Chapter Nine.

Chapter Nine.“Love that is First and Last...”“Now you will have to take care of me,” began Mona, after some minutes of silence, as they started slowly to ride round beneath the cliff.“A heavy responsibility for any one man during a whole hour or more.”“You have not found it so hitherto?”“Oh, then there were two of us. We took the risk between us. Hallo!” he broke off, “that’s a fine specimen!”She followed his upward glance. A huge bird of prey had shot out from the cliff overhead and was circling in bold, powerful sweeps, uttering a loud, raucous scream.“As good a specimen of adasje-vangeras I ever saw,” went on Roden, still gazing upward. “Now, I wonder if a Snider bullet would blow it all to pieces at that distance!”“You’ll never bring it down with a bullet?” said Mona eagerly.“Not, eh? Perhaps not.”The great eagle, jet black save for her yellow feet standing out against the thick dusky plumage, floated round and round in her grand gyrations, her flaming eye visible to the spectators as she turned her head from side to side. Roden, without dismounting, put up his rifle. Simultaneously with the report a cloud of black feathers flew from the noble bird, who, as though with untamable determination to disappoint her slayer, shot downward obliquely, with arrow-like velocity, and disappeared beyond the brow of the cliff overhead.“You were right,” said Roden, slipping a fresh cartridge into his piece. “I did not bring it down, for with characteristic perversity, the ill-conditioned biped has chosen to yield up the ghost at the top of the cliff, whereas we are at the bottom.”“Oh, can’t we go up to it? This is much better game than those poor little rhybok. But, wherever did you learn to shoot like that?”“We can go up!” he replied, purposely or accidentally evading the last question. “That gully we passed, a little way back is climbable. But you had better wait below. It will be hard work.”“So that’s how you propose taking care of me—to leave me all alone? Not if I know it. The place looked perfectly safe.”Safe it was: a narrow, staircase-likecouloir, consisting of a series of natural steps; the rocks on either side heavily festooned with thick masses of the most beautiful maidenhair fern. Leaving the horses beneath, they began the climb, and after a couple of hundred feet of this they stood on the summit of the mountain.The summit was as flat as a table, and covered with long coarse grass, billowing in the fresh strong breeze which swept it like the surface of a lake. Around, beneath, free and vast, spread the rolling panorama of mountain and plain.“Ah! this is to live indeed!” broke from Mona. “I don’t know that I ever enjoyed a day so much in my life.”The other did not immediately look at her, but when he presently did steal a keen, but furtive glance at her face, there was something there, which, combined with the tone wherein she had uttered the above words, set him thinking.“I don’t see anything of thedasje-vanger,” he said, at length; “and yet this is about the place where it should have fallen. It may have fluttered into the long grass, but couldn’t have gone far with that bullet hole through it. Now, you search that way, and I’ll search this.”For a few minutes they searched hither and thither; then a cry from Mona brought him to her side.“This is the place,” she said. “Look!”She stood as near as she dared to the brow of the cliff, pointing downwards. On the very verge, fluttering among the grass bents, were several small feathers, jet black, and such as might have come out of the breast of the great bird. Roden advanced to the brink.“Thisisthe place!” he declared, leaning over. “And, look! there lies our quarry, stone dead. The spiteful brute has chosen a difficult place, if not an inaccessible one.”“Where? Let me see. Hold my hand, while I look down, for I don’t half like it.”This he did, and shudderingly she peered over. From where they stood the cliff fell for about twenty feet obliquely, but very steep, and grown over with tufts of grass, to a narrow ledge scarcely two feet wide; below this—space. But upon this ledge lay the great eagle, with outstretched wings, stone dead, its head hanging over the abyss.“I can get at it there, fortunately,” muttered Roden.“What are you going to do?”“I’m going down to pick up the bird.”“You are not.”He stared.“But I want it,” he urged. “It is too fine a specimen to be left lying there.”“Never mind; you can shoot another. Now, don’t go, don’t!”Again he recognised the expression which came into her face, as with startled eyes and voice which shook with the veryabandonof her entreaty, she stood there before him. What then? He had seen that look in other faces, but what had come of it!“I am going down,” he repeated.“You cannot; you shall not. It is too horrible. You will be killed before my eyes. Won’t you give it up becauseIask you?”“No.”There were men who would have given a great deal to have heard Mona Ridsdale speak to them in that tone, who would willingly have risked their lives, rather than have refrained from risking them, at her request. This one, however, answered short and straight and with brutal indifference, “No.”They looked at each other for a moment, as though both realised that this was a strange subject for a conflict of will, then she said,“So you will not give it up?”“No. It is an easy undertaking, and for me a safe one.”She turned away without another word, and he began his descent.This, however, was less simple than it looked, as is usually the case, or rather, so appallingly simple that a slight slip, or the loosening of a grass tussock, would send the average climber whirling into space. But Roden Musgrave was an experienced hand on mountains, and thoroughly understood the principle of distributing his weight. In a very short space of time he was standing on the ledge, and had picked up the dead bird.“I can’t throw it up,” he cried, for the benefit of his companion, who, once he had began his descent, had not been able to resist watching its progress, and lying flat on the brink was marking every step. “It’s too heavy. I shall have to sling it around me somehow.”“Make haste and come out of that grisly position,” was all she replied.And her definition of it was not an unmerited one. The ledge was hardly wide enough to turn upon, and from beneath they had both seen the great rock wall, in its unbroken smoothness, considerably upwards of a hundred feet in height.Then with the dead eagle slung around him, he began his return, inch by inch, step by step, holding on by every tuft of grass or projecting stone, carefully testing each before trusting any portion of his weight to it—she the while watching every step with a fearful fascination.All of a sudden something gave way. One moment more, and he would have been in safety. Roden felt himself going—going. Still, with consummate presence of mind, he strove to distribute his weight. All in vain. He could not recover his lost footing. He was sliding with increased momentum, sliding to the brink of the terrible height.Mona’s blood turned to ice within her. She was too stricken even to shriek, in the unspeakable horror of the moment. Her fingers dug into the ground, instinctively clenched, as she lay there, gazing down, an appalled and powerless spectator.He, for his part, did not look up. The dust and stones slid in streams from beneath him and leaped over the ledge into space—then his descent stopped. He seemed to be flattening himself against the height, clinging for all he knew how. And then, as if to add to the gloomy depression of this horrible peril, there stole up a dark, misty cloud, spreading its black wings around the summit of the mountain, shedding a twilight as of fear and disaster. Mona found her voice.