A dry, scorching wind is whirling the pungent red dust-clouds along the
streets of King Williamstown, and early though it be, not much more than
nine o'clock, life is at the moment exceeding unpleasant for dwellers in
the Kaffrarian capital as the hot blast sweeps down the wide streets and
over the great arid square, powdering the thirsty eucalyptus trees with
a layer of sand, penetrating even the coolest and tightest of houses. A
day on which an easy-chair and nankeen garments seem absolute
necessities, and yet in the busy frontier town there is as much life and
stir as usual. Waggons load and unload before the principal stores;
their oxen standing or lying in the yokes, poor and attenuated, for the
season is a bad one indeed, further up, the country is suffering from a
veritable drought. Men move about singly or by twos and threes, some in
the semi-military uniform affected by officers holding a command in some
frontier corps, others lightly clad and in broad sombrero-like hat or
pith helmet. Round the native shops and canteens bronzed Kafirs squat
and jabber, or, jumping on their weedy, undersized nags, dash off at a
gallop down the street. Here and there, a Police trooper, the
snow-white cover of his peaked cap gleaming in the son, rides briskly
away from the telegraph office, and the scarlet uniforms of a detachment
of regulars, as they march up from the river, returning from their
morning bathe, make a glow of shining colour in the close, dusty street.
It is an ill wind, however, that blows nobody good, as the
drinking-bars could testify; for the number of persons who enter those
useful institutions in the course of the morning--each and all with
precisely the same remark, that it being externally so dry they stand
all the more in need of a wet within--is so large that I will not
attempt to reveal it.
Leaving the stir and the whirl of the brisk trading centre, we will pass
to a comparatively quiet quarter. In the verandah of a small house, on
the outskirts of the town, some one is standing, looking intently
through a pair of field-glasses, which are levelled at a distant object,
evidently a horseman rapidly approaching by the road leading from the
Transkei. For a moment she stands eager and motionless, gazing with all
her might at that dusty road in the distance; then a red flush of
disappointment tinges the beautiful face as she drops the glass from her
eyes, and the graceful, erect figure suddenly assumes an unconscious
droop.
"The fifth time this morning," she murmurs to herself, dejectedly. "I
declare I won't look again, it's unlucky."
"So it is, dear. `A watched kettle never boils,' you know," says a
cheery female voice at her elbow. "That's why I haven't been watching
for George. He'll come, all in good time; and so will the other one.
But you really mustn't stay out in this heat, Lilian, you'll be ill, and
then shan't I catch it!"
"Oh no, I won't," answered Lilian, with a laugh and a blush. "Besides,
I like the heat."
"Do you? I wish I did, for I've got to go out in it. I'm not even
going to ask you to come, because I know it will be impossible to get
you off that verandah until--until--well, until," concluded Annie Payne
with another cheerful laugh, as she started upon her unwilling errand,
whatever it was.
Left to herself, Lilian looked wearily out on the wide expanse of
sun-baked _veldt_, watching ever the white straggling road where it lost
itself over the rise. Once a figure appeared on the sky-line, and her
heart gave a great bound, but it was only a pedestrian, her eyes were
sufficiently practised now to tell her that, without the necessity of
looking through the glass. The heat and the scorching wind were nothing
to her. It might have been the most exhilarating weather, and she would
not have felt the difference, for to-day her lover would return--return
to her, after more than two months of campaigning, two months of danger
and hardship and separation; and now she watched the road, impatiently
pacing the verandah, and longing for his arrival. Yet he came not. She
had done nothing but scan the approaches to the town through the
field-glass; but what to the naked eye had more than once looked like
the well-known form, had speedily changed to that of some ungainly
Dutchman, or sooty native, when the powerful lens was brought to bear
upon it.
Yes, the campaign is over now--at least, for the present; and the
volunteers and burgher forces are returning home, leaving to the Mounted
Police and Regulars the task of patrolling the Gcaleka country--that
being about all there is left to do. The summer is well advanced; in
fact, it wants only a fortnight to Christmas, and the frontiersmen
composing the colonial forces decline to remain any longer doing mere
patrol work. They have borne their part gallantly in the actual
fighting, and now that this is at an end they rightly deem themselves
entitled to return. So there is great rejoicing in the little domicile
in King Williamstown where George Payne has installed his household
during his absence at the front, and now, on this bright, though
overpoweringly hot day, Lilian stands in the verandah watching for the
return of her lover.
What an anxious time to her have been those two months! How she has
thought of him, and in spirit been with him all through the campaign!
