Kitabı oxu: «In the Whirl of the Rising», səhifə 4

Chapter Six.
The Desire of Gandela

“What on earth have you been doing to Jim Steele, Clare?” said Mrs Fullerton, as she came into her drawing-room, and sank into a cane chair. “He passed me in the gate looking as black as thunder. He made a lug at his hat, growled like a dog, and was off like a shot. Look! there he goes,” pointing to a fast-receding figure pounding down the strip of dusty road that fronted the straggling line of unpretentious bungalows.

“I only refused him,” was the half-laughing, half-sad reply. “What else was I to do when I don’t care two brass buttons about the man? Really, Lucy, there are drawbacks attendant on life in a country where there are not enough women to go round. He is only the fifth since I’ve been up here.” Even had there been enough women to go round, as the speaker put it, assuredly she herself would not have come in last among them, if there are any powers of attraction in an oval face and straight features, a profusion of golden-brown hair, deep blue Irish eyes thickly fringed with dark lashes, and a mouth of the Cupid-bow order. Add to this a beautifully proportioned figure, rather tall than short, and it is hardly to be wondered that most of the men in the township of Gandela and all the region round about went mad over Clare Vidal. Her married sister, Lucy Fullerton, formed a complete contrast, in that she was short and matronly of build, but she was a bright, pretty, winsome little thing, and correspondingly popular.

“Well, you shouldn’t be so dangerous, you queenly Clare,” she retorted, unpinning her hat and flinging it across the room. “Really it was an act of deadly hostility towards all our good friends to have brought you up here to play football with their hearts and their peace of mind. Not that Jim Steele is any great catch, poor fellow.”

“Oh, he’ll get over it,” said Clare. “They all do.”

From this it must not be imputed to her that she was vain and heartless. For the first, she was wonderfully free from vanity considering her powers of attraction. For the last, her own heart had never been touched, wherefore she was simply unable to understand the feeling in the case of other people, apart from the fact that her words were borne out by the results of her own observation.

“There was Captain Isard,” went on Mrs Fullerton, “and Mr Slark, who they say has good prospects, and will be a baronet at his father’s death. You sent them to the right-about too.”

“For the first – life in the Matabeleland Mounted Police doesn’t strike me as ideal,” laughed Clare. “For the second – fancy going through life labelled Slark. Even, eventually, Lady Slark wouldn’t palliate it. Besides, I don’t care twopence for either.”

“Who do you care twopence for, among all this throwing of handkerchiefs? There’s Mr Lamont – ”

“He never made a fool of himself in that way. He hasn’t got it in him,” struck in Clare, speaking rather more quickly.

Her sister smiled to herself at this kindling of animation.

“Hasn’t got it in him?” she repeated, innocently mischievous. “You mean he’s too great a fool?”

“I mean just the reverse. He’s got too much in him.”

“But – you know, dear, what they say about him – that he’s – er – a bit of a funkstick.”

“Bit of a funkstick! Pooh! Look at his face, Lucy. How can a man with a face like that have an atom of cowardice in his composition? Why, it’s too ridiculous.” And the whole-souled contempt which Clare infused into this vindication would have inspired wild exultation in the breast of any one of her multifold adorers near and far, had it been uttered in his own behalf. Yet her acquaintance with the object thereof was of the slightest. “Well, you know they say that one evening there was a bit of a row on over at the hotel – horrid, quarrelsome, fighting creatures men are – and someone insulted Lamont, or trod on his toes, or something, and, when he objected, the other wanted him to fight; and he quite climbed down.”

“I don’t believe it – or, at any rate, the motive they put upon it,” said Clare decidedly. “People have a way of piling on to their stories in the most recklessly top-heavy manner. In all probability he was more than the other’s match, and kept out of it on that account.”

“You make an effective champion, Clare,” laughed the other, mischievously. “Well I don’t know the ins and outs of it. Dick knows more about it than I do.”

“Oho! What does Dick know more about than you do?” hailed a voice outside the window, and its owner immediately entered, accompanied by another man. “Anyhow, that’s a big bit of news to start with – that Dick should know more about anything under the sun than you do. Here’s Driffield, and he’s going to stay lunch.”

“Dick, don’t be silly. How do you do, Mr Driffield,” greeting the Native Commissioner. “We were talking about Mr Lamont, and what they say about him. Clare says she doesn’t believe a word of it, and I was saying you knew more about it than I do, Dick.”

“Do you mean the breeze at Foster’s?”

“Yes.”

“Well, he did climb down. There’s no doubt about it. And the funny part of it is, that with the gloves on there’s hardly a man anywhere in these parts who can touch him.”

