Chapter Twelve.
The Red Signal—Or the White?
“Why—it is. It’s old Qubani,” said Driffield.
“And who might old ‘Click’-ubani be?” asked Clare.
“He’s a thundering big Matabele witch-doctor. Fancy the old boy rolling up to see the fun. Wonder they let him in.”
“It was thanks to you, Driffield,” said a man who was within earshot. “He was asking for you. Told them at the gate that you and Lamont had invited him to come.”
“Then he told a whacking big lie, at any rate as far as I am concerned. Well, I suppose I must go and talk to him, and incidentally stand him something. In my line it’s everything to be well in with influential natives.”
“Can’t you bring him here, Mr Driffield?” asked Clare. “I’d like to talk to a Matabele chief—didn’t you say he was a chief?”
“No; a witch-doctor, who, in his way, is often just as big a pot as a chief—sometimes a bigger. You’d better come over with me and talk to him, Miss Vidal; then, when you’ve had enough of him, you can go away, whereas if I bring him here he may stick on for ever.”
Old Qubani, who was squatting against the enclosure talking to a roughish-looking white man, rose to his feet as he saw Driffield, and with hand uplifted poured forth lavish sibongo. Then he turned to Clare.
“Nkosazana! Uhle! Amehlo kwezulu! Wou! Sipazi-pazi!”
“What does he say?” she asked.
“He hails you as a princess, says that you are beautiful, and have eyes like the heavens—and that you are dazzling. That’s why he put his hand over his eyes and looked down.”
“Silly old man; he’s quite poetical,” she said, looking pleased all the same.
“Indhlovukazi!”
“Now he’s calling you a female elephant.”
“Oh, the horrid old wretch. That is a come down, Mr Driffield.”
“Yes, it sounds so, but it’s a big word of sibongo, or praise, with them.”
“Oh well, then I must forgive him.”
“Intandokazi!”
“What’s that?” said Clare, but Driffield had cut short the old man’s rigmarole and was talking to him about something else. He did not care to tell her that she was being hailed as his—Driffield’s—principal—or rather best-loved—wife. Two white men, standing near, and who understood, turned away with a suppressed splutter.
There was the usual request for tobacco, and then, Qubani glancing meaningly in the direction of the bar tent, remarked that he had travelled far, and that the white man made better tywala than the Amandabeli, as, indeed, what could not the white men do.
“A bottle of Bass won’t hurt him,” declared Driffield, sending across for it.
“Why does he wear that great thick cap?” said Clare. “He’d look much better without it.”
“This?” said the old man, putting his hand to the cap of red knitted worsted, surmounted by a tuft, which adorned his head—as the remark was translated to him. “Whau! I am old and the nights are not warm.”
“Why, he’s got on two,” said Clare, as the movement, slightly displacing the red cap, showed another underneath made of like material but white. “Goodness! I wonder his head doesn’t split.”
“Native heads don’t split in a hurry, Miss Vidal,” said Orwell, the Resident Magistrate, who had joined them in time to catch the remark.
“I don’t believe I ought to speak to you, Mr Orwell—at any rate not just yet. You had no business to win that tent-pegging. I had backed Mr Lamont.”
The Magistrate laughed.
“Let me tell you, Miss Vidal, that you had backed the right man then. In fact it’s inconceivable to me how he missed that last time, unless the sense of his awful responsibility made him nervous. It would have made me so.”
Again, many a true word uttered in jest. The speaker little knew that he had stated what was literally and exactly the case.
“Nonsense. I wonder where Mr Lamont has got to. He hasn’t been near me since.”
“That I can quite believe. He’s afraid. I know I should be.”
“Nonsense again, Mr Orwell.” And talking about other things they turned away, quite forgetting the old witch-doctor. There was one, however, who was not forgetting him—no, not by any means.
The while Jim Steele, the latest rejected of Clare, was very drunk in the bar tent. When we say very drunk we don’t mean to convey the idea that he was incapable, or even unsteady on his pins to any appreciable extent—but just nasty, quarrelsome, fighting drunk; and as he was a big, powerful fellow, most of those standing about were rather civil to him. Now Jim Steele was at bottom a good fellow rather than otherwise, but his rejection by Clare Vidal he had taken to heart. He had also taken to drink.
He had noticed Clare and Lamont together that day, and had more than once scowled savagely at the pair. Moreover, he had heard that Clare had backed Lamont—and had made others do so—in the tent-pegging, and now he was bursting with rage and jealousy. It follows therefore that this was an unfortunate moment for the object of his hatred to enter the tent, and call for a whisky-and-soda. Upon him he wheeled round.
“You can’t ride a damn!” he shouted.
“I never tried. I prefer to ride a horse,” said Lamont, setting down his glass.
“But you can’t,” jeered Steele. Then roused to the highest pitch of fury by the other’s coolness, he bellowed: “Look here. Can you fight, eh? Can you? Because if so, come on.”
Something akin to intense dismay came into Lamont’s mind at this development. That this drunken, aggressive idiot should have it in his power to dig not only his own grave—that would have been a good riddance—but all their graves, was a new and startling development in a situation that was already sufficiently complicated. For apart from his horror and repulsion at being perforce a party to a drunken brawl in the bar tent—how was he going to impress Qubani, at the crucial moment, with a bunged-up eye, perchance, or a bleeding nose. He would only look ridiculous, not in the least impressive, and it was of vital importance he should look impressive.
“Yes, I can,” he answered shortly, “but I’m not going to—now.”
A murmur of disgust arose from among some of the bystanders. Lamont had funked again.
“Then you’re a blanked coward,” yelled Steele, and the murmurs deepened. And yet—and yet—there was a look in Lamont’s dark face which made some of them pause, for it was not exactly the look of one who was afraid, rather was it that of a man who was trying to restrain himself.
