Chapter Five.
The Meeting of the Ways.
The mail-steamer from England had been docked early in Cape Town, and the tables at lunch-time, in the dining room of Cogill’s Hotel at Wynberg, were quite full. There is something unmistakable about the newly landed passenger, male or female, especially when taken gregariously; and this comes out mainly in a wholly abnormal vivacity, begotten presumably of a sense of emancipation from the cooped monotony of shipboard, and a conversational tendency to hark back to the incidents of the voyage, and the idiosyncrasies of the populace of the recent floating prison. Add to this a display of brand new ribbons on the hats of certain of the ornamental sex, bearing the name of the floating prison aforesaid, and a sort of huddled up clannishness as of a hanging together for mutual protection in a strange land.
With this phase of humanity were most of the tables filled. One, however, was an exception, containing a square party of four, not of the exuberantly lively order. To be perfectly accurate, though, only three of these constituted a “party;” the fourth, a silent stranger, wearing more the aspect of a man from up-country than one of the newly landed, was unknown to the residue.
“What an abominable noise those people are making,” remarked one of the trio, a tall, thin, high-nosed person of about thirty, with a glance at a table over the way, where several newly landed females were screaming over the witticisms of a brace of downy lipped youths, who were under the impression the whole room was hanging upon their words. “I only hope they don’t represent the sort of people we shall have to put up with if we stay here.”
“Don’t you be alarmed about that, Mrs Bateman,” said the man on her right. “That stamp of Britisher doesn’t stay here. It melts off into boarding-houses and situations in Cape Town or Johannesburg. Just rolls up here because it’s the thing to run out to Cogill’s and have tiffin first thing on landing; at least, so it thinks. It’ll all have disappeared by to-night.”
“That’s a comfort, anyway, if we do stay. What do you think of this place, Nidia?”
“I think it’ll do. Those views of the mountain we got coming along in the train were perfectly lovely. And then it seems so leafy and cool. You can get about from here, too, can’t you, Mr Moseley?”
“Oh yes, anywhere. Any amount of trains and trams. And I expect you’ll wear out the roads with that bike of yours, Miss Commerell.”
“By the way, I wonder if they brought our bicycles from the station?” said the other of the two ladies. “You saw them last, Nidia.”
“Yes. They are all right. They were standing outside when we came in.”
Now, utterly workaday and commonplace as all this was, not a word of it escaped the silent stranger. This girl, seated at his right, had riveted his attention from the moment she came in, and indeed there was that about Nidia Commerell’s face which was likely to exercise such an effect. It had a way of lighting up—a sudden lifting of the eyelashes, the breaking into a half smile, revealing a row of teeth beautifully even and white. She had blue eyes, and her hair, which was neither brown nor golden, but something between, curled in soft natural waves along the brow, dispensing with the necessity of any attempt at a fringe; and her colouring was of that warm richness which gave the idea that Nature had at first intended her for a brunette, then got puzzled, and finally had given her up in hopeless despair, which was perhaps the best thing that could have happened, for the result was about as dainty, refined, alluring a specimen of young womanhood as the jaded glance of the discriminating male could wish to rest upon.
This, at any rate, was the mental verdict of the stranger, and for this reason he hailed with inward satisfaction the recently expressed decision of the two as to taking up their quarters there for a time.
“You ought to remain here a few days, and show us about, Mr Moseley,” said the elder of the two ladies, after some more desultory conversation.
“Wish I could, Mrs Bateman. No such luck, though. I’ve got to start for Bulawayo to-night. They are hurrying the soul out of me as it is.”
“Isn’t the journey a frightful one?” asked Nidia.
“It isn’t a delightful one,” laughed the man, who was just a fair average specimen of the well-bred Englishman, of good height, well set up, and well groomed. “Railway to Mafeking, then eight days’ coaching; and they tell me the coach is always crammed full. Pleasant, isn’t it?”
The stranger looked up quickly as though about to say something, but thought better of it. Nidia rejoined—
“What in the world will we do when our time comes?”
“I am afraid you must make up your minds to some discomforts,” replied Moseley. “One of the conditions of life in a new country, you know. But people are very decent in those parts, and I’m sure would do everything they could to assist you.”
A little more conversation, and, lunch being over, the trio withdrew. John Ames, left alone at the table, was lost in all sorts of wild imaginings. Something seemed to have altered within him, and that owing to the proximity of this girl, a perfect stranger, whom three quarters of an hour ago he had never set eyes on. It was really very absurd, he told himself. But when a man has had fever, he is bound to be liable to fall a victim to any kind of absurdity. Fever! that was it—so he told himself.
Now, as he sat there, dreamily cracking almonds, he began to regret his reticence. The very turn of the conversation favoured him. He might have volunteered considerable information for the benefit of the man who was going up-country, he suspected, for the first time. The conversation would have become general, and might have paved the way to an acquaintanceship. There was no necessity for him to have been so reticent. He had lived too long stowed away, he decided. It was high time he came out of his shell.
He had applied for and obtained his leave, and had come down there to spend it. The sea breezes blowing across the isthmus of the Cape Peninsula, the cool leafiness of the lovely suburbs, were as a very tonic after the hot, steamy, tropical glow of his remote home. But the effects of the fever, combined with a natural reserve, kept him from going much among people, and most of his time was spent alone.
“I wonder who that man is who sat at our table,” Nidia Commerell was saying; for the trio were seated outside trying to converse amid the cackle and din of one of the livelier parties before referred to.
“He looked awfully gloomy,” said Mrs Bateman.
“Did you think so, Susie? Now, I thought he looked nice. Perhaps he wasn’t feeling well.”
“He had a look that way, too,” said Moseley. “Up-country man perhaps. Down here to throw off a touch of fever. I’ve seen them before.”
“Poor fellow! That may have accounted for it,” said Nidia. “Yes; he’s quite nice-looking.”
John Ames, meanwhile, was smoking a solitary pipe on the balcony in front of his room, and his thoughts continued to run on this new—and to him, supremely foolish subject. Then he pulled himself together. He would get on his bicycle and roll down to Muizenberg for a whiff of the briny.
The afternoon was cloudless and still, and the spin along a smooth and, for the most part, level road exhilarating. A brisk stroll on the beach, the rollers tumbling lazily in, and he had brought his mind to other things—the affairs of his district, and whether the other man who was temporarily filling his place would be likely to make a mess of them or not, and how he would pull with Inglefield—whether Madúla had recovered from the sulky mood into which the action of Nanzicele had thrown him—and half a hundred matters of the sort. And so, having re-mounted his wheel, and being about halfway homeward again, he could own himself clear of the foolish vein in which he had set out, when—there whirled round the bend in the road two bicycles, the riders whereof were of the ornamental sex; in fact, the very two upon one of whom his thoughts had been chaotically running.
