John Ames, Native Commissioner: A Romance of the Matabele Rising - Bertram Mitford

“Who?” asked Nidia, with a ripple of mirth over the inconsequence of the remark—which certainly was funny.

“John, of course. He is a fine fellow, Nidia. Didn’t know they grow men like that in those parts”—with a very approving gaze at the advancing figure of his son-in-law, who, strolling along the terrace, was drinking in the lovely panorama of fair English landscape, contrasting it, perchance, with certain weird regions of granite boulder and tumbled rock and impenetrable thorn thicket. And here it may be noted that, her present happiness notwithstanding, Nidia had by no means forgotten her sad and terrible experiences, and there were times when she would start up in her sleep wild-eyed and with a scream of horror, as she saw once more the mutilated corpses of the murdered settler’s family, or found herself alone in the shaggy wilds of the Matopos. But the awakening more than made up for the reminiscence. She was young, and of sound and buoyant Constitution, and the grim and ghastly recollection of appalling sights and peril passed through would eventually fade.

“Am I interrupting you?” said John Ames, as at his entrance the two looked up. “Nidia was going to stroll down to the bridge with me, Mr Commerell; but if you want her, why, I shall have to keep myself company.”

“Considerate, as few of them are or would be under the circumstances,” thought the old gentleman to himself. But aloud he said, “No—no. It’s all right. We’ve done our talk, John. You’d better take her with you, and she can tell you what it has all been about. Besides, I have some business to attend to.”

He watched them strolling along the terrace together, and a strange joyful peace was around the old man’s heart.

“God bless them!” he murmured to himself—his spectacles, perhaps, a trifle dim. “They are a well matched pair, and surely this is a Heaven-made union if such a thing exists. God bless them, and send them every happiness!”

And here we take leave to join in the above aspiration; for although ourselves no believers in the old-fashioned “lived-happy-ever-after” theory, holding that about nineteen such cases out of twenty, putting it at a modest proportion, are, in actual fact, but sparsely hedged around with the a “happy” qualification, yet here we think it possible that the twentieth case may be found, if only that all the circumstances attendant upon it go to make for that desirable end.

The End.