“I’m not going to now,” he said shortly, “but I’ll accommodate you where and when you like, after the gymkhana’s over. We can’t start bruising now, with a lot of ladies on the scene. Now, can we?”
The bystanders, thus appealed to, saw the sense of this. Besides, they were not going to be done out of their fun this time. It was only fun adjourned.
“No, no. That’s quite right and reasonable. Jim, you can’t kick up a row here now. Take it out of him afterwards,” were some of the cries that arose.
“He won’t be there. He’ll scoot.”
“Oh no, I won’t,” answered Lamont. “I’ll be there,”—“if any of us are,” he added to himself grimly.
He finished his liquor and went outside. There was a lull in the proceedings, and people were moving about and talking, pending the distribution of the prizes.
“Greeting, Qubani. That is good. Last time we talked was ‘kwa Zwabeka.’”
“Ou! Lamonti is my father,” answered the old witch-doctor. Then, having fired off a long string of sibongo, he concluded that the sun was very hot, and it was long since he had drunk anything.
“That shall be presently when these are gone,” said Lamont. “But first—walk round with me, and I will show you where the horses race. It is good to see the chief of all izanusi again.”
The old ruffian complied, nothing loth. He was thinking that the more exuberant his friendliness the more completely would he lull all suspicion among these fools of whites. He professed himself profoundly interested in everything explained to him.
“I saw you ride, Lamonti,” he said. “Whau! but you did pick up the little bits of wood with the long spear. That was great—great. But the other Inkosi was greater.”
“Yes, the other was greater, Qubani, but what made me miss that stroke was joy at seeing my father, the greatest of all izanusi in our midst.”
“Whau!”
“Mr Lamont, do come and help us with the prizes. They balloted for who should distribute them, and Lucy was chosen. Do come and stand by us and help. They are going to begin now.”
“I’m most awfully sorry, Miss Vidal, but I can’t just now.”
“You won’t?” said Clare curtly, for she was not accustomed to be refused.
“I can’t,” he repeated. “Do believe I have a good reason—and don’t direct any attention to me just now. Believe me, a great deal hangs upon it.”
“Very well,” she said, and left him, marvelling. It must be as he had said—still that he should refuse to do something for her and prefer to talk to this squalid old savage instead—why, it was incomprehensible.
“What is covered up on that waggon, Nkose!” said the witch-doctor, pointing to a waggon which stood just inside the fence. Its position, perhaps, directly facing the Ehlatini ridge, suggested an inspiration to Lamont. He answered—
“Izikwa-kwa.” (Maxim guns.)
“’M—’m! Izikwa-kwa?” hummed the other, wholly unable to suppress a considerable start of surprise. Then, recovering himself, he grinned, in bland incredulity.
“Inkosi is joking,” he said. “There is no war.”
“Nevertheless those are izikwa-kwa, loaded and ready to pour forth a storm of bullets for the rest of the day;” and the speaker devoutly prayed that the bar-keeper might not send his boy to get out another supply of soda-water bottles from beneath the sail and thus expose the fraud.
“Come. We will go and see them receive the rewards, those who have won them. But first I would have something to remember the chief of izanusi by. So sell me that red cap which is on thy head, Qubani,” producing some silver.
“Now nay, my father, now nay, for the nights are cold and this red cap is warm—ah! ah! warm. See, here is a fine horn snuff-box, be content with that instead, as a gift.”
“Here I hold the lives of twelve men—six on each side,” answered Lamont, showing him the butt of a revolver, in one of his side pockets. “If I receive not that red cap this instant, the first life it shall spill will be that of the chief of all izanusi.”
Qubani grunted, then his hand went slowly to his head. It was a tense, a nerve-racking moment. Would this savage, defying death, hurl the blood-red symbol high in the air, or—
The two were alone together now, the whole assembly having gathered round the prize tent. Lamont had drawn a revolver.
“Move not, save to hand me that cap,” he said.
For a moment the savage hesitated. But the ring of steel pointing straight at his chest, perhaps the awful and fell look on this man’s face, from which every drop of blood had vanished, and whose eyes were glittering like those of a wild beast, decided him. His hand came slowly down from his head, and the red cap was in Lamont’s left hand.
Yes, it was a tense moment, and in the excitement of it Lamont had all he could do to keep his nerves steady. With a mind characteristically attuned to trifles at such a moment he found his attention partly shared by such. Apart from the crowd a very pretty girl was rating a man, in voluble English with a foreign accent, apparently for having paid too much attention elsewhere during the day. He heard Jim Steele snarling and cursing in the bar tent, and idly wondered if his language would reach ears for which it was not fit. He felt an interest in Orwell’s dog, running about in search of its master—in short, a dozen other trivialities raced through his brain. Then a loud cheer broke the spell. The first prize had been distributed.
“This is not the unarmed gathering you would think, Qubani,” he said, speaking in quick low tones. “Each man—and there are nearly two hundred of them—has his weapons all ready, and would have them in his hand in far less time than it would take you to run—say from here to Ehlatini.”
“Whou!” ejaculated the witch-doctor, bringing his hand to his mouth.
“Moreover, all round Gandela there is laid that which would blow a whole impi into the air did such walk over it. The whites know where it is, but it would be very dangerous for strangers.”
“Ha!”
Another cheer went up, as another prize was given away. Incidentally Lamont thought how fortunate he had been in not winning the tent-pegging competition, for he could not have received his prize by deputy, and it was still important to keep a close watch on Qubani.
“And now, O great isanusi,” he went on, “what would be thy fate did those here know what my múti has told me? No quick and easy death, I fear.”
A troubled and anxious look came into the old man’s face.
“You are my father, Lamonti, but your talk is dark—very dark. Ou! Yet though I understand it not, I will do all you wish.”
“That will be wise. Now we will look at them receiving the rewards. Come.”
