Charlotte was to accompany uncle to Cape Town this morning, some friends
having begged him to bring her in to spend the day with them. She was
charmed at being allowed to accede to the proposal, and quite agreed this
time in the wisdom of securing the cool hours of the day for driving. I
found her sitting in our open carriage, ready and waiting for uncle,
sooner than necessary.
"How much I wish you were coming too, Mechie, instead of staying by
yourself in this stupid place!" she said to me, turning up her handsome
face, bright with smiles, as leaning over the balcony rails I awaited her
departure.
"Don't you remember when we were coming here, Lotty, I told you I should
be so greatly vexed to go without you, and you said, 'All the vexation
will be on your side, then, for I should not care a bit'? Well, that's my
answer to you now," I replied, laughing.
"Ah, well, there's no accounting for tastes," rejoined Charlotte in a tone
of commiserating superiority; "you always were, and I suppose always will
be, a queer, incomprehensible little thing."
"Come, Lotty," I said, feeling rather piqued by the implied contempt of
her words, "confess honestly, which is most desirable, to find sources of
enjoyment in every place, or be dependent always upon external
excitements?"
But Lotty was in no mood for grave remonstrances, and while she was still
laughing our uncle entered and the carriage drove up. He nodded a farewell
to me, and Lotty looking back cried out gayly: "Good-bye, Mechie."
Aunt and I passed a delightful day together—a day full of sweet, tranquil
enjoyment. For many hours, during the hottest time, we remained under the
refreshing shade of the fruit trees, reading, working or talking, as the
mood inclined us. Occasionally I wandered about, attracted by the musical
note of some bird I wanted to see or the gay tints of some insect I wished
to capture for a brief while that aunty and I might examine it closely.
But of all happy, joyous little creatures whom it charmed me to watch, the
chameleons were the most amusing as they glanced about amidst the branches
of the trees, in their hunt for insects, their varying colours contrasting
brightly and beautifully with the rich hues of the fruit and flowers.
In the evening a disappointment befell us. We were hopefully expecting the
return of our loved ones, when instead there came a letter from uncle,
saying that particular business would detain him in town until the
following evening. As for Lotty, he continued, her friends, from whose
house he was then writing, were only too delighted to have her with them
for as long as she could be spared, and he had therefore agreed to her
remaining their guest for the present, "an arrangement very agreeable to
Lotty herself," uncle added. He then went on to say he had met Dr.
Manfred, who strongly advised that as his patient, Mrs. Rossiter, was
deriving so much benefit from the air of the Flats, she should stay out
the fortnight, returning again to Rathfelder's in another month, and so on
repeatedly while she found she gained any advantage to her health. "I am
glad to say," uncle concluded, "that Susan's mother is so much better that
she hopes to be able to come back with Charlotte and myself to-morrow
evening, which will make your longer visit in that 'wilderness,' as Lotty
calls it, more agreeable, I hope, to all parties."
"Dear, good old Susan!" exclaimed I; "excepting that the attendance of
such a servant and friend must always be an acquisition, and the sight of
her kind face in the highest degree cheering to me because of her genuine
piety and sound sense, I should not otherwise wish any addition to our
present party or any alteration in our ways. That it does you good to be
here, my own dear aunt," jumping up and kissing her fondly, "is in my
opinion sufficient to make it delightful were it far less charming than it
really is or our arrangements far less convenient."
I was very anxious that my aunt would allow me to share her bed-room that
night, feeling uneasy at the thought of her being so entirely alone in the
present delicate state of her health. But oh no, she would not on any
account agree to such a proposal, she said; I had quite enough to do
during the day without the risk of my nights being also unnecessarily
disturbed. She was a very uncertain sleeper, she added, and often
extremely restless, without, however, feeling ill or requiring anything,
and my rest would perhaps be much broken and to no purpose. There was but
one room between our bed-rooms, and should she be seriously in want of
assistance, nothing could be easier than to open her door and make me hear
instantly.
