Bertram Mitford - The White Hand and the Black - A Story of the Natal Rising

“This is no end of a jolly spot whereon to laze away a restful morning,” declared Elvesdon, as snugly disposed in a cane-chair he puffed out contented clouds of smoke.

“Isn’t it?” said Thornhill, who was similarly employed. “And it’s always cool here, however broiling it may be outside, unless of course there’s the hot wind on. That always rakes everything.”

Overhead the boughs of the tall fig-trees, with their wealth of broad leaves, made a most effective canopy. Behind was a high pomegranate hedge, in front young willows fringing a small runnel fed by the dam lower down, where bevies of finks fluttered in and out of their pendulous nests, making the air lively with their cheerful twitter. Glimpsed through an opening here and there the warm sun-rays shot down in golden kiss upon drooping loads of peaches and pears hanging from the fruit trees beyond.

“What’s the latest, Mr Elvesdon? Is there any fresh development in this unrest movement?”

It was Edala who spoke. Elvesdon had been contemplating her with a furtive but admiring satisfaction, as she sat there in her low chair, the gold aureole of her head resting back against her clasped hands. There was something in her every movement – her every pose – that fascinated him; yet not an atom of self-consciousness or posing was there about her. And her very attire. The well-fitting blouse of light blue, set off the blue of her eyes, the gold of her hair; the cool white skirt, from which peeped one white shoe – all, he decided, was perfect. At the question he half started.

“The latest?” he echoed. “Well, Miss Thornhill, I don’t think there is any ‘latest.’ Things are much the same as ever, and likely to remain so.”

Her eyes were full upon his face, which they seemed to be reading like an open page. She shook her head slightly.

“Ah – you are not going to tell me. You won’t say anything before me because I’m a girl. That’s what you’re thinking. Now – isn’t it?”

Elvesdon, whom we believe we have shown was as far from being a fool as the small minority of people, felt a little disconcerted, and only hoped he was not showing it. As a matter of fact that was exactly what he had been thinking. All his official instincts were dead against discussing official matters in the presence of the other sex; and the question she had asked certainly covered very official matters; far more official – even delicate – at that juncture than his light and ready answer should have led his questioner to believe. Equally, as a matter of fact, she was not deceived by its lightness and readiness for one moment. But before he could frame a second answer Thornhill came to the rescue.

“What should there be of the ‘latest,’ child?” he said, dropping a sinewy sun-browned hand caressingly upon her long slim, and yet also sun-browned one. “You shouldn’t rush Mr Elvesdon in his official capacity you know. It isn’t playing the game. Besides, it’s a sort of ‘day of rest’ remember, so we mustn’t talk shop.”

“Ah-ah-ah! That’s all very well,” she answered, with a laugh, but not wholly a mirthful one. “If you two were alone together you’d be talking no end of that very kind of shop. I know.”

Elvesdon had quite recovered his self-possession. His official susceptibilities were somewhat ruffled by the remark. It was not a question thoughtlessly put by a mere thoughtless girl. This was nothing of the kind, but a woman, with infinite capacity for thought. The question was nothing, but the manner in which the answer had been taken argued something of petulance, even obstinacy. Now the latter is not an attractive quality in the other sex, he decided, even less, if possible, than in his own.

Then he mentally damned himself for a suspicious and most ill-conditioned curmudgeon, an official prig. This girl with the thoughtful eyes, and quick, bright, intelligent mind, had asked him a mere harmless question – only for information, for she was interested in everything; not out of motives of curiosity – and lo, he had shrunk into his official shell, and had more than half snubbed her; snubbed her by implication at any rate. But – how she puzzled him. He had seen her but once before, but he had thought of her a good many more times than that. She was so totally unlike any other girl he had ever seen in his life.

“Have you been drawing much lately, Miss Thornhill?” he said, interestedly, as though to make up for his former answer. But the remark had just the opposite effect. He was ‘talking down to’ her now, Edala was thinking. Drawing, painting, singing – those were interests enough for a girl. She must not raise her eyes to weightier and more human matters. But her nature was an intensely self-concentrated one, and self-controlled.

“Oh, yes,” she answered easily, and as if the other matter had clean passed from her mind. “I’m thinking of going in for native studies. Would they catch on in Europe should you think, Mr Elvesdon?”

“They’d have the advantage of originality, at any rate,” he answered. A merry peal escaped Edala.

“What a good official reply,” she cried. “Never mind, Mr Elvesdon. I like it. If you had declared they could not do otherwise I don’t know what I should have thought of you, if only that never having seen a sample you couldn’t possibly know that they were any good at all.”

“Why, obviously,” rejoined Elvesdon, secretly pleased with himself for having refrained from giving utterance to a second banality. “I’m afraid I’m too old to launch out into paying compliments; and” – he added slyly – “too official .”

Thornhill chuckled. He, silently emitting puffs of smoke, was watching the battle of wits between the pair and keenly enjoying it. Moreover he rejoiced that Edala should have found a foeman worthy of her steel, one with whom she could sharpen wits. It would relieve the dulness of her life, render her more contented perhaps. Nor did the admiration which would now and then shine out prominently in the eyes of their visitor, when the latter was animated, and therefore off his guard, escape him. So he listened, and smoked complacently, as they branched off from one topic to another, sometimes indulging in a passage of arms, frequently agreeing enthusiastically. Yes, it was a pleasant way of getting through the morning of a “day of rest.”

“I know what we must do this afternoon, father,” said Edala, when dinner was nearly over. “We’ll take Mr Elvesdon to the top of Sipazi.”

Elvesdon looked puzzled.

“Do you mean on to the roof, Miss Thornhill?” he said.

The girl went off into another merry peal; the point of the joke being that the farm was so named, after a certain striking mountain which stood opposite, but this their visitor did not know.

“I don’t believe you meant that seriously,” she said.

“But I did. Why not?”

“When you come to know your own district a little better, Mr Elvesdon,” she pronounced with mock severity, “you will know that that flat topped mountain over there beyond the kloof – the one with that splendid red krantz at the top – is called Sipazi-pazi, on account of the glimmer which seems to set it on fire when the sun gets on to it at a certain angle.”

“Good name that,” he answered, looking at the stately pile with renewed interest. “But then, unfortunately, I have only just come into my ‘own district’ and haven’t quite had time to ‘know’ everything.”

“Well then, this place is named after the mountain,” she went on, loftily ignoring the retort. “But the doubled word is too much of a mouthful, so we cut it down, and call both just Sipazi. In fact so do the natives themselves.”