In the Whirl of the Rising Part 8

"d.i.c.k, don't be silly. How do you do, Mr Driffield," greeting the Native Commissioner. "We were talking about Mr Lamont, and what they say about him. Clare says she doesn't believe a word of it, and I was saying you knew more about it than I do, d.i.c.k."

"Do you mean the breeze at Foster's?"

"Yes."

"Well, he did climb down. There's no doubt about it. And the funny part of it is, that with the gloves on there's hardly a man anywhere in these parts who can touch him."

"There you are, Lucy," cried Clare triumphantly. "Didn't I tell you it was because he was more than the other's match?"

"Well, it hadn't got a look that way at the time, and that was what struck everybody who saw it. Certainly it struck me," replied Fullerton. "But the next time you girls start taking away your neighbours' characters, don't do it at the top of your voices with window and door wide open. We could hear you all down the road.

Couldn't we, Driffield?"

"Mr Driffield sets a higher value on his immortal soul than you do on yours, d.i.c.k," retorted Mrs Fullerton loftily. "Consequently he isn't going to back you in your--ahem!--unveracity."

"No. But he's dying of thirst, Lucy. So am I."

She laughed, and took the hint. Then as the two men put down their gla.s.ses, Fullerton went on--

"Talking of the gloves--that reminds me of another time when Lamont climbed down. That time he put on the gloves with Voss. It was a beautiful spar, and really worth seeing. Then, just as the fun was at its height, Lamont suddenly turned quite white--as white as such a swarthy beggar can turn, that is--and chucked up the sponge then and there."

"Yes. I remember that. It looked rum certainly--but all the same I'll maintain that Lamont's no coward. He showed no sign of it in the war of '93 anyway. If anything rather the reverse."

"Ah!" exclaimed Clare significantly.

"May have lost his nerve since," said her brother-in-law, also significantly.

"Well, I like Lamont," said Driffield decidedly.

"I don't," said Fullerton, equally so.

"Mind you, he's a chap who wants knowing a bit," went on the Native Commissioner. "Then he's all right."

"Is he coming to the race meeting, Mr Driffield?" said Clare.

"Yes. He didn't intend to, though, until I gave him your message, Miss Vidal. We pointed out to him that he couldn't stop away after that."

"Message! But I sent him no message."

"Oh, Miss Vidal! Come now--think again."

"Really, Mr Driffield, I ought to be very angry with you for twisting my words like that," laughed Clare. "But--you mean well, so let it pa.s.s. You are forgiven."

"Talking of Lamont," struck in Fullerton, who had a wearisome way of harking back to a subject long after everybody else had done with it, "there's a yarn going about that he had to leave his own neighbourhood in England for showing the white feather. And it looks like it, remembering what a close Johnny he is about himself."

Driffield looked up quickly.

"I believe I know who put that yarn about," he said. "Wasn't it Ancram--that new man who's putting up at Foster's?"

"Most likely," said Fullerton. "I never heard it myself till a day or two ago."

"Why, what a sweep the fellow must be," declared Driffield. "Lamont has been putting him up since Peters picked him up in the mopani veldt, nearly dead with thirst. Saved his life, in fact. I know it's Ancram, because he pitched me the same yarn--of course 'in strict confidence.'

Confidence indeed!"

"What a cur!" p.r.o.nounced Clare. "Oh, what a completely loathsome cur!"

"Hear--hear!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Driffield.

"Cur or not," said Fullerton, who over and above his dislike of Lamont was naturally of a contradictious temperament,--"cur or not, the story has a good deal of bearing on what we know out here--"

"If it's true," interjected Clare, with curling lips.

"--He left a kid to drown. Said he wasn't going to risk his life for a gutter kid--and wouldn't go in after it even when the girl he was engaged to implored him to. She called him a coward then and there, and gave him the chuck. This chap Ancram saw it all. He was there."

"Then why didn't he go in after it himself?" suggested Clare, with provoking pertinence.

"Says he couldn't get there, or something. Anyway Lamont's girl chucked him then and there. She was the daughter of some county big-wig too."

"Of course I wasn't there," said Clare, "and the man who enjoyed Mr Lamont's hospitality, as a stranger in a strange land, was. Still, I should like to hear the other side of the story."

"What if it hasn't got another side?" said her brother-in-law shortly.

"What if it has? Most stories have," answered Clare sweetly.

"Anyway," struck in Driffield, "Ancram's no sort of chap to go around talking of other people funking. I took him on patrol with me the other day from Lamont's. Thought he'd like to see something of the country perhaps, and the Matabele. Incidentally, Lamont lent him a horse and all he wanted for the trip. Well, the whole time the fellow was in the bluest of funks. When a lot of the people came to _indaba_ us, he kept asking whether they might not mean treachery, or had arms concealed under their blankets. As to that I told him yes, and legs too."

Clare went off into a ringing, merry peal.

"Capital!" she cried.

"Oh well--" said Driffield, looking rather pleased.

"But he was in a terrific funk all through. The acme of it was reached the night we slept at the Umgwane drift. Ames voted him a devil of--er, I mean a superlative nuisance. He kept waking us up at all hours of the night, wanting to know if we didn't hear anything. We had had a big _indaba_ that day with Tolozi and his people, and this chump kept swearing he heard footsteps, and they must be stealing up to murder us in our sleep. I wonder if Peters had been filling him up with any yarns. But, anyhow, Ancram's a nice sort of chap to talk about other people funking, isn't he?"

"Why, yes," said Clare. "But his behaviour with regard to Mr Lamont is too contemptible, spreading stories about him behind his back. Why should he do it, Mr Driffield? What on earth motive can he have?"

"Cussedness, I suppose--sheer cussedness. A good deal more mischief is made under that head than is due to mere motive, I imagine."

"I believe so. By the way, did you persuade Mr Ames to come over for the race meeting?"

"Persuade! I tried to, Miss Vidal. But there's no getting Ames that far out of his district unless on leave or on duty. Ames spells conscientiousness exaggerated."

"That's a pity," said Clare. "He's one of the nicest men I know."

"Except Mr Lamont, Clare," appended her sister mischievously.

"They're so different. You can't compare them," p.r.o.nounced the girl, her serenity unruffled. And then they talked of other things, and had lunch; and after a digestive smoke the two men went back to their offices--Fullerton being by profession a mining engineer.

The township of Gandela consisted of a number of zinc-roofed houses, all staringly new, straggling down what would be the main street when the town was properly laid out, but at present was only the coach road.

There was a market square, with--at present--only three sides to it; an ugly red-brick building representing the magistrate's court; ditto another, representing the Church of South Africa; a farther block somewhat more substantially built, which was the gaol, and from which not more than a dozen or so of prisoners had escaped since the place was first laid out two years previously. At a corner of the market square aforesaid stood the only hotel the place boasted, run by one Foster, to whom reference has been made; while away across the veldt, about half a mile distant, were the barracks of the Matabeleland Mounted Police, a troop of which useful force watched over the town and patrolled the neighbourhood. Scenically Gandela was prettily situated, strategically badly. It stood on a pleasant undulating plain, dotted with mimosa, but on one side dominated by a long, thickly-wooded hill called Ehlatini, the first of a range, likewise thickly-wooded, extending farther back.