The Fire Trumpet Part 22

"The worst of it is that the bare fact of coming to the town entails upon one multifold commissions, utterly regardless of s.p.a.ce or carrying power," he answered. "Look at those bundles, for instance. Not a third of what I was to have fetched, and shall catch it for not bringing out."

Lilian laughed.

"Never mind. I'll bear witness in your favour. And now tell me, when do we reach Seringa Vale?"

"Not before sundown. I'm afraid you'll be dreadfully done up. It's very spirited of you to travel two days running like this. I wonder you didn't allow yourself a day here to rest after coming up all the way from Port Elizabeth yesterday."

"It was tiring, certainly. But I've had a good night's rest, and this sort of travelling is quite luxurious after the pa.s.senger-cart. Is it going to be very hot?"

"I'm afraid it'll be warm, but not dusty, which is something to be thankful for. The heavy shower in the night has done that much for us.

Look! Grahamstown shows well from here."

A curve in the road brought the city into full view, lying beneath, embowered in its bosky gardens.

"Yes. But I don't see anything to admire in these colonial towns. They are not even picturesque. Frightfully dusty, oppressively hot, and streets and buildings absolutely hideous."

"I agree with you. Look at this one, for instance. That mound of baked clay, plastered up wet and left to dry, which we pa.s.sed at starting and which can hardly be distinguished now, doesn't look much like a cathedral, does it? Yet it is. Then that fifth-rate mongrel Corn Exchange you see--there--is the Eastern Districts Court, second temple of Justice in the land. That square barn-like wool-store, beyond the clay cathedral, is a Methodist chapel with a truly appalling front. It is the prize barrac.o.o.n of that connexion, and its habitues fondly cherish the conviction that it is a second Milan. The building away there against the hill is to be admired, isn't it? Built for a barrack it remains a barrack, though it is now a public hospital. The town is pretty, thanks to its situation and trees, but there isn't a decent-looking building in it."

"I want to see something of the country," went on Lilian. "It ought to be lovely, judging from what I saw of it coming along in the post-cart yesterday. And I've seen nothing of it as yet."

"Here we are, then. What do you think of that?" said her companion, as, having crested the hill which shut the city from view, he whipped up his horses and they sped merrily along an elevated flat, dashing aside the dewdrops which lay thickly studding the short gra.s.s like a field of diamonds. The sun was not long up, and a white morning mist hung here and there among the sprays of the bush, but overhead all was dazzling blue. The view was extensive. Wooded ridges melted away afar in the soft morning light, and in the distant background the crescent range of the Great Winterberg rose purple and dim.

"Oh, but this is lovely!" cried Lilian. "Don't laugh at me, Mr Claverton, but it is like drinking in new life after being pent up in a dusty town."

"I'd rather be shot than laugh at you," he answered, with an earnestness very unwonted in him. "I am only too glad you should find anything to enjoy in what I feared would be to you a very tedious journey. Still more glad am I that it has been my luck to escort you."

It was about the first genuine compliment he had ever paid to a woman in his life, and yet he seemed totally unconscious of intending any compliment at all. He could hardly take his glance off the beautiful, animated face beside him. And how was it that this same escort duty had fallen to his lot? When Lilian Strange found out at nearly the last moment that the opportunity on which she relied of getting to Seringa Vale had fallen through, Mr Brathwaite had made arrangements to go to Grahamstown and fetch her himself. But a sharp attack of rheumatism precluded this, and Hicks, who otherwise would have been told off on this mission, and who had his own reasons for not wishing to be away from home two days, easily prevailed on his friend to go instead of him.

On they sped, now ascending a hill at a foot's pace, now bowling briskly down the next declivity, as the road wound over the rolling country. To Lilian the journey, so far from being a tedious one, was wholly delightful. She was vividly interested in everything. Even the little meercats, which sat upright on their hind legs a few yards from the road and then bolted into their burrows at the approach of the horses, came in for a share of her notice and admiration. A solitary secretary bird, stalking away down in the hollow, became the subject of numerous inquiries, and she gazed with awe upon a cloud of great white vultures soaring overhead bound for some defunct horse or sheep, appearing from nowhere and disappearing as mysteriously. To the English girl, with her keen love of Nature, even these insignificant representatives of wild African animal life were full of interest.

