The Fire Trumpet Part 24

"In Bond Street it is just possible that I should. On an African sheep farm the escort is appropriate," she answered, with a flash of merriment in her lovely, changing eyes.

The distance to the house was not great, but Claverton contrived to render it as great as possible.

"How is it you are out all alone?" he asked, as they walked along.

"Oh, the fact is, Mrs Brathwaite and the girls were busy, very busy. I wouldn't for the world abuse my guest's privilege, so I slipped off on a solitary voyage of discovery."

"And a pretty sort of discovery you made! By-the-bye, I have had no opportunity of asking if you had quite recovered from yesterday's fatigue, and it has been lying heavily on my conscience. You did not appear at breakfast, and we have been desperately busy all the morning."

There was a tender ring in his tones as he made this very commonplace observation which could hardly have escaped the other. She answered very sweetly:

"I am afraid I was dreadfully lazy. But I was a little tired this morning. It shan't occur again; there!"

"You must rest to-day, then, because they are getting up a dance to-night in your honour. You are literally to make your _debut_ here.

Didn't they tell you?"

"Now I think of it, they did. Here we are at the house, Mr Claverton.

Thanks, so much, for accompanying me."

"And now I shall catch it. The dear old man hates any of us to thrash a n.i.g.g.e.r. Stand by and support me under my castigation."

Claverton had seen Mr Brathwaite in the hall, and lost no time in telling him what had happened. The old settler shook his head as he listened.

"It won't do," he said. "You'll never get any good out of them if you take to hammering them. They cut off to the district town and lay an information against you, and you're summoned before the magistrate, and put to no end of bother. And that's not all. It has a bad effect on the others. They know they'll get the better of you in court, and invariably do get it; and once a black fellow thinks he can get the better of you in any way, then good-bye to your authority. Besides, it earns you a bad name among the Kafirs, which means a constant difficulty in obtaining labour, and when you do obtain it you only get the refuse.

There's Thorman, for instance. He used to lick his Kafirs for the least thing, and he never kept a decent servant on his place two months at a time. I advised him to knock off that plan, and he did; but for years afterwards he suffered from its effects, in the shape of a constant lack of decent labour. No; it doesn't pay, take my word for it."

"Well, but you've no idea how cheeky that fellow was, and has been for some time past," urged Claverton.

The other merely shrugged his shoulders with the air of a man unconvinced, and repeated as he turned away: "It doesn't do."

Claverton shot a glance at his late companion as much as to say; "There, I told you how it would be," and caught a bright, rapid smile in return.

Then he went back to his work.

Hard by the scene of the recent row was the dipping tank, oblong in shape, fifteen feet by five and about eight in depth. It was two-thirds full of a decoction of lime and sulphur, and into this the sheep were dropped, and after swimming about for a couple of minutes or so were suffered to emerge, by the raising of a sliding door at one end. This end, unlike the other, was not perpendicular, but the floor was on a sufficient slope to enable the animals to walk out, which they did, and stood dripping in a stone-paved enclosure also with a shelving floor so that the liquid that drained off them should run back into the tank. At the other end was a larger enclosure containing several hundred sheep, which four or five Kafirs, among them the recreant Mopela, were busy catching for the purpose of dipping them in the unsavoury but scab-eradicating mixture. Over which operation presided Hicks and Claverton, each with a forked pole in his hand, wherewith to administer the necessary ducking to the immersed quadrupeds. At last Hicks proposed that they should knock off, and come back and finish after dinner.

"Not worth while, is it?" was the reply. "Let's finish off now we're at it, then we can take things easy, clothed and in our right minds. We can hardly go inside the house, even, in this beastly mess."

Claverton carries his point, as he generally does. So they work on and on in the heat and the dust, and the air is full of splashes as the kicking animals are dropped into the tank, and redolent with the ill savour of sulphur and lime and perspiring natives; and the contents of one of the great cauldrons simmering over the fire are thrown in to replenish the medicinal bath, and the number of sheep left undipped waxes smaller and beautifully less, till at length the last half-dozen are disposed of and the job is at an end.