The prize tent was at the farther end of the enclosure and facing the Ehlatini ridge, towards which the spectators’ backs were, by the position, of necessity turned. But Lamont, as he manoeuvred his prisoner on to the fringe of the crowd, took care that his was not. He noticed, moreover, a thread of smoke arising from the summit of the ridge. Well, there was nothing very extraordinary about that—or—there might have been.
“Throw up thy cap, Qubani,” he said pleasantly, as another cheer broke forth and some hats were thrown in the air. “Throw up thy cap, and rejoice with us. Thy white cap.”
The witch-doctor dared not refuse. With a broad grin, as though he were entering into the fun of the thing, he threw into the air—the white signal.
Again, and again, every time the cheering broke forth, Lamont banteringly bade him throw it higher, promising much tywala when the proceedings were over, till finally many of the spectators turned their attention to him and laughed like anything, cheering him. And one of them remarked that it was worth coming for alone, just to see the old boy flinging up his cap and hooraying like a white man and a brother.
They little knew, those light-hearted ones, that but for one man’s nerve and presence of mind the red signal would have gone up, and then—
Chapter Thirteen.
On Ehlatini.
When Clare Vidal awoke on the morning after the race meeting, and her thoughts went back to some of the events and incidents of that sporting and festive gathering, she was fain to own herself sorely puzzled: and those events and incidents, it may as well be said, comprised the extraordinary behaviour of Lamont. He had deliberately snubbed her. He had been especially favoured in being singled out and asked to help her—and, incidentally, her sister—and had, lamely, but decidedly refused. Refused! Why, not a man there present but would have sprung to comply with such a request—such a command—as she laughingly recalled how on their first arrival in the country, by the Umtali route at the close of the war of occupation, she had been christened ‘The Queen of the Laager,’ when a passing scare had rendered it advisable to laager up. Yet this one had refused—refused her! Well, what then? He was simply a morose, unmannerly misogynistic brute! No. She could not look upon it in this light at all.
She had awakened early, and felt that a walk in the cloudless morning air, before the sun rays developed into an oppressive steaminess, would do her good. Gandela at large had not awakened early. There had been a good deal of late carousing among the rougher spirits there gathered together for the occasion, and a good deal of house-to-house visitation, also late, on the part of the more refined. So Gandela at large slept late proportionately.
The Fullertons’ house was on the very outskirts of the township, and she stepped forth straight on to the open veldt. The dew lay, sparkling and silvery, upon the green mimosa fronds, and made a diamond carpet of the parched burnt-up grass upon which her steps left footprints. How beautiful was the early morning in this fresh open land. The call and twitter of birds made strange unknown melody as she passed on her way, leaving the shining zinc roofs of the straggling township, turning her face toward the free open country. There lay the race-course, away on her left, and her face was set toward the dark bushy ridge of Ehlatini.
Two ‘go-away’ birds sped before her, uttering their cat-like call, as, with crest perkily erect and flicking their tails, they danced from frond to frond. How cool the inviting depths of that bush line looked, billowing down the slope of the hill, challenging exploration of their bosky recesses.
Clare was in splendid physical form, and walked with a straight willowy swing from the hips, rejoicing in the sheer physical exercise of her youth and strength. She looked up at the ridge above her, then back at the scattered township behind. To gain the summit would mean a fine view, also taking in the far, unknown stretch of country beyond. She had never wandered this way before, and it would be a novelty and something to expatiate upon to those lazy people whom she had left behind in a state of prolonged slumber. Slumber! and on such a morning.
The morning air blew balmy and warm, straight down from the Zambesi and beyond; straight down from the heart of the great mysterious continent. Later on it would be hot, oppressive. And in the shade of the mimosa, and wild fig, and mahobo-hobo, birds piped and called to each other.
Clare struck into a narrow path, which wound up, a mere cattle-track, through the thickness of the bush. It was delightful this roaming about a wild land alone. Soon, with no great effort or tax upon her powers of wind and limb, she had gained the summit of the ridge.
And then, on the farther side, other ridges went ribbing away in the distance, like billows of dark verdure; but on the right, where they ended, sloping abruptly to the more even ground of the gently undulating country beyond, far away in a film of light and vista, to lose itself in a hazy blue on the skyline nearly a hundred miles distant, stretched a vast mysterious wilderness. Then she sat down beneath the shade of a large overhanging wild fig, to take it all in.
She was used to wildness, and loved it. Reared in one of the wildest tracts of wild Ireland, she had delighted to go forth on solitary rambles, with trout rod and creel, more than ankle deep in soft bog soil, tramping laboriously to her field of action in high mountain lough, where the shrieking gust of a squall every half hour or so drove her to refuge beneath some great rock, what time the trout sulked, only to rise fast and furious when the rain squall had passed, and the raven croaked from the shining wet crags. And this solemn blue vista, stretching away in its vastness, formed a contrast indeed to the stormy glistening grandeur of her former mountain home; here with its hot, sub-tropical steaminess; yet there was that in common between both of them—that both were the wilds.
In the dreaminess of her reverie she started suddenly. The loud neighing of a horse, together with the violent flapping of an empty saddle as the animal shook himself, caused a sudden inroad upon her meditations that produced that effect. There, hitched to a bush, stood a horse, one moreover that she seemed to recognise. Yes, it was the large, high-withered roan that Lamont had ridden when, at her urgent request, he had entered for the tent-pegging competition and—had not won.
In a moment Clare’s meditations, dreamy and otherwise, were scattered to the winds. There was the horse, but—where was its owner? A strange inclination—impulse, rather—to get away, to return before he should discover her presence, came upon her. Yet—why? Why on earth—why?
But whatever the ground for such aspirations they were not to be fulfilled, for at that moment a voice hailed her—an astonished voice.
“Why, Miss Vidal, good morning. Who in the world would have dreamed of meeting you up here?”
“I might say the same, Mr Lamont. I thought I would take a bit of a stroll while all Gandela was sleeping off last night’s orgies. Strange, but I’ve never been up here. I suppose it is because the climb rather froze Lucy off—and I didn’t bother to come alone. Do you know I think this country makes people very lazy.”
