Jasper Lyle Part 18

Mr Trail had brought this mother and eldest daughter nearer to each other than they had been for years; and Mrs Daveney antic.i.p.ated Eleanor's confidence ere the morning pa.s.sed. The latter did not appear at the breakfast-table, and the kind, anxious father went to satisfy himself that she was not ill.

There was a shade of anxiety on his brow, and as he pa.s.sed his wife, on leaving the table at the call of some farm-servant, he whispered to her that Eleanor wished to see her.

The result of their conference was the resolution on Eleanor's part, with the sanction of father and mother, to "tell Major Frankfort the history of the miniature, and more if he desired it."

Light broke on Eleanor as her mother reminded her of many trifling incidents, plainly manifesting Frankfort's partiality for her. These, connected with what had lately pa.s.sed between the young widow and the generous, candid soldier, left no doubt an her mind of the nature of his regard for her. She began to weigh every look; she suddenly remembered he had addressed her as "Eleanor,"--she had been too much startled by the unexpected allusion to her lost darting to think of anything but the revival of the bitter pang.

Then Frankfort's violent emotion was so at variance with his usual delicacy. She was half-frightened to believe that he loved her. They had spent three weeks together under the same roof. It might truly be said that the light of a new day had _dawned_ upon her, so insensibly had Frankfort's influence stolen over her, and sweetened an existence, of late so wretched and forlorn.

To have seen the settlement of Annerley, in the early part of March, 18--, you would have thought, had you known nothing of the terrible elements gathering silently around, that Mercy and Peace had met together, that Righteousness and Truth had kissed each other.

"In the deep noontide, in the sunset's hush," the children's voices chimed together in the busy school; mothers and sisters plied their needles in the shady, trellised pa.s.sage; the cattle herds grew careless, and dozed away the dreamy day; the ladies of the family party suffered themselves to hope that the dove with the olive branch was winging her way from the mountain haunts of the unhappy heathen. Ormsby was hourly profiting by his a.s.sociation with his energetic, intelligent, active-minded host. The "maxims" he had been accustomed to laugh at as "Frankfort's plat.i.tudes" were household words here. The fresh, innocent mind of Marion was a new and beautiful study, and he was a little, a very little, afraid of Mrs Daveney. He was not quite sure that he liked her--she was evidently inclined to keep him in order, and then she was "dreadfully clever."

So complete was the quiet reigning in this beautiful wilderness, that even Mr Daveney began to think the chiefs had held council, and determined on prolonging the truce, owing to the lateness of the season, the corn being yet unripe in the districts between the Buffalo and Keiskama rivers. The two officers were awaiting his expected despatch to rejoin their regiments, if ordered to do so, as they had considered it right, on so long and unforeseen detention, to "report" their whereabouts to their commanding officer.

You will think it all very novel-like and romantic to have brought these delightful, handsome, intelligent officers into the wilderness, and established them there with an obliging mamma, and a soldierlike host, and two charming daughters--you will consider it all perfectly correct in romance, but not quite so true to nature. Ah! if you had seen the world at home and abroad as I have done, dear reader, you would have discovered that romance and reality are much more nearly allied than untravelled folks imagine. I a.s.sure you, the picture of the Annerley settlement is not exaggerated, though I admit that the family I have selected to introduce to you is not of common stamp, even in England; but there is plenty of s.p.a.ce for more of them in Southern Africa, and there is so little room in England, that vice jostles against virtue, and often has the best of it.

Frankfort and Eleanor were again seated on the rustic bench, beneath the scarlet-tufted corallodendrum. He could not doubt any longer that he had at least touched her heart--how deep the impression was, he could not tell. In her manner to him she was like a child, all joyousness; at times smiling, almost gay, and occasionally confiding, but as yet not so in matters connected with herself. Sometimes she would half promise to "talk of herself" to him; then the time came, and something would intervene. If he had shrunk from asking her previous history, she dreaded to tell it. She said so, but added, for his comfort--"Fear not, dear Major Frankfort; you may pity me as unfortunate, and contemn me as weak, but you will not have occasion to condemn. I am only a wronged, deceived, and, for a long time, most unhappy woman; and if you should despise me for my misfortunes, which you may do"--she put her hand on his lips, as he was about to interrupt her--"you will not love me less, though you may not choose me for your wife."

He took her hand in his, and pressed it with a fervency, eloquent but silent.

"Ah!" said she, shuddering, "it is so long since I was happy, that, albeit _you_ present the cup, I hold it to my lips, trembling lest it fall."

She took the miniature of her boy from her bosom. Frankfort bent over her, and gazed upon the angel face, dimmed with the young mother's tears; but though she wept, it was not with that pa.s.sionate anguish he had witnessed before. He drew her to him--he ventured to kiss away those slow-falling tears--he had told her that morning that he loved her.

"Tell me," at last whispered Frankfort, trembling and cold with suspense, "who was this child's father?"

"I could not nerve myself to tell you my sad story," replied Eleanor.

