She did not answer. Her eyes were fixed on the gloom without and the
soft falling rain. Oh, the continuous drip, drip of that ceaseless rain
throughout this livelong day, turning the daylight into dusk, and
beating time in her heart to the echoes of the past! And throughout it
all was a vague, indefinable longing for this man's presence. The
enforced imprisonment in the house had been doubly irksome without him,
and at last she had been constrained to own it to herself. Once she had
seen him coming towards the door, and all unconsciously had made ready
such a bright smile of welcome; but he had turned back, and the smile
had faded, and a chill, sickly feeling around her heart had taken its
place. What right had she to feel thus, she thought? In a few weeks
they would part as friends, acquaintances, nothing more, and then--well,
at any rate he knew the worst. But now as he found her in the darkening
twilight, her heart gave a bound, and her voice assumed a dangerous
tenderness as she replied to him.
"The rain has been very cruel," he went on. "I couldn't catch so much
as one stray glimpse throughout the whole afternoon. If you are
blockaded indoors, you might look out of the window now and then."
"Why, I've done nothing else. And you, did you get very wet?" And
there is a little inflection as of anxiety in her voice as she raises
her eyes to his.
"Don't let's talk about me, but about a far more interesting subject--
yourself. Haven't you been frightfully bored to-day?"
"Well, I have rather--at least, I mean, I oughtn't to say that, but one
gets rather low sometimes, you know, even without much cause, and I've
been so to-day," she answered, her tone relapsing into one of dejection,
and he, standing there beside her, began to feel deliriously happy,
though well knowing that it was for the moment. But the gloaming was
about them, and they were alone together. What more could he--could
they--want?
A light flashed from the other room; then a sound of voices. It was not
exactly a blessing that Claverton gulped down, as some one was heard
calling:
"Lilian. Are you there? It's supper-time. Why, what has become of
her?" added the voice, parenthetically.
Lilian started as if from a reverie. "Here I am," and she rose hastily.
Claverton was not the only one who watched her as she came out into the
light, but the serene, beautiful face was as calm and unmoved as if she
had been in their midst all the time.
Very cheerful and homelike looked the lighted room, and the table with
its hissing tea-urn, and knives and forks and dish-covers sparkling on
the snowy cloth. Very bright and exhilarating in contrast to the wet,
chill gloom without, and to those two, who had been at work in the rain
all day, especially so.
"The flood will do no end of damage," Mr Brathwaite was saying, as he
began to make play with the carving-knife. "There'll be lots of stock
swept away, I fear, and the homesteads along the river banks stand a
good chance of following."
"That's cheerful, for their owners," remarked Claverton. "I should
think old Garthorpe's place would be one of the first to go."
"Serve him right, I was nearly saying. He doesn't deserve to own a good
farm like that--always preaching to the Kafirs instead of looking after
it."
"Is he a missionary?" asked Lilian.
"No. He ought to be, though. He's quite humbug enough."
"Tsh!" laughed Mrs Brathwaite. "Lilian will think you a regular
heathen."
"Can't help it," retorted the old man. "I know what I'm talking about,
which is more than everybody does who professes to give an opinion on
the subject. Any grocer's boy, who in England would never get further
than a shop-counter, makes a fine good trade of it by coming out here to
`preach the Gospel' to the heathen. It's less trouble and pays
infinitely better. What is the consequence? Kafirland is chock-full of
bumptious, uneducated, hypocritical scamps, who live on the fat of the
land, and are never happy unless meddling with what doesn't concern
them. All the disturbances which crop up from time to time, are hatched
and fomented by these rascals. Call themselves teachers, indeed! What
do they teach their lambs? To keep their hands off their neighbours'
property? Not a bit of it. And what missionary ever stuck to his post
when war did break out, I should like to know? Not one. They clear out
in time to save their own skins, never fear, and sneak off to befool the
British public, while we are defending our lives and property. A set of
meddlesome, mischief-brewing, slander-mongering frauds. They are the
curse of the colony."
On this congenial theme the old man continued to descant for some time.
Then the tread of horses was heard outside, and the arrival of Hicks and
Thorman created a diversion.
"So the bridge has gone," said Mr Brathwaite, dropping the missionary
question. "I thought it would. It should have been built ten feet
higher from the first. This flood, though, is a flood, and no mistake.
I only remember one like it."
"Ha, ha?" laughed Thorman, who was quite in a genial mood. "You should
have seen Hicks pitching into a transport-rider. He doubled him up by
the roadside like a ninepin."
"And how would he double up a ninepin, Mr Thorman?" queried Ethel,
mischievously.
Meanwhile, Hicks looked sheepish. "I couldn't help it," he said. "The
fellow challenged me."
As predicted, the flood did an immense amount of damage. Every bridge
was torn away by the force of the waters, as if it had been a bit of
stick. Homesteads by the river-side flooded or swept away; gardens and
corn lands swamped and utterly laid waste; every runnel or golly washed
out as clean as a tube, the piles of drift-wood and rubbish, deposited
here and there on their banks, alone showing the height to which the
waters had risen. And when in a few days the rain ceased, and it was
practicable to ascertain the fall extent of devastation--though even
then in parts of the _veldt_ it was impossible to ride with any safety
or comfort, for a horse would sink knee-deep in the spongy soil--the
land was noisome with the carcases of drowned animals, sheep and goats
lying by tens and by twenties rotting in the sun in roadway and golly.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note 1. Hottentots with an admixture of white blood are thus known in
Colonial parlance.