“Oh yes. There’s a steaminess about it that gets on to one’s energies somehow. It’ll infect you too when you’ve been out here a little longer.”
“Now don’t talk down to me, Mr Lamont. I feel quite an old pioneer. I came up here during the war, you know.”
“Yes, yes. Just over two years ago.”
“Well, you needn’t be so supercilious. Especially as you don’t seem to have been over-successful yourself this morning.”
“Successful? Oh, I see,” following her glance to the magazine rifle he carried. “No. Game is scarce since the rinderpest, and especially right near Gandela, like this.”
“Look what I found just now, in the bush, before I got to the top here,” she said. “It must be some sort of native ornament.”
She held out to him two white cow-tails, fastened to a kind of bracelet of twisted sinew.
“Yes, it is. Very much of a native ornament.”
The tone was dry, and—she thought—rather curious. She went on—
“I have more than one grievance against you, Mr Lamont. First of all, why didn’t you come in and see us last night? We had quite a number of men dropping in.”
“All the more reason why I shouldn’t, isn’t it? Too much of a crowd, you know.”
“No, I don’t. We can never have too much of a crowd of our friends.”
He laughed—again, she thought, strangely.
“That’s novel doctrine to me, anyway,” he said. “I was always under the impression one could—and very much so. But I don’t think your brother-in-law likes me. Isn’t that good enough excuse?”
“No, it isn’t. Dick doesn’t constitute the whole establishment. But, here is another thing. I own I’ve been dying of curiosity over it ever since. Why was it of so much importance that you should spend the rest of the day with that snuffy old savage? You were sticking to him closer than a brother. In fact you were at each other’s elbow all the time. More than one noticed it.”
“Oh, did they?” and here she noticed a touch of concern in his tone. Then, as if he had come to some sudden resolution, “I believe you have good nerves, Miss Vidal?”
“Yes,” wonderingly.
“Well, get Fullerton to take, or send, you and your sister into Buluwayo without further delay.”
Now Clare wondered indeed.
“Why?” she said simply.
“Yes, that’s a fair question. But if I explain, will you undertake not to get panic-stricken, and also to leave events to me—in short, not to give away what I may tell you, no, not even to your sister.”
“Why, of course. But—you don’t mean to say these savages are meditating a war—on us?”
“Yes I do. And not only that, but the whole thing is cut and dried, and it’s only a question when to begin. Now I shall be able to answer your other question. You thought me no end boorish and ungracious yesterday. Well, the reason why I stuck to old Qubani like a brother, instead of being of service to you, was that, if I had not, the whole of Gandela would at this moment be a heap of ashes, and the race-course piled with the bodies of every man, woman, and child in the place.”
“Good Heavens! You don’t mean that?” ejaculated Clare, staring at him.
“Certainly I do. There was an impi stationed here—up here where we are sitting, and at a signal from Qubani it was to rush the whole show. And then—”
“What was the signal?”
“He was to throw up the red cap he was wearing. It was to be done during the prize-giving, so as to be less noticeable.”
“And—you prevented him?”
“I should think so. I showed him a six-shooter—I had one in each pocket—and promised to blow his head off if he didn’t give me that red cap right there. Now a native is nothing if not practical, and the fact of all in Gandela being massacred was nothing to this one if he wasn’t there to see the fun, as, of course, he wouldn’t be. So—he handed over the red cap. I own, though, it was rather a tense moment while he was sort of hesitating whether to do so or not.”
Clare could only gasp, and stared speechless at this man, whom she had heard her brother-in-law, and others, describe as something of a coward—and of whom she, in spite of her better instincts, had thought sorely and with resentment only yesterday, by reason of what she termed to herself his ‘rudeness’ in flatly refusing to do what she had asked him. Good Heavens! And all the time, by his nerve and cool-headedness, he had saved her and the whole settlement from a hideous death. What a cool, masterful, resourceful brain was here.
“But, Mr Lamont,” she broke forth at last, “how did you know that this awful thing was contemplated—was to happen?”
“Well, that’s something of a story. I heard it among them—heard the whole scheme in all its details. Of course they don’t know that, or I shouldn’t be alive here, talking to you at this moment. Indeed, the amazement of the old witch-doctor at finding himself euchred imparted a comic element into a most confoundedly tragical situation.”
Clare looked at him in silence. She was turning over in her mind the events of the previous day. She remembered how the fact of him appearing in a coat had been commented on as an out-of-the-way circumstance. Now it all stood explained. It was to conceal the deadly weapon wherewith he had compelled the treacherous Matabele to abandon his murderous plan. And what an awful contrast was there—that gathering, as unsuspecting and light-hearted as though in the midst of peaceful England, while not a mile away hovered a storm-cloud of bloodthirsty savages awaiting the signal to overwhelm the whole in a whirlwind of massacre and agonising death. And this had been averted by the coolness and resolution of one man.
“You may or may not have noticed that the old ruffian was wearing two caps, a red and a white?”
“Yes, I remarked on that,” said Clare. “I wondered his head didn’t split.”
“Well, the white cap was to be the signal that the time was not ripe. I made him throw up that, and hooray with the rest of us.”
“Yes, I remember that too, and how we all laughed.”
“Of course I primed him with the state of preparedness we were all in, though not seeming to be—and that there were Maxims hidden under that waggon sail instead of soda-water bottles. Good Lord, if the bar-keeper had sent his boy to get out a fresh box of the same! but he didn’t, luckily.”
“Yes, indeed. But what have you done about the affair, Mr Lamont? and is the old witch-doctor in prison?”
“As yet I’ve done nothing except come up here the first thing this morning and verify the whole affair. And I have. There are abundant traces that a large number of Matabele have occupied this ground for hours. Look at the thing you picked up—do you know what it is?”
