Mayenga Farm (24 page)

"A selfish one, I'm afraid. If Mayenga had been farmed to show a profit—even a small one—we could have engaged someone like Fourie to run it while I was on tour. Then we would always have had the place to come back to, and there would be no question of losing so many excellent friends."

After a pause, she answered, "We did start out with that ambition, but I think we're right to cut clean from Mayenga, however painful the break. Lecturing is much more in your line than farming, and if the land pulls, we can spend our holidays on a guest farm. I believe we're both townies at heart."

Adrian had doubts. Her continued pallor and the fixity of her smile worried him. When she pegged to be left at home on Sunday morning he wouldn't hear of it. She must come along and play tennis with the other young people, in the judge's garden, while the judge and he had their session indoors. Once there, he persisted, she would enjoy it.

On Monday they slipped back into the new leisurely routine, reading much of the time and taking a walk together before meals. In the evening, when she had gone off for a ride, Adrian sauntered round Rennie's flower garden and earmarked a few perennials which would transplant into pots and tins, and travel with them to the Cape.

He didn't hear the car. He never did bother much with noises, especially unnatural ones. It was that faculty which allowed him at all times to lose himself in a book so completely.

However, he did notice the creak of the gate, and when he raised his head and saw Kent, his chief reaction was one of relief that Rennie was not here.

"Well, old chap," he said. "So you’re back from the wilderness. Is the timber as fine as you expected?"

"’So-so," came the non-committal rejoinder. "I've seen enough of it for the present. How are you now? Well over the snake bite?"

"Oh, yes, and I’m leading a beautifully lazy life." Kent's head inclined to indicate the expanse of garden and the outhouses. "You're looking stark all round. A swift decision, wasn't it?"

"You've heard that we're leaving Mayenga?"

"Only this morning. Maxwell sent me some mail and newspapers, and I came across your advertisement. Had any offers?"

"Not yet. No one seems to have any money. I shall appoint an agent. They're expensive but necessary, and mostly they have lists of buyers."

Kent said, "Consider the farm sold. Name your price and I'll pay it."

Adrian dusted soil from his hands and, for some reason, took his glasses from their case and put them on. Seriously, he turned to stare into Kent's eyes.

"More land, Kent? What would you do with it?" "Plant the whole with citrus and install a manager in the house. Once that's done it will be no trouble. You needn't regard it as charity," he added with a touch of bitterness. "This farm will repay whatever it costs me. I'm not just offering to buy you out of a mess."

"I didn’t suppose for a moment that you were," Adrian replied mildly. If you really want the farm, have it. We’ve no wish to make a profit."

"We'll go into figures tomorrow." For a second his lip pulled tight between his teeth. Then: "Is Rennie about?"

Deliberately vague, Adrian waved a hand riverwards. "She's out riding, making the most of her last week or so in the district. Rennie never tires of your South African sunsets. Folk tell me they’re even lovelier at the coast."

"More spectacular, perhaps. Has she any definite plans?"

"What sort of plans?"

"For the future," he said curtly. "How soon are she and Rogers to be married?"

Adrian felt as if he had unwittingly walked to the outermost edge of a precipice. It would appear that Kent knew nothing about Jackie’s elopement, and here was he, Adrian Gaynor, about to play the part which Rennie had wanted to assign to him. The gentle breaker of ill news. Perhaps he could avoid it, though; hedge round the matter and create a diversion. He was definitely not fashioned for the dramatic role.

"I shouldn’t think it will ever come to that," he remarked

conversationally. "They'll correspond, of course, but the chances are against their meeting again for years to come. Rennie’s going on tour with me, and after that we may buy a house. The college is in a suburb of Cape Town, so we hope to live nearby. You know, Kent, I ought to have acknowledged a year ago to being a weak hand at farming; then I would either have put more pep into it, or sold out at a better time...

"Rennie and that fellow may have had a private agreement," he interposed abruptly.

"Oh, no, she’d have let me into it."

"But you must have guessed she was in love with him."

"Rennie?" said Adrian wonderingly. "What an odd idea. Michael’s pleasant enough—I grew to like him very much —but he's hardly the man to suit Rennie."