"I have written it. My father will give it you this evening, I own I shrunk from this tearing open of the records of the past. There are some pa.s.sages from which you will turn perhaps in dismay. You will discover, what you may have already suspected, that I have loved and been deceived; but you have yet to decide whether I am a fitting bride for you. I confess I have no hope."

Frankfort withdrew his hand from Eleanor's. He paced the walk in great agitation.

She waited till he approached her again. "Pity me," said she, rising.

"Ah! it has been a terrible task to make this revelation to you. Do me justice--I did not seek to win _you_. I had abjured love for ever; but you came; you were kind; I listened; a new emotion stirred my heart, unlike the wild pa.s.sion which once brought me to the depths of despair, and now, G.o.d help me! _you_, too, may forsake me."

She was weeping. "Tell me," he again whispered, "is there any self-reproach?--any shame? Ah, Eleanor! I must know--any--"

"Disgrace!" you would say, interrupted Eleanor.

Her lover answered her not a word, but stood waiting her reply. The strong, tall man shook like an aspen-tree.

"You will learn all," said Eleanor, "in the packet I have left for you with my father. I leave it to you to decide whether we may meet again."

The light of day was fading. Side by side, they returned towards the house; but not a word did either speak. They went round by the vineyard; they stood at the gateway leading to the trellised pa.s.sage.

Frankfort opened it, and Eleanor would have pa.s.sed him by.

He drew her back. "Shall we meet again, Eleanor?" said he.

"Alas!" she answered, "I fear _you_ will decide otherwise." And he--his _heart_ answered her in the spirit, if not in the words, of Moore's beautiful song:

"I know not and care not if guilt's in that heart, I but know that I love thee, whatever thou art!"

Ah, reader! you will be glad to know, for I cannot help telling you, that Eleanor, though _disgraced_, was not _guilty_, save in the act, and that I do not defend, of marrying one for whom she had no real affection.

The inmates of Annerley have retired to their rest. The whole household seems hushed in the deepest repose; but Frankfort is seated with a packet before him, which he longs, yet dreads, to open.

He tears the seal away, and the sight of Eleanor Lyle's handwriting makes his heart beat--he can hear it in the silence of the midnight hour.

But we must first see how sped the convicts.

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

THE TORTURE.

It was in the month of December, 18--, that Lee and Martin Gray established themselves as traders at Umlala's kraal, in Kafirland. The reader has been given to understand that Lee had no intention of domesticating himself with the savages, albeit he adapted himself at once to the customs of the tribe, persuading the chief and his councillors that he had been induced to join them from a desire to better his condition, as well as aid and advise them in their plans and operations against the colony. He was too well acquainted with the Kafir character to attempt to impose on them by professing disinterested motives, for on these he knew they would place no reliance; but by fixing himself as a trader among them, he could in the first place bide his time for carrying out his intentions of joining the Dutch; and while doing so, lay up a fund for future pecuniary wants or emergencies. To Brennard it was his interest to be a faithful agent. To do Lee justice, he had no thought of fraud in money matters, and from the traders to the eastward he easily gathered intelligence of the Dutch farmers'

movements, from the districts of Natal, and beyond the Draakberg, to an appointed spot between the branches of the Orange River, where a general gathering of emigrant Boers was to take place previous to treking in a body to Orichstad, a settlement beyond the 25th degree of south lat.i.tude, and therefore considered by them as not subject to the British Government.

With an air of good faith, he opened a correspondence in cipher with Brennard, who, at his suggestion, placed an agent on the Stormberg mountains, and thus increased his contraband traffic by disposing of arms and ammunition to the Boers, who, a.s.sisted by these traitors, grew sanguine in their hopes and determined in their preparations. So blind, indeed, was the colonial government to the real state of affairs, that wagons containing guns actually pa.s.sed the outskirts of the frontier garrisons, on their way to the Modder and Bilt River settlements, while smaller arms were landed at the Umtata, and conveyed to a depot at the foot of the northern extremity of the Stormberg mountains.

The Dutch soon felt the influence of a master mind at work. A secret communication was set on foot between Lee and the rebel leader; but Lee was cautious in his policy, since, to be suspected by the Kafirs as anything but a trader, would be to draw down attention from the missionaries, who were, when permitted, in communication with the tribes most distant from the colony. Those within the border were becoming every day more lawless. It was said by some of these teachers, in after times, that they had had an idea of some men of suspicious character living among Umlala's people; but having no tangible proof of their existence, having only the word of Kafir spies to depend on, they could take no steps in the matter, either by offering advice to the Kafirs, near whom the poor missionaries and their families were living in dread and peril of their lives, or by giving information to the authorities, who were too remote to act.

Lee liked the life he led; the form of government so favourable to the doctrine that "might is right," though tempered in some measure by general opinion, in which he succeeded in gaining a voice; the total absence of all moral discipline except as regarded women, with whom Lee, as he said, had no mind to trouble himself--a life of ease, yet of excitement, the s.p.a.cious and beautiful country, all conspired to render his temporary location desirable; but while he thus rested on his arms, his mind was ceaselessly at work.