“Oh, try and rest a little while and collect yourself,” she said; “then make another attempt!”“I can’t move,” came the response; “and—I can’t hold on here much longer. I believe my left wrist is broken. I am suffering the torments of hell.”Mona was almost beside herself. Roden Musgrave was in a bad way indeed when such an admission could be wrung from him.“Dear, don’t give up!” she cried, in a wail of despairing tenderness, such as had never been wrung from her lips before. “Make one more effort; this time, becauseIask you. A yard or two more, and I shall be able to reach you.”Was this the woman who had stood shrinkingly to gaze over the brink, and had quickly retreated with a shudder? Now, as she lay there, extending her arm down as far as it would go, in order to afford him the necessary hand-grasp, all fear on her own behalf seemed to have left her. But the man, flattened against the face of the cliff with the dead eagle slung to his back, seemed not able to move, and as she had said, it was but a yard or two farther.But the effort must be made. Roden was only resting for one final struggle. It was made. Reaching upward he grasped the extended hand, then let go again.“Hold it! hold it!” cried Mona, appalled by the awful whiteness which had spread over his face, evoked as it was by the agony he was suffering.“No, I won’t, I should only drag you down.”“You would not. I am very firm up here,” she replied. “I can hold you till—till help comes.”He wriggled up a little higher, then with his uninjured hand he grasped hers. A sick faintness came upon him. The world seemed to go round. The brink of the cliff, the brave, eager face and love-lit eyes, the swaying grass bents, now rimy with misty scud, all danced before his vision. He felt cold as ice, that deathly numbness which precedes a faint. But for the strong, warm clasp of the hand which now held his, Roden Musgrave’s days were numbered. Well indeed was it for him, that the splendid frame of its owner was not merely the perfection of feminine symmetry, but encased a very considerable modicum of sheer physical strength.“Roden, darling!” she murmured. “Save yourself if only that you may do so through me. You have surprised my secret, but it shall be as though you had not, if you prefer it.”It was a strange love-making, as they faced each other thus, the one overhanging certain death, the other raised entirely out of her physical fears, resolute to save this life, which after all might not belong to her. Thus they faced each other, and the dark whirling blackness of the glooming cloud lowered thicker and thicker around them.“Let me go, Mona!” he gasped forth wearily, in his semi-faint. “I may drag you down. Good-bye. Now—let go!”She almost laughed. The strong grasp tightened upon his hand firmer than ever.“If you go, I go too. Now I am going to shout. Perhaps Charlie will hear.” And lifting up her voice she sent forth a long, clear, ringing call; then another and another.No answer.Then, as the minutes went by, the bolt of a wild despair shot through Mona’s brave heart. Strong as she was, she could not hold him for ever, nor was he able, in the agony of his broken wrist, to raise himself any farther. Her brain reeled. Wild-eyed with despair she strove to pierce the opaque grey curtain which was crusting her face and hair with rime. It was winter, and this table-topped mountain was of considerable elevation. What if this thick chill cloud was the precursor of a heavy snowfall? Charlie, acting on the idea that they had missed each other in the mist, might have gone home. Every muscle in her fine frame seemed cracking. The strain was momentarily becoming greater, more intense, and again she sent forth her loud, clear call, this time thrilling with a fearful note of despair.It was answered. Eagerly, breathlessly she listened. Yes—it came from below the cliff. Charlie had arrived at the spot where they had left their horses. She shouted again. The answer told that he was climbing the gully by which they had ascended.“Do you hear that? We are safe now. A few minutes more, and Charlie will be here.”“It is you who have done it, Mona,” he murmured.Then she spoke no more. Now that succour was near at hand, she found herself actually revelling in the position, and a delight in making the most of it while it lasted was qualified by the agony Roden was suffering, as also by a strange feeling of jealousy that she had not been able to carry out the rescue alone and unaided; of resentment that she should be driven to call in the help of another.“That’s it, is it?” said Suffield, prompt to master the situation at a glance. “Now, Mona, I’ll relieve you of this amount of avoirdupois, and when you have rested for a minute you hold on to me for all you know how, and I’ll lug him up in a second.”The while he had got hold of Roden by the hand and wrist; then in a trice had, as he said, dragged the sufferer over the brink and into safety, for he was a powerful man.“So that’s what it was all about?” he went on, as he cut loose the dead eagle. “Thedasje-vangernearly revenged itself. How do you feel, Musgrave, old chap?”“Like an idiot,” said Roden faintly, as he took a liberal pull at the flask the other had been swift to tender him, and began to feel the better therefor. “I never could stand being hurt. Though hard enough in other ways, anything in the way of pain turns me sick. But, Suffield, if it had not been for Mona I should have been a dead man.”“Oh, ‘Mona,’ is it?” thought Suffield, with an internal grin. Then aloud, rather anxiously, “Anything else besides the wrist?”“I’ve banged up a knee a good bit; but I expect it’s only bruised. Now we’d better start. I seem to be getting all right.”He was ghastly pale as he tottered to his feet, evidently still in great pain.“No, never mind,” he went on; “I don’t want any help, I can walk all right.”But as they began the descent of the gully, Suffield, carrying both rifles and the dead eagle, leading the way, he felt faint and dizzy. In an instant Mona’s hand had closed upon his. Hitherto she had stood silently aloof in the revulsion of feeling. He was safe now. The words which had been wrung from her by the extremity of his peril must be regarded as unsaid. So she resolved—but was it a revolution that came within her power to keep? The volcanic fires of her strong, passionate, sensuous temperament had lain dormant beneath an egotistic and inconsiderate vanity, had lain dormant, unknown even to herself. Now they were to burst forth with a force, and to an extent, unsuspected by herself, and as startling as they had been hitherto unknown. But on one point there was no room for any more self-deception. Whatever half-truth there might have been in Grace Suffield’s oft-uttered prediction, now it had become all truth. Mona realised that her tarn had indeed come—for good and for ill, for once and for ever.