“This?” said Clare, holding out the cow-tails on the string.
“Yes. Well, that is part of the regular war-gear. It is tied round the leg above the calf—and this thing you found forms an important ‘pièce de conviction.’ It is never worn when moving about in the ordinary way. Well, old Qubani is not detained, because I saw it answered my purpose best to let him go.”
Chapter Fourteen.
A Good Understanding.
“To let him go?” echoed the girl. “But—ought you not to have had him arrested as a traitor and a murderer? Good Heavens! The whole plot is too awful.”
“And so I divulge it to you first, instead of to my fellow-man Orwell, R.M., or Isard, commanding the Matabeleland Mounted Police in Gandela. Why?”
Clare looked puzzled.
“I don’t know why,” she said. “But it seems a dreadful responsibility.”
“So I was inclined to think—in fact, very much did think—when having mapped out my plans everything seemed to conspire to smash them up. Yourself among the said everything.”
“Myself? Now, how?”
Lamont smiled that queer sour smile again.
“Why, certainly. Didn’t you make a point of my entering for the tent-pegging? What would have happened if I’d won? I couldn’t receive a prize by deputy. Didn’t you want me to help you and your sister, what time to have left the side of our worthy and reverend magician would have been fatal?”
“Yes. I did that,” said Clare penitently. “But, Mr Lamont, how on earth could I have foreseen that anything of the kind was brewing?”
“No, you couldn’t. I’m not blaming you, you understand, no, not for a moment.”
What was this? Not blaming her? Blaming her! Clare Vidal was not accustomed to be ‘blamed’ any more than to have her requests refused, especially in this land where there were not even enough women to go round, as she was fond of putting it. She was wondering what awful and scathing rejoinder she would have made to any man who should have ventured on such a remark to her a day or two ago. Yet to this one, lounging back there with one elbow resting on a big cold stone, lighting his pipe, she had no thought of scathing rejoinder. She was all aglow with admiration of his nerve and self-reliance.
“Then there was a bore of a fellow—Jim Steele—who was rather screwed, and wanted me to fight him, silly ass! Of course I wasn’t going to do that there, under any circumstances, but he—and the other idiots who thought I was afraid of him—little dreamt how they were trying to dig their own graves. For our worthy schemer Qubani would have thought me grotesque with a swelled eye, and you are bound to sustain some such damage in a rough-and-tumble with a big powerful devil like Steele. It was important then that Qubani should not think me grotesque.”
“Yes, I know. I’ve heard about that affair. There’s very little that doesn’t get round to us, in a small place like this, Mr Lamont. And you told him you’d meet him later—I know all about it, you see. Well, you mustn’t. It’s not at all worthy of grown men to act like a lot of overgrown schoolboys. It’s undignified.”
“Oh, I very much more than quite agree with you there. But then I promised the chap. Now, how can I go back on a promise?”
More than ever now did her brother-in-law’s insinuations with regard to this man come back to Clare. And it struck her that he did not plead that cowardice might be imputed to him if he failed—only that having made a promise he ought to keep it. “He isn’t a bad chap at bottom, Jim Steele,” went on Lamont, “except when he’s squiffy, and then he gets quarrelsome. Probably he’ll have forgotten all about everything by the time he wakes, or if not will recognise that he’s made an ass of himself.”
“I should hope so, indeed. But we are getting away from the witch-doctor. Why did you let him go?”
“Instinct, pure instinct. Natives are queer animals, and you don’t always know quite how to take them. If we had kept old Qubani, the township might have been rushed this very night. By turning him loose, full up with what I told him—well the move is justified by results, or you and I would not be talking together up here comfortably at this moment. Now this one has taken on a sort of respect for me—they do that, you know. I asked him what he thought would happen if I gave away for what purpose he was there. He wilted at that. Then I told him I gave him his life, and he must not be less generous. He talked round and round for a little, then said that I had better begin to move with my things at a time of the moon I reckoned out at somewhere about a fortnight hence. So now you see why I want you to get Fullerton to take you in to Buluwayo.”
“But, he won’t do it. He might if you were to put it to him.”
“That’s just when he wouldn’t. You know what they’d say, Miss Vidal ‘Lamont’s got ’em again’—meaning the funks.”
This was said with little bitterness, rather with a sort of tolerant contempt. Clare felt ashamed as she remembered all the remarks to which she had listened, reflecting on this man’s courage, and all because he did not take kindly to some low, pothouse brawl. She kindled.
“How can anyone say such a thing—such a wicked thing—when you have saved the whole settlement from massacre?”
“Oh, that wouldn’t count. To begin with, they wouldn’t believe what I’ve just been telling you—would say I’d invented it. They’ll believe it fast enough in a week or two’s time though. By the way, it was the sight of old Qubani and his red cap that made me miss that last tilt at the peg, and a good thing I did miss it. Providential, as Father Mathias would say.”
“Father Mathias? Have you seen him lately?” said Clare.
“We travelled part of the way together when I was coming back from Lyall’s. We were caught in a nasty dry thunderstorm and took refuge in Zwabeka’s kraal. It was there I overheard that nice little conspiracy.”
“And so you travelled with Father Mathias?” said Clare. “I hope you were nice to him. He is a great friend of ours.”
“Nice to him, Miss Vidal?” answered Lamont, raising his brows as if amused at the question. “Why not? He is a very nice man. Why should I be other than nice to him?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Except that—well, he is a priest.”
“What then? Oh, I see what you mean. But I have no prejudice against priests. On the contrary—my experience of them is that they are kindly, tolerant men, very self-sacrificing and with considerable knowledge of human nature. When you’ve said that, it follows that they are almost invariably good company. This one was decidedly so. Why on earth should I not be ‘nice’ to him?”
“Oh well, you know—you Protestants do have prejudices of the kind,” she answered somewhat lamely.
“But I am not a Protestant.”