“There you are, Lucy,” cried Clare triumphantly. “Didn’t I tell you it was because he was more than the other’s match?”

“Well, it hadn’t got a look that way at the time, and that was what struck everybody who saw it. Certainly it struck me,” replied Fullerton. “But the next time you girls start taking away your neighbours’ characters, don’t do it at the top of your voices with window and door wide open. We could hear you all down the road. Couldn’t we, Driffield?”

“Mr Driffield sets a higher value on his immortal soul than you do on yours, Dick,” retorted Mrs Fullerton loftily. “Consequently he isn’t going to back you in your – ahem! – unveracity.”

“No. But he’s dying of thirst, Lucy. So am I.”

She laughed, and took the hint. Then as the two men put down their glasses, Fullerton went on —

“Talking of the gloves – that reminds me of another time when Lamont climbed down. That time he put on the gloves with Voss. It was a beautiful spar, and really worth seeing. Then, just as the fun was at its height, Lamont suddenly turned quite white – as white as such a swarthy beggar can turn, that is – and chucked up the sponge then and there.”

“Yes. I remember that. It looked rum certainly – but all the same I’ll maintain that Lamont’s no coward. He showed no sign of it in the war of ’93 anyway. If anything rather the reverse.”

“Ah!” exclaimed Clare significantly.

“May have lost his nerve since,” said her brother-in-law, also significantly.

“Well, I like Lamont,” said Driffield decidedly.

“I don’t,” said Fullerton, equally so.

“Mind you, he’s a chap who wants knowing a bit,” went on the Native Commissioner. “Then he’s all right.”

“Is he coming to the race meeting, Mr Driffield?” said Clare.

“Yes. He didn’t intend to, though, until I gave him your message, Miss Vidal. We pointed out to him that he couldn’t stop away after that.”

“Message! But I sent him no message.”

“Oh, Miss Vidal! Come now – think again.”

“Really, Mr Driffield, I ought to be very angry with you for twisting my words like that,” laughed Clare. “But – you mean well, so let it pass. You are forgiven.”

“Talking of Lamont,” struck in Fullerton, who had a wearisome way of harking back to a subject long after everybody else had done with it, “there’s a yarn going about that he had to leave his own neighbourhood in England for showing the white feather. And it looks like it, remembering what a close Johnny he is about himself.”

Driffield looked up quickly.

“I believe I know who put that yarn about,” he said. “Wasn’t it Ancram – that new man who’s putting up at Foster’s?”

“Most likely,” said Fullerton. “I never heard it myself till a day or two ago.”

“Why, what a sweep the fellow must be,” declared Driffield. “Lamont has been putting him up since Peters picked him up in the mopani veldt, nearly dead with thirst. Saved his life, in fact. I know it’s Ancram, because he pitched me the same yarn – of course ‘in strict confidence.’ Confidence indeed!”

“What a cur!” pronounced Clare. “Oh, what a completely loathsome cur!”

“Hear – hear!” ejaculated Driffield.

“Cur or not,” said Fullerton, who over and above his dislike of Lamont was naturally of a contradictious temperament, – “cur or not, the story has a good deal of bearing on what we know out here – ”

“If it’s true,” interjected Clare, with curling lips.

” – He left a kid to drown. Said he wasn’t going to risk his life for a gutter kid – and wouldn’t go in after it even when the girl he was engaged to implored him to. She called him a coward then and there, and gave him the chuck. This chap Ancram saw it all. He was there.”

“Then why didn’t he go in after it himself?” suggested Clare, with provoking pertinence.

“Says he couldn’t get there, or something. Anyway Lamont’s girl chucked him then and there. She was the daughter of some county big-wig too.”

“Of course I wasn’t there,” said Clare, “and the man who enjoyed Mr Lamont’s hospitality, as a stranger in a strange land, was. Still, I should like to hear the other side of the story.”

“What if it hasn’t got another side?” said her brother-in-law shortly.

“What if it has? Most stories have,” answered Clare sweetly.

“Anyway,” struck in Driffield, “Ancram’s no sort of chap to go around talking of other people funking. I took him on patrol with me the other day from Lamont’s. Thought he’d like to see something of the country perhaps, and the Matabele. Incidentally, Lamont lent him a horse and all he wanted for the trip. Well, the whole time the fellow was in the bluest of funks. When a lot of the people came to indaba us, he kept asking whether they might not mean treachery, or had arms concealed under their blankets. As to that I told him yes, and legs too.”

Clare went off into a ringing, merry peal.

“Capital!” she cried.

“Oh well – ” said Driffield, looking rather pleased.