“Now you will have to take care of me,” began Mona, after some minutes of silence, as they started slowly to ride round beneath the cliff.

“A heavy responsibility for any one man during a whole hour or more.”

“You have not found it so hitherto?”

“Oh, then there were two of us. We took the risk between us. Hallo!” he broke off, “that’s a fine specimen!”

She followed his upward glance. A huge bird of prey had shot out from the cliff overhead and was circling in bold, powerful sweeps, uttering a loud, raucous scream.

“As good a specimen of adasje-vangeras I ever saw,” went on Roden, still gazing upward. “Now, I wonder if a Snider bullet would blow it all to pieces at that distance!”

“You’ll never bring it down with a bullet?” said Mona eagerly.

“Not, eh? Perhaps not.”

The great eagle, jet black save for her yellow feet standing out against the thick dusky plumage, floated round and round in her grand gyrations, her flaming eye visible to the spectators as she turned her head from side to side. Roden, without dismounting, put up his rifle. Simultaneously with the report a cloud of black feathers flew from the noble bird, who, as though with untamable determination to disappoint her slayer, shot downward obliquely, with arrow-like velocity, and disappeared beyond the brow of the cliff overhead.

“You were right,” said Roden, slipping a fresh cartridge into his piece. “I did not bring it down, for with characteristic perversity, the ill-conditioned biped has chosen to yield up the ghost at the top of the cliff, whereas we are at the bottom.”

“Oh, can’t we go up to it? This is much better game than those poor little rhybok. But, wherever did you learn to shoot like that?”

“We can go up!” he replied, purposely or accidentally evading the last question. “That gully we passed, a little way back is climbable. But you had better wait below. It will be hard work.”

“So that’s how you propose taking care of me—to leave me all alone? Not if I know it. The place looked perfectly safe.”

Safe it was: a narrow, staircase-likecouloir, consisting of a series of natural steps; the rocks on either side heavily festooned with thick masses of the most beautiful maidenhair fern. Leaving the horses beneath, they began the climb, and after a couple of hundred feet of this they stood on the summit of the mountain.

The summit was as flat as a table, and covered with long coarse grass, billowing in the fresh strong breeze which swept it like the surface of a lake. Around, beneath, free and vast, spread the rolling panorama of mountain and plain.

“Ah! this is to live indeed!” broke from Mona. “I don’t know that I ever enjoyed a day so much in my life.”

The other did not immediately look at her, but when he presently did steal a keen, but furtive glance at her face, there was something there, which, combined with the tone wherein she had uttered the above words, set him thinking.

“I don’t see anything of thedasje-vanger,” he said, at length; “and yet this is about the place where it should have fallen. It may have fluttered into the long grass, but couldn’t have gone far with that bullet hole through it. Now, you search that way, and I’ll search this.”

For a few minutes they searched hither and thither; then a cry from Mona brought him to her side.

“This is the place,” she said. “Look!”

She stood as near as she dared to the brow of the cliff, pointing downwards. On the very verge, fluttering among the grass bents, were several small feathers, jet black, and such as might have come out of the breast of the great bird. Roden advanced to the brink.

“Thisisthe place!” he declared, leaning over. “And, look! there lies our quarry, stone dead. The spiteful brute has chosen a difficult place, if not an inaccessible one.”

“Where? Let me see. Hold my hand, while I look down, for I don’t half like it.”

This he did, and shudderingly she peered over. From where they stood the cliff fell for about twenty feet obliquely, but very steep, and grown over with tufts of grass, to a narrow ledge scarcely two feet wide; below this—space. But upon this ledge lay the great eagle, with outstretched wings, stone dead, its head hanging over the abyss.

“I can get at it there, fortunately,” muttered Roden.

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going down to pick up the bird.”

“You are not.”

He stared.

“But I want it,” he urged. “It is too fine a specimen to be left lying there.”

“Never mind; you can shoot another. Now, don’t go, don’t!”