"How can you judge?" bit out Kent in a fury of exasperation. "What the hell do you know about your own daughter?"

"Enough," replied Adrian very quietly, "to be certain that she has never been in love with Michael Rogers."

"I'm sorry, Adrian, but it sometimes happens that an onlooker sees more than the affectionate parent. My guess is that as soon as this novel of his is finished he’ll ask Rennie to marry him—and she knows it."

"Then you’re a very poor guesser, Kent," he said decisively. "I rather shirk being the bearer of bad tidings, but you’ve asked for it. When Michael’s book is complete he will already be a married man. Jacqueline Caton flew with him to London, several days ago, for the express purpose of becoming his wife. Are you satisfied?"

Kent stood strangely still. He had flushed darkly, and for a long moment he looked at Adrian as though he were not there.

At last, in a voice gone rough and urgent with some kind of emotion, he said, "If Rennie wasn’t in love with the fellow why did she return the picture? Surely my gift was as good as his! Why did she cling to that young jackanapes when you had snake-bite? And why, in heaven's name.... "

Adrian broke in with a gust of sudden, lighthearted laughter. "I haven't the least notion what you're talking about. But I gather that you're in a fine temper with Rennie because she’s stuck to her independence. She'll be back before long. I suggest you come in and cool off, and later on you and she can have a quiet hour in the lounge."

"What I have to say," returned Kent crisply, "had better be said in the open air, where there are no walls to reverberate. How far up-river does she ride?"

"By now she'll be this side of the boundary, on her way home. But look here, Kent____"

"I'll borrow your horse," he threw back at Adrian. "Don’t worry. I'll bring her back alive!"

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

MEANWHILE Rennie lingered among the willows, her thoughts far removed from the approaching sunset. Today she had ridden farther than usual, and viewed from the shelter of some trees a native village surrounded by mealie and yam fields, where women worked and piccaninnies tumbled. She had been overcome by a sick dread of leaving the bushveld, and stern upbraiding had helped not a bit. Useless to assure herself that the coast was more delightful. The African bush had captured her heart.

She tried to see herself behind a mahogany counter against a background of books; subscribers smiling and thanking her for the care with which she searched for whatever they required, some of them so well known to her that she enquired about their families. That was how it had been in England, and libraries are some of the few institutions that follow a pattern in almost any land. Interesting, rewarding work, if one had not discovered that plantation life was inexpressibly more satisfying.

It was less harrowing to think along the lines of work than to dwell on a future so barren and loveless that her heart quailed. Yet it had to be confronted and conquered. A small voice within reminded her that Jackie was gone and Kent free, but reason answered that Kent would not only revert to his erstwhile disregard of women, but his contempt for the sex would be intensified a thousand times. Jackie, whom he must have trusted as far as it was in him to trust any woman, had betrayed him. A man of Kent's character would not lightly forgive, and he’d never forget.

In any case, the dregs of Kent's love were not good enough for Rennie. Marriage on the rebound was a humiliating business, and no lasting happiness could come from it. She didn’t want Kent on those terms.

She thought back to the maize fire, his generosity, the speed and ease with which he had produced well-ordered lands from an agricultural chaos. The halcyon interval when Mayenga and the Gaynors had come first with him, and any miracle had seemed possible; the canoe ride, when he had shown her the new forest and explained the timbers. There was too much to look back upon.

Rennie ached with an accumulation of pain. It was always at its worst at this time of the evening, when she cantered the river bank and neared the cottonwood log where she and Kent had first met.

Presently, of his own accord, the gelding slowed and trod into the shallows to drink. Rennie stayed in the saddle, facing the orderly trees on the opposite side.

"Buck up, Paddy," she said impatiently.

He whinnied and his head came up, ears alert, and in a minute Rennie heard the sound, also: the faint, regular thud of hoofs. Her eyes strained down to the bend in the river, and her pulses began a scared throbbing. Had something happened to her father, or was this he, come to warn her of some catastrophe at the house?

She jerked the rein, but not sharply enough, for Paddy kept his forelegs in the mud, and his nose turned interestedly towards the nearing hoofbeats. Rennie used her heels and the gelding backed straight across the track.