“But he was in a terrific funk all through. The acme of it was reached the night we slept at the Umgwane drift. Ames voted him a devil of – er, I mean a superlative nuisance. He kept waking us up at all hours of the night, wanting to know if we didn’t hear anything. We had had a big indaba that day with Tolozi and his people, and this chump kept swearing he heard footsteps, and they must be stealing up to murder us in our sleep. I wonder if Peters had been filling him up with any yarns. But, anyhow, Ancram’s a nice sort of chap to talk about other people funking, isn’t he?”

“Why, yes,” said Clare. “But his behaviour with regard to Mr Lamont is too contemptible, spreading stories about him behind his back. Why should he do it, Mr Driffield? What on earth motive can he have?”

“Cussedness, I suppose – sheer cussedness. A good deal more mischief is made under that head than is due to mere motive, I imagine.”

“I believe so. By the way, did you persuade Mr Ames to come over for the race meeting?”

“Persuade! I tried to, Miss Vidal. But there’s no getting Ames that far out of his district unless on leave or on duty. Ames spells conscientiousness exaggerated.”

“That’s a pity,” said Clare. “He’s one of the nicest men I know.”

“Except Mr Lamont, Clare,” appended her sister mischievously.

“They’re so different. You can’t compare them,” pronounced the girl, her serenity unruffled. And then they talked of other things, and had lunch; and after a digestive smoke the two men went back to their offices – Fullerton being by profession a mining engineer.

The township of Gandela consisted of a number of zinc-roofed houses, all staringly new, straggling down what would be the main street when the town was properly laid out, but at present was only the coach road. There was a market square, with – at present – only three sides to it; an ugly red-brick building representing the magistrate’s court; ditto another, representing the Church of South Africa; a farther block somewhat more substantially built, which was the gaol, and from which not more than a dozen or so of prisoners had escaped since the place was first laid out two years previously. At a corner of the market square aforesaid stood the only hotel the place boasted, run by one Foster, to whom reference has been made; while away across the veldt, about half a mile distant, were the barracks of the Matabeleland Mounted Police, a troop of which useful force watched over the town and patrolled the neighbourhood. Scenically Gandela was prettily situated, strategically badly. It stood on a pleasant undulating plain, dotted with mimosa, but on one side dominated by a long, thickly-wooded hill called Ehlatini, the first of a range, likewise thickly-wooded, extending farther back. Well, what mattered that? The natives were thoroughly under control, men said. They had been so knocked out by the pioneer force and the Chartered Company’s Maxims during the war of occupation, that they would not be anxious to kick against the white man’s rule again in a hurry.

Would they not? We shall see.

Chapter Seven.
Fellow Travellers

“Well, good-bye, Lyall. Next time you want to do another cattle deal send me word. Only do it before the rinderpest has swept me clean. So long.”

And Lamont, swinging himself into his saddle, rode away from Lyall’s store, quite content with the price he had obtained from that worthy for a dozen young oxen, which he had delivered the day before. Moreover, he could not sufficiently congratulate himself that when he arrived home that evening he would not find Ancram.

He chuckled to himself as he thought how they had got rid of that extremely unwelcome guest. When Ancram had returned from his trip with Driffield, more jaunty than ever, Peters began to play his part, launching forth into awful and blood-curdling instances of the vindictiveness of the Matabele, and what a mistake it was that Ancram should have done anything to incur a feud that might extend through any amount of relationships. Thoroughly yet deftly did he rub it in, and soon Ancram’s nervousness reached such a pitch that he had come to regard poor Zingela – who had no more idea of cutting the strange Makiwa’s throat than he had of cutting his own – as a perfectly ferocious monster, ever on the watch for an opportunity of having his blood.

“You’ll be able to amuse yourself alone for a few days, Ancram,” Lamont had said one morning when the requisite stage of scare had been reached. “Peters and I have got to be away, but we’ll be back in a week at the outside.”

Ancram’s look of blank dismay was something to behold. Couldn’t he come, too? he asked. No, he couldn’t, because there was no spare horse that was in condition for the journey.

“But,” added Lamont consolingly, “you’ll be all right here. Zingela will look after you and show you where to find game, and so on.”

Would he indeed? thought Ancram to himself. Not if he knew it. He supposed it was with a purpose that Lamont proposed to leave him alone with this ferocious savage, to be butchered by him and his relatives – Peters had spread it on thick – but that purpose he intended to defeat. Yes, that was it. He, Ancram, was the only man in the country who knew about the Courtland affair, and of course Lamont wanted to get rid of him at all costs, now that there was another girl in the case.

