The Fire Trumpet Part 34

Lilian, in her intense love of the beautiful, could not restrain a cry of delight as she gazed upon the splendid panorama before them. The exhilarating exercise and the warm balminess of the air had brought the loveliest flush into her clear olive cheeks, and as she sat there lightly reining in her horse, while the sweet eyes sparkled and dilated and a witching smile carved the usually sad mouth, her companion thought he had never seen such a picture in his life.

"A lovely background with a lovelier central figure," he murmured.

"Look at it well," he added. "Take it all in thoroughly, now; it will never look the same again. Nothing ever strikes us as it does the first time."

She looked half round at him. "Am I delaying you?"

"Delaying _me_? Good heavens!" is all the reply he can make just then.

Often in the time to come will he remember this day, this moment. Often will he stand in imagination as he does now with one arm over the pommel of his saddle, watching the radiant face of this girl in its almost divine beauty, set in entranced contemplation of the glorious landscape all gleaming with purple and gold in the flooding suns.h.i.+ne. And remembering it he will feel as though he had lost Heaven. A dull, gnawing pain tugs at his heart as a forecast of the future runs darkly through him, but with a great effort he thrusts it aside; he will live in the present, and sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.

"What are those, down there?" cried Lilian. "Bucks of some sort?"

"Yes. Springbok. There are a few on this side of the place."

Some two dozen of the graceful creatures were trotting leisurely along on the slope below them. They were near enough for the dark stripe upon their s.h.i.+ning sides to be plainly discernible, as also the rings on their black curved horns, as they kept turning their heads to gaze inquiringly at their human observers.

"How pretty they are!" said Lilian. "We are seeing ever so many queer things to-day, and this beautiful country. Do you know, I am thoroughly enjoying this ride."

"Are you? I wish it might last for ever."

His face wears the same look of longing desperation which it wore in the starlight, while they stood by the pool. Quickly the gladness fades from hers as a light that has gone out. She thinks how selfish she is to throw her joyousness at him thus, while his heart is aching for love of her.

"Hus.h.!.+" she says, in a low compa.s.sionate tone. "Remember our compact."

Claverton dare not trust himself to look at her. His eyes are fixed on the hazy slopes of the far-off mountains, whose green and purple sides he scarcely so much as sees. For some minutes neither speaks. Then with a quick restless sigh he throws himself into the saddle.

"You are right," he says, huskily. "It is I who am weak; weak as water.

Only this once. I will not transgress again."

They resumed their way. The springboks, startled by the sudden move forward, bounded off. On the brow of the rise, several of them began leaping high into the air, with all four feet off the ground together, and their bodies in the form of a semicircle. Being in relief against the sky, the effect was not a little bizarre.

"What ridiculous creatures!" said Lilian, watching them. "I never saw such contortions."

"Yes, they are vindicating their name," said her companion, tranquilly.

He had recovered his composure, and was thankful for this diversion.

Cresting the next ridge they came suddenly upon a couple of advancing hors.e.m.e.n, heavy-faced, lumbering-looking fellows, their complexions tanned to the colour of brickdust, and it needed but a glance at their general untidiness, and seedy get-up, to p.r.o.nounce upon their nationality.

They stopped and shook hands with Claverton, doffing their greasy hats to his companion, at sight of whom even their wooden countenances showed signs of animation. A few commonplace questions and answers were exchanged, then one of the Boers, glancing at Lilian, asked with the freedom of speech customary among that delightfully primitive people: "Is that your wife?"

He answered without moving a muscle, and enlightened them. They were only ignorant brutes, he reasoned, half savages almost; yet just then, the question had come upon him with a kind of shock. He was thankful that Lilian had not understood the conversation.

"I really must learn Dutch," she said. "It isn't nearly such an inviting tongue as the full melodious flow of the Kafir language; but far more useful, I should think. Everybody seems to speak it."

"Yes, it's the regular go-between jargon here. Very few even of the frontier people speak Kafir, and not one Kafir in five hundred can talk English, hence the necessity of a go-between. Look! There's our destination."

They had reached the brow of one of those long rolling undulations which formed a leading feature in the landscape, and on the rise opposite stood a large single-storeyed house, with an iron roof and deep verandah. A block of out-buildings adjoined, and several s.p.a.cious enclosures sloped down into the hollow; but save for a few tall blue gums overshadowing the house, the surroundings were dest.i.tute of trees.