Again he recognised the expression which came into her face, as with startled eyes and voice which shook with the veryabandonof her entreaty, she stood there before him. What then? He had seen that look in other faces, but what had come of it!

“I am going down,” he repeated.

“You cannot; you shall not. It is too horrible. You will be killed before my eyes. Won’t you give it up becauseIask you?”

“No.”

There were men who would have given a great deal to have heard Mona Ridsdale speak to them in that tone, who would willingly have risked their lives, rather than have refrained from risking them, at her request. This one, however, answered short and straight and with brutal indifference, “No.”

They looked at each other for a moment, as though both realised that this was a strange subject for a conflict of will, then she said,

“So you will not give it up?”

“No. It is an easy undertaking, and for me a safe one.”

She turned away without another word, and he began his descent.

This, however, was less simple than it looked, as is usually the case, or rather, so appallingly simple that a slight slip, or the loosening of a grass tussock, would send the average climber whirling into space. But Roden Musgrave was an experienced hand on mountains, and thoroughly understood the principle of distributing his weight. In a very short space of time he was standing on the ledge, and had picked up the dead bird.

“I can’t throw it up,” he cried, for the benefit of his companion, who, once he had began his descent, had not been able to resist watching its progress, and lying flat on the brink was marking every step. “It’s too heavy. I shall have to sling it around me somehow.”

“Make haste and come out of that grisly position,” was all she replied.

And her definition of it was not an unmerited one. The ledge was hardly wide enough to turn upon, and from beneath they had both seen the great rock wall, in its unbroken smoothness, considerably upwards of a hundred feet in height.

Then with the dead eagle slung around him, he began his return, inch by inch, step by step, holding on by every tuft of grass or projecting stone, carefully testing each before trusting any portion of his weight to it—she the while watching every step with a fearful fascination.

All of a sudden something gave way. One moment more, and he would have been in safety. Roden felt himself going—going. Still, with consummate presence of mind, he strove to distribute his weight. All in vain. He could not recover his lost footing. He was sliding with increased momentum, sliding to the brink of the terrible height.

Mona’s blood turned to ice within her. She was too stricken even to shriek, in the unspeakable horror of the moment. Her fingers dug into the ground, instinctively clenched, as she lay there, gazing down, an appalled and powerless spectator.

He, for his part, did not look up. The dust and stones slid in streams from beneath him and leaped over the ledge into space—then his descent stopped. He seemed to be flattening himself against the height, clinging for all he knew how. And then, as if to add to the gloomy depression of this horrible peril, there stole up a dark, misty cloud, spreading its black wings around the summit of the mountain, shedding a twilight as of fear and disaster. Mona found her voice.

“Oh, try and rest a little while and collect yourself,” she said; “then make another attempt!”

“I can’t move,” came the response; “and—I can’t hold on here much longer. I believe my left wrist is broken. I am suffering the torments of hell.”

Mona was almost beside herself. Roden Musgrave was in a bad way indeed when such an admission could be wrung from him.

“Dear, don’t give up!” she cried, in a wail of despairing tenderness, such as had never been wrung from her lips before. “Make one more effort; this time, becauseIask you. A yard or two more, and I shall be able to reach you.”

Was this the woman who had stood shrinkingly to gaze over the brink, and had quickly retreated with a shudder? Now, as she lay there, extending her arm down as far as it would go, in order to afford him the necessary hand-grasp, all fear on her own behalf seemed to have left her. But the man, flattened against the face of the cliff with the dead eagle slung to his back, seemed not able to move, and as she had said, it was but a yard or two farther.

But the effort must be made. Roden was only resting for one final struggle. It was made. Reaching upward he grasped the extended hand, then let go again.

“Hold it! hold it!” cried Mona, appalled by the awful whiteness which had spread over his face, evoked as it was by the agony he was suffering.

“No, I won’t, I should only drag you down.”

“You would not. I am very firm up here,” she replied. “I can hold you till—till help comes.”

He wriggled up a little higher, then with his uninjured hand he grasped hers. A sick faintness came upon him. The world seemed to go round. The brink of the cliff, the brave, eager face and love-lit eyes, the swaying grass bents, now rimy with misty scud, all danced before his vision. He felt cold as ice, that deathly numbness which precedes a faint. But for the strong, warm clasp of the hand which now held his, Roden Musgrave’s days were numbered. Well indeed was it for him, that the splendid frame of its owner was not merely the perfection of feminine symmetry, but encased a very considerable modicum of sheer physical strength.

“Roden, darling!” she murmured. “Save yourself if only that you may do so through me. You have surprised my secret, but it shall be as though you had not, if you prefer it.”

It was a strange love-making, as they faced each other thus, the one overhanging certain death, the other raised entirely out of her physical fears, resolute to save this life, which after all might not belong to her. Thus they faced each other, and the dark whirling blackness of the glooming cloud lowered thicker and thicker around them.

“Let me go, Mona!” he gasped forth wearily, in his semi-faint. “I may drag you down. Good-bye. Now—let go!”

She almost laughed. The strong grasp tightened upon his hand firmer than ever.

“If you go, I go too. Now I am going to shout. Perhaps Charlie will hear.” And lifting up her voice she sent forth a long, clear, ringing call; then another and another.

No answer.