“Not a Protestant? I don’t quite understand.”
“Certainly not I don’t protest against anything or anybody. I believe in competition, and if the Catholic Church were to capture this country, or England, or the entire world for that matter, I should reckon that the very fact of doing so would be to establish its claim to the right to do so.”
Woman the apostle—woman the missioner—felt moved to say, “Why don’t you examine her claims to do so, and then aid in furthering them?” But Clare Vidal, looking at the speaker, only quoted to herself, “Thou art not far from the kingdom of heaven.”
“As a matter of fact,” went on Lamont, “I find among Catholics far more tolerance—using the word in its broad, work-a-day sense—than among those belonging to any other creed. By the way—are you one, may I ask?”
“Why, of course.”
“I didn’t know. Well, you must take my opinion—given in utter ignorance of the fact—for what it’s worth. There’s a sort of a Catholic colony near my place at home, and the priest is one of my most valued friends.”
Clare brightened.
“Really?” she said. “How nice. But, Mr Lamont, how is it you live over here? Do you prefer this country to England?”
“I think it prefers me. You see, I can’t afford to live in my own place. It’s dipped—mortgaged, you understand—almost past praying for. So it’s let, and here I am.”
“So that’s why you are here?”
“Yes. The life suits me too. I believe if a miracle were to be worked, and my place started again clear for me, I should still stick out here, or at any rate come out every other year.”
Clare looked at him, and the beautiful Irish eyes, their deep blue framed by thick dark lashes, were sympathetic and soft. She was thinking of the abominable stories Ancram had been spreading about this man; how he had been hounded out of his county for cowardice, and so on. She repeated—
“So that is why you are out here?”
“Of course,” he answered looking at her with mild astonishment. “Why else should I be?”
“Oh no. I hope you don’t think me very inquisitive, Mr Lamont. Why, it really seems as if I were trying to—to ‘pump’ you—isn’t that the word?”
“But such a thought never entered my head. Why should it?”
Clare felt uncomfortable. There was manifestly no answer to be made to this. So she said—
“By the way, who is this Mr Ancram? You knew him at home, didn’t you?”
“Oh yes. Slightly, and didn’t care for him at that. He turned up at my place here one night. Peters had picked him up in woeful plight down Pagadi way—and gave me the idea he had come to stay. I’ve nothing to say against the chap, mind, but I don’t care for him.”
Clare was no mischief-maker, still she could not help saying—
“Well, I don’t think he’s any friend of yours, from what I’ve heard.”
“No? I suppose not. He’s been putting about a yarn or two of his own here with regard to me, with just that substratum of truth about it that makes the half lie the most telling. But—good Lord, what does it matter?”
Clare’s eyes opened wide. There was no affectation about this indifference—and how different this man was to the general ruck. Instead of getting into a fume and promising to call the delinquent to account, and so forth, as most men would have done, this one simply lay back against the hard cold stone, puffed out a cloud of smoke, and said, “What does it matter?”
“Then you are indifferent to the opinion of other people about you?” she said.
“Utterly. Utterly and entirely. I look at it from this point of view. If anything is said to my discredit, those whose opinions are worth having won’t believe it. If they do, their opinions are not worth having—from my stand-point. See?”
“Yes, I do. You are a practical philosopher.”
“I don’t aim at being. The conclusion is sheer common-sense.”
Then there fell silence. The rays of the newly risen sun poured down hotter and hotter upon the parched-up land, but the air was wonderfully clear. Behind lay the township, its zinc roofs flashing and shimmering in the unstinted morning radiance. Before lay roll upon roll of billowy verdure, and, on the right, a vast expanse stretching away, blue with distance, to the far skyline. Bright, peaceful and free, yet at that moment seething with demoniacal hate and the planning of demoniacal deeds. Yet here they sat, these two, conversing as unconcernedly as though such things were as completely impossible, as completely of the past, as one of them, at any rate, had up to half an hour ago imagined.
“I must be going back,” said Clare. “This is only a before breakfast constitutional.”
“I’ll go too. I’ve found out all I want to. I shall start back home this evening.”
“This evening? Why, you are never going back to that lonely farm again, with these savages plotting to murder us all?”
“Yes, I am. They won’t do it yet I am persuaded of that.”
Clare’s eyes dilated, as he walked beside her, leading his horse. The ‘coward’ again, she could not help thinking to herself. How many of those who so decried him, knowing what he did, would have started on a long solitary ride across the country to return to a solitary, and practically defenceless, dwelling at the end of the journey?
“But get Fullerton to take you into Buluwayo for a time,” he repeated, as they neared the township. “This place is too small, and straggling, and might be rushed.”
“But he won’t. He’d laugh at the idea, if I put it to him.”
“Yes. I know. Fullerton’s a pig-headed chap—very. Still you needn’t put it on its true grounds. Make out you want to shop, or see a dentist, or something, and get your sister to back you up. It’ll be strange if you can’t work it between you. Only—do it—do it.”
She was impressed by his earnestness, and duly promised.
“Do look in and see us before you go out, Mr Lamont,” she said, as they regained the township. “When do you start?”
“About sundown. There’s a nice new moon, and it’s pleasanter to ride at night, also easier on one’s horse.”
“Well, we shall be at home all the afternoon, Lucy and I. Good-bye for the present.”
Chapter Fifteen.
A Council of War.
When the strokes of the horse’s hoofs told that he had mounted and was riding away, Clare could not resist turning to glance back at him. How well he looked in the saddle, she thought, and then the calm strength of the almost melancholy face as he talked to her, the easy indifference to what would have irritated and stung most men, came back to her. This was an individuality absolutely new to her experience, and one of vivid interest, so vivid indeed that she began to recognise with a sort of wonder that she could not get it out of her thoughts. She recalled their conversation. If he had laid himself out to say exactly the right thing all through it, he could not have pleased her more, and yet it was obvious that he was talking perfectly naturally, and without premeditation—certainly without an idea of pleasing anybody. But—was she going to make a sort of hero of the man? Well, it certainly began to look something like it. So when at the breakfast-table Fullerton remarked—
“Didn’t I see you talking to Lamont just now, Clare, over by the Sea Deep stands?” she felt that the mere question evolved within her quite an unexpected degree of combativeness.
