For all the brave way in which Aida had taken her grisly experience--and
the full gruesomeness of her peril and narrow escape had been borne in
upon her, especially during the trial and the revelations it had
evolved--an impression had been left upon her mind which rendered the
life to which she had been looking forward, and its associations,
distasteful to her for the present. So after our marriage, which took
place a month later than the dark and tragical circumstances I have just
recorded, we decided to start for a prolonged tour of a year or more in
Europe.
That time was a halcyon time for me, falling in no whit short of what I
had always pictured it in anticipation. We did not hurry ourselves. We
took things easily, and thus were spared all the worry and flurry of
those who do not. In consequence we were able to enjoy to the full the
pick of the Old World in all that was beautiful or interesting, and
after my twenty years of up-country knocking about, and generally
roughing it, everything enjoyed in such association was both.
The farm I had bought for our joint occupation I was able to dispose of
at a trifling loss, and my trading store I sold at some profit; which
made things not merely as broad as they were long, as the saying goes,
but broader. But before we started on our tour it transpired that Edith
Sewin and Kendrew had managed to compass a very mutual excellent
understanding--it might have occurred to me at the time of our anxiety
and grief that Kendrew had displayed quite an unusual familiarity in his
references to my sister-in-law elect, but I suppose in the all-absorbing
anguish of my own loss I had no mind to give to any such trivial detail.
But as we were to be away a long time, the artful dog took advantage of
the circumstance to hurry forward his own ambition. It would never do,
he urged--they both urged--for the presence of her only sister to be
wanting at Edith's marriage, and in the result if there was not a double
wedding, at any rate there were two within a very short time of each
other. Well, we were all glad. Kendrew was a good fellow--a thoroughly
good fellow--and the farm he had inherited through poor old Hensley's
murder was a right good one. He was going to throw up transport-riding
and work it, he declared, and he did.
The old people, reft thus of both their daughters, decided to leave the
frontier and settle just outside Durban; an excellent climate and
country for those who have spent most of their lives in India. The farm
was turned over to Falkner; who, by the way, soon blossomed into a
remarkably able and energetic colonist. His sheer brutal pluck won him
the very real and undiluted respect of the natives, and after not more
than three attempts had been made upon his life, these came to the
conclusion that "Umsindo" was really great, and one whom, taking him all
round, it was no disgrace or disadvantage to serve; for with all his
faults he was open-handed, and this tells. He was a very devil, they
declared, but one that it was better to be with than against, and so he
prospered. But he soon found a better outlet for his pugnacity than
mere head punching, for the Zulu War broke out, and of course Falkner
must be in the thick of it. He served all through, in a corps of
Irregular Horse, and performed fine feats of daring on more than one
occasion and notably during the disastrous rout on the Hlobane Mountain,
for which he ought to have got the V.C. but didn't, and is a happy man
proportionately in that he cherishes a grievance. By a curious irony of
Fate too he was instrumental in saving the life of no less a personage
than our old antagonist, Dolf Norbury, for soon after the invasion of
Zululand, that worthy, having quarrelled with his friend and ally
Mawendhlela, found himself run very hard by that gin-loving potentate's
followers. He had made a desperate fight for it, and had shot down
quite a number. Still there were numbers left, when Falkner, happening
along with a patrol, rescued him only in the bare nick of time.
Afterwards he told me that he had invited him to try, just in a friendly
way, another "scrap" for the conqueror, but Dolf wasn't taking any.
He'd rather light out for over the Swazi border, he said, if it was all
the same to his rescuer and quondam enemy. It was--and so they parted,
this time in a kind of rough friendliness.
Of the "Brotherhood of the Dew" I have been able to get no further
information. Whether the Zulu War had created a far-reaching diversion,
or that the hanging of Ukozi and Co. had conveyed the impression that it
was unhealthy to carry on its operations in a white man's country I
can't say for certain, but nothing more was heard of it, in Natal at any
rate. Aida's experience of it however, had left such an impression upon
her that she had a rooted aversion to returning to live anywhere near
the scene of its former operations, so we decided to settle down upon a
farm in one of the most healthy and picturesque parts of the Eastern
Districts of the Cape Colony. There Jan Boom is our most reliable and
trusted factotum; Jan Boom, now the owner of three wives--with power to
add to the number--and much cattle--the result of the priceless service
he rendered us in the past.
Priceless service! Yes indeed, for although a good many years have gone
by since the events happened of which I, Godfrey Glanton, have striven
to set forward a clear account--remember literature is not an up-country
man's strong point--still they have been years of unbroken happiness.
And still they remain, in proof whereof, I invite any reader of this
narrative who may find himself in my part of the world, to come and
judge for himself. I am easily found, and I promise him a cordial
welcome, and--if he is fond of the gun--something not bad in the way of
sport.
The End.