One quick glance from Nidia Commerell’s blue eyes as they shot by, and John Ames was thrown right back into all that futile vein of meditation which he had only just succeeded in putting behind him. The offender, meanwhile, was delivering herself on the subject of him to her companion in no uncertain terms.
“Susie, that’s the man who was sitting at our table. I think we’ll get to know him. He looks nice, and, as he bikes, he’ll come in handy as escort to a pair of unprotected females.”
“How do you know he’ll appreciate the distinction you propose to confer upon him? He may not, you know. He looks reserved.”
“Oh, he’s only shy. Say something civil to him to-night at dinner. We’ll soon get him out of his shell. He only wants a little judicious drawing out.”
The other looked dubious. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’m not sure we hadn’t better leave him alone. You see, I’m responsible for your good behaviour now, Nidia; and really it is a responsibility. I don’t like being a party to adding this unfortunate man’s to your string of scalps.”
We regret to record that at this juncture Nidia’s exceedingly pretty mouth framed but one word of one syllable. This was it:
“Bosh!”
“No, it isn’t bosh,” went on her friend, emphatically. “And, the worst of it is, they all take it so badly; and this one looks as if he’d be no exception to the general rule, but very much the reverse. I don’t know what there is about you, but you really ought to be cloistered, my child; you’re too dangerous to be at large.”
“Susie, dry up! We’ll exploit our interesting stranger this evening, that is, presently; and now I think we’d better turn, for after three weeks of the ship I can’t ride any further with the slightest hope of getting back to-night.”
The upshot of all this was that when the two sat down to dinner they gave John Ames the “Good evening” with just as much geniality as the frigidity of English manners would allow to be manifested when outside England towards the only other occupant of the same table. It sufficed for its purposes, and soon the three were in converse.
“We passed each other on the road this evening,” said John Ames. “It was some way out, and I wonder you got back in time. Are you fond of bicycling?”
“We simply live on our bikes when the weather is decent,” replied Nidia. “This seems a good locality for it. The roads are splendid, aren’t they?”
“Yes. I generally wheel down to Muizenberg or Kalk Bay for a puff of sea air. It’s refreshing after the up-country heat.”
“Sea air? But can you get to the sea so soon?” said Mrs Bateman, surprised.
“Oh yes. In less than an hour.”
Both then began to enthuse about the sea, after the British method, which was the more inexplicable considering they had just had three weeks of it, and that viewed from its very worst standpoint—upon it, to wit. They must go there to-morrow. Was it easy to find the way? And so forth. What could John Ames do but volunteer to show it them?—which offer was duly accepted. Things were now upon a good understanding.
“Do they ride bikes much up-country—I think you said you were from up-country, did you not?” said Nidia, artlessly, with that quick lift of the eyelids.
“Oh yes, a good deal. But it’s more for the hard practical purpose of getting from one place to another than just riding about for fun. It strikes one though, if one has any imagination, as a sample of the way in which this aggressive civilisation of ours wedges itself in everywhere. You are right away in the veldt, perhaps only just scared away a clump of sable or roan antelope, or struck the fresh spoor of a brace of business-like lions, when you look up, and there are two fellows whirring by on up-to-date bikes. You give each other a passing shout and they are gone.”
“Yes. It is a contrast, if one has an imagination,” said Nidia. “But not everybody has. Don’t you think so?”
“Certainly. But when a man lives a good deal alone, and sees comparatively little of his kind, it is apt to stimulate that faculty.”
Nidia looked interested. The firm, quiet face before her, the straight glance of the grey eyes, represented a character entirely to her liking, she decided. “Is it long since you came out?” she asked.
“Well, in the sense you mean I can’t be said to have come out at all, for I was born and bred out here—in Natal, at least. But I have been in England.”
“Really? I thought you were perhaps one of the many who had come out during the last few years.”
“Am I not colonial enough?” said John Ames, with a quiet laugh.
“N-no. At least, I don’t mean that—in fact, I don’t know what I do mean,” broke off Nidia, with a perfectly disarming frankness.
“Do you know Bulawayo at all?”
The diversion came from the third of the trio.
“Oh yes; I have just come from up that way.”
“Really. I wonder if you ever met my husband. He is a mining engineer. Bateman our name is.”
John Ames thought.
“The name doesn’t seem altogether unknown to me,” he said. “The fact is I am very seldom in Bulawayo. My district lies away out in the wilds, and very wild indeed it is.”
“What sort of a place is Bulawayo?”
“Oh, a creditable township enough, considering that barely three years ago it was a vast savage kraal, and, barring a few traders, there wasn’t a white man in the country.”
“But isn’t it full of savages now?” struck in Nidia.
“Yes; there are a good few—not right around Bulawayo, though. Are you likely to be going up there?”
“We are, a little later,” replied Mrs Bateman. “This is fortunate. You will be able to tell us all about it.”
“With pleasure. I shall be too happy to give you any information I can.”
“Is it safe up there?” said Nidia. “Is there no fear of those dreadful savages rising some night and killing us all?”
Unconsciously the official reserve came over John Ames. He had more than once predicted to himself and one or two confidential friends such a contingency as by no means outside the bounds of practical politics, almost invariably to be laughed at for his pains. Now he replied:
“Everything that precaution can do is against it. They are carefully supervised; in fact, it is my own particular business to supervise a considerable section of them.”
“Really? But how do you talk, to them? Can they talk English?”
John Ames smiled. “You forget I mentioned that I was raised in Natal.”
“Of course. How stupid I am!” declared Nidia. “And so you know their language and have to look after them? Isn’t it very exciting?”
“No; deplorably prosaic. There are points of interest about the work, though.”
“And you keep them in order, and know all that’s going on?”
“We try to; and I think on the whole we succeed fairly well.”
But at that very moment Shiminya the sorcerer was dooming to death two persons, and filling with seditious venom the minds of three chiefs of importance within the speaker’s district.
Chapter Six.
About some Dallying.
John Ames was beginning to enjoy his leave, and that actively.
At first he had done so in a negative kind of way. It was pleasant to have nothing to do, and plenty of time to do it in, to rise in the morning and know that until bedtime at night he had only to please himself and take no thought for anything whatever. He had a few acquaintance in the neighbourhood, more or less busy people whose avocations kept them in Cape Town throughout the working day, and so was mostly thrown upon his own resources. This, however, was not without its advantages, for the change had hardly benefited him much as yet, and he was conscious of a sort of mental languor which rendered him rather disinclined than otherwise for the society of his fellows. He liked to mount his bicycle and spin for miles along the smooth level roads, beneath the oak and fir shade, the towering wall of mountain glimpsed ever and anon athwart the trees; or, gaining the nearest point of sea shore, lie on the beach for hours, watching the rollers come tumbling in, and the revels of bathers skipping amid the surf. Hitherto he had been content to do all this alone, now he was not; and the name of the agency which had effected this change was Nidia Commerell.