I will here explain that Rathfelder's Hotel was a portion of building
entirely separated from the part inhabited by our host and his family,
which lay at the back—a long line of rooms on the ground floor. The hotel,
a substantial house of two stories high, consisted of suites of rooms,
sleeping and sitting-rooms alternately on the upper floor, and spacious
reception-rooms with one bed-room, filling up the whole of the ground
floor. The latter were for the accommodation of casual visitors, picnic
parties or travellers to Port Elizabeth, but all the first were reserved
exclusively for boarders who stayed weeks or months at a time. There was
no staircase in the building, access to the upper rooms being only
obtained by means of flights of steps ascending at different points to the
broad balcony which I have before mentioned. No servants slept in the
visitors' portion of the hotel, and oddly enough, though sometimes full of
company at other seasons, no one but ourselves was lodging there just at
the present time; consequently, aunt and I had the whole hotel at our
disposal. This independent state of affairs did not in the least
disconcert us; on the contrary, the novelty of our situation afforded us
amusement; and in the evening we wandered through the large rooms, which
all opened into each other by single doors, without any feeling of
apprehension.
The next day we were again disappointed. Uncle and Charlotte did not come,
and a second letter of much the same import as the first once more put off
their return until the day after.
In the evening, toward night, aunty and I once more perambulated the great
suite of rooms, and though feeling no fear of danger, we as a matter of
course shut and fastened the venetians and locked the different doors,
which, conducting from one room to another, finally opened into a narrow
passage running through the upper house and beginning and terminating with
the balcony. This securing of windows and doors the servants considered
superfluous, and therefore never performed; as it was, they had now
completed their last services in our sitting and bed-rooms, paid their
last visit to see if we wanted anything and taken their departure,
evidently without a thought being given to the other parts of the house
above or below.
It was still sufficiently light to admit of our seeing with tolerable
clearness without candles, and on passing on our way to the extreme end
with intent to begin shutting up the first room in that direction and all
the rest backward in succession, we noticed a fowl roosting on the back of
a chair beside one of the beds. A large quantity of poultry was always
wandering about, outside the hotel, and frequently they walked into the
rooms and laid their sweet white or brown eggs in some sheltered corner.
It had become quite a matter of amusement to Charlotte and me to search
for the eggs every evening.
"We must turn Mrs. Hen out of the window when we return," observed aunty;
"it won't do to leave her there all night." And laughing together at the
domestic character displayed by the bonny-looking feathered lady, we
continued our way. Having fastened the doors and windows of the end room,
we were on the point of quitting it, when at that instant I was startled
by a sudden shriek from the fowl as she flew down from her perch in the
distant chamber. With some feeling of terror I looked inquiringly at Aunt
Rossiter, but her perfectly composed smile reassured me as she said:
"She evidently heard our remarks, Mechie, upon her ill-regulated
disposition, and is either offended or ashamed."
"Oh, she is in the highest state of indignation," rejoined I; "just hear
how she is attacking us both!"
And certainly Mrs. Hen seemed to be fully verifying my words, for on she
came to the room we were in, cackling at the very top of her shrill voice
in a most unmistakably incensed manner.
"What's the matter, old lady?" exclaimed I, laughing, as she angrily
strutted toward us holding her head very high and looking about her right
and left, and over her shoulder behind, with a scared and frightened
glance. "Do you think we are shutting up the house with intent to kill and
roast and eat you?" I added, opening the window to let her out on the
balcony, to find her way home. Instead of immediately leaving us, however,
she stood in the room cackling louder than ever, saying something eagerly
and earnestly which I longed to understand, feeling certain she was
passing some very severe strictures on our want of consideration in having
thus disturbed and terrified her, which remarks, I gayly said, must be of
an extremely original and amusing nature.
When she had said all she could to enlighten us—and oh that we had been
able to understand her!—she walked in the same dignified, albeit disturbed
manner out of the window, her whole expression declaring, as I afterward
pictured to my imagination, that she could do no more, and must now leave
us and our obstinacy to our fate. "All she has received in return for her
noisy garrulity is to be well laughed at, especially by myself, so no
wonder she is offended," I said, laughing again as I reclosed and fastened
the venetians and windows.