Tween Snow and Fire Part 13

This, then, was the corps to which Carhayes had attached himself, and among the ranks of which, after two or three days of enforced delay while waiting for orders--and after a characteristically off-hand farewell to the Hostes and his wife--he proceeded to take his place.

They were to march at sundown and camp for the night at the Kei Drift.

All Komgha--and its wife--turned out to witness their departure.

Farmers and storekeepers, transport-riders and Mounted Police, craftsmen and natives of every shade and colour, lined the roadway in serried ranks. There was a band, too, blowing off "G.o.d Save the Queen," with all the power of its leathern lungs. Cheer after cheer went up as the men rode by, in double file, looking exceedingly workman-like with their well filled cartridge belts and their guns and revolvers. Hearty good-byes and a little parting chaff from friends and intimates were shouted after them through the deafening cheers and the brazen strains of the band, and, their numbers augmented by a contingent of mounted friends, who were to ride a part of the way with them, "just to see them squarely off," the extremely neat and serviceable corps moved away into a cloud of dust.

There was another side to all this enthusiasm, however. A good many feminine handkerchiefs waved farewell to that martial band. A good many feminine handkerchiefs were, pressed openly or furtively to tearful eyes. For of those threescore and odd men going forth that evening in all the pride of their strength and martial ardour, it would be strange, indeed, if some, at any rate, were not destined to leave their bones in a far-away grave--victims to the bullet and a.s.segai of the savage.

The days went by and grew into weeks, but there was no want of life and stir in the little settlement. As Carhayes had remarked grimly during his brief sojourn therein--life appeared to be made up of bugle calls and lies. Hardly a half-hour that the bugle was not sounding--either at the Police camps, or at those of the regular troops now being rapidly moved to the front, and scarcely a day went by but a corps of mounted burghers or volunteers pa.s.sed through, _en route_ for the seat of war.

The store keepers and Government contractors laughed and waxed fat.

All sorts of rumours were in the air, and as usual wildly contradictory.

The white forces in the Transkei were in imminent peril of annihilation. The Gcaleka country had been swept clear from end to end.

Kreli was sueing for peace. Kreli had declared himself strong enough to whip all the whites sent against him, and then with the help of the Gaikas and Hlambis to invade and ravage the Eastern Province of the Colony. The Gaikas were on the eve of rising, and making common cause with their Gcaleka brethren. The Gaikas had not the slightest wish for war. The Gaikas were never more insolent and threatening. The Gaikas were thoroughly cowed and lived in mortal dread of being attacked themselves. Thus Rumour many tongued.

The while events had taken place at the seat of war. The Kafirs had attacked the Ibeka, a hastily fortified trading post in the Transkei, in great force, and after many hours of determined fighting had been repulsed with great loss, repulsed by a mere handful of the Mounted Police, who, with a Fingo levy, garrisoned the place. Kreli's princ.i.p.al kraal on the Xora River had been carried by a.s.sault and burnt to the ground,--the Gcaleka chieftain, with his sons and councillors, narrowly escaping falling into the hands of the Colonial forces--and several other minor engagements had been fought. But the powerful Gaika and Hlambi tribes located throughout British Kaffraria, though believed to be restless and plotting, continued to "sit still," as if watching the turn of events, and night after night upon the distant hills the signal fires of the savages gleamed beneath the midnight sky in flashing, lurid tongues, speaking their mysterious, awesome messages from the Amatola to the Bashi.

Hoste--who, with other of his neighbours, was occupied with the armed tending of his stock in _laager_--was growing daily more restless and discontented. It was cruelly rough on him, he declared, to be pinned down like that. He wanted to go and have his share of the fun. The war might be brought to an end any day, and he would have seen nothing of it. He would try and make some satisfactory arrangement and then get away to the front at once, he vowed. In which resolution he met with but lukewarm encouragement from his wife.

"You should just see the yarn that friend of Payne's wrote him about the fight at Kreli's kraal, Ada," he remarked one day, having just ridden in. "He says it was the greatest sport he ever had. Eh, Payne?"

That worthy, who had accompanied him, nodded oracularly--a nod which might mean anything. Taught wisdom by the possession of a partner of his own joys and sorrows, he was not going to put himself in active opposition to what he termed the Feminine Controller-General's Department. But he and Hoste had hatched out between them a little plan which should leave them free, in a day or two, to start off in search of the death or glory coveted by their martial souls.