Nearly a fortnight has gone by since we introduced that entrancing personality to the reader’s notice; and whatever effects the same had had upon John Ames, one at any rate was certain, viz. a conviction that it was not good to be alone.
They had seen a good deal of each other within that time. Nidia had carried out to the full her expressed intention of using him as an escort, and he, for his part, had gladly welcomed the rôle, and efficiently discharged it; and whether it was along bicycle ride, or a more remote expedition by rail, or a scramble up the Devil’s Peak, that commended itself to the two ladies for the day’s programme, there was John Ames in sure and faithful attendance. It did him good, too. There was an ingredient in the tonic which was stimulating, life-giving indeed, and now in this daily companionship he felt that life was worth living. Decidedly he had begun to enjoy his leave.
“Well, Susie, wasn’t I justified in my prediction?” said Nidia to her friend, as they were dressing for dinner after one of these expeditions.
“Which prediction? You make so many.”
“Concerning John Ames,”—for so they had got into the way of designating him when alone together.
“I said he looked as if he were nice, and also that he would come in handy as an escort for two unprotected females. Well, he is both. Isn’t he?”
“Yes; he is a remarkably well-mannered, pleasant man.”
“With more than two ideas in his head?”
“Yes; he can talk intelligently on any subject, and if he knows nothing about it won’t pretend to.”
“As is the case with the average turned-out-of-a-bandbox, eyeward-twisting-moustache type of Apollo one usually encounters in one’s progress through this vale of woe,” supplied Nidia, with an airy laugh.
“That holds good, too. But, gracious Heavens, child, don’t pile up your adjectives in that mountainous fashion, or you’ll reflect no credit on my most careful training and tuition.”
“All rights Govvie,” cried Nidia, with a peal of merry laughter—the point of the allusion being that prior to her marriage Susie Bateman had been a combination of companion and governess to the girl she was now chaperoning; in fact, was a distant relation to boot. “But the said careful training was such a long time ago. I’m beginning to forget it.”
“Long time ago!”
“Yes, it was. In the days of my youth. I am in my twenty-fourth year, remember. Is that nothing?”
“Of course it’s nothing. But—what were we talking about?”
“Oh, John Ames, as usual.”
“As usual—yes. But, Nidia, isn’t it rather rough on the man? He’s sure to end by falling in love with you.”
Again the girl laughed, but this time she changed colour ever so slightly.
“To end by it! That’s not very complimentary to my transcendent fascinations, O Susie. He ought to begin by it. But—to be serious—perfectly serious—he isn’t that sort.”
“I’m not by any means sure. Why should you think so?”
“No signs. He’d have hung out signals long ago if he’d been trending that way. They all do. The monotony of the procedure is simply wearisome.”
“Nidia, you are really a very dreadful child. Your talk is absolutely shocking to the ears of a well brought up British female.”
“Can’t help it. If a series of idiots come to labour under the impression that life outside my presence—ten days after first becoming aware of my existence—is totally unendurable, where am I to blame? I can’t scowl at them, and nothing short of that will restrain them. Now, the reason why I rather like this man is that he has so far shown no signs of mental aberration.”
She meant it all. For one so plenteously, so dangerously, dowered as far as the other sex was concerned, Nidia Commerell was strangely unromantic. In her allusion to the rapidity with which the average male succumbed to her charms there was no exaggeration. She seemed to possess the art of conquest sudden and complete, yet, in reality, art it was not, for she had not a shadow of the flirt in her composition. The very artlessness of her frank unstudied demeanour constituted, in fact, her most formidable armament. But she refused to see why she should avoid the other sex simply because a large percentage of its members were weak enough to fall in love with her upon no sort of warranty or provocation. There was no affectation, either, in her declaration that the unanimity wherewith they did so candidly bored her.
“Just as I begin to like a man,” she would plaintively declare, “and find him of some use, he gets serious, gloomy, and spoils everything.” And for all her airiness on the subject, she was not entirely without a qualm lest John Ames should follow suit, and him she had more than begun to like very much indeed. The roar of a truly demoniacal gong cut short further discussion of the subject, by warning them that it was time to go down and join the object of it at table. Him they found in an amused state.
“Rather fun,” he said. “Some fellow has been going for that most cherished and firmly rooted institution, the great Cape fish-horn, in a letter to the evening Argus. He doesn’t see how a civilised community at the end of the nineteenth century can tolerate their day and night alike being made hideous by an unending procession of dirty Malays blaring weirdly, wildly, deafeningly through a ‘yard of tin;’ and, for the matter of that, no more do I. Look, here it is”—handing the paper across to Mrs Bateman.
The latter, like most high-featured people, was of censorious habit. “Yes; it’s amusing,” she said. “But there are some people who are never happy unless they are finding fault. I suppose even these poor Malays must earn their living.”
“No fear of their not doing that,” rejoined Ames. “Why, they are the most well-to-do crowd on this peninsula. I take it the writer’s point is they could earn it without making life intolerable to the world at large.”
At which remark, ever so faint a droop of the mouth-corners changed the visage of a silent, middle-aged individual seated at an adjacent table; but his back was towards them, and they couldn’t see it. “Oh, nonsense,” retorted Mrs Bateman, breezily. “People who can’t stand a little noise ought to go and live by themselves on a desert island.”
Here the droop on the lips of the silent one became a very pronounced sneer. “A fool of a woman, answering according to her folly,” he thought.
“Let me see it,” cried Nidia. “Yes; it is a good joke, and perfectly true, too. I know I’ve wished that same hideous noise anywhere times out of number. I quite agree—it is amazing how they tolerate it. I wonder who the writer is. Positively I’d like to send him an anonymous letter of cordial thanks.”
This time the silent one laughed to himself, heartily and undisguisedly.
“Write it to the Argus instead and agree with him; that’ll do just as well,” said John Ames. “The fact of the matter is that the Malay vote is a power just here, and it would be about as easy to uproot Table Mountain itself as the diabolical snoek trumpet under discussion.”
“No, I don’t agree with you in the least, Susie,” declared Nidia. “I think unnecessary racket ought to be put down with a stern hand. Don’t you remember all that abominable cannon nuisance when we were in the Bernese Oberland? You didn’t like that any more than I did. Just fancy, Mr Ames. Some of the most picturesque turnings of the road, almost wherever we went, were tenanted by a miscreant volunteering to let off a horrid cannon for half a franc—to raise an echo.”
“I should have felt like offering him a whole one not to raise it,” was the reply. “But the noble Switzer was shrewd enough to appraise his clients at their correct value. The English are never quite happy unless they are making a noise, unless it is when they are listening to one.”
