The Luck of Gerard Ridgeley Part 9

"Don't be an idiot," answered the girl, but in a tone which seemed to say the "chaff" was not altogether displeasing to her. "But you remember the report we heard coming through Howick, about two men being nearly carried over the Umgeni Fall to-day, while one was trying to save the other. That's the hero of the story, depend upon it. I'd have got it all out of him if you hadn't been in such a desperate hurry. And now we don't even know who he is!"

"No more we do. Let's put an advertis.e.m.e.nt in the paper. That'll draw him--eh? Such a nice-looking boy, too!" he added, mimicking her tone.

"Tom, you're a born idiot," she rejoined, blus.h.i.+ng scarlet.

The "nice-looking boy" meanwhile was cantering homeward in the twilight, building castles in the air at a furious rate. Those blue eyes--that voice--hovered before his imagination even as a stray firefly or so hovered before his path. It was long since he had heard the voice or seen the face of any woman of birth and refinement. Anstey was not wont to mix with such, and the few female acquaintances the latter owned, though worthy people enough, were considerably his inferiors in the social scale. At this time, indeed, his mind and heart were peculiarly attuned to such impressions, by reason of his lonely and uncongenial surroundings; more than ever, therefore, would a feeling of discontent, of yearning home-sickness, arise in his mind. Then, by a turn of retrospect, his memory went back to Mr Kingsland's hearty, straightforward words of advice: "When you've got your foot in the stirrup, keep it there. Stick to it, my lad, stick to it, and you'll do well." And now he _had_ got his foot in the stirrup. Was he to kick it out again in peevish disgust because the stirrup was a bit rusty? No; he hoped he was made of better stuff than that. He must just persevere and hope for better times.

He reached home just as the black cloud, which had been rolling up nearer and nearer, with many a red flash and low rumble, began to break into rain. Having hastily put up his horse in the tumble-down stable, and seen him fed, he went indoors, only to find Anstey blind drunk and snoring in an armchair. Utterly disgusted, he helped that worthy to bed, and then, after a cold supper, for which he had little appet.i.te, he sought his own shakedown couch in the comfortless lumber-room. Then the storm broke in a countless succession of vivid flashes and deafening thunder-peals which shook the building to its very foundations; and to the accompaniment of the deluging roar and rush of the rain upon the iron roof he fell fast asleep--to dream that he was rescuing countless numbers of fighting Zulus from the Umgeni Fall, over which a rainbow made up of blue eyes was striving to lure them.

Note 1. "Snake." Zulus are great believers in tutelary spirits, of which each individual has one or more continually watching over him. To such they frequently, though not invariably, attribute the form of the serpent.

Note 2. A term of contempt employed by the warlike natives of Zululand to designate the natives dwelling in Natal. Probably a corruption of the popular term "Kafir," _ama_ being the plural sign.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

DOWN.

We referred to a change which had come into Anstey's manner as regarded his intercourse with our young friend. More than once he had returned to the charge and sounded the latter again as to the probability of his relatives being willing to invest some funds for him in what he was pleased to call their joint concern. But Gerard's reply had been positive and unvarying. So persuaded was he of their inability to do so that he would not even apply to them. Then it was that Anstey's manner began to change.

He dropped the intimate, elder-brother kind of tone which had heretofore characterised their intercourse, and which poor Gerard in his youth and inexperience had taken for genuine, and for it subst.i.tuted a master-and-servant sort of demeanour. He would order Gerard about, here and there, or send him off on an errand, with a short peremptoriness of tone as though he were addressing some particularly lazy and useless native. Or he would always be finding fault--more than hinting that the other was not worth his salt. Now, all this, to a lad of Gerard's temperament, was pretty galling. The relations between the pair became strained to a dangerous tension.

It happened one morning that Gerard was in the tumble-down old stable, saddling up a horse to start upon some errand for his employer. It was a clear, still day, and through the open door came the sound of voices, which he recognised as belonging to two or three transport-riders, whose waggons were outspanned on the flat outside, and who had been lounging in the store making purchases and chatting just before.

"So I hear they've got two more writs out against Anstey," one voice was saying.

"So? Who's doing it this time?"

"Oh, Butler and Creighton. They ain't going to allow him any more tick--not even to the tune of a string of beads. Why, he's dipped three or four times over. His bills ain't worth the paper they're written on."

"Going to sell him up, are they?"

"_Ja_. They just are. They've got out two more writs, I tell you.

Shouldn't wonder if they put in an execution to-day."

Gerard, to whom every word was as plainly audible as it was to the speakers themselves, felt as though petrified. This relative of his, with his plausible and grandiloquent schemes, stood revealed a bankrupt swindler of the worst type. All the glowing pictures of wealth and success which he had drawn now seemed mere pitiful traps to catch him, Gerard, in his youth and inexperience. Now the motive of Anstey's change of manner was as clear as daylight. There was nothing further to be got out of him. And with a dire sinking of the heart Gerard thought of how he had been induced to invest his little all in this utterly rotten concern. But no--it could not be. Anstey was his relation. He could not be such a mean, pitiful rascal as that. But the next words were not such as to rea.s.sure him.