Then, as the minutes went by, the bolt of a wild despair shot through Mona’s brave heart. Strong as she was, she could not hold him for ever, nor was he able, in the agony of his broken wrist, to raise himself any farther. Her brain reeled. Wild-eyed with despair she strove to pierce the opaque grey curtain which was crusting her face and hair with rime. It was winter, and this table-topped mountain was of considerable elevation. What if this thick chill cloud was the precursor of a heavy snowfall? Charlie, acting on the idea that they had missed each other in the mist, might have gone home. Every muscle in her fine frame seemed cracking. The strain was momentarily becoming greater, more intense, and again she sent forth her loud, clear call, this time thrilling with a fearful note of despair.

It was answered. Eagerly, breathlessly she listened. Yes—it came from below the cliff. Charlie had arrived at the spot where they had left their horses. She shouted again. The answer told that he was climbing the gully by which they had ascended.

“Do you hear that? We are safe now. A few minutes more, and Charlie will be here.”

“It is you who have done it, Mona,” he murmured.

Then she spoke no more. Now that succour was near at hand, she found herself actually revelling in the position, and a delight in making the most of it while it lasted was qualified by the agony Roden was suffering, as also by a strange feeling of jealousy that she had not been able to carry out the rescue alone and unaided; of resentment that she should be driven to call in the help of another.

“That’s it, is it?” said Suffield, prompt to master the situation at a glance. “Now, Mona, I’ll relieve you of this amount of avoirdupois, and when you have rested for a minute you hold on to me for all you know how, and I’ll lug him up in a second.”

The while he had got hold of Roden by the hand and wrist; then in a trice had, as he said, dragged the sufferer over the brink and into safety, for he was a powerful man.

“So that’s what it was all about?” he went on, as he cut loose the dead eagle. “Thedasje-vangernearly revenged itself. How do you feel, Musgrave, old chap?”

“Like an idiot,” said Roden faintly, as he took a liberal pull at the flask the other had been swift to tender him, and began to feel the better therefor. “I never could stand being hurt. Though hard enough in other ways, anything in the way of pain turns me sick. But, Suffield, if it had not been for Mona I should have been a dead man.”

“Oh, ‘Mona,’ is it?” thought Suffield, with an internal grin. Then aloud, rather anxiously, “Anything else besides the wrist?”

“I’ve banged up a knee a good bit; but I expect it’s only bruised. Now we’d better start. I seem to be getting all right.”

He was ghastly pale as he tottered to his feet, evidently still in great pain.

“No, never mind,” he went on; “I don’t want any help, I can walk all right.”

But as they began the descent of the gully, Suffield, carrying both rifles and the dead eagle, leading the way, he felt faint and dizzy. In an instant Mona’s hand had closed upon his. Hitherto she had stood silently aloof in the revulsion of feeling. He was safe now. The words which had been wrung from her by the extremity of his peril must be regarded as unsaid. So she resolved—but was it a revolution that came within her power to keep? The volcanic fires of her strong, passionate, sensuous temperament had lain dormant beneath an egotistic and inconsiderate vanity, had lain dormant, unknown even to herself. Now they were to burst forth with a force, and to an extent, unsuspected by herself, and as startling as they had been hitherto unknown. But on one point there was no room for any more self-deception. Whatever half-truth there might have been in Grace Suffield’s oft-uttered prediction, now it had become all truth. Mona realised that her tarn had indeed come—for good and for ill, for once and for ever.