Then Hicks suggested a swim in the dam, and the proposal was soon carried into effect. After which, in renewed attire and presentable once more, they appeared among the rest of the household.

To some at least in that household has come among them a change; an element of upheaval certainly not even dreamed of by all whom it shall concern. A change. The acquisition of a beautiful and agreeable young lady visitor by this circle? No, something more than that.

Mrs Brathwaite playfully upbraided Claverton for being the unconscious cause of frightening her visitor on the first morning of her arrival.

Then Lilian came to the rescue. If she had been startled it was her own fault or ill fortune for going where she was not wanted. Here vehement protest from him whose cause she was pleading. Then, she urged, he who had been the means of startling her had made all the amends in his power by seeing her safely home, coward as she was to need it. Here more vehement protest.

What does this vehemence mean on the part of a man to whose nature it is wholly foreign, who is calmness and equability itself?

This question--partly its own answer--flashed through Ethel's mind. She was to all appearances deep in discussion with Laura and Hicks as to certain debatable arrangements for the coming festivity. In reality she was performing that extremely difficult feat, keeping an ear for two distinct conversations. In the course of which difficult feat Ethel was wondering how it was that these adventuresses (yes, that is the word she used) with nothing on earth to recommend them, should have the power of taking everybody by storm in the way their visitor seemed to be doing.

Lilian was wondering how it was that her visit seemed likely to be far more pleasant and enjoyable than she had at first antic.i.p.ated, which was saying a great deal. Also what there was about this man, now talking so unconcernedly to herself and her hostess, that raised him on a pedestal considerably above the residue of the species.

Claverton was wondering how it was, that his life seemed to have been cut in two distinct halves since yesterday.

And Ethel again read both faces like an open book. And this time she read in the one, greater possibility; in the other, absolute certainty.

Such was the situation.

And it had all come about in a single day.

VOLUME ONE, CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

"MINGLE SHADES OF JOY AND WOE."

The long dining-room is in a blaze of light, such as it has not sparkled with for some considerable time, and only then on rare and special occasions such as the present one. The polished floor reflects the glow of numerous candles, and, as Hicks vigorously puts it, the decks are thoroughly cleared for action. Expectant groups stand about the room or throng the doorways--for the fun has not yet commenced, and meanwhile talk and laughter goes on among the jovial spirits there foregathered, and the graver ones, when not the subjects of rally, are intent on contemplating the floor, the ceiling, the fireplace, or anything or nothing. The party might be an English one to all appearances. You may descry the usual phases in its ingredients. There is shy humanity, confident humanity, blatant humanity, fussy humanity, even pompous humanity. There, however, the resemblance ends. Of stiffness there is none. Everybody knows everybody, or soon will--meanwhile acts as if it does. Then, in the little matter of attire, many of the "lords of creation" are arrayed in orthodox evening costume and white-chokered, others in black coats of the "go-to-meeting" order, while three or four Dutchmen, bidden to the festivity on neighbourly grounds, sport raiment fearfully and wonderfully made, whose effect is enhanced by terrific neckties, varying in shades from scarlet to green. The company is composed almost entirely of the settler cla.s.s. Jolly old fellows who have come to look on at the enjoyment of their extensive and well-looking families in various stages of adolescence, and who, in spite of their white hair and sixty or seventy summers, seem more than half inclined not to remain pa.s.sive spectators of the fun. One or two of these, by the way, judging from nasal rubicundity and other signs, will, I trow, be found more frequently hovering around the charmed circle where flows the genial dram, than in the immediate neighbourhood of the giddy rout. Middle-aged men, bronzed and bearded, looking serious as they contemplate what is expected of them, for a.s.suredly we English, in whatever part of the world we be, "take our pleasures sadly." Young settlers are there, stalwart fellows, several of whom have ridden from far, carrying their gala array in a saddle-bag, and who by the time they return will have been three days away from home. But distance is nothing; their horses are strong and hardy, and the roads are good, and if not, what matters? Life is nothing without its enjoyments, and accordingly they intend to enjoy themselves, and do.