How eagerly she has sought out every scrap of news of the forces in the
field, whether in the newspaper reports or the telegrams _affiche_-d
outside the post office! And at night she has lain awake picturing all
manner of dreadful contingencies till her pillow was wet with tears; but
she can do nothing--nothing but weep and pray. And now the time of
waiting is past, and she will see him again to-day, and lay her head
upon his breast and feel that life is too good to live.
But if he should not come till to-morrow or the next day! Something may
have detained him. An accident perhaps, such things do happen. Her
head begins to ache, and she goes into the house in search of some
cooling restorative. She has the house to herself fortunately--for the
children are out somewhere--and sinking into a low chair she holds her
handkerchief, steeped in the grateful liquid, to her throbbing brows.
At last, with a sickening sense of blankness--of hope deferred, at her
heart, she falls asleep, worn out by the heat and the watching coming
upon a night of wakefulness.
The molten hours creep on. The deep bass voices of a group of Kafir
passers-by, momentarily break their stillness; the thrifty German
housewife opens the door of the dwelling opposite--for it is a new
quarter, and the houses are built almost in the _veldt_--and throws a
pailful of stuff to her fowls, which run clucking up; but no tramp of
hoofs disturbs the midday quiet.
Suddenly Lilian awakes. Is it an instinct, or is it the clink of a spur
and a light, firm tread on the _stoep_ outside, that makes her start up
and hasten to the door? In the passage she collides against a man who
is entering, and with a quick exclamation he catches her in his arms.
"Arthur--love--is it indeed you? I am not dreaming, am I?" she murmurs,
clinging tightly to him, the rich voice vibrating with uncontrollable
emotion. "It is you--at last--darling. And I have been waiting and
watching so long--till I began to think all sorts of dreadful things
must have happened," and raising her head from his breast she looks at
him, laughing and weeping at the same time in her ecstasy of joy.
"Yes; it's myself all right," he replies, kissing away the tears from
her cheeks and eyes. "But I shall begin to think it's some one else
directly, because this is far and away too good for me--too good for me
to believe in. Lilian, my life! Every day since we parted I have been
looking forward to and waiting for this."
"Ah God! I have got my darling back again safe--safe!" she murmurs
almost inaudibly, but Claverton hears it, and he does not answer, he
only tightens his clasp of the lithe, willowy figure which he holds in
his embrace, and covers the soft dusky hair, lying against his cheek,
with passionate kisses. A thousand years of ten times the peril and
hardship he has gone through since they parted would be a small price to
pay for such a moment as this, he thinks. They make a pleasant picture,
those two, as they stand there. He--well-knit, grave, handsome, in the
rough picturesqueness of his campaigning attire, his features bronzed by
exposure to sun and climate, and with his normal air of quiet resolution
deepened and enhanced by a sense of many dangers recently passed
through; looking at her with a tender, protecting reverence. She--soft,
graceful, and clinging--the sweet lips curving into a succession of
radiant smiles even while her eyes are yet wet with the tears which an
uncontrollable feeling of love and thankfulness has evoked.
"So you thought I was never going to put in an appearance, darling?" he
says, at length.
"Ah, how I waited and longed! But I can forget it now--now that I have
got you. Wait! You look so much better for the dreadful time you have
been through, dearest, so strong and well. And you are not going off
again, are you? The war is over now."
"I hope so," is his rather weary reply. "I'm tired of ruffians and camp
life--utterly sick of them. Not but what the said ruffians are rather
good fellows; but peace is better than fighting, when all's said and
done. By the way, how is it we have the house all to ourselves? This
is an unusual run of luck, my Lilian."
"Mrs Payne is out somewhere, and the children too. And--"
"And--why didn't you go with them, instead of moping in here alone all
the morning?"
"Arthur!"
"Lilian! Don't look so shocked, my darling. Do you think I don't know
perfectly, that you wouldn't lose a chance of getting the first glimpse
of a certain broken-down and war-worn ragamuffin?"
A shadow darkened the light. Both looked up quickly as a slim,
well-made native, standing in the doorway, raised his hand above his
head and sang out lustily, "Inkos!"
"Hallo, Sam!" cried Claverton, not best pleased with the interruption.
"How are you getting on?"
The native showed a double row of dazzling "ivories" as he grinned in
genuine delight at seeing his master back again.
"Did you kill many--very many of the Amaxosa, my chief?" he asked, in
the Zulu tongue.
"H'm. Many of those who got in front of my gun-barrels up there, met
with bad accidents," replied his master, drily.
Sam chuckled and grinned. His exultation could hardly contain itself.