Chapter Ten.“I Have Won You!”The alarm and concern felt by Grace Suffield on the return of the trio, Roden with his arm in a sling, and looking rather pale and, as he jocosely put it, interesting, almost beggars description; and the way in which her concern found expression in rating, womanlike, the person whose chiefraison d’êtrewas to be rated—viz., her husband, was beautiful to behold.Why had he allowed his guest to ran such risks—to go into dangerous places by himself? He could not be expected to know the country as they did; and so on, and so on. And Roden listening, stared and then laughed—first, as he looked back to a few experiences of “dangerous places” that would make them open their eyes wide did he choose to narrate them; secondly, at the idea that he needed to be taken out in leading-strings. And this idea brought him promptly to Suffield’s aid. The accident was his own fault entirely, he declared, and it was lucky it was no worse. And then, glad of the opportunity, he launched out at length upon the topic of Mona’s courage in the emergency, and how he owed his life entirely to her. A new light seemed to dawn upon Grace as she listened to this recital, and she glanced narrowly at Mona, who, however, lost no time in taking herself out of the room, remarking rather petulantly that there was no need to trumpet her praises quite so loudly.Roden’s injuries, when carefully examined, were found to consist of a severe sprain of the left wrist, which was not broken as he at first believed; a bruise on the side of the head, which had had not a little to do with his incapacitation at the time of the occurrence; and a contused knee. He vigorously, however, opposed the idea of sending for Lambert. The whole thing was simple enough, he declared. A mere question of bandages and fomentation. He would be all right in the morning.“You ought to say, ‘See what comes to wicked people who go out buck-shooting on Sunday,’ Mrs Suffield,” he concluded.“I won’t strike a man when he’s down,” she answered. “I’m waiting until you’re well again. Then the lecture is coming. Don’t flatter yourself you are going to escape it.”The bandaging and fomentation were most effectually carried out. Strangely enough, however, Mona held aloof. She seemed in no way anxious to do anything for the sufferer now. She was abnormally silent, too, throughout the evening; but that might be due to reaction from the shock and fright she had received.Although at bedtime Roden had made light of his injuries, yet they were sufficiently painful to keep him awake during the best part of the night. After a couple of hours of unrestful slumber he started up, feeling feverish and miserable. A burning thirst was upon him, together with a strange sinking sensation, begotten of the constant throbbing of his sprained wrist, and the dull, dead ache of his bruised knee. He would have given much for some brandy-and-water, but it was unobtainable by any means short of disturbing the household in the dead of midnight, and this he did not care to do. Stay, though! There was his flask. It might still contain a little of the ardently desired stimulant. Quickly he found it, and a shake resulting in a grateful gurgle, announced that it was nearly half full.But alas for the uncertainty of human hopes! The stopper was jammed, and flatly refused to be unscrewed. With both hands he might have managed it, but with the use of only one the thing was impossible. In vain he tried every conceivable device for holding the flask, while with his uninjured hand he twisted frantically at the stopper. It would not yield.“Tantalus, with a vengeance,” he growled wearily. “If it were made of glass instead of this infernal metal, I’d knock the head off.”Faint and sick, he staggered back to bed, feeling about as miserable as a man can under the circumstances. It was a cool night, almost a cold one, still, in his feverish unrest, Roden had thrown the window wide open. As he lay, he could see the loom of the great hills against the star-gemmed vault, which was cloudless now, and there floated ever and anon the cry of a night-bird, or prowling animal from the wild mountain-side. The sight, the sounds, carried his meditations back to the strange and well-nigh tragic events of the day. A kind of fate seemed to have overhung them from the very beginning. Why had Mona suddenly and unexpectedly insisted upon joining the party? But for her, he would have met with a terrible death, crushed to atoms at the foot of the great cliff. There had been no exaggeration in his statement to that effect, and now, lying there in the darkness and silence of night, when the mind, in a state of wakefulness, is most active, he realised it more fully than ever. But for her strong courageous handgrip, he could not have maintained his position two minutes. Had she been of the kind of women who faint and scream, and altogether lose their heads, his fate had been sealed. But no. She had behaved grandly, courageously, heroically. Was it ruled that her fate was to be bound up with his? he wondered, as he reflected upon the strangely spontaneous manner in which her secret had escaped her. And here the inherent cynicism, the verjuice drop of suspiciousness engendered by a life of strange experiences, injected itself upon his reflections, and he began steadily to review all the circumstances of their acquaintanceship.He remembered how she had first attracted, then repelled him; how she had first been disposed to make much of him, only to turn suddenly, in the most capricious and irresponsible manner, to lavish her favour upon Lambert. Well, that had in no way troubled him. Lambert was a newer arrival; Lambert was young, and he himself was not exactly young, but a tolerably jaded and experienced victim of circumstances; and while disliking him, never for a moment had he dreamed of regarding the doctor in the light of a rival. He had merely stood by and watched this new development of her preferences with a whole-hearted amusement not undashed with contempt. To-day, however, his eyes were opened. She had merely been resorting to the stale device of playing off Lambert against himself. But now—? The better, truer, nobler side of Mona’s nature had flashed forth in that moment of peril. She had displayed a glimpse of her true self in yielding up possession of the secrets of her innermost heart; and up till that day he would not have believed that she had a heart.But the enlightenment? What was to be the upshot of it? She had saved his life—could she not therefore claim it?Wouldshe not therefore claim it? And at the thought his mind stirred uneasily. For he did not return her love.How should he? Again drawing upon the stores of his experiences he could recall that same look in other eyes, could recall even the same utterances—the latter far more impassioned, far more self-oblivious than hers had been—all perfectly genuine at the moment.At the moment! For how had it ended? A year or two of absence, of separation—new interests surrounding—the gradual dimming effects of time, and all that warm, real, live passion had cooled down into the dry ashes of worn-out memories—had faded into extinction. How should he, we repeat, credit with any more lasting properties the fervour of this latest instance?He tossed restlessly from side to side, the same feverish thirst tormenting him. Suddenly his room grew light—he could distinguish objects quite plainly. The moon had risen, suffusing the heavens and the black loom of the mountain-top across the vista of the open window with golden light. Wearily, hopelessly, he flung himself out of bed and made another attempt at unscrewing the flask. Once more in vain. Well, he did not want to disturb the household, but even consideration had its limits. He would go and knock up Suffield.Sick with pain and exhaustion, he made for the door; but before he reached it, to his surprise it opened—opened softly.“Roden, darling! Where are you?” whispered a voice.“Good God!—Mona!” was all he could ejaculate, in his unbounded astonishment.“Something told me you were in pain, and wretchedly ill,” she whispered, her voice shaking with a thrill of tenderness. “And you are. I came to see what I could do for you.”“Just this, Mona,” was the firm reply. “Go back to your room at once. Good God! Only think! Supposing any one were to hear you! Heavens! it would be too awful.”In the light of the newly risen moon he could distinguish the soft, velvety gleam in her eyes, that wondrous kindling of her face into a love-light which rendered it strangely beautiful. She wore a white clinging dressing-gown, which set off the lines of her splendid form, and as she stood thus before him, Roden Musgrave would not have been human if he had remained unmoved.“Mona, Mona, why are you doing this?” he whispered, his voice slightly thrown off its balance. Then encircling her with his uninjured arm, he kissed the lips uplifted to his. And at the same time, while her eyes closed, and she nestled against him with a long, shuddering sigh of contentment, he recognised that on his part this was not love.“But—how selfish I am, keeping you standing like this!” she said suddenly. “I can tell by your very voice that you are in pain.”“I am that. But go back at once to your room.”“Not yet. I am here now; and I want to do something for you, and I will.”“Then see if you can unscrew this infernal flask. I’ve been trying hard at it all night, but can’t do anything with only one hand.”She took the recalcitrant flask. A firm hold, a vigorous grip with her strong, lithe fingers—the stopper came off in the most provokingly easy manner.“Ah, I feel better now!” he said, after a liberal admixture of its contents with a little water. “And now, Mona, having done guardian angel to very considerable purpose, you must go.”“Not even yet. I am going to do guardian angel to more purpose still. You must try and get some sleep. You are hot and feverish; but see, I have brought a fan. I am going to sit by you and cool your forehead. You will soon drop off then.”“Mona, you are too self-sacrificing,” he whispered. “Do you think I could sleep knowing the ghastly risk you are running? Now, to please me, do go back at once. It is still safe, but you can’t tell how long it may remain so. One of those brats of Suffield’s might wake at any moment and yell, and set the house generally agog. Go while it is safe. You have already done a great deal for me, and I feel immensely the better for it.”But his adjurations fell on deaf ears, and he was really feeling very feverish and exhausted; far too much so to continue to urge the point. So she sat by his bedside, softly fanning his burning and aching brow, and presently he dropped off into a delicious state of restfulness and ease, such as he had not known since first receiving his injuries. Was it the helplessness engendered by weakness and suffering and exhaustion that rendered his mind more amenable to her sway? Was there a languorous, all-pervading mesmerism in the very force and power of her love, which drew him beneath its spell in spite of himself? Whatever the cause, he was soon sleeping soundly and peacefully.For upwards of an hour Mona sat there watching him, but he never stirred. At last she rose, and gazing intently for a few moments upon the sleeping face, she bent down and imprinted a long kiss upon the unconscious forehead.“Darling love—mylove! I have won you from Death, and I claim you,” she murmured passionately. “Youshallbe mine. Youaremine.”And still turning to look at him as though she could not tear herself away, she moved to the door, and was gone—gliding forth as softly and silently as she had come.

