"BUT I AM THY LOVE."
Three days later Carhayes arrived. He was in high spirits. The
remainder of his stock was under way, and, in charge of Eustace, was
trekking steadily down to his other farm in the Colony, which was
sufficiently remote from the seat of hostilities to ensure its safety.
He had ridden with them a day and a half to help start the _trek_, and
had then returned with all haste to enrol himself in the Kaffrarian
Rangers--a mounted corps, raised among the stock-farmers of the
district, of whom it consisted almost entirely.
"Wish I was you, Tom," Hoste had said ruefully. "Wouldn't I just like
to be going bang off to the front to have a slap at old Kreli instead of
humbugging around here looking after stock. This _laager_ business is
all fustian. I believe the things would be just as safe on the farm."
"Well, shunt them back there and come along," was Carhayes' reply.
"We are not all so fortunate as you, Mr Carhayes," retorted Mrs Hoste
with a trifle of asperity, for this advice was to her by no means
palatable. "What would you have done yourself, I should like to know,
but for that accommodating cousin, who has taken all the trouble off
your hands and left you free to go and get shot if you like?"
"Oh, Eustace? Yes, he's a useful chap," said Carhayes complacently,
beginning to cram his pipe. "What do you think the beggar has gone and
done? Why, he has inspanned four or five boys from Nteya's location to
help him with the _trek_! The very fellows we are trekking away from,
by Jove! And they will help him, too. An extraordinary fellow,
Eustace--I never saw such a chap for managing Kafirs. He can make 'em
do anything."
"Well, its a good thing he can. But doesn't he want to go and see some
of the fun himself?"
"Not he. Or, if he does, he can leave Bentley in charge and come back
as soon as he has put things straight. Bentley's my man down there. I
let him live at Swaanepoel's Hoek and run a little stock of his own on
consideration of keeping the place in order and looking after it
generally. He'll be glad enough to look after our stock now for a
consideration--if Eustace gets sick of it and really does elect to come
and have a shot at his `blanket friends'--Ho-ho!"
The Kaffrarian Rangers were, as we have said, a corps raised in the
district. The farmers composing it mounted and equipped themselves, and
elected their own leaders. There was little discipline, in the military
sense of the word, but the men knew each other and had thorough
confidence in their leaders. They understood the natives, and were as
much at home on the _veldt_ or in the bush as the Kafirs themselves.
They affected no uniforms, but all were clad in a serviceable attire
which should not be too conspicuous in cover--an important
consideration--and all were well equipped in the way of arms and other
necessaries. They asked for no pay--only stipulating that they should
be entitled to keep whatever stock they might succeed in capturing from
the enemy--which in many cases would be merely retaking their own. The
Government, now as anxious as it had been sceptical and indifferent a
month previously, gladly accepted the services of so useful a corps.
The latter numbered between sixty and seventy men.
This, then, was the corps to which Carhayes had attached himself, and
among the ranks of which, after two or three days of enforced delay
while waiting for orders--and after a characteristically off-hand
farewell to the Hostes and his wife--he proceeded to take his place.
They were to march at sundown and camp for the night at the Kei Drift.
All Komgha--and its wife--turned out to witness their departure.
Farmers and storekeepers, transport-riders and Mounted Police, craftsmen
and natives of every shade and colour, lined the roadway in serried
ranks. There was a band, too, blowing off "God Save the Queen," with
all the power of its leathern lungs. Cheer after cheer went up as the
men rode by, in double file, looking exceedingly workman-like with their
well filled cartridge belts and their guns and revolvers. Hearty
good-byes and a little parting chaff from friends and intimates were
shouted after them through the deafening cheers and the brazen strains
of the band, and, their numbers augmented by a contingent of mounted
friends, who were to ride a part of the way with them, "just to see them
squarely off," the extremely neat and serviceable corps moved away into
a cloud of dust.
There was another side to all this enthusiasm, however. A good many
feminine handkerchiefs waved farewell to that martial band. A good many
feminine handkerchiefs were, pressed openly or furtively to tearful
eyes. For of those threescore and odd men going forth that evening in
all the pride of their strength and martial ardour, it would be strange,
indeed, if some, at any rate, were not destined to leave their bones in
a far-away grave--victims to the bullet and assegai of the savage.
The days went by and grew into weeks, but there was no want of life and
stir in the little settlement. As Carhayes had remarked grimly during
his brief sojourn therein--life appeared to be made up of bugle calls
and lies. Hardly a half-hour that the bugle was not sounding--either at
the Police camps, or at those of the regular troops now being rapidly
moved to the front, and scarcely a day went by but a corps of mounted
burghers or volunteers passed through, _en route_ for the seat of war.