“Well, old chap,” he had answered, “I think I won’t stop on. The fact is I get beastly bored all by myself, and I think you said there was a hotel in Gandela.”

“Yes. It’s not first-rate, but Foster’s a very decent fellow. If you tell him you’ve been stopping with me he’ll do his best for you,” Lamont had replied.

“But I don’t know anyone there.”

“You’ll very soon get to. There are some very good fellows in Gandela – only don’t go on the wait-to-be-introduced tack.”

Mightily did Lamont chuckle to himself over this reminiscence as he rode along, and his mirth was quite undashed by the consciousness that Ancram bore him no goodwill – and the certainty that he would injure him if he could. For this, however, he cared nothing. The Courtland story might leak out and welcome. There was no one whose opinion he valued sufficiently for it to matter. Wait. Was there not? No. There was no one.

His way lay over undulating mimosa-studded ground, beautiful but for a parched and burnt-up look, due to the prolonged drought; passing now and again a native kraal, heavily stockaded with mopani poles and thorn boughs, for lions were not altogether unknown in that part, as we have seen. A brief off-saddle for lunch, and to cool his horse’s back, and he took the track again.

Lamont was well mounted, and his steed stepped forth at a long, swift, easy walk. In the afternoon heat he became drowsy, and was soon nodding. The art of sleeping on horseback is one that can be acquired by pressure of circumstances, and if the animal is steady in its paces, and knows its way, why, then, there is no further difficulty – and of this one both these conditions held good. Suddenly a loud whinny on its part started the rider bolt awake again.

They were now travelling down a path skirting a range of stony hills. Below, and in front at no great distance, was another horseman proceeding in the same direction. It took but one moment to determine him a white man, and not many more to overhaul him and range up alongside. The stranger was dressed in serviceable khaki and a sun-helmet, all of which was in keeping with the bronzed face and short black beard, but not altogether with the round clerical collar. Catching the sound of hoofs behind, he reined in and turned, and Lamont recognised him as Father Mathias, one of the priests attached to the Buluwayo Mission.

“Good evening, Father,” he called out, as he came up. “Rather far afield, aren’t you? This is an unexpected pleasure. I hope we are travelling the same way, because I’m already a good bit sick of my own company.”

“Mr Lamont, is it not?” said the priest, speaking with a foreign accent. “Ah yes. We met in Gandela, did we not? I too – I shall be very glad of company.”

They rode along, chatting. The while, Lamont was eyeing the other’s horse, a sorry-looking beast at best, and, besides its rider, was loaded up with a fair amount of luggage, in the shape of a large rolled valise across the horn of the saddle and a couple of well filled-out saddle-bags on each side.

“You’d better let me help you with some of that load,” he said at last. “In fact we’ll transfer the lot. My horse is as fresh as paint, and won’t feel it.”

“Oh, I could not think of letting you do that, Mr Lamont. A few pounds more or less make no great difference.”

“Don’t they? I don’t know if you have ever walked with a knapsack, Father, but I have – and it’s just that very pound or so extra that makes all the difference in the world. Are you going to ride that horse all the way to Buluwayo?”

“Yes. But I shall have a day’s rest at Skrine’s Store, where I have to look after some of our people.”

“Thirty-five miles. You will hardly get him there – certainly not to-night. You had better come home with me.”

The other feared that this was impossible, as, after they had journeyed together up to a certain point, it would be right in the contrary direction. But he ceased to combat Lamont’s offer to relieve him of some of the load.

“You don’t travel light, Father,” laughed Lamont, as he finished strapping the valise across his own saddle.

“But this is not my own luggage. I have been on a round of visitation, and wherever I find some of our people they are glad of the opportunity to hear Mass. It is the ornaments required for the Mass that are in these saddle-bags.”

“Oh, I understand now,” said Lamont. “I thought it was camping outfit. Well, that is shepherding the flock and no mistake – and that over a pretty wide run.”

“That is what we are here for, Mr Lamont. It is possible we may miss some, but we try not to.”

“I’m sure you do,” assented Lamont heartily. “Why, you are proverbial in this country as models of energy.”

“That is pleasant to know. But, speaking personally, I like the life. I am strong, and it does me no harm.”

They chatted of other things and everything. The priest was a cultured man, and as they covered mile after mile of hot, steamy Matabeleland, both he and his companion hardly noticed it, for they were back in the various centres of artistic Europe, discussing its treasures with eagerness and appreciation. They off-saddled for half an hour, then on again.

“I think we are getting near where my road turns off,” said Father Mathias at last. “But, Mr Lamont, I am so glad we have been able to travel together. I have not noticed the distance at all.”

