“Better shut up, Anstey,” said the man who had evinced a head-punching disposition. “We ain’t afraid of you and your pistol, and you may get more than you like, yet. And you, friend. What do you propose to do?”
“Get out of this as soon as possible,” answered Gerard, in weary disgust. “Get back to Maritzburg, I suppose. But I’ve got some luggage here—not much, but a good deal more than I can carry; and you can imagine I don’t want to leave it behind.”
“Rather. Well, look here now,” said the man who had been addressed as Sam Carruthers; “I’m bound for the town, and if you don’t mind jogging along with a waggon, I’ll be glad to take in your luggage and yourself too. I won’t charge you anything for it either. And, remember this. You don’t seem to have been long in the country, and have fallen into the hands of a mortal sweep. Well, remember the swindle that has been planted on you was done by one of your own countrymen, not by one of as Anstey hasn’t been out here so very many years himself.”
This was only too true. From the colonial people he had had to do with Gerard had met with many little acts of kindness. It had been reserved, as the other had said, for one of his own countrymen to rob him of his little all—to leave him penniless, a stranger in a strange land.
He gladly accepted the transport-rider’s friendly offer, and, having hastily packed his outfit—Anstey the while keeping well out of his way—he bade adieu for ever to the scene of his first colonial experience.
Poor Gerard, alone in Maritzburg, without a friend in the Colony, and with about fifty shillings to his name, besides his moderate outfit, might indeed have reckoned himself in evil case; and, after a few days, in spite of his pluck and determination, he did so reckon himself. He had taken up his quarters at a cheap boarding-house which the friendly transport-rider had told him about—a place in comparison with which the mosquito-haunted Wayne’s was almost a palace—and had set about trying to find work. But what chance had he? The fact of his being a lad of education and refinement told against him with those among whom he applied. “A fine gentleman and a raw Britisher,” as they put it—to do them justice in their own minds only—was only a synonym for uselessness. Every billet wherein education was required was either filled, or hungrily competed for by a hundred applicants; applicants, too, with recommendations in their favour, and where were his? He tried to turn to account such experience as he had gained with Anstey, but with no better success. The country stores required a much more experienced hand, and one who could speak the native language fluently; the town ones wouldn’t look at him. Apart from the question of recommendations, here the very fact of his having been with Anstey was against him, was enough to shut him out even from the list of that most hopeless form of hope deferred—the cases “under consideration.” That precious rascal, he found, was far better known than trusted, and more than one instance of sharp practice and roguery on the part of Anstey now came to his knowledge. But meanwhile time was flying, and with it, of course, money. And he was no nearer attaining any way of replenishing his well-nigh vanished stock of the latter.
Gerard Ridgeley’s education had been of the usual happy-go-lucky, slipshod sort which is hammered into the average English boy who is destined for no profession in particular, and which for purposes of after life is practically useless. The regulation amount of Latin and Greek, and Euclid and arithmetic, got through by rote, often with the help of a crib, with perhaps a smattering of British and home-made French, had fallen to his lot, as well as the regulation share of cricket and football. But these attainments, good in themselves, seemed not to help him one whit in gaining the means of subsistence in his present predicament. He had never even taken to carpentering as an amusement, as some boys do, and of course of any other handicraft was as ignorant as a babe unborn.
Probably no one in these days really imagines that living is cheap in the Colonies, save perhaps to the dwellers in the veldt or bush, who grow their own necessaries of life. In the towns it is considerably dearer than in England, and a sovereign is apt to represent nearer ten shillings than twenty. So Gerard speedily learnt, as time flew and so did his funds, and prospects of employment remained as remote as ever.
“There ain’t room for chaps as wants a job in this here blessed colony,” bitterly remarked one of his fellow-boarders one day. “It’s a small country when all’s said and done, and there’s too many of us already, besides all these Hindian coolie-niggers they’re a importin’ of by shiploads.”