The cottage which Hoste had taken for his family was a tiny pill-box of a place on the outer fringe of the settlement, fronting upon the _veldt_, which situation rendered the ladies a little nervous at night, notwithstanding an elaborate system of outposts and pickets by which the village was supposed to be protected. At such a time the presence of Eanswyth, of whom they were very fond, was a perfect G.o.dsend to Mrs Hoste and her daughters. The latter were nice, bright children of fifteen and thirteen, respectively, and there were also two boys--then away at a boarding school in Grahamstown. If Eanswyth ever had reason to complain of the dullness or loneliness of her life on the farm, here it was quite the reverse. Not only was the house so small that four persons were sufficient to crowd it, but somebody or other, situated like themselves, was always dropping in, sitting half the day chatting, or gossiping about the progress of the war and the many rumours and reports which were flying around. In fact, there was seldom a respite from the "strife of tongues," for no sooner had one batch of visitors departed than another would arrive, always in the most informal manner.

Now, of all this excess of sociability, Eanswyth was becoming a trifle weary.

To begin with, she could obtain little or no privacy. Accustomed to full measure of it in her daily life, she sorely missed it now. She even began to realise that what she had taken as a matter of course-- what, indeed, some of her neighbours had half commiserated her for--was a luxury, and, like other articles falling under that category, a thing to be dispensed with now that they were living, so to say, in a state of siege.

She was fond of the two girls, as we have said; yet there were times when she would have preferred their room to their company--would have preferred a long, solitary walk. She was fond of her friend and entertainer; yet that cheery person's voluble tongue was apt to be sometimes a trifle oppressive. She liked her neighbours and they liked her; yet the constant and generally harmless gossip of the other settlers' wives and daughters, who were ever visiting or being visited by them, regarding work, native servants, babies, engagements, the war, and so forth, would strike her as boring and wearisome to the last degree. There were times when she would have given much to be alone-- absolutely and entirely alone--and think.

For she had enough to think about now, enough to occupy every moment of her thoughts, day and night. But was it good that it should be so--was it good?

"I am a wicked woman!" she would say to herself, half bitterly, half sadly, but never regretfully--"a fearfully wicked woman. That is why I feel so restless, so discontented."

Never regretfully? No; for the sudden rush of the new dawn which had swept in upon her life had spread over it an enchanted glamour that was all-powerful in its surpa.s.sing sweetness. That first kiss--alone in the darkness of that peril-haunted midnight--had kindled the Fire of the Live Coal; that one long, golden day, they two alone together, had riveted the burning link. There was no room for regret.

Yet there were times when she was a prey to the most poignant anguish--a woman of Eanswyth's natural and moral fibre could never escape that-- could never throw herself callously, unthinkingly, into the perilous gulf. A mixture of sensuousness and spirituality, the spirit would ever be warring against the mind--which two are _not_ convertible terms by any means--and often in the dark, silent hours of night a sense of the black horror of her position would come upon her in full force. "Heaven help me!" she would cry half aloud in the fervour of her agony. "Heaven help me!" And then would be added the mental reservation, "But _not_ through the means of loss--not through the loss of this new and enthralling influence which renders the keenest of mental anguish, engrossingly, indescribably sweet!"

"Save me from the effect, but, oh, remove not the cause!" A strange, a paradoxical prayer, but a genuine one; a terribly natural one. Thus poor humanity, from--and before--the days of Augustine of Hippo until now--until the consummation of the world.

As the days grew into weeks, the strain upon such a nature as Eanswyth's began to tell--as it was bound to do. She began to look pale and worn, and in such close companionship the change could not escape the eyes of her friends.

"Don't you let yourself be anxious, my dear," said a motherly settler's wife one day, bursting with a desire to administer comfort. "The Rangers will soon be back now. And they're all right so far--have had some rough work and haven't lost a man. Your husband knows how to take care of himself; never fear. Yes, they'll soon be back now."

This was the sort of consolation she had to acquiesce in--to receive with a glad smile at the time, and for hours after to torture herself with the miserable guilty consciousness that the fate of the Kaffrarian Rangers was to her a matter of infinitesimal account. There was one, however, whom appearances were beginning no longer to deceive, who, in pursuance of the strange and subtle woman's instinct, which had moved her to make that remark to her husband _in camera_, as recorded in a former chapter, began to feel certain that the real object of Eanswyth's solicitude was to be found west, not east--back in the peaceful Colony instead of in the Transkei braving peril at the hands of the savage enemy. That one was Mrs Hoste. She was not a clever woman by any means--not even a sharp woman, yet her mind had leaped straight to the root of the matter. And the discovery made her feel exceedingly uncomfortable.

That farewell, made in outwardly easy social fashion, under several pairs of eyes, had been a final one. Eustace had not ridden over on another visit, not even a flying one, as Eanswyth had hoped he would.

Still, bitterly disappointed as she was, she had appreciated the wisdom of his motives--at first. If there was one quality more than another she had admired in him in times past, it was his thorough and resolute way of doing a thing. If anything had to be done, he did it thoroughly.

The undertaking upon which he was then engaged certainly demanded all his time and attention, and he had given both, as was his wont. Still she had hoped he would have found or made some opportunity for seeing her once more.