“Yes; aren’t they?” cried Nidia. “You see it in their fondness for banging doors and talking at the top of their voices on every landing at all hours of the day and night, and throwing their boots about and pounding up and down for hours over somebody else’s head, in a house full of other people.”
The silent one hearkened approvingly. “That’s no fool of a girl,” he was saying to himself.
“I know,” replied John Ames. “And, talking about that stumping overhead trick, if you were wantonly to knock a cripple off his crutch you would be voted the greatest brute on earth. Yet that same cripple will go into the room above yours, and, as you say, pound up and down for hours, or perhaps let fall that same crutch with a mighty bang upon the floor, totally callous to the possibility of there being some unfortunate wight underneath with shattered nerves, and generally seedy, and who would give his soul for a square night’s rest. No; if you expect from other people any of the consideration they expect from you, you are simply laughed at for a fool, and a selfish one at that.”
“Oh, well, in life we have to give and take, I suppose,” remarked the censorious one, with striking originality.
John Ames smiled. He had an idea as to the sort of giving and taking this masterful person would be likely to practise, save in one quarter, that is; for he had not spent the time he had in the society of the two without detecting that she had at any rate one soft place, and that was Nidia Commerell. So he agreed easily, and the talk drifted on to other matters.
It was pleasant out in the moonlight. The elder of the two ladies had pronounced herself tired when Nidia, whose freshness nothing seemed to impair, suggested strolling. John Ames was rather inclined to be silent as they wandered on, the light of the southern moon flooding down through the overshadowing firs, the balmy stillness of the night broken by distant snatches of shrill laughter and the chatter of voices from squalid coloured loafers on the main road. He was realising with a sort of pang at the heart how all this time would soon be behind him, as in a flash, only as an episode to look back to. The girl, noting his silence, was wondering whether it was a prelude to what she had airily termed “hoisting the signals,” and, thus conjecturing, was surprised at herself and her lack of the usual eagerness to avoid them.
“You are feeling much better than when you came down, are you not, Mr Ames?” she said softly.
“Ever so much. I shall go back quite set up.”
Her practised ear detected the slightest suspicion of melancholy in the tone, while admiring the strength which controlled it.
“What a strange life you must have to lead up there!” she went on; for he had told her a good deal about himself during the time of their acquaintanceship.
“Oh yes. It gets monotonous at times. But then, I take it, everything does.”
“But it is such a useful life. And you have helped to open up the country, too.”
“Not I. That is left to other people.”
“But you were with the first expedition, and so of course you helped. I don’t wonder you pioneers are proud of the part you took in extending the Empire. Isn’t that the correct newspaper phrase? At any rate, it sounds something big.”
John Ames smiled queerly. He was not especially proud of the extension of the Empire; he had seen a few things incidental to that process which had killed within him any such incipient inflation.
“Oh yes; there’s a good deal of sound about most of the doings of ‘the Empire,’ but there—I must not get cynical on that head, because the said extension is finding me in bread and cheese just now, and I must endeavour to be ‘proud of’ that.”
“You must have great responsibilities holding the position you do. Tell me, are you able to throw them off while you are away, or do you lie awake sometimes at night wondering if things are going right?”
“Oh, I try not to bother my head about them. It’s of no use taking a holiday and thinking about ‘shop’ all the while. Besides, the man who is in my place is all there. He has been at it as long as I have; and if there is one thing I may say without conceit I do know—in fact, both of us know—it is the wily native and his little ways.”
Ah, John Ames, so you thought, and so thought many others in those boding days! But at this moment the man who is in your place is drinking whisky and water and smoking pipes with the Police sub-inspector in a circular hut on the Sikumbutana, and you are dallying beneath a radiant moon upon a fir-shaded road at Wynberg, with more than one lingering glance into the eyes of the sweet-faced, soft-voiced girl beside you. But one could almost read a leering derisive grin into the face of the cold moon, for that moon is now looking down upon that which would give both yourself and ‘the man in your place’ something very serious to think about and to do. It is looking down upon—let us see what.
Chapter Seven.
The Voice of Umlimo.
It is probable that the Matopo Hills, in Southern Matabeleland, are, as a freak of Nature, unique on the earth’s surface.
Only a vast upheaval—whether through the agency of fire or of water, let the geologists determine and quarrel over—can have produced such a bizarre result. A very sea of granite waves, not smooth and rolling, but piled in gigantic, rugged heaps; cones of immense boulders, rising to the height of many hundred feet; titanic masses of castellated rock; slab-like mesas and smooth-headed domes all jumbled together arbitrarily side by side; it is as though at some remote age a stupendous explosion had torn the heart out of earth’s surface, and heaving it on high with irresistible force, had allowed it to fall and settle as it would. Colossal boulders, all on end, anyhow, forming dark holes and caves, lead up to the summits of these marvellous cones; and in such clefts wild vegetation finds abundant anchorage—the acacia and wild fig and mahobo-hobo. Here a tall rock pinnacle, balancing upon its apex a great stone, which, to the unthinking eye, a mere touch would send crashing from its airy resting-place where it has reposed for ages and ages beyond all memory; there a solid square granite block the size of a castle, riven from summit to base as completely and smoothly as a bisected cheese. Grim baboons, of large size and abnormal boldness, bark threateningly from the ledges, and every crag is a perfect rookery of predatory birds—hawks and buzzards, and kites and carrion crows—soaring and wheeling beneath the blue of the heavens. Valleys, narrow and winding, intersect this chaotic mass, swampy withal in parts, and harbouring reedy water-holes where, beneath the broad leaves and fair blossoms of radiant lilies, the demon crocodile lurks unsuspected. Great crater-like hollows, too—only to be entered by a single way, and that a very staircase of rocks—the whole a vast and forbidding series of natural fastnesses, which even now have been thoroughly penetrated by but few whites, and at that time by the conquerors of the country not at all.
Evening is drawing down upon this rugged wilderness. The sun has gone off the world, but a rosy afterglow still tinges the piled boulders or smooth, balanced crags rearing up above the feathery foliage of acacia; and, save for an odd one here and there, the wheeling birds of prey have sought their inaccessible roosting-places. But such as have not—for these an unwonted sight lies beneath. The deathlike solitude of each winding valley is disturbed by an unwonted life—the life of men.
On they come—dark forms in straggling lines—threescore here, two there; a dozen further back, even as many as a hundred together. And they are converging upon one point. This is a hollow, the centre of which forms an open space—once under cultivation—the sides a perfect ruin of shattered rocks.