Lamont cordially replied that the same held good of himself. Then, looking quickly up —

“We are going to have a change, and if it means rain – why then, hooray! Otherwise I don’t like the look of it ahead – no, not at all.”

In their conversation as they rode along they had, as we have said, lost sight of outside features. Now a deep, low growl of thunder recalled such. Over the range of hills they were skirting peered a ridge of black cloud, mounting higher and higher to the zenith in a huge solid pillar, spreading in black masses, lighted fitfully with the gleam of quickly successive flashes. The sun had already gone down.

“We are in for it,” said Lamont, looking up. “We shall get an exemplary ducking, unless – but then you might not care about that – we were to take shelter in Zwabeka’s kraal. It’s only just the other side of that bend in front.”

“Let us do that,” said the priest. “Zwabeka is a considerable chief, is he not? I would like to see him.”

“This is going to be no fool of a storm,” went on Lamont, again looking upward. “The sooner we get under cover the better.”

The booming growl had changed into a well-nigh unintermittent roar, as the huge cloud, towering pillar-like, now spread its black wings in a dark canopy in every direction. The horses pricked up their ears and snorted with alarm at each blinding flash. So far no rain had fallen, and there was a smell of burning in the very air.

Now a barking of dogs sounded between the rolls of thunder, and rounding a spur they came in sight of a large kraal, lying at the mouth of a lateral kloof, densely bushed and extending far up into the range of hills. The conical huts stood within the strong encircling stockade, and among them dark forms stood about in groups, gazing skyward, and indulging in deep-toned speculation as to the probability of a copious and welcome rain to relieve the parched-up and drooping crops in the lands. But the two white men, as they rode in through the still open gateway, thought to detect an unwonted sullenness instead of the cheerful greeting of welcome which should have been theirs. A ringed man came forward.

“Greeting, Gudhlusa,” called out Lamont, to whom the man was known. “We would shelter, and have a talk at the same time with Zwabeka the chief. Is he in his house?”

“I see you, Lamonti. Au! Zwabeka? He is asleep.”

“No matter. It will do when he wakes. Meanwhile we will go into a hut, for the rain will be great.”

“’M – ’m!” assented the bystanders in a guttural hum. “The rain will be great. Ah! ah! The rain will be great!”

There was a significance in the repetition hardly observed at the time by the new arrivals. One of them, at any rate, was to appreciate it later. To one of them, also, the utter absence of geniality on the part of the people supplied food for thought, combined too as it was with the use of his native name – in this instance a corruption of his own – instead of the more respectful ‘Nkose.’ But then Zwabeka’s people were mostly Abezantsi – or those of the old, pure-blooded Zulu stock, and therefore proud.

“Come this way, Amakosi,” said the man he had addressed as Gudhlusa, pointing to a small enclosure. “We will put your horses there, and give them grain. Yonder is a new hut with the thatch but just on. There will ye rest.”

“That is good, Gudhlusa,” said Lamont, giving him some tobacco. “Later, when the chief is awake we will talk with him.”

The new hut proved to be a very new one, which was a huge advantage in that it ensured immunity from the swarming cockroaches inseparable from old ones, and even worse. On the other hand, the thatch ‘just put on,’ was not as complete as it might be, for a glint of sky visible through a hole or two in the roof did not give encouraging promise of a water-tight protection from the average thunder-shower. The saddlery and luggage was accordingly disposed in what looked likely to prove the driest side of the hut.

“Well, Father, I’m inclined to think we can see our quarters for to-night,” said Lamont cheerfully, as he filled his pipe and passed on his pouch to his companion.

“Thanks. I think so too. Well, we might do worse.”

“Oh yes. A dry camp is better than a wet one. Do you talk the Sindabele?”

“A little. Enough to make myself understood for the ordinary purposes. But I am learning it. You seem to have got it well, though.”

“I wish I had it better. You see I am a bit interested in these people. They – and their history – appeal to me. Poor devils! I can’t help sympathising with them to a certain extent. It must be rotten hard luck for a lot of these older ones, like Zwabeka for instance, who have been big-wigs in their time, having to knuckle down to a new and strange form of government in which they come out very under-dog indeed. Still, it’s the universal law and there’s no help for it. But – I’m sorry for them for all that.”

Could he have seen what was in Zwabeka’s mind, – Zwabeka, nominally asleep in one of the huts a few yards away, – could he have heard what was on Zwabeka’s tongue, yea, at that very moment, where would his sympathy have been? The course of but a few days was destined to change it, like that of many another who desired to treat the conquered race with fairness and consideration, and who like himself were sitting on the brink of the hitherto quiescent vent of a raging volcano.