"Ha, Missie Liliane," he said, in his broken English, "Sam he tell you
so. Inkos, he kill lots, lots of Amaxosa nigga. He shoot, shoot them--
so, so," and he began snapping his fingers vehemently, and otherwise
pantomiming the sharp-shooting of a body of skirmishers. "Sam, he tell
you so, Missie Liliane. Amaxosa nigga no good! They no can hurt Inkos.
Sam, he tell you so. Inkos, he shoot, shoot them instead. Amaxosa
nigga no good. Haow!"
"Sam, you rascal, shut up that," cried Claverton, good-humouredly. "Cut
found to the stable and look after the horse; I've ridden the poor brute
nearly to death. Give him a good rub down, and see that he's cool
before he drinks. D'you hear?"
"Teh bo 'Nkos," answered Sam, and he disappeared; and they could hear
him as he passed beneath the open window, humming to a sort of chant of
his own: "Aow! Amaxosa nigga no good--no good."
"Has that chap behaved himself while I've been away, darling?" asked
Claverton.
"Behaved himself? Why, he's the best of boys. Sometimes when I felt
very, very downhearted about the war, that dear, good Sam would try all
in his power to cheer me up, and persuade me that you would be sure not
to come to harm, love. He used to declare that the Kafirs were sure to
run away whenever you appeared, and he cut such extraordinary antics,
always bringing in that ridiculous phrase of his, that he kept me in
fits of laughter. Yes, he has been as good as possible."
"That's a feather in Sam's cap, and a deuced good thing for him. Wasn't
it queer, my falling in with all the old lot up there? They were all
just the same; even Jeffreys hasn't quite laid by his scowl, and as for
Jack Armitage, he's a greater lunatic than ever. I hope our little
friend keeps a tight rein on him at his hearth and home, for in the
field there was no holding the fellow. He has started a frightful thing
in bugles, which he toots upon vehemently on the smallest provocation,
though, by Jove, I was glad enough to hear that braying old post-horn
once, when Brathwaite's men turned the tables in our favour in an
awkwardish scrimmage."
It was a remarkable coincidence that as he uttered these words a
terrific fanfare should be sounded outside.
"That's it! Jack's post-horn for anything!" cried he, making for the
window. "Talk of the--ah'm! Wonder what the fellow's doing here. And,
look, there's George Payne and the rest of them."
The whole lot of them it was, and a minute later they all entered,
laughing and talking at a great rate.
"Why, Jack, what the deuce are _you_ doing up here?" cried Claverton, in
astonishment.
"We forgot it might be necessary to obtain Mr Claverton's permission to
tread the streets of King Williamstown," demurely said a voice at his
elbow, before the other could reply.
Claverton turned.
"Oh--ah--ah'm! So _we_ did. I forgot. How d'you do, Mrs Armitage?"
he said, looking quizzically down at the bright, saucy face of the
speaker.
Gertie Armitage--_nee_ Wray--laughed and blushed as she shook hands with
him. She looked much the same as when last we saw her, a trifle
saucier, perhaps, but that was only natural, said her friends, seeing
that she had to look after madcap Jack.
That worthy, meanwhile, was endeavouring to initiate Payne's son and
heir into the mysteries of the key bugle, but the youngster could evoke
no sound from the same, and was ready to cry with chagrin.
"Look here, Harry, this is the dodge," and, putting the instrument to
his lips, he emitted a series of diabolical and heartrending blasts.
"Jack--Jack!" cried Claverton, stopping his ears, "for Heaven's sake
drop that fiendish row, or you'll have all the Germans in the quarter
scuttling under their beds, thinking that the Gaikas have risen, and
some fellow has come to commandeer them to go to the front."
"Fiendish row! There's gratitude for you," retorted Armitage. "He
didn't call it a fiendish row that day down near the Bashi, did he,
Payne?"
"No, it was all right then," rejoined Claverton. "Music in the wrong
place, you know, degenerates into a diabolical row. Keep the old
post-horn for the ghosts at Spoek Krantz, Jack. They'd appreciate it
keenly."
"Oh, the ingratitude of human nature!" exclaimed the bugler. "But I've
left Spoek Krantz."
"Have you? Ah, I thought the ghosts would be too much for you some day.
Where are you now?"
"Nowhere. Got a roving commission. When the country's quiet again I'm
going to take over that place next door to Hicks. By the way, you
should just see Hicks now, a model family man. Would hardly leave his
missis and brace of kids even to go and have a shot at old Kreli. We
almost had to lug him away by force."
"When the country is quiet again I'm going to do this," he had said, and
in such wise do we mortals airily make our plans. Meanwhile all was
hilarity and gladness and contentment in that circle, for was it not a
reunion of those dear to each other, after the trials, and perils, and
privations of a hard chapter of savage warfare?
