himself from the transfixing pin, were not in it with the fun held out to her by the writhings of this six-foot-one victim. And the sport was already beginning in his blank face and piteous tone.
“No, I don’t think you must even use my name, Justin,” she said, in wind-up of the programme she was laying before him as to his future rule of conduct. “You will be forgetting, and rapping it out when Hilary is here.”
“What then? Would he be very jealous?” returned the victim shortly, very sore with jealousy himself at this recalling of the absent one’s existence.
“Perhaps. There’s no telling,” answered Hermia, with a wholly enigmatical smile. She was thinking that here was a new and entertaining development of the situation. Hilary jealous! Heavens! that would be a feat to have accomplished. She did not believe him capable of any such foolish and youthful passion. And yet, if she misjudged him? And recognising such a possibility, a spice of fear came to season the excitement, only serving however to enhance its original zest.
In the fair scene spread out before these two there was little enough to suggest the growlings and roarings of ravening beasts making terrible the dark night hours. The undulating roll of veldt, green after the recent rains, and radiant in the golden morning, sparkled with innumerable dewdrops. Birds called cheerily; bird-wings glanced through the air in gorgeous colour and flash of sheeny streak; and the great granite kopjes to the westward, rising to the cloudless blue, seemed to tower twice their height in the shimmer and warmth of the newly risen sun.
Upon this lovely outlook one of the two was gazing with a moody brow and a heavy heart. Suddenly he started.
“Who’s this, I wonder?” he exclaimed, shading his eyes.
A speck in the distance had arrested his attention – an approaching speck. It might have represented a horseman, almost certainly it did.
“I believe it’s Blachland,” went on Spence. “I’ll get the binocular, and see.”
The