Tween Snow and Fire Part 8

Followed by the old Kafir, Eustace unlocked the storeroom--a dark, cool chamber forming part of an outbuilding. The carcase of a sheep, freshly killed that morning, dangled from a beam. Piles of _reims_, emitting a salt, rancid odour--kegs of sheep-dip, huge rolls of Boer tobacco, bundles of yoke-skeys, and a dozen other things requisite to the details of farm work were stowed around or disposed on shelves. On one side was a grindstone and a carpenter's bench. Eustace cut off a liberal length from one of the rolls of tobacco and gave it to the old Kafir. Then he filled his own pipe.

"Josane?"

"_Nkose_!"

"You are no fool, Josane. You have lived a good many years, and your head is nearly as snow-sprinkled as the summit of the Great Winterberg in the autumn. What do you thing of last night's performance over yonder?"

The old man's shrewd countenance melted into a slight smile and he shook his head.

"The Gaikas are fools," he replied. "They have no quarrel with the English, yet they are clamouring for war. Their country is fertile and well watered, yet they want to throw it away with both hands. They are mad."

"Will they fight, Josane?"

"_Au_! Who can say for certain," said the old man with an expressive shrug of the shoulders. "Yet, was ever such a thing seen? The dog wags his tail. But in this case it is the tail that wags the dog."

"How so, Josane?"

"The chiefs of the Gaikas do not wish for war. The old men do not wish for it. But the young men--the boys--are eager for it. The women taunt them, they say; tell them they have forgotten how to be warriors. So the boys and the women clamour for war, and the chiefs and the old men give way. Thus the tail wags the dog. _Hau_!"

"And what about the Gcalekas?"

"The Gcalekas? It is this way, _Nkose_. If you shut up two bulls alone in the same kraal, if you put two scorpions into a mealie stamp, how long will it be before they fight? So it is with the Gcalekas and the Fingoes. The land is not large enough for both. The Gcalekas are ready for war."

"And Kreli?"

"The Great Chief is in one of his red moods," answered Josane, in a different tone to that which he had employed when speaking of the Gaikas. "He has a powerful witch-doctress. I know her. Was I not `smelt out' by her? Was I not `eaten up' at her `word'? The toad! The impostor! The jackal cat! The slimy fish! I know her. Ha!"

[Eaten up: Idiom for the total sequestration of a person's possessions.]

The old man's eyes glared and his tone rose to one of fierce excitement at the recollection of his wrongs. Eustace, accustomed to study his fellow-men, took careful note of the circ.u.mstance. Strange things happened. It might serve him in good stead one day.

"The Gcalekas will fight," went on Josane. "Perhaps they are fighting now. Perhaps the _Baas_ will have some news to bring when he returns from Komgha. The telegraph is quick, but the voice of the bird in the air is quicker," he added with a meaning smile, which convinced his listener that he knew a great deal more than he chose to say.

"The fire stick is even now in the thatch," went on the Kafir, after a few more puffs at his pipe. "There is a herald from the Great Chief among the Gaika kraals."

"Hlangani?"

"Hlangani. The Gaikas are listening to his `word,' and are lighting the war-fires. If he can obtain the ear of Sandili, his work is done.

_Whau_, Ixeshane," he went on, slipping into the familiar name in his excitement. "You English are very weak people. You ought to arrest Matanzima, and several others, and send a strong Resident to Sandili, who should always keep his ear."

"We can't do that, Josane. There are wheels within wheels and a power behind the throne. Well, we shall see what happens," he went on, rising as a hint to the other to depart.

He did not choose, for reasons of his own, to ask Josane direct how imminent the danger might be. To do so would be ever so slightly to impair his own _prestige_. But in his own judgment he decided that the sooner they set their affairs in order against the coming storm the better.

CHAPTER TWELVE.

"AH, LOVE, BUT A DAY!"

Pondering over what the old Kafir had said, Eustace busied himself over two or three odd jobs. Then, returning to the storeroom, he filled up a large measure of mealies and went to the house.

"I'm going down to the ostrich camp, Eanswyth. Do you feel inclined to stroll that far, or are you too tired?"

"Yes and no. I think it will do me good."

Flinging on a wide straw hat she joined him in the doorway. The ostrich camp was only a couple of hundred yards from the house, and at sight of them the great birds came shambling down to the fence, the truculent male having laid aside his aggressive ferocity for the occasion, as he condescended, with sullen and lordly air, to allow himself to be fed, though even then the quarrelsome disposition of the creature would find vent every now and again in a savage hiss, accompanied by a sudden and treacherous kick aimed at his timid consort whenever the latter ventured within the very outskirts of the mealies thrown down. But no sooner had the last grain disappeared than the worst instincts of the aggressive bully were all to the fore again, and the huge biped, rearing himself up to his full height, his jetty coat and snowy wing-feathers making a brave show, challenged his benefactors forthwith, rolling his fiery eyes as though longing to behold them in front of him with no protecting fence between.

"Of all the ungracious, not to say ungrateful, scoundrels disfiguring G.o.d's earth, I believe a c.o.c.k ostrich is the very worst," remarked Eustace. "He is, if possible, worse in that line than the British loafer, for even the latter won't always open his Billingsgate upon you until he has fairly a.s.similated the gin with which your ill-judged dole `to save him from starving' has warmed his gullet. But this brute would willingly kick you into smithereens, while you were in the very act of feeding him."