They pa.s.sed a large ostrich farm lying beneath them on the slope, and she could hardly believe her companion's statement that the distant black specks at the farther ends of their respective enclosures were as formidable as the traditional mad bull, until a large troop of ten-months-old ostriches, under charge of herds, swept past, and he drew her attention to their size, and the strength of those long legs terminating in a sharp, h.o.r.n.y toe, capable of ripping a man up. But the birds looked very handsome, very picturesque as they careered by, their snowy plumes extended and waving, and she was delighted with the picture they made, though her enjoyment was tempered with alarm as the horses showed signs of restiveness. But Claverton rea.s.sured her, and the ostriches and their keepers were soon left far behind.

"You live at Seringa Vale, do you not, Mr Claverton?"

"Well, yes; I do at present. I am jackarooing there, as they say in Australia, which is to say that I am imbibing instruction in the craft in consideration of my valuable services."

"And are you going to settle out here, then?"

"To settle! H'm! How do you know I wasn't born and bred out here?"

"I suppose because there's some sort of secret sign by which one importation can detect another," answered Lilian. "I don't believe you have been out here as long as I have."

"Do I look so thoroughly the 'new chum,' then? Point out the conspicuous sign of 'rawness,' that I may at once eradicate it, if it is worth eradicating, that is."

"No. I refuse to reveal my masonic sign," she answered, gaily; "but I know I am right in my conjecture. I could tell the moment I saw you.

Am I not right? Now confess!"

"Yes and no. That is to say, it is only three months since I left England this time; but before that I was out here in South Africa for several years."

"Then I cannot claim seniority of standing, after all. Are there any more 'importations' at Seringa Vale?"

"Yes. Hicks. But he's so thoroughly acclimatised that he don't count.

You and I are exiles and sojourners in a far country. I foresee we shall be talking British 'shop' to a grievous extent," said Claverton, not that he cared a rush about England, or had any great reason to, for the matter of that, but it would establish an _entente_ with his beautiful travelling companion, a something quite between themselves.

He was surprised to notice a wearied and even pained expression flit across the lovely face, like the shadow of a cloud pa.s.sing over the bright smooth surface of a mountain lake.

"I don't know. I think I would rather forget all about England," she replied, sadly. "It is a subject with no fascination for me. As I'm here in this country I want to like it, and it is highly probable that I shall, at any rate during the next two months. By-the-bye, what dear old people Mr and Mrs Brathwaite are!"

"That they are," a.s.sented the other, heartily. And then for the life of him he could not help subsiding into silence. She had a history, then.

She would fain forget the land of her birth. It was not wholly the stern law of necessity that had banished her to a distant land to fight the rough, hard battle of life. There was another cause, and glancing at her as she sat beside him, Claverton thought he could in a measure guess at the nature of that cause. His pulses were strangely stirred, and even then he was conscious of a longing to comfort her, of a wild, unreasoning resentment against some person unknown. Remarkable, wasn't it, considering he had only seen her for the first time in his life that morning, and that now it was still far short of midday?

But two persons of opposite s.e.xes, both young, both goodly to look upon, and under circ.u.mstances situated such as these two, will, I trow, find it difficult to preserve silence for long--seated side by side in the circ.u.mscribed s.p.a.ce of a buggy. Lilian was the first to break it.

"What was that?" she asked, eagerly, as a loud resounding bark echoed forth from the hillside above them.

"Only a baboon. Look, there he is--that black speck up there; and the others are not far off."

They were driving through a wild and narrow pa.s.s. High overhead great ma.s.ses of rock cut the skyline in fantastic piles, castellated here, riven there, and apparently about to crumble in pieces, and hurl themselves down upon the road. Thick bush grew right down to the road winding along the side of the hill, which here and there fell straight away from it in rather an alarming and precipitous manner.

