In the Whirl of the Rising Part 15

"Oh, don't do that. You'll lose. That fellow Ancram has been riding my horse to death, the groom at Foster's was quite surprised I should want to ride him up here now, all things considered. However, there he is.

I'll enter with pleasure, but don't you plunge on me."

"But I will, and you must win. Do you hear, you must win."

"I'll try my best, and can't do more."

"That's right," she said.

Lamont was very much of a misogynist, and was impatient of the s.e.x and its foibles, but there was something in this girl that disarmed even him. Her very voice sounded caressing, and the quick lift of the deep blue eyes--well, it was dangerous, might soon become maddening. She had appealed to him from the very first, he admitted as much deep down in his heart of hearts, but there, and there only. Now, amid this sunny, light-hearted scene, as he looked at her he thought how, under other circ.u.mstances, he might have talked to her differently. But the horror invisibly brooding on yonder sunlit hill was still to be reckoned with, and now another anxiety was deepening within his mind. The witch-doctor had not yet arrived, and his presence was essential to the carrying out of the plot--and its frustration.

The tent-pegging, like the racing, proved, for the most part, poor; so much so indeed that it was hard to work up any great enthusiasm over it, though there was abundance of chaff. At the end, however, flagging interest revived, for now the win lay between Lamont and Orwell, the resident magistrate. Tie after tie they made, always neck and neck, and it became a question whether it would not end in a tie. There was plenty of excitement now, and shouting. Then there was dead silence as the two men awaited the word for the last time.

Lamont settled down to his saddle. He would win, he felt, to miss would be impossible. They were off. His lance was unerringly straight for the peg. But as they thundered along he looked up--only one lightning-quick glance, and then--his lance ploughed up the bare turf while that of his adversary whirled aloft, the wedge of wood impaled upon it hard and fast. And amid the roar of cheers that rent the air, Lamont recognised that that quick side-glance he had been betrayed into taking had lost him the day.

But that look--which had clouded his brain and unsteadied his wrist--not upon her for whom he was here in these modern lists was it directed, but upon a red object moving among the groups near the entrance gate of the enclosure.

CHAPTER TWELVE.

THE RED SIGNAL--OR THE WHITE?

"Why--it is. It's old Qubani," said Driffield.

"And who might old 'Click'-ubani be?" asked Clare.

"He's a thundering big Matabele witch-doctor. Fancy the old boy rolling up to see the fun. Wonder they let him in."

"It was thanks to you, Driffield," said a man who was within earshot.

"He was asking for you. Told them at the gate that you and Lamont had invited him to come."

"Then he told a whacking big lie, at any rate as far as I am concerned.

Well, I suppose I must go and talk to him, and incidentally stand him something. In my line it's everything to be well in with influential natives."

"Can't you bring him here, Mr Driffield?" asked Clare. "I'd like to talk to a Matabele chief--didn't you say he was a chief?"

"No; a witch-doctor, who, in his way, is often just as big a pot as a chief--sometimes a bigger. You'd better come over with me and talk to him, Miss Vidal; then, when you've had enough of him, you can go away, whereas if I bring him here he may stick on for ever."

Old Qubani, who was squatting against the enclosure talking to a roughish-looking white man, rose to his feet as he saw Driffield, and with hand uplifted poured forth lavish _sibongo_. Then he turned to Clare.

"_Nkosazana! Uhle! Amehlo kwezulu! Wou! Sipazi-pazi_!"

"What does he say?" she asked.

"He hails you as a princess, says that you are beautiful, and have eyes like the heavens--and that you are dazzling. That's why he put his hand over his eyes and looked down."

"Silly old man; he's quite poetical," she said, looking pleased all the same.

"_Indhlovukazi_!"

"Now he's calling you a female elephant."

"Oh, the horrid old wretch. That is a come down, Mr Driffield."

"Yes, it sounds so, but it's a big word of _sibongo_, or praise, with them."

"Oh well, then I must forgive him."

"_Intandokazi_!"

"What's that?" said Clare, but Driffield had cut short the old man's rigmarole and was talking to him about something else. He did not care to tell her that she was being hailed as his--Driffield's--princ.i.p.al--or rather best-loved--wife. Two white men, standing near, and who understood, turned away with a suppressed splutter.

There was the usual request for tobacco, and then, Qubani glancing meaningly in the direction of the bar tent, remarked that he had travelled far, and that the white man made better _tywala_ than the Amandabeli, as, indeed, what could not the white men do.

"A bottle of Ba.s.s won't hurt him," declared Driffield, sending across for it.

"Why does he wear that great thick cap?" said Clare. "He'd look much better without it."

"This?" said the old man, putting his hand to the cap of red knitted worsted, surmounted by a tuft, which adorned his head--as the remark was translated to him. "_Whau_! I am old and the nights are not warm."

"Why, he's got on two," said Clare, as the movement, slightly displacing the red cap, showed another underneath made of like material but white.

"Goodness! I wonder his head doesn't split."

"Native heads don't split in a hurry, Miss Vidal," said Orwell, the Resident Magistrate, who had joined them in time to catch the remark.

"I don't believe I ought to speak to you, Mr Orwell--at any rate not just yet. You had no business to win that tent-pegging. I had backed Mr Lamont."

The Magistrate laughed.

"Let me tell you, Miss Vidal, that you had backed the right man then.

In fact it's inconceivable to me how he missed that last time, unless the sense of his awful responsibility made him nervous. It would have made me so."

Again, many a true word uttered in jest. The speaker little knew that he had stated what was literally and exactly the case.

"Nonsense. I wonder where Mr Lamont has got to. He hasn't been near me since."

"That I can quite believe. He's afraid. I know I should be."

"Nonsense again, Mr Orwell." And talking about other things they turned away, quite forgetting the old witch-doctor. There was one, however, who was not forgetting him--no, not by any means.

The while Jim Steele, the latest rejected of Clare, was very drunk in the bar tent. When we say very drunk we don't mean to convey the idea that he was incapable, or even unsteady on his pins to any appreciable extent--but just nasty, quarrelsome, fighting drunk; and as he was a big, powerful fellow, most of those standing about were rather civil to him. Now Jim Steele was at bottom a good fellow rather than otherwise, but his rejection by Clare Vidal he had taken to heart. He had also taken to drink.

He had noticed Clare and Lamont together that day, and had more than once scowled savagely at the pair. Moreover, he had heard that Clare had backed Lamont--and had made others do so--in the tent-pegging, and now he was bursting with rage and jealousy. It follows therefore that this was an unfortunate moment for the object of his hatred to enter the tent, and call for a whisky-and-soda. Upon him he wheeled round.

"You can't ride a d.a.m.n!" he shouted.

"I never tried. I prefer to ride a horse," said Lamont, setting down his gla.s.s.