Of the fair s.e.x there is a goodly muster--though fewer in proportion to that of the men, as is frequently the case at frontier dances-- consisting of the wives and daughters of the settlers. Some are pretty, some plain; some are bright and lively, and nicely dressed; others again are badly attired, and neither bright nor lively; and at present they are mostly gathered together in the room opening out of the one which is to be the scene of the fray.

"Now then, Hicks, Armitage, some of you fellows, let's set the ball rolling," cried the jovial voice of Jim Brathwaite, as a volunteer pianist (the orchestral department must be worked entirely by volunteer agency) sat down at the instrument and dashed off a lively galop. "Come along, Arthur, give these fellows a lead," he went on.

Claverton was standing in the doorway. He turned as Jim addressed him.

"Well, if it's all the same, I think I'll cut in later. Fact is, I'm not much of a dancer. Besides, it's a ridiculous exercise."

"Aren't you! 'England expects,'" said Ethel, maliciously, as she floated by, a dream-like vision in pink gauziness. Her golden hair, confined by some cunning device at the back of her head, flowed in s.h.i.+ning ripples below her waist, and the deep blue eyes flashed laughingly into his as she made her mocking rejoinder.

"Does it? Expectations are notoriously unsafe a.s.sets," was the quiet reply.

"Well, we must make a start or we shall never get these fellows to begin," said Jim. "Come along, Ethel, you promised me the first dance.

If you didn't you ought to have."

They glided off, and Claverton stood and followed them mechanically with his glance; but, as a matter of fact, he hardly saw them. He was wondering what on earth had become of Lilian Strange. The dance wore on, and then the next, still Claverton stood in the doorway, which coign of vantage he held conjointly with an uncouth-looking Dutchman and a burly but bashful compatriot, and still _she_ did not appear. At length, while crossing the inner room with a vague idea of putting an artless and roundabout inquiry or two to Mrs Brathwaite as to why Lilian did not appear, he heard himself hailed by his host. Turning quickly he perceived the latter sitting in confab with a contemporary in age, but vastly different in appearance.

"Arthur, this is an old friend of mine, Mr Garrett."

Then arose a queer-looking old fellow, short, rotund of person, and whose exceeding rubicundity of visage betokened, I fear, anything but aversion for ardent spirits. Running one stubby hand through his bristly grey hair, he extended the other to Claverton.

"'Ow do--'ow do? Not been long in the country, have you? My word, but it's a fine country, this is--fine country for young fellers like you."

Claverton thought the country contained also some advantages for the speaker; and he was right. Here was old Joe Garrett, who never knew his father, if he had one, and who, having early in the century deserted from a two-hundred-ton merchant brig lying in Algoa Bay, had started in colonial life as a journeyman carpenter. By hook or by crook he had made his way, and now, by virtue of the four fine farms which he owned, he deemed himself very much of a landed proprietor, and every whit the equal of Walter Brathwaite, "whose ancestors wore chain-armour in the fourteenth century," as some one or other's definition of a gentleman runs.

"I was jest such a young feller as you once," went on this embodiment of colonial progress. "I landed in this country in nothin' but the clothes to my back, and look at me now. Now, I'll tell you what I did," and the oracle, slapping one finger into the palm of the of her hand, looked up into his victim's face with would-be impressive gravity, "I worked; that's what I did--I worked. Now, you may depend upon it, that for a young feller there's nothin' like a noo country--and work!"

"I suppose so," acquiesced Claverton, horribly sick of this biography.

"Now a noo country," went on the oracle, "a noo country, sez I, ain't an old one. 'Ere you're free; there," flinging out a stubby hand in the imaginary direction of Great Britain, "nothing but forms and sticklin'.

Now, 'ere I can sit down to dinner without putting on a swallow-tail-coat and a white choker, for instance. No; give me a noo country and freedom, sez I."

"Quite right, Mr Garrett. A swallow-tailed coat plays the mischief with the digestion, and science has discovered that a white choker tarnishes the silver. Something in the starch, you know--a.r.s.enic, they say."