"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.