The store keepers and Government contractors laughed and waxed fat.
All sorts of rumours were in the air, and as usual wildly contradictory.
The white forces in the Transkei were in imminent peril of
annihilation. The Gcaleka country had been swept clear from end to end.
Kreli was sueing for peace. Kreli had declared himself strong enough
to whip all the whites sent against him, and then with the help of the
Gaikas and Hlambis to invade and ravage the Eastern Province of the
Colony. The Gaikas were on the eve of rising, and making common cause
with their Gcaleka brethren. The Gaikas had not the slightest wish for
war. The Gaikas were never more insolent and threatening. The Gaikas
were thoroughly cowed and lived in mortal dread of being attacked
themselves. Thus Rumour many tongued.
The while events had taken place at the seat of war. The Kafirs had
attacked the Ibeka, a hastily fortified trading post in the Transkei, in
great force, and after many hours of determined fighting had been
repulsed with great loss, repulsed by a mere handful of the Mounted
Police, who, with a Fingo levy, garrisoned the place. Kreli's principal
kraal on the Xora River had been carried by assault and burnt to the
ground,--the Gcaleka chieftain, with his sons and councillors, narrowly
escaping falling into the hands of the Colonial forces--and several
other minor engagements had been fought. But the powerful Gaika and
Hlambi tribes located throughout British Kaffraria, though believed to
be restless and plotting, continued to "sit still," as if watching the
turn of events, and night after night upon the distant hills the signal
fires of the savages gleamed beneath the midnight sky in flashing, lurid
tongues, speaking their mysterious, awesome messages from the Amatola to
the Bashi.
Hoste--who, with other of his neighbours, was occupied with the armed
tending of his stock in _laager_--was growing daily more restless and
discontented. It was cruelly rough on him, he declared, to be pinned
down like that. He wanted to go and have his share of the fun. The war
might be brought to an end any day, and he would have seen nothing of
it. He would try and make some satisfactory arrangement and then get
away to the front at once, he vowed. In which resolution he met with
but lukewarm encouragement from his wife.
"You should just see the yarn that friend of Payne's wrote him about the
fight at Kreli's kraal, Ada," he remarked one day, having just ridden
in. "He says it was the greatest sport he ever had. Eh, Payne?"
That worthy, who had accompanied him, nodded oracularly--a nod which
might mean anything. Taught wisdom by the possession of a partner of
his own joys and sorrows, he was not going to put himself in active
opposition to what he termed the Feminine Controller-General's
Department. But he and Hoste had hatched out between them a little plan
which should leave them free, in a day or two, to start off in search of
the death or glory coveted by their martial souls.
The cottage which Hoste had taken for his family was a tiny pill-box of
a place on the outer fringe of the settlement, fronting upon the
_veldt_, which situation rendered the ladies a little nervous at night,
notwithstanding an elaborate system of outposts and pickets by which the
village was supposed to be protected. At such a time the presence of
Eanswyth, of whom they were very fond, was a perfect godsend to Mrs
Hoste and her daughters. The latter were nice, bright children of
fifteen and thirteen, respectively, and there were also two boys--then
away at a boarding school in Grahamstown. If Eanswyth ever had reason
to complain of the dullness or loneliness of her life on the farm, here
it was quite the reverse. Not only was the house so small that four
persons were sufficient to crowd it, but somebody or other, situated
like themselves, was always dropping in, sitting half the day chatting,
or gossiping about the progress of the war and the many rumours and
reports which were flying around. In fact, there was seldom a respite
from the "strife of tongues," for no sooner had one batch of visitors
departed than another would arrive, always in the most informal manner.
Now, of all this excess of sociability, Eanswyth was becoming a trifle
weary.
To begin with, she could obtain little or no privacy. Accustomed to
full measure of it in her daily life, she sorely missed it now. She
even began to realise that what she had taken as a matter of course--
what, indeed, some of her neighbours had half commiserated her for--was
a luxury, and, like other articles falling under that category, a thing
to be dispensed with now that they were living, so to say, in a state of
siege.
She was fond of the two girls, as we have said; yet there were times
when she would have preferred their room to their company--would have
preferred a long, solitary walk. She was fond of her friend and
entertainer; yet that cheery person's voluble tongue was apt to be
sometimes a trifle oppressive. She liked her neighbours and they liked
her; yet the constant and generally harmless gossip of the other
settlers' wives and daughters, who were ever visiting or being visited
by them, regarding work, native servants, babies, engagements, the war,
and so forth, would strike her as boring and wearisome to the last
degree. There were times when she would have given much to be alone--
absolutely and entirely alone--and think.