The alarm and concern felt by Grace Suffield on the return of the trio, Roden with his arm in a sling, and looking rather pale and, as he jocosely put it, interesting, almost beggars description; and the way in which her concern found expression in rating, womanlike, the person whose chiefraison d’êtrewas to be rated—viz., her husband, was beautiful to behold.

Why had he allowed his guest to ran such risks—to go into dangerous places by himself? He could not be expected to know the country as they did; and so on, and so on. And Roden listening, stared and then laughed—first, as he looked back to a few experiences of “dangerous places” that would make them open their eyes wide did he choose to narrate them; secondly, at the idea that he needed to be taken out in leading-strings. And this idea brought him promptly to Suffield’s aid. The accident was his own fault entirely, he declared, and it was lucky it was no worse. And then, glad of the opportunity, he launched out at length upon the topic of Mona’s courage in the emergency, and how he owed his life entirely to her. A new light seemed to dawn upon Grace as she listened to this recital, and she glanced narrowly at Mona, who, however, lost no time in taking herself out of the room, remarking rather petulantly that there was no need to trumpet her praises quite so loudly.

Roden’s injuries, when carefully examined, were found to consist of a severe sprain of the left wrist, which was not broken as he at first believed; a bruise on the side of the head, which had had not a little to do with his incapacitation at the time of the occurrence; and a contused knee. He vigorously, however, opposed the idea of sending for Lambert. The whole thing was simple enough, he declared. A mere question of bandages and fomentation. He would be all right in the morning.

“You ought to say, ‘See what comes to wicked people who go out buck-shooting on Sunday,’ Mrs Suffield,” he concluded.

“I won’t strike a man when he’s down,” she answered. “I’m waiting until you’re well again. Then the lecture is coming. Don’t flatter yourself you are going to escape it.”

The bandaging and fomentation were most effectually carried out. Strangely enough, however, Mona held aloof. She seemed in no way anxious to do anything for the sufferer now. She was abnormally silent, too, throughout the evening; but that might be due to reaction from the shock and fright she had received.

Although at bedtime Roden had made light of his injuries, yet they were sufficiently painful to keep him awake during the best part of the night. After a couple of hours of unrestful slumber he started up, feeling feverish and miserable. A burning thirst was upon him, together with a strange sinking sensation, begotten of the constant throbbing of his sprained wrist, and the dull, dead ache of his bruised knee. He would have given much for some brandy-and-water, but it was unobtainable by any means short of disturbing the household in the dead of midnight, and this he did not care to do. Stay, though! There was his flask. It might still contain a little of the ardently desired stimulant. Quickly he found it, and a shake resulting in a grateful gurgle, announced that it was nearly half full.

But alas for the uncertainty of human hopes! The stopper was jammed, and flatly refused to be unscrewed. With both hands he might have managed it, but with the use of only one the thing was impossible. In vain he tried every conceivable device for holding the flask, while with his uninjured hand he twisted frantically at the stopper. It would not yield.

“Tantalus, with a vengeance,” he growled wearily. “If it were made of glass instead of this infernal metal, I’d knock the head off.”

