Thus died Walter Brathwaite—the staunch, persevering settler, the pioneer of industry and advancement in a new and far-away land, and, above all, the genial, noble-hearted gentleman. One who had never turned his back on friend or foe, a man who had never been guilty of a mean action or reaped advantage from the misfortune of his fellows; open of hand, kindly of heart and firm of head, he died as he had lived, regretted, loved, and respected by all who knew him. And that country is fortunate which can show many of his like.
And in the dark and rayless days that followed, it was Lilian’s task to whisper words of consolation and hope to the sorrowing widow, crushed to the very earth in her sudden and comfortless grief; and in no better hands could it have devolved. But within the year Mrs Brathwaite had followed her husband, and Lilian, who, up to then, had tended her with more than all the loving care of a daughter, watched over her to the last.
“God bless you, dearie,” had been the dying woman’s parting words to her. “You have given yourself up to the comfort and happiness of others; some day it will return to you a hundredfold. Only be patient.”
They buried her beside her husband; and in one disastrous day, sad indeed had been the change wrought in that peaceful, happy home. And then Lilian, craving for work and diversion, had gone back to her old line of life, which, involving a constant tax on her energies, would afford her both the one and the other. So here she was, after a lapse of years, installed at Fountain’s Gap, ostensibly as the preceptress of Mrs Payne’s children, in reality as companion to that good-hearted little woman herself, who had taken an immense fancy to her, and, moreover, hated being left alone, as must, otherwise, inevitably be frequently the case from the very nature of her husband’s pursuits.
“Did you hear anything fresh in Komgha to-day, George?” asked his wife, when they were seated at the table. The curtains were drawn and the room looked snug and homelike.
“Two more troops of Police ordered over the Kei.”
“Oh, dear. That looks bad. We are in a dreadful state of scare now, Mr Claverton,” she explained. “I can hardly sleep at night for thinking of it—and right in the middle of those wretches, too.”
“We are!” rejoined Payne, good-humouredly. “Say, rather, you are. The fact is, Claverton, my wife thinks of nothing but fire and sword, morning, noon, and night, till she’s worked herself up to such a pitch that every time a drunken nigger howls in the veldt she vows they are raising the war-cry.”
“Well, but you know there is reason for it,” retorted she. “And if it gets any worse, Lilian and I will go away with the children to Grahamstown or somewhere. I really am frightened.”
“That’s a long way,” said Payne, banteringly. “I also heard that the new Governor was coming up to the frontier.”