She had heard from him two or three times, but they were letters that all the world might have seen, for Eustace was far too prudent to send anything more meaning into a house full of other people, and a small and crowded house at that. The mere glance of an eye--purely accidental, but still a mere glance--on the part of a third person, no matter who, would be more than sufficient to tumble down his fair house of cards in great and irreparable ruin. He was not a man to take any such risks.

She had appreciated his caution--at first. But, as time went by, the black drop of a terrible suspicion distilled within her heart. What if he had begun to think differently! What if he had suffered himself to be carried away by a mere moment of pa.s.sing pa.s.sion! What if time and absence had opened his eyes! Oh, it was too terrible! It could not be.

Yet such things had happened--were happening every day.

An awful sense of desolation was upon her. She hungered for his presence--for the sound of his voice--for even a sc.r.a.p of paper containing one loving word which his hand had written. To this had the serene, proud, strong-natured woman come. Her love had humbled her to the dust. Thus do we suffer through those for whom we transgress--thus does the delight of an hour become the scourge of a year.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

"A MADNESS OF FAREWELLS."

One afternoon Eanswyth managed to steal away for a solitary ramble unperceived. In the joy of having actually succeeded, she had wandered some little distance from the settlement. She felt not the slightest fear. No Kafirs would be in the least likely to molest her so near a strongly garrisoned post, even if the tribes in the immediate neighbourhood had been in a state of open hostility, which was not at present the case. As for solitude, it was not complete enough, for the country was open and sweeping and there were always hors.e.m.e.n in sight, coming and going in the distance, along the main road.

Half unconsciously she walked in the direction of her deserted home. It was a lovely, cloudless afternoon and the sun was already beginning to slant towards his western bed, darting long rays of gleaming gold upon the wide, rolling plains, throwing out with photographic clearness the blue outlines of the distant hills. Crickets chirruped gleefully in the gra.s.s, and away down in the hollow a pair of blue cranes were stalking mincingly along, uttering their metallic, but not unmelodious, cry.

Suddenly the clink of a horse's hoof smote upon her ear. It was advancing along the roadway in front. A flush of vexation spread over her face. It might be somebody she knew--and who would insist upon accompanying her back on the score of the disturbed state of the country, if not upon that of politeness. She had not stolen away, to rejoice like a schoolgirl in her sense of freedom, for that. It was very annoying.

The horseman topped the rise. She gave a little cry, and stood rooted to the ground as though her limbs were turned to stone. Could it be--?

Yes--it was!

In a moment he had sprung to the ground beside her. She could not move now if she had desired to, for she was held fast in a strong embrace. A rain of warm kisses was falling upon her lips--her face.

"Eanswyth--my darling--my love! Did you come to meet me?"

"O Eustace! I had begun to think you were never coming back to me! Ah, you little know what I have gone through. Dear one, I never knew till now how my very life was wrapped up in you!" she gasped, her voice thrilling with a very volcano of tenderness and pa.s.sion as she clung to him, returning his kisses again and again, as if she could never let him go.

She did not look unhappy and worn now. Her eyes shone with the light of love--the beautiful lips wreathed into smiles--her whole face was transfigured with her great happiness.

"Dear love, you have grown more beautiful than ever; and all for me," he murmured in that peculiar tone of his which bound her to him with a magnetic force that was almost intoxicating. "It is all for me--isn't it?"

"Yes," she answered without hesitation; looking him straightly, fearlessly in the eyes. Heaven help her!

"And yet you doubted me!"

"Eustace, darling, why did you never write to me? At least, why did you only write in that ordinary, formal and matter-of-fact way?"

"Because it would have been the height of insanity, under existing circ.u.mstances, to have done otherwise. And so you doubted me? You thought that I had only been playing with you? Or that even otherwise I had only to be away from you two or three weeks and I could forget?"

His tone, low and quiet, was just tinged with reproach. But it contained a subtle consciousness of power. And to her ears it sounded inexpressibly sweet, for it was this very sense of power that const.i.tuted the magnetism which drew her to him.

"Yes, I will confess. I did think that," she answered. "I can hide nothing from you. You have read my thoughts exactly. Ah, my own--my own! What have I not gone through! But you are with me again. Life seems too good altogether."

"It was our first parting, and a longish one," he said musingly as he walked beside her towards the settlement--his horse, with the bridle over its neck, following behind with the docility of a dog. "It was good for both of us, Eanswyth, my life. Now, do you think it was exactly delightful to me."

"N-no," she replied plaintively, pressing to her side the arm which he had pa.s.sed through hers as they walked. "Though, of late, I haven't known what to think."

"They will know what to think if you go on looking so ridiculously happy," he said meaningly. "The gossip-loving soul of mother Hoste will be mighty quick at putting two and two together. And then?"