A Veldt Official Part 23

But a very few minutes' search convinced him that the place contained no human remains. He was puzzled. What had become of the unfortunate settlers? That there had been a fierce and sanguinary battle was evident, but it was impossible that the savages could have been beaten off, else would the house not have been fired. Herein was a mystery.

The situation of the place was gloomy and forbidding to the last degree, the black rain standing deep within that lonely kloof, and, lying around, the grim earthly remains of those who had a.s.sailed it. Opposite rose a rugged cliff, whose brow was crowned with a grove of fantastically plumed euphorbia; and then as his eye caught a stealthy movement amid the gloom of the straight stems, Roden gave a slight start, and immediately was as ready for action as ever he had been in his life.

Yes, something was stirring up there. The moment was rather a tense one, as standing amid those weird ruins he bent his gaze long and eagerly upon the darkness of the straight euphorbia stems, round, regular as organ pipes. Shadowy figures were flitting in and out. Were others creeping up to a.s.sail him in the rear, signalled by these? Was he in a trap, surrounded? Then he laughed--laughed aloud; for there went up from the euphorbia clump a strong, harsh, resounding bark:--

"Baugh-m! Baugh-m!"

"Only baboons after all!" he cried, feeling more relieved than he cared to own. And seeing nothing to be gained by further lingering, by extended investigation, he once more mounted his horse and took his way out of this valley of desolation and of death.

And as he gained the opposite ridge, he found that the storm was clearing away, or rather travelling onward. Before him lay a series of gra.s.sy flats, fairly open, but dotted with _clompjes_ of bush here and there. The sun had broken forth again, and, the cloud curtain now removed, was flooding the land with dazzling light. The change was a welcome one, and had the effect of restoring the traveller's spirits, somewhat depressed by the grim and gruesome scene he had just left. And now, as the sun wanted but an hour to his setting, Roden decided to off-saddle for that s.p.a.ce of time. Then his steed, rested and refreshed, would carry him on bravely in the cool night air, and but a very few hours should see him safely over the hostile ground, if not among inhabited dwellings once more. So, choosing a sequestered hollow, Roden off-saddled and knee-haltered his steed, and then betook himself to a little clump of bush which grew around a stony _kopje_, and which afforded him a secure hiding-place and a most serviceable watch-tower, for it commanded a considerable view of the surrounding veldt.

CHAPTER TWENTY.

MONA'S DREAM.

Notwithstanding the splendid courage and quickness of resource she had shown upon a certain critical and, but for those qualities on her part, a.s.suredly a fatal occasion, Mona Ridsdale was by no means free from that timidity under given circ.u.mstances, which seems second nature with most women. She preferred not to be left alone in the dark if possible to avoid it, and, in fact, had as dread a realisation of what it meant to be "unprotected" as the most commonplace and unheroic of her s.e.x: consequently, when Suffield found it unavoidable to be absent from home a night or two, Mona was apt to conjure up terrors which interfered materially with her peace of mind. Now, just such an absence on the part of her male relative befell some few nights after Roden's departure for the Main Camp.

"Oh, Grace, I do feel so nervous this evening!" she exclaimed, starting, not for the first time, as one of the ordinary nocturnal wild sounds from veldt or mountain-side came floating in through the open windows.

"Feel my hands, now cold they are; and yet it is such a hot night that one wants every square foot of air the windows will admit."

"That is foolish, Mona," replied her cousin. "Yes, your hands are indeed cold. Why, to-morrow will ring back not only Charlie, but perhaps somebody else."

"G.o.d grant it may!" was the eager rejoinder. "But do you know, Grace, I have a horrible presentiment on that score too; I believe that is why I feel so s.h.i.+very to-night. It is like a warning--I feel as if something were going to happen to him--were happening!"

There was a wildness in the glance of the dilated eyes, a quick, spasmodic catch of the voice, which disconcerted the other, who, in ordinary matters, was the less timid of the two.

"Mona, dear, don't, for Heaven's sake, give way to such fancies. They grow upon one so. And how you will laugh at them--at yourself--in the morning, when Charlie comes back, and perhaps somebody else."

"I can't help it. I wish the night was over. I am sure something is going to happen before the morning."

The two were sitting together, the supper over, and the nursery department tucked up, snug and quiet for the night. Suffield had ridden away to attend a sale at a distance, and would hardly return before the following afternoon. It was, as we have said, a hot night, and both windows of the room were open; indeed, it would have been well-nigh impossible to breathe had they been shut. At the black s.p.a.ces thus framed Mona would stare ever and again, with a quick glance of apprehension, as though expecting, she knew not what, to heave into view from the gloom beyond. It was a still night, moreover, and every sound from without was wafted in with tenfold clearness--the weird shout of a night-bird from the mountain-side; the yelp of a jackal far out upon the plain; the loud and sudden, but musical tw.a.n.ging note of the night locust, whose cry can hardly be credited to a mere insect, so powerful, so bird-like is it. Even the splash of a mud-turtle waddling into the dam was audible.