Lilian was very happy in the days that followed; and to her lover, after
the rough camp life, the toil and the battle, with all the hardening
associations, the sunny quiet spent in the companionship of this
refined, beautiful woman, was as the very peace of Heaven. Oft-times as
he watched the sweet eyes kindle at his approach, and heard the firm,
low voice shake ever so slightly, his heart would thrill and his cheek
flush with a fierce elation over his absolute sense of possessing the
rich, the priceless gift of her entire love; and then would succeed a
momentary wave of despondency as he thought how this must be far too
much happiness to fall to his lot, and with the thought something very
like an unspoken prayer--wild, passionate, and unbridled in burden even
as his own resolute nature--would shape itself within his heart, that
rather than again experience such a blow as that which had sent him
forth a desolate wanderer years ago--he might die--a hundred deaths, if
need be, so that obliteration came to him at last. And had there been
room for it, his tenderness towards Lilian would have redoubled with
these reflections; but there was not--it was always the same.
"Be quick, darling," he said to her one day, as she was leaving the room
for a moment to fetch some necessary implement missing from her
work-basket. "I hate to have you out of my sight for half a minute more
than is inevitable."
The two were alone together, and he pitched his book across the room
impatiently as he spoke. She turned and came back to him.
"Why, I wonder you're not quite tired of me," she said, with her sunny
smile, bending over him and toying with his hair.
"Tired of you! _My_ Lilian. The only being on earth for me to love.
The capacity has been kept so long in reserve that now there's no
holding it."
She bent lower and laid her cheek against his brow. "Yes, Arthur. We
are both alone in the world for each other--are we not?" she whispered;
then, suddenly escaping from his would-be detaining arm, she darted to
the door, turning to flash upon him a bright, loving look before she
went out; and he, rising, kicked over a chair and then another, and
opened and threw down three or four books without gleaning an idea of
their contents, and walked to the window, then back again, and whistled,
and otherwise fidgeted outrageously until her return.
Lose not a minute of your happiness, ye two; gather to the full the
sweets of the present, even while ye may, for ye know not what the
future may have in store. Even yet the war-cloud hangs threatening on
the horizon; it has lifted, but has not vanished. Amid the rage of the
elements may suddenly fall peace. It is but a lull in the tempest.
To some of his former companions-in-arms, who lived in the town or
neighbourhood, Claverton was an unfailing source of wonder.
"I should never have known the fellow," one of them would say, as they
discussed him among themselves. "Why, most of us in camp used to look
upon Claverton as a man with no more heart than a stone. A fellow who
would close the eyes of his twin brother and then sit down to a jolly
good breakfast, and crack a joke about it,"--the speaker's idea of the
acme of callousness. "And now he's making a perfect fool of himself
about a girl--hardly leaves her for a moment, they say. I can't
understand it," and the speaker knocked the ashes out of his pipe with a
jerk and a shrug, implying half pity, half contempt.
"You could if you had seen her," said another, quietly. "She's awfully
fetching."
"So I'm told. But still--such a hard nail as Claverton. I can't make
it out."
Thus spoke his companions-in-arms. It could not be expected, however,
that these plain, honest, matter-of-fact frontiersmen should give him
credit for possessing a two-sided nature. They merely spoke of him as
they had seen him.
One day the two were walking along the upper end of the market-square.
It was in the middle of the forenoon, and though warm, a fine day, and
the traffic on the footway was tolerably brisk, while around an
auctioneer's table a goodly crowd was assembled, and the sale went on in
spirited fashion. They were stopped by some mutual acquaintance, and
Claverton, taking advantage of the incident, left Lilian talking to
these, while he dived into the throng for a moment to speak to some one
whom he had suddenly caught sight of. When he returned, he found Lilian
standing alone, their friends having taken their leave and passed on.
"So sorry you've had to wait, darling--even a minute. Why, what is it?"
For she was looking a trifle perturbed.
"Nothing. Really nothing. Let's go on."
"Is it the heat? We'll go home. It is rather overwhelming, of course;
I ought to have remembered," he said, anxiously.
"No, it isn't too hot in the least," she answered. Then taking a quick,
furtive look behind: "Arthur--wait--now look round--quick! There's
somebody following us."
He turned rapidly and scanned the crowd. No one seemed to be making of
them a special point of observation.
"I don't see any one out of the common. See if you can point him out,
dear."
"No. He is gone; I could see him shrink out of sight directly I looked
round the second time," she said, excitedly, twirling the handle of her
sun-shade. "I wouldn't say anything at first, thinking it might be my
fancy; but I could see him eyeing you as you went in among all those
people just now. He was standing on the pavement--there."