On they come—line upon line of dark savages—advancing mostly in silence, though now and then the hum of a marching song, as some fresh group arrives at the place, rises upon the stillness in clear cadence. None are armed, unless a stick apiece and a small shield can be defined as weapons; and there is a curiously subdued note pervading the assembly—an elated look on some of those dark faces, a thoughtful one on others—but one of expectancy upon all.
Each party as it arrives squats upon the ground awaiting the next. And still the tread of advancing feet, the hum of approaching voices, and presently the open space is filled with dark humanity to the number of several hundreds. During the period of waiting, chiefs, leaving their own following, greet each other, and draw apart for converse among themselves. Suddenly, and with startling nearness, there echoes forth from a crag overhead a loud resonant bark. It is answered by another and another. A volley of deep-voiced ejaculation, first startled—for their feelings are wrought up—then mirthful, arises from scores of throats. A troop of baboons has discovered this human concourse, and, secure in a lofty vantage ground, is vocally resenting its presence.
But such levity is promptly checked by a sense of the serious nature of the gathering. It is clear that all are assembled who mean to come. And now the gloom lightens with amazing rapidity, as the broad disc of a full moon sails majestically forth above the jumble of serrated crags; and to it turns that sea of wild dark faces stamped with an unwonted expectation and awe, for as yet the bulk of those present have but a dim idea of the end and object of this mysterious convention.
In the lamplike glow of this new light faces are clearly discernible, and amid the group of chiefs are those of Madúla, and Zazwe, and Sikombo, and Umlugula, and several others holding foremost rank among their tribesmen. On this occasion, however, they are not foremost, for it is upon another group that the main interest and expectation centres.
The members of this are decked out in the weird array of sorcerers, are hung around with entrails and claws, mysterious bunches of “charms,” white cowhair and feather adornments, and the grinning skulls of wild animals. One alone is destitute of all ornamentation, but the grim hawk-like countenance, the snaky ferocity of the cruel stare, the lithe stealthiness of movement, stamps this man with an individuality all his own, and he is none other than Shiminya. These are the “Abantwana ’Mlimo,” the hierarchy of the venerated Abstraction, the “Children of Umlimo.” Of them there are perhaps two score. They are seated in a circle, droning a song, or rather a refrain, and, in the midst, Shiminya walks up and down discanting. The chiefs occupy a subsidiary place to-night, for the seat of the oracle is very near, and these are the mouthpieces of the oracle.
By degrees the assembly gathers around. Voices are hushed. All attention is bent upon these squatting, droning figures. Suddenly they rise, and, bursting through the surrounding ranks, which promptly open to give them way, start off at a run. The crowd follows as though magnet drawn. But the run soon slows down to a kind of dancing step; and, following, the dark assemblage sweeps up the valley bottom, the long dry grass crackling as the excited multitude crushes its way through. On the outskirts of the column a great venomous snake, disturbed, trodden on, rears its hideous head, and, quick as lightning, strikes its death-dealing fangs into the legs of two of the crowd, but in the exaltation of the hour no thought is given to these. They may drop out and die; none can afford to waste time over them.
For nearly an hour the advance continues, the black mass pouring, like ants, over every obstacle—over stones, rocks, uprooted tree-trunks—winding through a tortuous valley bottom, the granite crags, towering aloft in their immensity, looking down as though in cold scornful indifference upon this pigmy outburst of mere human excitement, and then the way opens, becoming comparatively clear. The “Abantwana ’Mlimo” slacken their pace, and then the whole body is brought to a halt.
The spot is a comparatively open one save for the long dry grass. In front is a belt of acacias; but behind, and towering above this, there rises an immense mass of solid granite, its apex about two hundred feet above the bottom of the hollow—a remarkable pile, smoother and more compact than the surrounding crags, and right in the centre of its face is a black spot about twelve feet square.
The blackness, however, is the effect of gloom. This spot is the mouth of a hole or cave.
In dead silence now the multitude crouches, all eyes fixed expectantly upon the black yawning mouth. Yet, what can appear there within, for the rock face is inaccessible to any save winged creatures? A cleft, passing the hole, traverses obliquely the entire pile, but as unavailable for purposes of ascent as the granite face itself. No living being can climb up thence. Another vertical crack descends from above. That, too, is equally unavailable. Yet, with awe-stricken countenances, the whole assembly, crouching in semicircular formation, are straining their eyeballs upon the gaping aperture.
In front are the hierarchs of the grim Abstraction. If here indeed is the home of the latter it is well chosen, for a scene of more utter wildness and desolation than this weird, granite-surrounded fastness is hardly imaginable. The great round moon, floating on high, seems to the impressionable multitude to lower and spread—almost to burn.
And now the “Abantwana ’Mlimo” rise from their squatting posture, and, forming into a double line, their faces lifted towards the black, gaping hole, begin to sing. Their chant rolls forth in a regular rhythm, but the usual accompaniment of the stamping of feet is at first absent. But the song, the wild savage harmony of voices fitting well into their parts, is more tuneful, more melodious, than most barbaric outbursts of the kind. Its burden may be rendered somewhat in this wise—
“Voice from the air, Lighten our way! Word of the Wise, Say! shall we slay? Voice of the Great, Speaking from gloom; Say! shall we wait Darkness of doom?”
The echoes ring out upon the still night air, rolling in eddies of sound among the granite crags. The company of sorcerers, every nerve and muscle at its highest tension, softly move their feet to the time, as again and again they repeat their awesome invocation, and with each repetition the sound gathers volume, until it reaches a mighty roar. The multitude, stricken motionless with the awe of a great expectation, gaze upward with protruding eyeballs, awaiting a reply. It comes.
The singing of the Abantwana ’Mlimo has ceased. There is a silence that may be felt, only broken by a strained breathing from hundreds of throats. Then, from the black cave, high above, sounds forth a voice—a single voice, but of amazing volume and power, the voice of the Great Abstraction—of the Umlimo himself. And the answer is delivered in the same rhythm as the invocation—
“Dire is the scourge, Sweeping from far: Bed is the spear, Warming for war. Burned is the earth, Gloom in the skies; Nation’s new birth—Manhood arise!”
Strong and firm the Voice rolls forth, booming from that black portal as with a thunder note—clear to a marvel in its articulation, cold, remorseless in the decision of its darkly prophesying utterance. Indescribably awe-inspiring as it pours forth its trumpet notes upon the dead silence, small wonder that to the subdued eager listeners it is the voice of a god. Thrice is the rhythm repeated, until every word has burned deep into their minds as melted lead into a beam of soft-grained wood.
And now in the silence which ensues there steps forth from the ranks of the Abantwana ’Mlimo one man. Standing alone a little in front of the rest, he faces upward to the great cave overhead. In the absence of weird adornment, and with the moon upon his bird-like countenance, stands revealed Shiminya.