The rider appeared, his speed sending out a screen of pink dust behind him. His mount was a familiar chestnut color, moderate in size and just a shade ungainly. Adrian’s horse.

Rennie’s heart gave a terrified leap and she gripped hard on the leather in her hand. Yes, the horse was her father’s, but the virile figure on his back was unmistakably Kent’s.

He reined in at three yards and swung down. His jaw was taut, his eyes blazing. He held up his arms.

"Get down from that horse," he commanded.

She dismounted, feeling faint at his touch, and involuntarily clutched at his cuff for a second as he let her go. He gave a slap at the gelding’s flanks, and both horses, inseparable pasture companions, ambled a few yards and stopped to crop the grass.

Compellingly, Kent took a firm grip of her arm and made her walk with him to the thick shadow of a bottlebrush. He threw off his jacket, spread it out and gave her a gentle push which she was powerless to resist. She sat down and found the tweed warm beneath her hands.

Kent ignored the jacket. He dropped to the grass in front of her, rested back on both hands, and looked at her. There came a moment's hush, when even the sweet gurgle of the Lamu seemed to fade and the birds to cease their sunset song. A moment of rare magic which brought a sad pricking to Rennie’s eyelids and a hot lump to her throat. How she loved him!

"Tell me why you were in such a hurry and riding my father's horse," she pleaded.

Kent was in a hurry no longer. He seemed, in fact, reluctant to end the silence, for he continued to stare at her, his eyes still fiery and a working muscle faintly visible in his cheek.

Finally he said almost curtly, "Would you have gone away without seeing me again?"

"I .. . don't think so, Kent."

"You're not certain?"

"I don't know. Goodbyes are painful, and it will be hard enough to leave Mayenga, without adding a ghastly farewell visit to Elands Ridge."

"Rennie," his usually crisp tones had thickened slightly. "Answer this with absolute truth. Were you ever in love with Michael Rogers?"

Startled, she said, "In love with Michael! Never in my life. Why should you think of that?"

"You were under the same roof with him for a couple of months, you were sympathetic to his work, helped him whenever you could, and always spoke in his defence." Edgily, he added, "You two met each morning at breakfast and had your goodnight drinks together. How I hated to know that!"

"But you must have realized that he was simply a pleasant young paying guest. He was much more with my father than with me."

"He gave you the pearl necklet."

"He didn't." She had spoken hastily, without thought. More guardedly, she ended, "It wasn’t my necklace. I happened to have it in my bag the night we went to the Yachting Club. That was all."

"How in blazes did it get into your bag?" he demanded.

"You must have put it there."

"I did, but it belonged to someone else."

"Whom?"

She shook her head. Impossible to talk to Kent about Jackie.

But he was leaning forward, his brown face keen and determined, his chin angular. "Who was the someone else—Jacqueline Caton?"

"Then why, for Pete’s sake, didn’t you open up and tell me at the time?"

"I was in a peculiar position. I just couldn’t."

"Were you shielding someone?"

"No . . . no." Her hands came up over her eyes in a curiously childlike gesture of unhappy bewilderment.

She felt him grasp her wrists and hold them, and presently he drew them down and kept her fingers between his own.

"All right," he said. "That can wait. But don’t ask me to believe you accepted Michael’s kiss on her behalf!"

"No," she admitted with a pale smile. "The kiss was all mine.

An expression of Michael’s gratitude."

"It seemed to me that you weren’t too anxious to terminate it."

"Perhaps not. I can’t remember."

"Rennie ... I could have strangled you both."

Her eyes widened, the red lips trembled and her hands fought in sudden anguish to be free of him. But his hold tightened.

"You can't get away," he said. "Now or ever. You’re going to sink your English independence and marry me."

He was unprepared for the wounded expression, the turning aside of her head. Her nostrils dilated, and a tear

glistened on her cheek.

His arm was about her, his other hand in her tawny curls, crushing her close to his shoulder.

"You amazing child. You cry over the wrong things," he murmured, not too evenly. "There’s nothing to be sad about. Look at me, Rennie." In a minute or two she was able to obey, though her glance rose no higher than the chiselled mouth. She shrank from what she might read in the penetrating eyes.