Doolittle had not seen the traitor’s face. The man rose from the bush, he said, shot him, seized the pony, and rode off in a second with ruthless haste. He was tall and thin, but erect—that was all the wounded scout could tell us about his assailant. And that was not enough to identify Sebastian.
All danger was over. We rode back to Salisbury. The first words Hilda said when she saw me were: “Well, he has got away from you!”
“Yes; how did you know?”
“I read it in your step. But I guessed as much before. He is so very keen; and you started too confident.”
CHAPTER IX
THE EPISODE OF THE LADY WHO WAS VERY EXCLUSIVE
The Matabele revolt gave Hilda a prejudice against Rhodesia. I will confess that I shared it. I may be hard to please; but it somehow sets one against a country when one comes home from a ride to find all the other occupants of the house one lives in massacred. So Hilda decided to leave South Africa. By an odd coincidence, I also decided on the same day to change my residence. Hilda’s movements and mine, indeed, coincided curiously. The moment I learned she was going anywhere, I discovered in a flash that I happened to be going there too. I commend this strange case of parallel thought and action to the consideration of the Society for Psychical Research.
So I sold my farm, and had done with Rhodesia. A country with a future is very well in its way; but I am quite Ibsenish in my preference for a country with a past. Oddly enough, I had no difficulty in getting rid of my white elephant of a farm. People seemed to believe in Rhodesia none the less firmly because of this slight disturbance. They treated massacres as necessary incidents in the early history of a colony with a future. And I do not deny that native risings add picturesqueness. But I prefer to take them in a literary form.
“You will go home, of course?” I said to Hilda, when we came to talk it all over.
She shook her head. “To England? Oh, no. I must pursue my Plan. Sebastian will have gone home; he expects me to follow.”
“And why don’t you?”
“Because—he expects it. You see, he is a good judge of character; he will naturally infer, from what he knows of my temperament, that after this experience I shall want to get back to England and safety. So I should—if it were not that I know he will expect it. As it is, I must go elsewhere; I must draw him after me.”
“Where?”
“Why do you ask, Hubert?”
“Because—I want to know where I am going myself. Wherever you go, I have reason to believe, I shall find that I happen to be going also.”
She rested her little chin on her hand and reflected a minute. “Does it occur to you,” she asked at last, “that people have tongues? If you go on following me like this, they will really begin to talk about us.”
“Now, upon my word, Hilda,” I cried, “that is the very first time I have ever known you show a woman’s want of logic! I do not propose to follow you; I propose to happen to be travelling by the same steamer. I ask you to marry me; you won’t; you admit you are fond of me; yet you tell me not to come with you. It is I who suggest a course which would prevent people from chattering—by the simple device of a wedding. It is you who refuse. And then you turn upon me like this! Admit that you are unreasonable.”
“My dear Hubert, have I ever denied that I was a woman?”