"How they've given him so much law as they have bangs me, I admit," went on the first speaker. "Why, for the last year past he's never had a cent he could call his own. This show, and every mortal thing in it, has been dipped up to the hilt."

"Maybe this young Britisher he's got hold of has helped bolster him up.

Eh!"

"Maybe. So much the worse for the Britisher, for he'll never see a bra.s.s farthing of his money again. But how the mischief even a raw Britisher could be soft-sawdered by Anstey is a stumper. He's out and away the most infernal scoundrel in this colony."

All the blood rushed to Gerard's head. He had been duped, swindled. He had given several months of hard and honest work without receiving any pay, for his employer had always put him off on some pretext or other-- that it was more convenient, or usual, to settle up half-yearly, or what not. He had been swindled out of even the few pounds which were all he had in the world; for, as the man had just said, he would never be able to get a farthing out of Anstey. Unfortunately there could be no reason to doubt the truth of what he had just heard, for other signs, now made clear, seemed to point to it. These men, moreover, were talking at ease among themselves, and freely. They evidently knew what and who they were talking about. His first impulse was to walk straight up to them and ask for a further explanation. Instead, however, he went back to the store.

Anstey was there, drinking grog with a transport-rider who had just come in. At sight of Gerard he started up angrily.

"Why, what the deuce is the meaning of this?" he said, in his most offensive and hectoring tone. "Not gone yet, and I sent you to saddle up half an hour ago."

Gerard made no reply; but there was a look in his face which mightily disquieted his employer. But the latter, who was fuddled to a quarrelsome stage by the grog he had been drinking, roared out, with a volley of curses--

"You disobedient, skulking beggar! What do you suppose I keep you here for at all? Get out of this at once, and do as I tell you. Do you hear, sir?"

Gerard's face turned livid. The abominable insult of the tone and words was too much. He made a quick move forward, and things would have gone badly for Anstey. But the grip of muscular hands on his shoulders restrained him.

"Hallo, young fellow! What's all the row about? Keep cool, now, I say.

Keep cool!"

The advice was sorely needed, and the restraining touch had a salutary effect. Gerard was not going to throw himself into any vulgar promiscuous struggle, and collected himself with an effort. In the voices of the two men who had just entered, he recognised the two whose conversation he had overheard.

"I'll keep cool, right enough," he said. Then, addressing Anstey, "As for you, the sooner we part the better. I have stood your abominably offensive behaviour long enough, and I won't stand it a day longer. As long as you behaved decently to me--which you did at first, no doubt for reasons of your own--I would have done anything for you. Now you have got upon the other tack I've had about enough of it. So we may as well part at once. Please hand me over what you owe me, and I'll be off."

"What I owe you--eh?" said Anstey, with an evil sneer. "But supposing I don't owe you anything, my fine fellow? If you slink off without giving me proper notice, you forfeit every penny. How does that pan out--eh?"

Gerard's countenance fell. There was truth in this, he feared.

"Well, never mind about that," he said. "I'll waive my claim. I'll make you a present of these months of hard work. Just return me my twenty-five pounds, and we'll cry quits."

Anstey's face was a study in well-simulated amazement--blank, bewildered amazement.

"Is the fellow drunk," he said, "or only mad? Your what? I'm not sure if I quite heard. Your twenty-five thousand pounds, did you say?"

"I said my twenty-five pounds, that you induced me to hand over to you to be invested in this business, which I believe to be an utterly rotten concern, and has been for some time past," replied Gerard, stung out of all prudence or reserve.

The two transport-riders looked at each other with dismayed meaning.

Their conversation must have been overheard. Anstey's face turned livid at this. .h.i.t.

"You're slandering me--slandering me before witnesses, by G.o.d--and that's actionable. I'll have it out of you, you beggarly young sweep!"

he yelled, shaking his fist furiously, safe in the conviction that the other men would not suffer Gerard to a.s.sault him.

"Well, you can please yourself about that. What I want now is the return of my money?"

"Oh, indeed!" sneered Anstey, affecting a cool sarcasm. "And will you kindly state _what_ money it is you desire returned?"

"Certainly," answered Gerard, "though I have already done so. I want the twenty-five pounds--all I had in the world--which you induced me to entrust to you to be invested in this rotten business. And I am going to have it!"

"Oh, you are? So you shall, and welcome, when you can produce one sc.r.a.p of evidence, either in writing or by word of mouth, that I have ever had twenty-five pounds, or s.h.i.+llings, or pence from you. Eh, sonny? What do you say, now?"

Gerard started; stared blankly as he grasped the full extent of the other's rascality. For, in his rawness and inexperience, he had not required any sort of receipt or acknowledgment from Anstey, and he had handed over the money at a time when there was no witness within sight or earshot.

"And I tell you what it is," pursued Anstey, marking his undisguised discomfiture, "I'll be hanged if I don't have the law of you for trying to extort money out of me by threats and violence. I will, too, if you don't clear out of this mighty sharp, and give me no more bother! It's a criminal offence, I tell you; and these gentlemen are witnesses that you tried it on. I'll have you put in the _tronk_. I'll--"

"Stow all that, Anstey," said one of the men, sternly and decisively.