It was just at the most alarming of these places that a few puffs of dust and a crack or two of a whip betokened the approach of waggons, and the next moment the foremost of them appeared round a jutting corner of rock. Claverton muttered an imprecation as he noted that the oxen were without a leader, straggling across the very narrow road at their own sweet will, and bearing down upon him and his charge a great deal faster than he liked. The waggon, loaded sky high with wool bales, was still a couple of hundred yards off, but the road from it to the buggy was a brisk declivity; there seemed very insufficient brake on, and no sign of any one in charge. One of two things was likely to happen: either the buggy would be splintered into matchwood against the inner side of the road, or hurled into perdition over the outer one, by the ponderous ma.s.s now bearing down uncontrolled upon it. Claverton reined in his horses and hallooed angrily.

An ugly, mud-coloured head rose from the apex of the pile; then apparently subsided.

"Where's your 'leader,' you _schepsel_?" he shouted in Dutch. "Get off and stop your fore oxen, or, by G.o.d, I'll shoot them dead on the spot."

The situation was critical, it must be remembered. A sooty imp of a boy glided to the front of the span, and succeeded in bringing them up just in time. The huge, unwieldy machine rolled creaking past the buggy, narrowly grazing it with the wool bales. The Hottentot driver raised his ugly head and leered insolently.

"Hey, you, Engelschman! Don't you know how to pa.s.s a waggon yet?" he shouted.

Quickly Claverton stood up, and by dint of a dexterous "flick," cut the fellow with his driving-whip in such wise as to chip a weal of skin out of his face, and then the pace of the pa.s.sing vehicles carried him out of reach.

The Hottentot yelled and cursed with rage and pain; but there was something so threatening in Claverton's face and the sudden movement he made as if to descend and make a further example of him that the fellow thought better of it, and dropped the empty grog bottle which he had been about to shy after the trap. He solaced himself, however, with a shower of parting curses.

"Lord, Lord! To think that I should have to sit still and be cheeked by a dirty drunken Tottie," said Claverton to himself yet aloud, as if oblivious of his companion. Yet he had to. He could hardly drop the reins and leave her there in the middle of an excessively narrow and dangerous bit of road, with a pair of very fresh and somewhat restive horses on hand, while he went to wreak further vengeance on the impudent rascal whose carelessness might have been productive of a serious catastrophe. He was handicapped altogether.

It was an earnest of real life. By himself, with only himself to think of, he could take care of himself. In charge of another, would he not have to swallow tons and tons over and above the traditional peck of "matter in the wrong place" without a murmur? He would be handicapped altogether. Philosopher as he was, it was hardly likely that such a consideration should obtrude at this moment.

The other waggon was engineered by a couple of quiet-looking and civil Kafirs, who gave them plenty of roadway and the good-morning as they pa.s.sed.

Claverton stole a glance at his companion's face. She had been not a little startled, he could see that, yet she kept her composure, and the fact pleased him. Most women under the circ.u.mstances would have let fly exclamations of alarm, perhaps shrieked, possibly even might have grabbed convulsively at the reins--that most blindly idiotic and utterly exasperating phase of feminine scare upon wheels. This one, however, only changed colour ever so little, but did and said nothing.

"Here we are at an 'hotel,' as they call it in this country," he remarked, pointing out a seedy-looking domicile, like unto a fifth-rate Dutch farmhouse, which hove in sight before them. "We can either stop there, or drive on a little farther and outspan in the _veldt_, whichever you prefer."

"Oh, do let us outspan in the _veldt_," answered Lilian, gleefully.

"The drive is lovely, and a picnic in the middle of it will be quite the right thing."

"Of course it will--or rather two picnics, for we shall have to outspan again. Look, we don't lose much by giving that barrac.o.o.n the go-by," he went on, as they pa.s.sed the edifice in question. "Goat chops very tough, pumpkin and rice, and Cape sherry, are about the only items in its bill of fare, I venture to predict."

"Horrible!" declared Lilian, with a laughing grimace.