“Great Great One! Voice of the Wise!” he cries. “Thy children hear thee. They are brought even unto death. The scourge which Makiwa has brought upon them strikes hard. It is striking their cattle down by scores already. There will be no more left.”
There is a pause. With outstretched arms in the moonlight, the mediator stands motionless, awaiting the answer. It comes:—
“There will first be no more Makiwa.”
A heave of marvel and suppressed excitement sways the crowd. There is no misunderstanding this oracular pronouncement, for it is in the main what all are there to hear. Shiminya goes on.
“Oh, Great Great One, the land is burned dry for lack of rain, and thy children die of hunger. Will the land never again yield corn?”
“Makiwa has laid his hand upon it;” and the dull, hollow, remorseless tone, issuing from the darkness, now seems swept by a very tempest of hate, then replies, “Remove the hand!”
Sticks are clutched and shields shaken to the accompaniment of a deep growl of wrath forced from between clenched teeth.
“Remove the hand!” runs in a humming murmur through the multitude. “Ah, ah! Remove the hand!”
Again, with hollow boom, the Voice rolls forth.
“Even the very skies are darkening. Behold!”
Every head is quickly jerked back.
“Whou!”
Just the one ejaculation, volleyed from every throat, and in it there is but one consent, one expression, that of marvel and quaking dread. For in the tense excitement of awaiting the utterances of the oracle none have noticed that the flooding light of the moon has been gradually fading to darkness, albeit not a cloud is in the heavens. Now, as they look up, lo! the silvern orb is half covered with a black shadow. Onward it steals, creeping further and further, until the broad disc is entirely shrouded. A weird unnatural darkness lies upon the earth.
In silent awe the superstitious savages gaze blankly upon the phenomenon. There are those among them who have beheld it before, and to such under ordinary circumstances it would be looked upon with little concern. Now, however, worked up as they are, it is different. There are even some among them who have heard of the darkening of the sun during the first struggle of the great parent race of Zulu against the white invasion. Then it presaged great slaughter of their white enemies. And, as though reading the thoughts of such, the awful voice of the Great Abstraction broke in upon the oppressive, unnatural gloom—
“Children of Matyobane, (Father of Umzilikazi, founder and first king of the Matabelo nation), hearken. When Makíwa thought to eat up the mighty stock from which ye are sprung the very sun withdrew his light, and the plains between Isandhlwana and Umzinyati were red with the blood of Makiwa. Such as were not slain fled from the land. For the children of Zulu the sun grew black. For the children of Matyobane the moon. Lo, the blackening of the moon is the hiding of the nation, crushed, blackened, beneath the might of Makiwa. But the blackness does not last; so is the foot of Makiwa removed from the neck of the people of Matyobane. Behold!”
Every face, which has been turned towards the bark mouth of the oracle, again looks skyward. The black disc is moving back. The outer rim of the broad moon once more shines forth in a shaft of light. Broader and broader does this become, the strained eyeballs of the wrought-up savages bent upon it with concentrated stare. Then the Abantwana ’Mlimo, falling prone to the earth, once more raise the chant, and this time the whole multitude joins, in a great rolling volume of chorus:—
“Burned is the earth, Gloom in the skies; Nation’s new birth— Manhood arise!”
In wild uncontrollable excitement the multitude watches the now fast lightening orb; then, when the shadow has entirely left it, shining in bright, clear radiance as before, all faces are once more turned upward to the great granite pile, looming huge against the stars, its front a dull grey in the moonlight. Once more is the silence dead—expectant.
“Oh, Great Great One!” cries Shiminya, standing with arms outstretched, “we behold a nation’s new birth. But the time, O Word of the Wise? The time?”
“The time!” And now the Voice rolled from the black cavern mouth in a very thunder roar that reverberated among the mighty granite walls in a shock of echo that struck the entranced auditors speechless. “The time, Children of Matyobane? The time? Before next moon is dead.”
Chapter Eight.
The Parting of the Ways.
John Ames was seated beneath the verandah at Cogill’s Hotel with a blue official document in his hand and a very disgusted look upon his face.
The former accounted for the latter inasmuch as it was the direct cause thereof. In cold official terminology it regretted the necessity of abridging the period of his leave, and in terse official terminology requested that he would be good enough to return to his post with all possible dispatch.
He looked up from his third reading of this abominable document, and his brows were knitted in a frown. He looked at the thick plumbago hedge opposite, spangled with its pale blue blossoms, at the smooth red stems of the tall firs, up again at the deep blue of the cloudless sky overhead, then down once more upon the detestable missive, and said:—
“Damn!”
John Ames was not addicted to the use of strong language. Now, however, he reckoned the occasion justified it.
“With all possible dispatch.” That would mean taking his departure that night—that very night. And here he was, ready and waiting to do the usual escort duty, this time for a long day out on the bicycle. If he were to start that night it would mean exactly halving that long day. With a savage closing of the hand he crushed the official letter into a blue ball, and once more ejaculated—
“Damn!”
“Sssh!”
Thereat he started. Nidia Commerell was standing in the doorway right beside him, drawing on a pair of suede gloves, her blue eyes dancing with mirth. She was clad in a bicycle skirt and light blouse, and wore a plain white sailor hat.
“Sssh! You using naughty swear words? I am surprised at you!”
The smile which rippled brightly from the mobile lips showed, however, that the surprise, if any, was not of a derogatory nature. John Ames laughed ruefully.
“I’m sorry. But really it was under great provocation. I’ve received marching orders.”
“No? Not really? Oh, how disgusting!”
The utterance was quick. His eyes were full upon her face. How would she receive the communication? Was that really a flash of consternation, of regret, that swept over it?
“When must you go?” she continued, still, it seemed to him, speaking rather quickly.
“I ought to start by to-night’s train”—then, breaking off—“Where is Mrs Bateman? Is she ready?”
“We shall have to go without her. She can’t come—says she’s getting headachy.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry!”
Nidia had to turn away her head to avoid a splutter outright. Never had she heard words intended to be sympathetic uttered in tones of more jubilant relief. To herself she said: “You are a sad tarradiddler, John Ames.” To him she said, “Yes; it’s a pity, isn’t it?” He, for his part, was thinking that this time the official order need not be interpreted too literally. It had plainly intimated that a state of things had transpired which necessitated the presence of every official at his post, but this time the state of things could dispense with his adjusting hand for twenty-four hours longer. “With all possible dispatch.” Well, to start that night under the circumstances would not be possible, under others it would. Throughout the whole day Nidia would be alone with him, and he meant that day to be one that he should remember.
