Volume Two—Chapter Nine.
A Lull in the Storm.
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 affiché-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—née 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.