"Ah, you've found your way over to us at last," said Emily Naylor, who with Laura Brathwaite had come out on the stoep to meet Lilian. "So glad to see you. Was it very hot, riding? You must be tired."

"Oh, no," answered Lilian, "the air was delightful, and the view--I never saw anything so perfect;" and she turned to look again at the wide, sweeping landscape stretching away in front.

"Yes; it's very pretty," said her hostess. "It is not so pretty here as at Seringa Vale, because we have no trees, but the look-out is much wider. But come inside and sit down, or shall we sit out here? You must be tired after your ride."

"I'm not though, really. And you must not make me out an invalid,"

answered Lilian, with a smile. "I'm far from that."

"Then come and see the young ostriches."

Lilian readily a.s.sented, and the whole party moved thither accordingly.

"Well, Miss Laura, you're looking all the better for your change of air; in fact, blooming," remarked Claverton, who was walking beside her. "By the way, where's the twin?"

"Ethel? Oh, she's down at the ostrich enclosure, where we are going.

Mr Allen is there, too, and Will Jeffreys."

"_Alias_ Scowling Will. So he's here, is he?"

"Yes. But I can't return you the compliment you just paid me. You look as if you had been up all night for a week," answered Laura, with a spice of demure malice.

"Oh, don't make personal remarks; it's rude," murmured Claverton, languidly.

"Ha--ha," struck in Naylor. "Claverton's been getting on the spree, I expect, now that you two are not there to keep him in order. And now here we are," he went on, as they arrived at an improvised yard some twenty feet square, wherein a number of little oval-shaped woolly things were running about. "They are strong little beggars, not a seedy one among the lot."

They had not been long hatched, and as they scuttled about, stopping occasionally to peck at the chopped lucerne strewn on the ground, they were just the size and shape of the parent egg, plus legs and a neck.

Naylor picked one of them up.

"You'd never think that this little chap in less than a year's time would be able to kick a fellow into the middle of next week, would you?"

he said, showing it to Lilian.

"No, indeed," replied she, stroking the little creature's glossy brown neck, and pa.s.sing her fingers through the thick coating of hair-like feathers like the soft quills of the porcupine, which covered its back.

"What dear little things they are. They ought always to keep small."

"Oho!" laughed Naylor. "Bad look out for those who farm them, if they did. You wouldn't get much for a plucking off this little beggar, for instance."

"Of course I didn't mean that," she explained. "I meant that it was a pity such pretty little things should grow up big, and ugly, and vicious."

"It's a good thing sometimes that they are vicious," said Naylor. "It keeps the n.i.g.g.e.rs from going into the enclosures and stealing the eggs, and even plucking the birds. They are taking to that already."

"Are they not too much afraid of them?"

"Not always. Look at those two black chaps in yonder camp. They are four-year-old birds, and the n.i.g.g.e.r isn't born who'd go in and pluck them. Look, you can see them both now," added Naylor, pointing out a couple of black moving b.a.l.l.s, many hundred yards off, in the middle of their enclosures.

"It is all very interesting," exclaimed Lilian, half to herself, gazing around. Far away on the sunlit plains a herd of cattle was lazily moving; down by the dam in the hollow, whose gla.s.sy waters shone like burnished silver in the midday heat, stood a few horses, recently turned out of the kraal, swis.h.i.+ng the flies with their tails, or scratching each other's backs with their teeth, while in the ostrich "camps," whose long, low walls ran up the slope, the great bipeds stalked majestically about, pecking at the herbage on the ground, or, with head erect and neck distended, looked and listened suspiciously, equally ready for a feed of corn or for an intruder. All seemed to tell of peace, and suns.h.i.+ne, and prosperity.

"How you must enjoy your life in this beautiful country!" she went on.

Naylor was hugely gratified. Subsequently he took occasion to remark to his wife that Lilian Strange was the nicest and the most sensible girl he had ever seen. "Why doesn't Claverton cut in for her?" added the blunt, jovial fellow, in his free-and-easy way. "Then they could get hold of one of these places round here. He's a fool if he doesn't." To which his wife answered, with a provoking smile of superior knowledge, that she supposed most people knew their own business best.

Now, however, he looked pleased. "Well, yes; we've been brought up in it, you see, and shouldn't be happy in any other. But I should have thought that you, coming out from England, would have found it rather slow. Perhaps you haven't had time to, though, as yet."