For she had enough to think about now, enough to occupy every moment of
her thoughts, day and night. But was it good that it should be so--was
it good?
"I am a wicked woman!" she would say to herself, half bitterly, half
sadly, but never regretfully--"a fearfully wicked woman. That is why I
feel so restless, so discontented."
Never regretfully? No; for the sudden rush of the new dawn which had
swept in upon her life had spread over it an enchanted glamour that was
all-powerful in its surpassing sweetness. That first kiss--alone in the
darkness of that peril-haunted midnight--had kindled the Fire of the
Live Coal; that one long, golden day, they two alone together, had
riveted the burning link. There was no room for regret.
Yet there were times when she was a prey to the most poignant anguish--a
woman of Eanswyth's natural and moral fibre could never escape that--
could never throw herself callously, unthinkingly, into the perilous
gulf. A mixture of sensuousness and spirituality, the spirit would ever
be warring against the mind--which two are _not_ convertible terms by
any means--and often in the dark, silent hours of night a sense of the
black horror of her position would come upon her in full force. "Heaven
help me!" she would cry half aloud in the fervour of her agony. "Heaven
help me!" And then would be added the mental reservation, "But _not_
through the means of loss--not through the loss of this new and
enthralling influence which renders the keenest of mental anguish,
engrossingly, indescribably sweet!"
"Save me from the effect, but, oh, remove not the cause!" A strange, a
paradoxical prayer, but a genuine one; a terribly natural one. Thus
poor humanity, from--and before--the days of Augustine of Hippo until
now--until the consummation of the world.
As the days grew into weeks, the strain upon such a nature as Eanswyth's
began to tell--as it was bound to do. She began to look pale and worn,
and in such close companionship the change could not escape the eyes of
her friends.
"Don't you let yourself be anxious, my dear," said a motherly settler's
wife one day, bursting with a desire to administer comfort. "The
Rangers will soon be back now. And they're all right so far--have had
some rough work and haven't lost a man. Your husband knows how to take
care of himself; never fear. Yes, they'll soon be back now."
This was the sort of consolation she had to acquiesce in--to receive
with a glad smile at the time, and for hours after to torture herself
with the miserable guilty consciousness that the fate of the Kaffrarian
Rangers was to her a matter of infinitesimal account. There was one,
however, whom appearances were beginning no longer to deceive, who, in
pursuance of the strange and subtle woman's instinct, which had moved
her to make that remark to her husband _in camera_, as recorded in a
former chapter, began to feel certain that the real object of Eanswyth's
solicitude was to be found west, not east--back in the peaceful Colony
instead of in the Transkei braving peril at the hands of the savage
enemy. That one was Mrs Hoste. She was not a clever woman by any
means--not even a sharp woman, yet her mind had leaped straight to the
root of the matter. And the discovery made her feel exceedingly
uncomfortable.
That farewell, made in outwardly easy social fashion, under several
pairs of eyes, had been a final one. Eustace had not ridden over on
another visit, not even a flying one, as Eanswyth had hoped he would.
Still, bitterly disappointed as she was, she had appreciated the wisdom
of his motives--at first. If there was one quality more than another
she had admired in him in times past, it was his thorough and resolute
way of doing a thing. If anything had to be done, he did it thoroughly.
The undertaking upon which he was then engaged certainly demanded all
his time and attention, and he had given both, as was his wont. Still
she had hoped he would have found or made some opportunity for seeing
her once more.
She had heard from him two or three times, but they were letters that
all the world might have seen, for Eustace was far too prudent to send
anything more meaning into a house full of other people, and a small and
crowded house at that. The mere glance of an eye--purely accidental,
but still a mere glance--on the part of a third person, no matter who,
would be more than sufficient to tumble down his fair house of cards in
great and irreparable ruin. He was not a man to take any such risks.
She had appreciated his caution--at first. But, as time went by, the
black drop of a terrible suspicion distilled within her heart. What if
he had begun to think differently! What if he had suffered himself to
be carried away by a mere moment of passing passion! What if time and
absence had opened his eyes! Oh, it was too terrible! It could not be.
Yet such things had happened--were happening every day.
An awful sense of desolation was upon her. She hungered for his
presence--for the sound of his voice--for even a scrap of paper
containing one loving word which his hand had written. To this had the
serene, proud, strong-natured woman come. Her love had humbled her to
the dust. Thus do we suffer through those for whom we transgress--thus
does the delight of an hour become the scourge of a year.