They started. At first the exhilarating spin along the smooth fir-shaded road, together with the consciousness that the day was only beginning, caused him partly to forget that most unwelcome recall. They had arranged to use by-roads where the riding was good, and, taking the train at Mowbray, proceed to Cape Town, and ride out thence as far beyond Camp’s Bay as they felt inclined. Now, as they spun along through the sunlit air, between leafy gardens radiant with bright flowers and the piping of gladsome birds, the noble mountain wall away on the left towering majestic though not stern and forbidding, its cliffs softened in the summer haze, its slopes silvered with the beautiful wattle, and great seas of verdure—the bright green of oak foliage throwing out in relief the darker pine and blue eucalyptus—surging up against its mighty base, the very contrast afforded by this glorious scene of well-nigh Paradisical beauty, and the mental vision of a hot steamy wilderness, not unpicturesque, but depressing in the sense of remote loneliness conveyed, was borne forcibly home to the mind of one of them. It was a question of hours, and all would have fled. He grew silent. Depression had reasserted itself.
Yet, was it merely a sense of the external contrast which was afflicting him? He had traversed this very scene before, and not once or even twice only. He had always admired it, but listlessly. But now? The magic wand had been waved over the whole. But why transform the ordinary and mundane into a paradise for one who was to be suffered but one glimpse therein, and now was to be cast forth? A paradise—ah yes; but a fool’s paradise, he told himself bitterly.
“Well?”
He started. The query had come from Nidia, and was uttered artlessly, innocently, but with a spice of mischief.
“Yes? I was wondering?” she went on.
“What were you wondering?”
“Oh, nothing! Only—er—as it is rather—er—slow for me, don’t you think so—supposing you give me an inkling of the problem that is absorbing you so profoundly? You haven’t said a word for at least ten minutes. And I like talking.”
“I am so sorry. Yes; I might have remembered that. How shall I earn forgiveness?”
“By telling me exactly what you were thinking about, absolutely and without reservations. On no other conditions, mind.”
“Oh, only what a nuisance it is being called away just now.”
The tone was meant to be offhand, but the quick ear of Nidia was not so easy to deceive. When John Ames did look down into the bright laughing face it had taken an expression of sympathy, that with a quick bound of the heart he read for one that was almost tender.
“Yes. It is horrid!” she agreed. “You had a long time to run yet, hadn’t you?”
“Nearly a month.”
“I call it perfectly abominable. Can’t you tell them it is absolutely impossible to come back just now, that—er—in short, on no account can you?”
He looked at her. “Do you wish it?” was on his lips; but he left the words unsaid. He shook his head sadly.
“I’m afraid it can’t be done. You see, I am entirely at their beck and call. And then, from what they say, I believe they really do want me.”
“Yes; I was forgetting that. It is something, after all, to be of some use, as I was telling you the other night; do you remember?”
Did he remember? Was there one word she had ever said to him—one look she had ever given him—that he did not remember, that he had not thought of, and weighed, and pondered over, in the dark silent hours of the night, and in the fresh, but far from silent, hours of early morning? No, indeed; not one.
“I remember every single word you have ever said to me,” he answered gravely, with his full straight glance meeting hers. And then it was Nidia Commerell’s turn to subside into silence, for there struck across her mind, in all its force, the badinage she had exchanged with her friend in the privacy of their chamber. If he had never before, as she defined it, “hung out the signals,” John Ames was beginning to do so now—of that she felt very sure; yet somehow the thought, unlike in other cases, inspired in her no derision, but a quickened beating of the heart, and even a little pain, though why the latter she could not have told.
“Come,” she said suddenly, consulting her watch, “we must put on some pace or we shall miss the train. We have some way to go yet.”
On over the breezy flat of the Rondebosch camp-ground and between long rows of cool firs meeting overhead; then a sharp turn and a spin of straight road; and in spite of the recurring impediments of a stupidly driven van drawn right across the way, and a long double file of khaki-clad mounted infantry crossing at right angles and a foot’s pace, they reached the station in time, but only just. Then, as Nidia, laughing and panting with the hurry of exertion she had been subjected to, flung herself down upon the cushion of the compartment, and her escort, having seen the bicycles safely stowed, at considerable risk to life and limb, thanks to a now fast-moving train, clambered in after her, both felt that the spell which had been moving them to grave and serious talk was broken between them—for the present.
But later—when the midday glow had somewhat lost its force, when the golden lights of afternoon were painting with an even more vivid green the vernal slopes piling up to the great crags overhanging Camp’s Bay, the same seriousness would recur, would somehow intrude and force its way in. They had left their bicycles at the inn where they had lunched, and had half strolled, half scrambled down to the place they now were in—a snug resting-place indeed, if somewhat hard, being an immense rock, flat-topped and solid. Overhead, two other boulders meeting, formed a sort of cave, affording a welcome shelter from the yet oppressive sun. Beneath, the ocean swell was raving with hoarse sullen murmur among the iron rocks, dark with trailing masses of seaweed, which seemed as a setting designed to throw into more gorgeous relief the vivid, dazzling blue of each little inlet. Before, the vast sheeny ocean plain, billowing to the ruffle of the soft south wind.
“Really, you are incorrigible,” said Nidia at last, breaking the silence. “What shall I do to make you talk?”
“Yes; I am very slow to-day—I sorrowfully admit it,” he answered, with a laugh which somehow or other lacked the ring of merriment.
“I know,” went on Nidia. “I must start discussing the Raid. There! You will have to be interesting then.”
“That’s ruled out,” he replied, the point being that from the very first days of their acquaintance the Raid was a topic he had resolutely declined to argue or to express any opinion upon. “Besides, it’s such a threadbare subject. You are right, though. I am treating you very badly. In fact, it is not fair, and I am haunted by a shrivelling conviction that you are sorry you came out to-day, and at this moment are heartily wishing yourself at home. Am I not right?”
“No; quite wrong. I have, you know, a great respect for your convictions—at times, but for this last one I have nothing but contempt; yes, contempt—profound contempt. There! Will that satisfy you?”
Her tone was decisive, without being vehement. In it—in the glance of her eyes—he detected a ring of sympathy, of feeling. Could she read his inner thoughts, he wondered, that each hour of this day as it wore away did but tighten the grip of the bitter desolating pain that had closed around his heart? He watched her as she reclined there, the very embodiment of dainty and graceful ease. He noted the stirring of each little wave of gold-brown hair as it caressed her forehead to the breath of the soft sea wind; the quick lifting of the lashes revealing the deep blue of the soulful eyes, so free and frank and fearless as they met his; the rich tint of the smooth skin, glowing with the kiss of the air and sun; every curve, too, of the mobile expressive lips; and the self-restraint he was forced to put upon himself became something superhuman. And it was their last day together! She, for her part, was thinking, “John Ames is a fool, but the most self-controlled fool I ever met. How I shall miss him! Yes, indeed, how I shall miss him!” Aloud she said—
“I wonder when we shall be going up-country?”