Eanswyth laughed.

"What strange ideas you have got, Eustace. Now I wonder to how many people any such notion as that would have occurred."

"Have I? I am often told so, so I suppose I must have. But the grand majority of people never think themselves, consequently when they happen upon anybody who does they gaze upon him with unmitigated astonishment as a strange and startling product of some unknown state of existence."

"Thank you," retorted Eanswyth with a laugh. "That's a little hard on me. As I made the remark, of course I am included in the grand majority which doesn't think."

"I have a very great mind to treat that observation with the silence it deserves. It is a ridiculous observation. Isn't it?"

"Perhaps it is," she acquiesced softly, in a tone that was half a sigh, not so much on account of the actual burden of the conversation, as an involuntary outburst of the dangerous, because too tender, undercurrent of her thoughts. And of those two walking there side by side in the radiant sunshine--outwardly so tranquilly, so peacefully, inwardly so blissfully--it was hard to say which was the most fully alive to the peril of the situation. Each was conscious of the ma.s.s of molten fires raging within the thin eggsh.e.l.l crust; each was rigidly on guard; the one with the feminine instinct of self-preservation superadded to the sense of rect.i.tude of a strong character; the other striving to rely upon the necessity of caution and patience enjoined by a far-seeing and habitually self-contained nature. So far, both forces were evenly matched--so far both could play into each other's hands, for mutual aid, mutual support against each other. Had there been aught of selfishness--of the mere unholy desire of possession--in this man's love, things would have been otherwise. His cool brain and consummate judgment would have given him immeasurably the advantage--in fact, the key of the whole situation. But it was not so. As we have said, that love was chivalrously pure--even n.o.ble--would have been rather elevating but for the circ.u.mstance that its indulgence meant the discounting of another man's life.

Thus they walked, side by side, in the soft and sensuous sunshine. A shimmer of heat rose from the ground. Far away over the rolling plains a few cattle and horses, dotted here and there grazing, const.i.tuted the only sign of life, and the range of wooded hills against the sky line loomed purple and misty in the golden summer haze. If ever a land seemed to enjoy the blessings of peace a.s.suredly it was this fair land here spread out around them.

They had reached another of the ostrich camps, wherein were domiciled some eight or ten pairs of eighteen-month-old birds, which not having yet learned the extent of their power, were as tame and docile as the four-year-old male was savage and combative. Eustace had scattered the contents of his colander among them, and now the two were leaning over the gate, listlessly watching the birds feed.

"Talking of people never thinking," continued Eustace, "I don't so much wonder at that. They haven't time, I suppose, and so lose the faculty.

They have enough to do to steer ahead in their own narrow little groves.

But what does astonish me is that if you state an obvious fact--so obvious as to amount to a plat.i.tude--it seems to burst upon them as a kind of wild surprise, as a kind of practical joke on wheels, ready to start away down-hill and drag them with it to utter crash unless they edge away from it as far as possible. You see them turn and stare at each other, and open an amazed and gaping mouth into which you might insert a pumpkin without them being in the least aware of it."

"As for instance?" queried Eanswyth, with a smile.

"Well--as for instance. I wonder what the effect would be upon an ordinary dozen of sane people were I suddenly to propound the perfectly obvious truism that life is full of surprises. I don't wonder, at least, for I ought to know by this time. They would start by scouting the idea; ten to one they would deny the premise, and retort that life was just what we chose to make it; which is a fallacy, in that it a.s.sumes that any one atom in the human scheme is absolutely independent--firstly, of the rest of the crowd; secondly, of circ.u.mstances--in fact, is competent to boss the former and direct the latter. Which, in the words of the immortal Euclid, is absurd."

"Yet if any man is thus competent, it is yourself, Eustace."

"No," he said, shaking his head meditatively. "You are mistaken. I am certainly not independent of the action of anyone who may elect to do me a good or an ill turn. He, she, or it, has me at a disadvantage all round, for I possess the gift of foresight in a degree so limited as to be practically _nil_. As for circ.u.mstances--so far from pretending to direct them I am the mere creature of them. So are we all."

"What has started you upon this train of thought?" she asked suddenly.

"Several things. But I'll give you an instance of what I was saying just now. This morning I was surprised and surrounded by a gang of Kafirs, all armed to the teeth. Nearly all of them were on the very verge of shying their a.s.segais bang through me, and if Ncanduku--you know him--Nteya's brother--hadn't appeared on the scene just in the very nick of time, I should have been a dead man. As it was, we sat down, had an _indaba_ and a friendly smoke, and parted on the best of terms.

Now, wasn't I helplessly, abjectly, the creature of circ.u.mstances--first in being molested at all--second in Ncanduku's lucky arrival?"

"Eustace! And you never told me this!"

"I told Tom--just as he was starting--and he laughed. He didn't seem to think much of it. To tell the truth, neither did I. Why--what's the matter, Eanswyth?"

Her face was deathly white. Her eyes, wide open, were dilated with horror; then they filled with tears. The next moment she was sobbing wildly--locked in his close embrace.