“Yes, you very probably did,” she answered. “We met during my morning constitutional while you lazy people were snoring. He’s very interesting.”
“Is he?”
The tone, savouring of curt incredulity, whipped up the combative instinct still more, as she answered, with quite unnecessary crispness—
“Certainly. He’s got ideas, anyhow. So there’s that much interesting about him, if only for the scarcity of those who have.”
“Ideas or not, he funked again yesterday. When Jim Steele wanted him to take his coat off,” sneered Fullerton. Then the accumulated combativeness broke its barriers and fairly overwhelmed the incautious sneerer.
“Funked again!” echoed Clare. “I don’t believe he ever did such a thing in his life—no, nor ever could. Because he was too much of a gentleman to be drawn into a disgusting tap-room brawl to please a drunken rowdy, you call that funking. Well, I don’t, and I shouldn’t have the good opinion I have of Mr Lamont if he had acted otherwise. You forget, too, that we were all there, and even in Gandela I suppose it’s hardly the correct thing to indulge in prize fights in the presence of ladies.”
“Phew!” whistled Fullerton. “So that’s the way the cat jumps; Clare has struck her flag at last, Lucy. Lamont’s captured her.”
“Oh, go easy, Dick. I won’t have Clare teased,” was all the response he got in the conjugal quarter.
“She seems jolly well able to take care of herself anyhow,” pronounced her brother-in-law resentfully.
“I like fair play,” rejoined the girl, “and a great many of you don’t seem to know the meaning of the word. Because somebody says one thing, and somebody else another about a man who is really too much of a man to bother himself about it—you all go to work to make him out this and to make him out that. You’re worse than a pack of spiteful women.”
Oh, how she longed to tell them all she knew—how the man they were decrying had spent the day watching over the safety of all present, how his cool nerve and unflagging resource had averted from them the ghastly peril that threatened. But this she could not do. She was bound over to absolute and entire secrecy.
“By Jingo, I’ll tell you another thing now,” said Fullerton. “Blest if I didn’t meet this very chap, Lamont, at the bend of the road, just beyond the house, at twelve o’clock last night—you know, just after those fellows left us. He was strolling this way, and he’d got a Lee-Metford magazine rifle. I asked him what the deuce he was playing at sentry-go like that for, and he grunted something about getting his hand in, whatever that might mean; and when I wanted him to come in and have a whisky—for you can’t be inhospitable even though you don’t care much for a fellow—he wouldn’t, because he was afraid of scaring you all if you saw him with a rifle at that time of night, and of course he wouldn’t leave it outside. What was he up to, that’s the question. I own it stumps me.”
“Ah!” said Clare, with a provoking smile. “What was he up to?”
But a new light had swept in upon her mind. In view of what she had learned that morning there was nothing eccentric about this lonely watcher and his midnight vigil. And yet—and yet—why should he have singled out Richard Fullerton’s house as the special object of his self-imposed guardianship?
Meanwhile a sort of council of war was going on elsewhere. It consisted of four persons, Orwell the Resident Magistrate, Isard the officer in command of the Mounted Police stationed at Gandela, Driffield the Native Commissioner, and Lamont. To the other three the latter had just unfolded his tale of the conspiracy, and the steps he had taken to avert its execution on the previous day.
It had been received in varying manner. Orwell, a recent importation from England, and who deemed himself lucky in drawing a fixed salary from the Government of the Chartered Company as against years of waiting as a briefless barrister, was inclined to treat it flippantly. Isard, on the other hand, thought there might be something in it, but was resentfully disposed towards Lamont for not consulting him from the very first. He was responsible for the safety of the place, in a way, even more than the R.M., he deemed, and should have been informed of what was going on in order to take the necessary steps. But Driffield was fully awake to the gravity of the situation. He moved constantly among the natives, and understood not only their language perfectly but their ways of thought, and customs, and now this development seemed to fit in with, and piece together, what he had only heard darkly rumoured and hinted at among them.
“One thing about it puzzles me,” said Orwell. “You say that these fellows were actually posted up there on Ehlatini watching us all the time, Lamont. Now, how on earth could you find that out for certain?”
“Spoor. A considerable body like that could not have got up there and gone away again without leaving plenty of tracks, even when the ground is as dry as it is now. Now could it?”
“Oh, I suppose not,” answered Orwell rather hastily, for to him the mysteries of spoor were simply a blank page.
Lamont went on, “I’ll take you up there and point it all out to you. What do you say, Isard?”
“Yes, I’d like to see it,” was the answer, sceptically made, for Isard was a retired military man, with but little experience of veldt-craft.
“Here is another trifle or two which is corroborative evidence,” went on Lamont, producing the cow-tail ornament which Clare had picked up, as also one he himself had found.
“Ah yes. Well, but two swallows don’t make a summer,” said Orwell, still flippant.
“No, and two cow-tails don’t make an impi,” rejoined Lamont equably. “But these things are never worn as peaceable adornments. Driffield will bear me out in that.”
“That’s a fact,” said the Native Commissioner decisively.
“We ought to have been told, Orwell and I,” pronounced Isard briskly. “We’d have arrested this witch-doctor, and laid him by the heels as a hostage.”
“You’d have spoilt the whole show,” answered Lamont calmly. “The rest would have seen that something was wrong and would have rushed us at a disadvantage. What then? There wasn’t a man Jack on that race ground yesterday with so much as a six-shooter in his hip pocket. Where would they all have come in—and the women and children? Think it out a moment. No, my plan was the best.”