With that shrewdness which stands bad men in stead of deeper knowledge, Lee had long penetrated the weaker outworks, so to speak, of Gray's heart; keenly susceptible, of facile mind, and imbued with a vanity as natural to men as to women, he had easily yielded to the gentle influences and watchful solicitude of Amayeka. Lee at once profited by this "fancy," as he called it, to turn it to his own account, and used every means to encourage it.

Desirous of personal conference with the Dutch agent at the station in the Stormberg, he had no mind to be attended in such expeditions by Gray; yet he knew well that without some counter-charm, the deserter, on being left to himself, would at once appeal, through the missionaries, to the mercy of the British Government. True, there was the oath which had bound the three traders together in solemn compact, but paramount to all other considerations was Gray's horror of his own treachery and disloyalty as a soldier. However desirous he might be of keeping the compact, as regarded Brennard and Lee, inviolate, the issue of Gray's surrender would be keen inquiry, and consequently a fatal result to the chief convict's schemes. Like a good man's neglected garden, the surface of the young deserter's character presented a wilderness of weeds and briars, but below were seeds long sown, some dead, but some struggling, with every capability of fruition, when the soil should fall under the hand of the labourer. All considerations, Lee felt, would vanish before the wish to retrieve the past, to become, in Gray's own words, "an honest man again."

Evening time in Kafirland! The sun has all day long been glowing on the river, lighting it up like burnished steel; the trees motionless, the birds on listless wing, screening themselves within the shady boughs.

Now the mountain peaks are blending their purple summits with a crimson sky, and the last rays of light deck the clouds in the west as with a glory! Lo! it fades, and the heavens are veiled with a mantle of pale grey; the stream begins to murmur, responsive to the breeze that stirs its waters; the birds congregate in the balmy air before seeking their rest; the countless herds more slowly homeward, panting for the refreshment of cool water brooks; and the women, some singly, some in parties in single file, trip across the plains to draw water, as is their custom at eventide. The picture reminds one of what one reads of in the patriarchal days.

Lee and Gray sat upon a bank that sloped to the river, a tributary of the Great Kei--would you had a map, dear reader, to trace the country I would fain describe. Peals of laughter stirred the air. Beneath the over-arching boughs a crowd of dusky Nereides were taking their evening bath, swimming, diving, pulling each other in sport below the surface of the stream, swinging from branch to branch with amazing activity and grace, and tossing up fountains of spray on the elder women, who stood silently filling their calabashes at the clear pools between the stones at the drift.

"Amayeka, Amayeka, izapa, izapa (come hither)," cried two or three of the younger girls, as Amayeka, apparently unconscious of the gathering below, and with slow step, vacant air, and pitcher on her head, moved along the opposite bank, followed by her little attendant, a tiny meercat, which I have hitherto forgotten to mention.

It is the wisest-looking little thing you can imagine, is this meercat of South Africa. Its keen, restless black eye looks right into your own, and asks questions as plainly almost as speech could do. It has a way of setting itself up bolt-upright, and turning its head from one object to another with the most inquisitive air, and adapts itself to the habits of its owners in a manner perfectly marvellous. I remember one which, though not very young when taken near the Orange River, became domesticated like a dog, and was far more sociable than a cat. I think I see it now, sitting at a garden-gate facing a parade-ground, on which, at stated hours of the day, troops were wont to exercise. As the warning bugle sounded, it took up its position; when the regiment fell in, the meercat placed itself in front of the line; when the men marched, the little beast advanced in front of the column, halted with the troops, and when they were again in line, sat down before them, and watched the commanding officer with a knowing air quite indescribable.

At the close of a drill it would head the band to the limits of the ground; and when all were dismissed, would return to the house. In the cold weather, if suspicious of any visitors, it would roll itself into a ball, and squeeze itself into some corner, where it could not easily be reached; but it loved best to sit before the fire, with its paws on the fender, surveying the family group, of which it was the pet, with its sharp twinkling eyes, and bending its ears knowingly to every unaccustomed sound.

Such too was the creature that trotted beside Amayeka, now and then seating itself before her, and glancing from its mistress to the nymphs in the river, as if to remind her she was called; but she went on, deaf to the cry "Izapa;" and Gray watched her till she disappeared behind a tuft of trees overhanging the upper drift. Soon afterwards Lee joined some young warriors, with whom he had been engaged all the morning in firing at a mark, and who now summoned him to their employment of casting bullets at a fire under the rocks; Gray rose also, and descended by the bank.

Amayeka was seated by the river's brink, with the meercat at her feet; twilight lingered long, and the young moon shed its first ray of silver on the water, when a loose stone rolled past her; there was a light tread, a rustle in the branches of a long-tressed weeping willow, and Gray's hand fell on her shoulder.

But in a copse above lay the wizard Amani, with his elements of witchcraft gathered round him--strips of skin from the golden back of the deadly puff-adder, the hood of a cobra capello, some poisonous roots steeped in gall, the forefinger of a dead Fingo herdsman, and the skull of a Hottentot, in which last he was busily mixing up these ghastly charms with a cement of blood and clay.

He had long had some notion of Amayeka's intercourse with the younger convict, or trader, as Amani, like the rest of his tribe, supposed the deserter to be, and he now gloated at his discovery.