The Fire Trumpet Part 62

"Yes; it's myself all right," he replies, kissing away the tears from her cheeks and eyes. "But I shall begin to think it's some one else directly, because this is far and away too good for me--too good for me to believe in. Lilian, my life! Every day since we parted I have been looking forward to and waiting for this."

"Ah G.o.d! I have got my darling back again safe--safe!" she murmurs almost inaudibly, but Claverton hears it, and he does not answer, he only tightens his clasp of the lithe, willowy figure which he holds in his embrace, and covers the soft dusky hair, lying against his cheek, with pa.s.sionate kisses. A thousand years of ten times the peril and hardship he has gone through since they parted would be a small price to pay for such a moment as this, he thinks. They make a pleasant picture, those two, as they stand there. He--well-knit, grave, handsome, in the rough picturesqueness of his campaigning attire, his features bronzed by exposure to sun and climate, and with his normal air of quiet resolution deepened and enhanced by a sense of many dangers recently pa.s.sed through; looking at her with a tender, protecting reverence. She--soft, graceful, and clinging--the sweet lips curving into a succession of radiant smiles even while her eyes are yet wet with the tears which an uncontrollable feeling of love and thankfulness has evoked.

"So you thought I was never going to put in an appearance, darling?" he says, at length.

"Ah, how I waited and longed! But I can forget it now--now that I have got you. Wait! You look so much better for the dreadful time you have been through, dearest, so strong and well. And you are not going off again, are you? The war is over now."

"I hope so," is his rather weary reply. "I'm tired of ruffians and camp life--utterly sick of them. Not but what the said ruffians are rather good fellows; but peace is better than fighting, when all's said and done. By the way, how is it we have the house all to ourselves? This is an unusual run of luck, my Lilian."

"Mrs Payne is out somewhere, and the children too. And--"

"And--why didn't you go with them, instead of moping in here alone all the morning?"

"Arthur!"

"Lilian! Don't look so shocked, my darling. Do you think I don't know perfectly, that you wouldn't lose a chance of getting the first glimpse of a certain broken-down and war-worn ragam.u.f.fin?"

A shadow darkened the light. Both looked up quickly as a slim, well-made native, standing in the doorway, raised his hand above his head and sang out l.u.s.tily, "Inkos!"

"Hallo, Sam!" cried Claverton, not best pleased with the interruption.

"How are you getting on?"

The native showed a double row of dazzling "ivories" as he grinned in genuine delight at seeing his master back again.

"Did you kill many--very many of the Amaxosa, my chief?" he asked, in the Zulu tongue.

"H'm. Many of those who got in front of my gun-barrels up there, met with bad accidents," replied his master, drily.

Sam chuckled and grinned. His exultation could hardly contain itself.

"Ha, Missie Liliane," he said, in his broken English, "Sam he tell you so. Inkos, he kill lots, lots of Amaxosa n.i.g.g.a. He shoot, shoot them-- so, so," and he began snapping his fingers vehemently, and otherwise pantomiming the sharp-shooting of a body of skirmishers. "Sam, he tell you so, Missie Liliane. Amaxosa n.i.g.g.a no good! They no can hurt Inkos.

Sam, he tell you so. Inkos, he shoot, shoot them instead. Amaxosa n.i.g.g.a no good. Haow!"

"Sam, you rascal, shut up that," cried Claverton, good-humouredly. "Cut found to the stable and look after the horse; I've ridden the poor brute nearly to death. Give him a good rub down, and see that he's cool before he drinks. D'you hear?"

"Teh bo 'Nkos," answered Sam, and he disappeared; and they could hear him as he pa.s.sed beneath the open window, humming to a sort of chant of his own: "Aow! Amaxosa n.i.g.g.a no good--no good."

"Has that chap behaved himself while I've been away, darling?" asked Claverton.

"Behaved himself? Why, he's the best of boys. Sometimes when I felt very, very downhearted about the war, that dear, good Sam would try all in his power to cheer me up, and persuade me that you would be sure not to come to harm, love. He used to declare that the Kafirs were sure to run away whenever you appeared, and he cut such extraordinary antics, always bringing in that ridiculous phrase of his, that he kept me in fits of laughter. Yes, he has been as good as possible."

"That's a feather in Sam's cap, and a deuced good thing for him. Wasn't it queer, my falling in with all the old lot up there? They were all just the same; even Jeffreys hasn't quite laid by his scowl, and as for Jack Armitage, he's a greater lunatic than ever. I hope our little friend keeps a tight rein on him at his hearth and home, for in the field there was no holding the fellow. He has started a frightful thing in bugles, which he toots upon vehemently on the smallest provocation, though, by Jove, I was glad enough to hear that braying old post-horn once, when Brathwaite's men turned the tables in our favour in an awkwardish scrimmage."

It was a remarkable coincidence that as he uttered these words a terrific fanfare should be sounded outside.

"That's it! Jack's post-horn for anything!" cried he, making for the window. "Talk of the--ah'm! Wonder what the fellow's doing here. And, look, there's George Payne and the rest of them."

The whole lot of them it was, and a minute later they all entered, laughing and talking at a great rate.