“Never, I predict,” was the somewhat decisive rejoinder.
Nidia raised herself on one elbow. “You seem pretty certain as to that,” she said, “so certain that I begin to think the wish is father to the thought.”
“Thank you.”
“There, there, don’t be cross. I am only teasing you. I can be an awful tease at times, can’t I? Ask Susie if I can’t—if you haven’t found it out already, that is.”
The mischief had all left her voice, the laughing eyes were soft and sympathetic again. He laughed, too, but somewhat sadly.
“Because things up there are not over bright, and are likely to be less so. The cattle is all dying off from this new disease—rinderpest. The natives have never been thoroughly conquered, and there are still plenty of them. The loss of their cattle will make them desperate, and therefore dangerous. The outlook is gloomy all round.”
“Oh, but you will be able to put things right when you get back.”
John Ames stared, as well he might. Either she meant what she said or she did not. In the first event, she had a higher opinion of him than ever he had dreamed; in the second, the remark was silly to the last degree; and silliness was a fault, any trace of which he had not as yet discovered in Nidia Commerell.
“You cannot really mean that,” he said. “If so, you must be under an entire misconception as to my position. I am only one of several. We each of us try to do our best, but none of us can do anything very great.”
Listening intently, Nidia was saying to herself, “How true he rings! Note. The swagger and egotism of the up-to-date Apollo is conspicuously absent here.” Then, aloud—
“No; I was not chaffing. I believe you can do a great deal. Remember, we have been very much together of late, and I rather pride myself upon a faculty for character reading.”
The delicate insinuation of flattery in her tone constituted the last straw. John Ames felt his resolution growing very weak. Passionate words of adoration rose to his lips—when—
A screech and chatter of child voices and scurrying feet, right behind the rock under whose shadow the two were resting, then the sound of scrambling, and their resting-place was theirs no more. A round half-dozen uproarious infants were spreading themselves over the rock slabs around, their shrill shrieks of glee hardly arrested, as with a start they discovered the presence of others upon their new playground. And that they were there to stay they speedily made known by dint of yelling response to the calls of the parent-bird, whose own voice drew nearer around the rock.
The spell was broken. At that moment John Ames would have given anything to have seen the rocks below swept by a sudden tidal wave. The spell was broken. The moment had come and gone, and he was aware, as by an intuitive flash, that it would not come again.
Nidia rose. Did she welcome the fortuitous relief or not? he wondered, as he glanced at her keenly.
“Let us stroll quietly back,” she said. “We shall get no more peace with that nursery romping round us. Besides, it’s time we thought of beginning the return ride.
“What an ideal day it has been!” resumed Nidia, when the ground became even enough to carry on conversation with any degree of facility. “Hasn’t it?”
“M’yes. Very ‘ideal,’ in that like other ideals it doesn’t last. An ideal is like a wine-glass, sooner or later destined to be shattered.”
“That’s quite true. I wonder are there any exceptions to the rule?”
“Safely, no. People set one up for themselves and adore it; then crash—bang! some fine day they knock it down, and it shatters into smithereens. Then there is a pedestal empty—a pedestal to let.”
“And up goes another image, with like result,” laughed the girl.
“Precisely. But how cynical we are becoming. By the way, to go back to what I was saying a little while ago, you will probably not be coming up-country at all. Then we shall never see each other again.”
“Even then, why should we not?”
“Why? Why, because the chance that—that made us meet now is not likely to recur. That sort of blessed luck is not apt to duplicate in this vale of woe. Not much.”
She smiled, softly, tenderly. The self-contained John Ames was waxing vehement. His words were tumbling over each other. He could hardly get them out quick enough.
“And would you mind so very much if it did not?”
“Yes.”
“So would I.”
Then silence for a few moments. They were walking along a high-road. At very short intervals the ubiquitous cyclist—singly or in pairs—shot noiselessly by, or here and there a coloured pedestrian, seated by the roadside, eyed them indifferently.
“Why should we lose sight of each other?” said John Ames at length. “Do you know—this time we have had together has been—has been one that I could never have dreamed of as within the bounds of possibility.”
“We have had a good time, haven’t we?” assented Nidia, demurely, though conscious of a quickening pulse. “And now, I don’t mind telling you something—because I have failed to discover one atom of conceit in your composition—so I don’t mind telling you—”
“What?”
The interruption was startling. The voice was dry, the face stony. Had he but known it the interrupter was going up many degrees in the speaker’s estimation.
“Only that I shall miss you dreadfully—when you are gone.”
Nidia’s mischievous demureness simply bubbled with enjoyment at the look of relief which came over the other’s features. She continued—
“As you say, why should we lose sight of each other? You may write to me occasionally—when you can spare the time required for the saving of your country from all the ills that threaten it. But—let’s see, I—oh, well, never mind—I was going to say something, but I won’t. And now—we must not be serious any more. We have had a lovely day, the loveliest day we could possibly have had, and we are going to have a lovely ride back. Here we are at the hotel again.”
The significance of the tone, the veiled emphasis which underlay the remark, was not lost upon the listener. John Ames was one who knew when to let well alone. Patience, tact, a judicious mind, were all among his qualifications for his responsible and difficult post. Should they fail him in a matter where private feeling, however deep, was concerned? So he acquiesced.
Nidia, for her part, was conscious of mingled feelings. She did not know whether to be glad or not that they had been summarily interrupted; on the whole, she thought she was glad. On the other hand, she had not exaggerated in saying she would miss him dreadfully, and already she had some idea as to how she would miss him. Here was a man who was outside her experience, who represented an entirely new phase of character. With her, too, this time that they had spent so much together stood forth.
But although no more was said during their homeward ride of a nature to trench on grave matters, the tone between both of them was one that seemed unconsciously to breathe of confidence and rest. The deep murmur of the ocean swell had sunk its hoarse raving as it lapped the rocks below the skirting road; the golden glory of the heaving waters had turned to a deeper sapphire blue suffused with pink as the sun sank behind the rampart crags, and already two or three stars, twinkling forth, seemed to rest upon, then hover over, the rock crest of the great Lion Mountain, heaving up, a majestic sentinel, over the liquid plain. Yes; both were content, for in the hearts of both still rang the gladness and the quietude of a very conscious refrain:—“We shall meet again, soon.”
Thus the parting of the ways. But before they should meet again—what? In that surrounding of peace and evening calm, small wonder that no suggestion should find place as to a very different surrounding, where, far to the north, from the drear mountain wilderness, even at that moment, thundered forth—as another Voice from Sinai of old—a dire and terrible voice telling of scourge and of war—a voice, indeed, of woe and of wrath, sounding its dread tocsin o’er an entire land.
“Burned is the earth, Gloom in the skies Nation’s new birth— Manhood arise!”