A rus.h.i.+ng, booming, buzzing sound swept past the open window. Mona started again, and her face paled. It was only some big flying beetle, blundering past the oblong of light which had half-attracted, half-scared him; yet so overwrought were her nerves that she could hardly repress a startled scream. Now, this sort of thing is catching, and Grace Suffield felt that a little more of it would probably end by unnerving herself.

"My dear Mona," she said; "this is more than nervousness. You have caught cold somehow. Come now, you must go to bed; and I will make you something hot."

"I can't go to bed, Grace, and I couldn't sleep if I did," she answered.

"Let's go out on the _stoep_. The air may make one feel better."

To this the other agreed, and they went forth. It was a grand and glorious night. A faint moon hung low down in the heavens, and the great planets gushed their rolling fires in the star-gemmed blackness.

Such a night had been that other, when only the dark willows had overheard those whispers--deep, pulsating, pa.s.sionate--welling from the overcharged hearts and strong natures of those who uttered them.

"Look, look! That is almost bright enough for a meteor!" cried Mona as a falling star darted down in a streak of light, seeming to strike the distant loom of the mountain range in its rocket-like course. "There is something weird, to my mind, about these falling stars. What are they, and where do they go to?"

"Everything is weird to your mind to-night, dear. Come in now, and go to bed."

"Not yet, Grace. I feel better already. I knew the air would do me good. Look there! what is that--and that?"

Her tone now belied her former words--her limbs shook. And now both stood listening intently.

For there floated upon the still night air a sound--an eerie, wailing, long-drawn sound--faint, yet clear; very distant, yet plainly audible; rising and falling; now springing to a high pitch, now sinking to a m.u.f.fled, rumbling roar--yet so faint, so distant. Far away over the darkened waste where the great castellated pile of the Wildschutsberg rose gloomy beneath the horned moon, there hovered a strange reddening glow. At the sound the dogs lying around the house sprang up, baying furiously.

"Grace, I believe the Tambookie locations out yonder are up in arms.

That is the war-cry--they are dancing the war-dance. Listen!"

Here indeed was a potential peril, a tangible one, and removed from the spheres of mere bogeydom. There had been uneasy rumours in the air of late--that the Tembu locations on the confines of the district were plotting and restless, and more than ready to rise and join their disaffected fellow-tribesmen now in open rebellion beneath the slopes of the Stormberg. No wonder if these two unprotected women felt a real apprehension chill their veins, as they stood upon the _stoep_ of their lonely homestead gazing forth with beating hearts, listening to these ominous sounds rising upon the stillness of the night. The distance which separated them from the disaffected savages was not great, hardly more than half a score of miles.

"Even if it is so, I don't think we have anything to fear," said Grace at last. "They would go in the other direction if they moved at all; either cross over to join Gungubele's people, or Umfanta's, or perhaps move down to league forces with the Gaikas. They would hardly venture so near the town as this."

"Move down to league forces with the Gaikas?" echoed Mona, horror-stricken at the suggestion. "Why, that would mean that they would cross the very belt of country over which lay Roden's return route."

Grace Suffield was quick to grasp her meaning.

"No, no; not that, dear," she said. "I don't believe myself there is anything to be alarmed at. I believe they are only making a noise; possibly they have a big beer-drinking on, or something. Kaffirs, in their way, are just as fond of jollification as we are, you know; and I think I remember more than once hearing something of the kind before, only as there was no war on, or even dreamt of, we hardly noticed it at the time, I suppose. Yes, I am perfectly certain that is all it means; so now come in, and we'll go to bed. You shall sleep in my room if you like."

Mona suffered herself to be led in, and to be given wine, and generally taken care of: but curiously inconsistent, for all her nervous fears, she preferred to be alone. Then, bidding her relative good-night, she retired to her room, and having fastened the shutters and locked the door, she sat down to think.

Her thoughts flew straight off to one who now was the main object of them. Where was he at that moment? Returning to her, travelling at all speed over a peril-haunted region to return to her, alone perhaps, as he had hinted might be the case; and more than one unspoken prayer went up that it might not be so, or for his safety if it were. Then her recollections went farther back. She recalled many to whom she stood in the same light as she now did to that one--from their point of view, that is--yet none had succeeded in stirring her heart, in causing her pulses to beat quicker, or, if so, for no more than a moment, so to say.

She recalled many an impa.s.sioned pleading, many a haggard face, grief-stricken, disappointed, down to that of Lambert only the other day, and wondered if they had felt as she would feel were any evil to overtake that one now. How cold, how callous, how inconsiderate she had been to others, she recognised now; and as her thoughts turned to him she felt that, but for the certainty of seeing him again, of all the blissfulness of their reunion, and that in a day or two at the furthest, her life would have been lived--lived and done with for all time.

The house was in dead silence, as in the solitude of her room at last she began to prepare for bed. She had just finished brus.h.i.+ng out the thick waves of her hair, when a dull rumble, as of many feet, not far from the window, turned her pale and tottering. Her heart beat like a hammer, and the splendid outlines of her breast, now uncovered, rose and fell with the quick regularity of the roll of surf upon a level beach.