"Well, he's disappeared now, at any rate," said Claverton, again looking
carefully around. "What was the animal like--white or black?"
"Neither. A sort of dirty brown colour, not at all like a native of
these parts. He had woolly hair, though, and a hideous, wrinkled face
with two pointed, shark-like teeth; and he was looking at you so
fiercely," and she shuddered. "And oh--Arthur--when I looked round
again and saw those glaring eyes following on so close behind us, it
quite frightened me."
Claverton was puzzled. Nine Englishmen out of ten would have gently
pooh-poohed the idea as mere fancy; but his life had been too full of
strange and startling experiences for that.
"Have you no secret enemy? No one who would owe you a grudge?" she
continued, in a tone of deep anxiety. "That man looked murder at you."
"N-no; I can't call to mind any. Most likely a case of mistaken
identity. The fellow must have taken me for some one else, and bolted
directly I looked round for fear of being brought to book. That was it,
dear, depend upon it; so don't think anything more about the concern,"
he concluded, with the air of a man who has successfully solved a
mystery. But he wished he had caught a glimpse of the mysterious
individual all the same.
The incident had a depressing effect upon Lilian which she was quite
unable to shake off. That some terrible danger was hovering over and
threatening her lover she was certain; and the idea of being tracked and
watched by a secret foe was to her fraught with horror. But it was for
him she feared--for this man whom every day rendered more unspeakably
dear to her, and for whom, retiring, even timid as her nature was, she
could be brave as a lion, even to the giving of her own life to shield
him from harm. Of his past she knew but little--as yet he had not told
her much, and in all the fulness of her love and trust she took a pride
in abstaining from asking him; but that it had been more eventful than
the lives of most men of his age she had gathered, and what relentless
enemies might he not have, now surely and stealthily pursuing him? Many
a glance of admiration was cast on her--in her serene, dignified beauty,
which the troubled thoughtfulness now clouding her face only seemed to
enhance--as they passed along the busy streets; and people began to
inquire of each other who those two were who were never seen apart, and
who looked such a well-matched couple.
Meanwhile, the political outlook was becoming gloomier every day, for
the warlike tribes of the Gaikas and Hlambis--whose locations comprised
some of the wildest and most inaccessible parts of Kaffraria--were on
the verge of revolt. The stage of sullen restlessness and daring
outrage was about to culminate in open warfare, and no doubt now existed
that these savages intended to rise and make common cause with their
brethren the Gcalekas, who, though decimated and dispersed, were as far
as ever from being subdued. And, when compared with the rising now
threatening, the fighting in Gcalekaland was a mere fleabite, for the
latter had been localised in the Transkei, whereas this would envelope
the whole Eastern frontier in the flames of war. Day by day the low
rumblings of the gathering storm increased, and from far and near the
families of the settlers came crowding into King Williamstown. Every
hotel and lodging-house was crammed, and not a room was obtainable for
love or money. Many lived in their tent-waggons, failing more
substantial shelter, and the pastureland in the immediate neighbourhood
seemed in danger of exhaustion from the multitudes of live stock which
grazed thereon. The telegraph was actively at work, hourly flashing its
messages of alarm or reassurance according as the latest turn of events
warranted; while many-tongued rumour hinted at a decisive move pending
on the part of the enemy beyond the border simultaneously with the
rising of the tribes within the same. It was understood that the
burgher forces were liable to be called out at any moment, and among the
townsmen fresh volunteers were enrolled, and drill and parades went on
night and day in view of the probability that the regular troops in
garrison would be ordered to take the field, and that the townspeople
must be ready to protect themselves.
And as if the scourge of impending war--the merciless warfare of the
savage--was not enough, the land lay parched up with drought.
Transport-riders from up-country had gruesome tales to tell of roads
lined with rotting carcases or bleached skeletons of trek-oxen, which
had succumbed unable to find nourishment in the burnt-up grass, or
perishing on the margin of water-holes reduced to patches of dry, baked
mud--pointing to their own attenuated spans in corroboration of their
statements. The crops were failing, and, already in some districts, the
appearance of locusts in sufficiently formidable swarms was reported;
and the scant herbage, which the drought had spared, would be in danger
of disappearing entirely before this new and redoubtable plague. Trade
was at a standstill, and, amid the all-pervading apprehension and gloomy
outlook, it was universally held that the sooner the rising took place
the better. So Christmas approached; but it was not with joy or
gladness that men's hearts looked forward to the kindly festival in that
burning Southern midsummer, for the deserted farms and homesteads told
their own tale, and the savage enemy sullenly sat still, biding his own
time. The war-cloud hung brooding over the land darker and darker.