It was at this propitious juncture that the de Rivas elected to return. Their home was not in Salisbury but about seventy miles off, out Mazoë way too, and incidentally not above ten miles from Hammond’s own camp, but they put up at a hotel in town for a week or two to give Mrs de Rivas time to recover from the fatigue of a long coach journey, and be welcomed back by old friends. Promptly all the women in the town went to call, and take the news of the Hammond-Heywood engagement.
The Spanish Inquisition is no more, but the gentle art of putting the question accompanied by the watching torture has not yet been lost. Even when malice is absent, who can eradicate curiosity from the feminine temperament? Cara de Rivas’ dearest and most intimate Inquisitors were tender for her, however. They considered it only human that they should desire to know how she was “taking it,” but they had no coarse intent of putting questions. Merely they hoped to extract a few answers—eyes and lips and incidentally clothes tell so much!
And behold! two of the answers were entirely unexpected.
The first was that Cara de Rivas was as deeply in love with her husband as he was plainly and profoundly in love with her. This was for all the world to see and all the world proclaimed it instantly; but the other and charming piece of news was more subtly distributed. Women conveyed it by means of their eyebrows, with benign little smiles, and cryptic remarks, such as that—“It was all for the best;” “It would make such a bond”; “No more dangerous friendships;” “It would help the poor thing to forget (if there was anything to forget)!”
Afterwards, all wise people let the story of “the dangerous friendship” die and be buried, as all things that are dead as nails ought to be buried and put out of sight. And no one but a few scandal-lovers talked of anything but the speedily approaching marriage. The men of Salisbury made Bernard Carr’s life a torment to him, accusing him of being busier than a hen with a tin chicken getting Maryon Hammond’s trousseau ready, while they went into the matter of that same trousseau with profane and particular detail. For Carr was Jonathan to Maryon Hammond’s David, and his love for his friend was outrageous and notorious, passing all bounds. Like the mother of Asa he had made an idol in a grove; and the name of the idol was Hammond. The other friend and partner of Maryon Hammond was Girder, a dry, lean fellow of cynical disposition, professing affection for neither man, woman, nor dog; but throughout the long sun-smitten days and rain-soaked nights of that wet, hot January, he was the only man who refrained from joining in the general ribaldry at Carr’s expense, just because Carr, the perfect friend, neglected his own affairs to put Hammond’s in order, so that the latter might in due time marry and leave the country. While Hammond, gay of heart and wonderfully brilliant of face considering he had no looks, irreproachable always in white duck riding-kit—grande tenue for Salisbury—idled away the sunlit, starlit hours with the moon of his desire that knew no wane.
Strange that the affair of Maryon Hammond’s trousseau should occupy the minds and tongues of his friends far more than the threatened rising of the natives! But that was ever the way of Rhodesians in ’96. “Take care of the affairs of your neighbour,” ran their motto, “and the affairs of the country will take care of themselves.” Besides, the natives had threatened so often; it was absurd to be disturbed about them.
The growing restlessness and insolence of the Mashona tribes kraaled in the Salisbury, Mazoë, and Lomagundi districts—that is, within a sixty-mile radius of the capital was in fact notorious, and many of the outlying farmers and miners professed uneasiness; but the Native Commissioners whose business it was to know such things scoffed at their fears. The notion of a rebellion amongst a tribe of people long down-trodden and brow-beaten by the fierce Matabele, and now for the first time enjoying prosperous and unharried life under the white man’s rule found the Commissioners sneering incredulously.
“Makalikas show fight!” scoffed Brebner, Head of the Native Department and terror of every black face from Vryberg to Blantire. “Great Lord of War! There is not one ‘liver’ among the whole fifty thousand of them. But of course they’re cheeky—all niggers are when they get fat, and it takes only one good season with the crops for that. Moreover you must remember that it is now about six years since the Matabele knocked annual spots off them, and they are beginning to forget who it was stopped that by smashing the Matabele. Therefore they are cheeky, also inclined to think they are great. But you give me ten men and three Cape ‘boys’ and I’ll settle the hash of any ten thousand of them in this blessed country.”
This last to the Administrator for whose permission he was nagging to go and “remonstrate” with the ringleaders of a tribal fight down Victoria way. The Administrator smiled at the word. He was aware that Brebner invariably “remonstrated” with a riding-whip, but being a wise man and one who had lived a great part of his life amongst natives he was also aware that Brebner’s mode of argument was the best and only one properly appreciated by “our poor black brothers in South Africa” as they are fancifully described at Exeter Hall.
So, eventually, Brebner and suite were allowed to depart upon their hash-settling expedition. They rode out one pink dawn and the veld swallowed them up; thereafter peace fell upon Salisbury, and all talk of a native rising was dismissed. The discussion on Hammond’s trousseau was resumed at the Club.