Then with the stamping tread there arose a low moaning noise, long-drawn and unspeakably dismal in the dead midnight silence.

"What a despicable coward I am!" she exclaimed, now with a faint smile.

Then, with a glance at her magnificent limbs, "I am large framed, and strong, yet the least little thing makes me quake and quiver like a scared child."

She threw open the shutters, and, as she did so, again went up that unearthly, deep-throated moaning, ending in a short shrill bellow. But she knew the sound. The cattle had returned about the homestead, and were collecting at the spot where a sheep or goat was daily slaughtered for the use of the household and the farm hands. In the faint moonlight she could see the beasts bunched together, their noses down to the blood-soaked spot, sniffing and pawing up the ground as they emitted their dismal mutterings; then they would start off, with tail in air and horns lowered, and career a little way across the veldt, and return, as though the fell fascination was greater than the terror which had first appalled them, to resume their weird, hollow groaning as before. The dogs, well accustomed to this performance, forbore to notice it, beyond a low growl or two. Besides, they held the horns of the excited beasts in wholesome respect.

Closing the shutters again, Mona returned into the room. Just as she was about to get into bed, her glance was attracted by something. A great dark object was moving across the floor. Repressing an impulse to shriek aloud, she lowered her candle so as to dispel the shadow in which the thing moved, for it was under the table, and then with a shuddering horror she saw that it was a huge tarantula.

The evil-looking beast was of enormous dimensions. Outspread, it was the size of a man's hand, and its great hairy legs and dull, black, protruding eyes gave it the aspect of a demoniacal looking animal rather than a mere insect, as it came shoggling across the floor; then stopped suddenly, as its instincts warned it of danger.

All in a quiver of loathing and repulsion, she s.n.a.t.c.hed up a large book of bound-up music, and dropped it upon the hideous insect. She left it where it lay, not caring to investigate farther; knowing, too, that the thing would be crushed and flattened out of all life and shape beneath the heavy volume. Where did it come from? Tarantulas were quite rare in that high, open, bracing veldt, though plentiful enough in the lower and hotter bush country. But even there she had never seen one anything like this for size.

The nervous fears which had beset her throughout the evening had brought something like exhaustion in their train. No sooner was the light out, and her head upon her pillow, than she was fast asleep. Yet sound though her slumbers were, a thread of uneasiness ran through them.

Outside, in the faint moonlight, the cattle still cl.u.s.tered about the bloodstained spot, and even in her sleep she could still hear the pawing of their hoofs, and the unceasing refrain of their dismal and hollow groanings, half-soothing, half-terrifying in the mesmeric effect which they produced upon the ever-changing waves of her consciousness, that hovering border-line between wakefulness and the dream world. She murmured the name of her absent lover, and again, in her sleeping visions she was soothing him to rest in the still midnight, as he lay in feverish pain, but a few hours after she had drawn him back from death.

Then the great tarantula she had slain seemed to come into her slumbers.

She saw the upheaval of the broad book under which it lay crushed, and the hideous thing step slowly forth; and as it did so it spread itself out, black, gigantic, to ten times its original size. It advanced to the side of the bed, and leaped up on to the counterpane and crouched there, glowering at her with its dull black eyes, its great hairy feelers moving, its nippers working threateningly. She felt as one under a demoniacal spell, without even power of movement enough to tremble. Then she feared no longer for herself, for that which the grisly monster threatened seemed to be her absent lover. Now she sees him, sees him faintly and dimly as through darkness; and he, too, is unconscious. It is as though she sees him in a grave, amid the gloomy shadows of the nether world, far down in the dim depths of the black river of Death.

And now it seems that the whole room is full of shadowy, hairy shapes, like that which holds her in its demoniacal spell, that the dim darkness is astir with writhing tentacular legs, and they are closing round something--the pale countenance of a sleeping man. There is the glare of blood in their eager eyes, and oh, Heaven! the face of each crawling horror is a human one, dark, savage, bloodthirsty. And he?--Oh, G.o.d!

oh, G.o.d! The countenance of him who now sleeps there, ready for their blood-drinking fangs, is that of her absent lover! She can almost touch him, yet the terrible spell upon her holds her bound. Horror of horrors! she must s.n.a.t.c.h him again from this grisly peril or he is lost.

Too late! too late! no, not yet too late--one moment will do it! This chain that holds her, can she not break it? If she is powerless to touch him, still can she cry aloud in warning? No, she cannot. The gnome-like fiend crouching there has power over every faculty she possesses. Now these appalling shapes are upon the sleeping man, and now their eyes dart fire as from flaming torches. They seem to burn him, for he moves uneasily. Will he not wake? will he not wake? Too late! Then by some means the spell is broken, and with a wild, ringing, piercing cry, she utters aloud her lover's name in a clarion call of warning, and adjuration, and despair.