“Lamont’s right,” said Driffield. “By Jove, Lamont’s right! I’ve always said we go about a deuced sight too careless in this country, with no more means of defence than a toothpick, a pipe, and a bunch of keys.”
“Well, the point is,” struck in Orwell, rather testily, “what are we going to do now? Yes. What the very devil are we going to do now? Supposing I—or rather Isard and I—get laagering up the township, we incur the devil’s own responsibility, and then, if nothing comes of it, maybe we shan’t get into high hot water at Buluwayo for raising an all-searching scare.”
“I still think we ought to have boned the witch-doctor,” said Isard, “even if we waited until everybody had gone home. How’s that, Lamont?”
“It isn’t. In the first place, I had pledged myself to let him go away safe. In the next, you’d have brought matters to a head a lively sight sooner than was wanted. As it is, we have nearly a fortnight to get ready in.”
“How do you get at that?”
“Well, I’ve got at it—never mind how. The point is to see that you profit by the knowledge. I shall. I’m going back to my farm to-night.”
“Going back to your farm? The devil you are!” exclaimed Orwell.
“Of course. I’m not going to be the one to start the scare. I’ve warned every fellow I could, but they took it as a howling joke—like in the case of old Noah when he was knocking up the ark.”
There was a laugh at this.
“Well, I’ve done all I could,” he went on. “If you see an idiot sprinting straight for the edge of a precipice and when you warn him off he persists in swearing there’s no precipice there—what can you do? Nothing. Your responsibility ceases, unless you are physically strong enough to hold him back. Now, I am not physically strong enough to hold back the whole Matyantatu district. Give us another fill of your ’bacco, Orwell. Mine has all run to dust.”
“The thing is, what’s to be done?” went on Orwell, now rather testily.
“You and Isard must settle that,” answered Lamont. “I’m not responsible for the safety of the township. Only remember,” and here he became impressive, “you have women and children in the place, and lots of the houses are rather outlying. What I would suggest is to formulate some scheme by which you could run together some sort of laager at very short notice. Get all the waggons you can, and sand-bags and store-bags and so on, and warn quietly all the most level-headed of the community, and fix up that they shall get inside it if necessary. Only, do the thing quietly, so you will escape the obloquy of posing as scare-mongers and yet not give it away to the natives that you’re funking them. Isard, with his knowledge of strategy, ought to be able to arrange all that to a hair.”
This was rather a nasty one to Isard, whom the speaker happened to know had been one of those who was too ready to take in the insinuations of cowardice that had been made against himself, and had been a bit short and supercilious in consequence.
“That’s all very fine and large,” retorted the police captain. “But what we should like to know is, how the devil we’re going to get that very short notice.”
“You have native detectives attached to your force,” answered Lamont, “who may or may not be reliable—probably not. But failing them, or in any case, if I’m above ground I’ll contrive to give it you.”
“You? Why, how?”
“I told you I was going to start out for my farm to-night. After that I’m going to pay another visit to Zwabeka’s kraal.”
“The devil you are!” And Orwell and the police captain looked at each other. The same thought was in both their minds. This Lamont had acquired a reputation for being careful of his skin. Why, even the new arrival, Ancram, who had known him at home, had added to such reputation by the tale he had put about as to the reason why Lamont had found his own county too hot to hold him. Yet here he was proposing to go and put his head into the lion’s mouth. The subject of their thoughts, reading them, smiled to himself.
“Certainly I am,” he said. “You see, now, I was right in keeping faith with old Qubani. I’ll be able to find out something, and when I do I’ll let you know by hook or by crook. Meanwhile get everything prepared—quietly if you can, but—prepared. Now I don’t think we’ve any more to talk about, so I shall get back to Foster’s. Coming, Driffield?”
“Yes,” answered the Native Commissioner.
The two officials left together looked at each other for a moment in silence.
“Can’t make that fellow out,” said Orwell, breaking it. “I like Lamont well enough, but there’s no doubt about it that on at least two occasions, irrespective of Ancram’s yarn about him, he—well, er—caved in. Yet now he’s as cool and collected as a cucumber.”
“’M—yes. A collected cucumber,” said Isard.
“Oh, don’t be an ass, Isard. Now, I wonder if it’s a case of the nigger lion-tamer who used to stick his head in the lion’s mouth every evening, but when some fighting rough threatened to take it out of him he ran. That cad wouldn’t have gone into that lion’s cage even, let alone stick his head into the brute’s mouth. No, I expect we are all funksticks on some point or other. What?”
“Perhaps,” said Isard frostily, not in the least agreeing. Outwardly he was a tall, fine, soldierly man, looking well set up and smart in his uniform and spurs, and ‘Jameson’ hat. He had a bit of a reputation for ‘side,’ and now he little relished playing second fiddle to a man he esteemed as lightly as he did Lamont. “I don’t know that the fellow’s yarn isn’t all cock-and-bull and mare’s-nest,” he went on. “You see, it’s in his interest to pose as the saviour of Gandela.”
And he clanked out, not quite so convinced of what he preached, all the same.
“Say, Mr Lamont,” grinned the bar-keeper, as he and Driffield entered the hotel, “I’m afraid you won’t be able to pull off that scrap with Jim Steele to-day. He’s much too boozed.”
“Is he? Oh well, I really can’t be expected to hang about Gandela waiting till Jim Steele condescends to be sober again. Now can I? I put it to anyone.”
“Certainly not,” said Driffield. “You’ve given him every chance.”
A murmur of assent went up from those in the room, with one or two exceptions. These, charitably opined, though they did not say so, that it was ‘slim’ of Lamont putting off the affair, knowing what sort of state the other man would be in for the next three days at least. Lamont went on—
“He can take it on any time he likes. For the matter of that he can come out to my place and have it there. I’ll put him up for the occasion. Peters ’ll see fair play. What more can I do!”
It was agreed that the speaker stood vindicated.