"Why, Jack, what the deuce are _you_ doing up here?" cried Claverton, in astonishment.

"We forgot it might be necessary to obtain Mr Claverton's permission to tread the streets of King Williamstown," demurely said a voice at his elbow, before the other could reply.

Claverton turned.

"Oh--ah--ah'm! So _we_ did. I forgot. How d'you do, Mrs Armitage?"

he said, looking quizzically down at the bright, saucy face of the speaker.

Gertie Armitage--_nee_ Wray--laughed and blushed as she shook hands with him. She looked much the same as when last we saw her, a trifle saucier, perhaps, but that was only natural, said her friends, seeing that she had to look after madcap Jack.

That worthy, meanwhile, was endeavouring to initiate Payne's son and heir into the mysteries of the key bugle, but the youngster could evoke no sound from the same, and was ready to cry with chagrin.

"Look here, Harry, this is the dodge," and, putting the instrument to his lips, he emitted a series of diabolical and heartrending blasts.

"Jack--Jack!" cried Claverton, stopping his ears, "for Heaven's sake drop that fiendish row, or you'll have all the Germans in the quarter scuttling under their beds, thinking that the Gaikas have risen, and some fellow has come to commandeer them to go to the front."

"Fiendish row! There's grat.i.tude for you," retorted Armitage. "He didn't call it a fiendish row that day down near the Bashi, did he, Payne?"

"No, it was all right then," rejoined Claverton. "Music in the wrong place, you know, degenerates into a diabolical row. Keep the old post-horn for the ghosts at Spoek Krantz, Jack. They'd appreciate it keenly."

"Oh, the ingrat.i.tude of human nature!" exclaimed the bugler. "But I've left Spoek Krantz."

"Have you? Ah, I thought the ghosts would be too much for you some day.

Where are you now?"

"Nowhere. Got a roving commission. When the country's quiet again I'm going to take over that place next door to Hicks. By the way, you should just see Hicks now, a model family man. Would hardly leave his missis and brace of kids even to go and have a shot at old Kreli. We almost had to lug him away by force."

"When the country is quiet again I'm going to do this," he had said, and in such wise do we mortals airily make our plans. Meanwhile all was hilarity and gladness and contentment in that circle, for was it not a reunion of those dear to each other, after the trials, and perils, and privations of a hard chapter of savage warfare?

Lilian was very happy in the days that followed; and to her lover, after the rough camp life, the toil and the battle, with all the hardening a.s.sociations, the sunny quiet spent in the companionship of this refined, beautiful woman, was as the very peace of Heaven. Oft-times as he watched the sweet eyes kindle at his approach, and heard the firm, low voice shake ever so slightly, his heart would thrill and his cheek flush with a fierce elation over his absolute sense of possessing the rich, the priceless gift of her entire love; and then would succeed a momentary wave of despondency as he thought how this must be far too much happiness to fall to his lot, and with the thought something very like an unspoken prayer--wild, pa.s.sionate, and unbridled in burden even as his own resolute nature--would shape itself within his heart, that rather than again experience such a blow as that which had sent him forth a desolate wanderer years ago--he might die--a hundred deaths, if need be, so that obliteration came to him at last. And had there been room for it, his tenderness towards Lilian would have redoubled with these reflections; but there was not--it was always the same.

"Be quick, darling," he said to her one day, as she was leaving the room for a moment to fetch some necessary implement missing from her work-basket. "I hate to have you out of my sight for half a minute more than is inevitable."

The two were alone together, and he pitched his book across the room impatiently as he spoke. She turned and came back to him.

"Why, I wonder you're not quite tired of me," she said, with her sunny smile, bending over him and toying with his hair.

"Tired of you! _My_ Lilian. The only being on earth for me to love.

The capacity has been kept so long in reserve that now there's no holding it."

She bent lower and laid her cheek against his brow. "Yes, Arthur. We are both alone in the world for each other--are we not?" she whispered; then, suddenly escaping from his would-be detaining arm, she darted to the door, turning to flash upon him a bright, loving look before she went out; and he, rising, kicked over a chair and then another, and opened and threw down three or four books without gleaning an idea of their contents, and walked to the window, then back again, and whistled, and otherwise fidgeted outrageously until her return.

Lose not a minute of your happiness, ye two; gather to the full the sweets of the present, even while ye may, for ye know not what the future may have in store. Even yet the war-cloud hangs threatening on the horizon; it has lifted, but has not vanished. Amid the rage of the elements may suddenly fall peace. It is but a lull in the tempest.

To some of his former companions-in-arms, who lived in the town or neighbourhood, Claverton was an unfailing source of wonder.

"I should never have known the fellow," one of them would say, as they discussed him among themselves. "Why, most of us in camp used to look upon Claverton as a man with no more heart than a stone. A fellow who would close the eyes of his twin brother and then sit down to a jolly good breakfast, and crack a joke about it,"--the speaker's idea of the acme of callousness. "And now he's making a perfect fool of himself about a girl--hardly leaves her for a moment, they say. I can't understand it," and the speaker knocked the ashes out of his pipe with a jerk and a shrug, implying half pity, half contempt.

"You could if you had seen her," said another, quietly. "She's awfully fetching."