Faint and sick, he staggered back to bed, feeling about as miserable as a man can under the circumstances. It was a cool night, almost a cold one, still, in his feverish unrest, Roden had thrown the window wide open. As he lay, he could see the loom of the great hills against the star-gemmed vault, which was cloudless now, and there floated ever and anon the cry of a night-bird, or prowling animal from the wild mountain-side. The sight, the sounds, carried his meditations back to the strange and well-nigh tragic events of the day. A kind of fate seemed to have overhung them from the very beginning. Why had Mona suddenly and unexpectedly insisted upon joining the party? But for her, he would have met with a terrible death, crushed to atoms at the foot of the great cliff. There had been no exaggeration in his statement to that effect, and now, lying there in the darkness and silence of night, when the mind, in a state of wakefulness, is most active, he realised it more fully than ever. But for her strong courageous handgrip, he could not have maintained his position two minutes. Had she been of the kind of women who faint and scream, and altogether lose their heads, his fate had been sealed. But no. She had behaved grandly, courageously, heroically. Was it ruled that her fate was to be bound up with his? he wondered, as he reflected upon the strangely spontaneous manner in which her secret had escaped her. And here the inherent cynicism, the verjuice drop of suspiciousness engendered by a life of strange experiences, injected itself upon his reflections, and he began steadily to review all the circumstances of their acquaintanceship.

He remembered how she had first attracted, then repelled him; how she had first been disposed to make much of him, only to turn suddenly, in the most capricious and irresponsible manner, to lavish her favour upon Lambert. Well, that had in no way troubled him. Lambert was a newer arrival; Lambert was young, and he himself was not exactly young, but a tolerably jaded and experienced victim of circumstances; and while disliking him, never for a moment had he dreamed of regarding the doctor in the light of a rival. He had merely stood by and watched this new development of her preferences with a whole-hearted amusement not undashed with contempt. To-day, however, his eyes were opened. She had merely been resorting to the stale device of playing off Lambert against himself. But now—? The better, truer, nobler side of Mona’s nature had flashed forth in that moment of peril. She had displayed a glimpse of her true self in yielding up possession of the secrets of her innermost heart; and up till that day he would not have believed that she had a heart.

But the enlightenment? What was to be the upshot of it? She had saved his life—could she not therefore claim it?Wouldshe not therefore claim it? And at the thought his mind stirred uneasily. For he did not return her love.

How should he? Again drawing upon the stores of his experiences he could recall that same look in other eyes, could recall even the same utterances—the latter far more impassioned, far more self-oblivious than hers had been—all perfectly genuine at the moment.At the moment! For how had it ended? A year or two of absence, of separation—new interests surrounding—the gradual dimming effects of time, and all that warm, real, live passion had cooled down into the dry ashes of worn-out memories—had faded into extinction. How should he, we repeat, credit with any more lasting properties the fervour of this latest instance?

He tossed restlessly from side to side, the same feverish thirst tormenting him. Suddenly his room grew light—he could distinguish objects quite plainly. The moon had risen, suffusing the heavens and the black loom of the mountain-top across the vista of the open window with golden light. Wearily, hopelessly, he flung himself out of bed and made another attempt at unscrewing the flask. Once more in vain. Well, he did not want to disturb the household, but even consideration had its limits. He would go and knock up Suffield.

Sick with pain and exhaustion, he made for the door; but before he reached it, to his surprise it opened—opened softly.

“Roden, darling! Where are you?” whispered a voice.

“Good God!—Mona!” was all he could ejaculate, in his unbounded astonishment.

“Something told me you were in pain, and wretchedly ill,” she whispered, her voice shaking with a thrill of tenderness. “And you are. I came to see what I could do for you.”

“Just this, Mona,” was the firm reply. “Go back to your room at once. Good God! Only think! Supposing any one were to hear you! Heavens! it would be too awful.”

In the light of the newly risen moon he could distinguish the soft, velvety gleam in her eyes, that wondrous kindling of her face into a love-light which rendered it strangely beautiful. She wore a white clinging dressing-gown, which set off the lines of her splendid form, and as she stood thus before him, Roden Musgrave would not have been human if he had remained unmoved.

“Mona, Mona, why are you doing this?” he whispered, his voice slightly thrown off its balance. Then encircling her with his uninjured arm, he kissed the lips uplifted to his. And at the same time, while her eyes closed, and she nestled against him with a long, shuddering sigh of contentment, he recognised that on his part this was not love.

“But—how selfish I am, keeping you standing like this!” she said suddenly. “I can tell by your very voice that you are in pain.”

“I am that. But go back at once to your room.”

“Not yet. I am here now; and I want to do something for you, and I will.”

“Then see if you can unscrew this infernal flask. I’ve been trying hard at it all night, but can’t do anything with only one hand.”

She took the recalcitrant flask. A firm hold, a vigorous grip with her strong, lithe fingers—the stopper came off in the most provokingly easy manner.

“Ah, I feel better now!” he said, after a liberal admixture of its contents with a little water. “And now, Mona, having done guardian angel to very considerable purpose, you must go.”

“Not even yet. I am going to do guardian angel to more purpose still. You must try and get some sleep. You are hot and feverish; but see, I have brought a fan. I am going to sit by you and cool your forehead. You will soon drop off then.”

“Mona, you are too self-sacrificing,” he whispered. “Do you think I could sleep knowing the ghastly risk you are running? Now, to please me, do go back at once. It is still safe, but you can’t tell how long it may remain so. One of those brats of Suffield’s might wake at any moment and yell, and set the house generally agog. Go while it is safe. You have already done a great deal for me, and I feel immensely the better for it.”

But his adjurations fell on deaf ears, and he was really feeling very feverish and exhausted; far too much so to continue to urge the point. So she sat by his bedside, softly fanning his burning and aching brow, and presently he dropped off into a delicious state of restfulness and ease, such as he had not known since first receiving his injuries. Was it the helplessness engendered by weakness and suffering and exhaustion that rendered his mind more amenable to her sway? Was there a languorous, all-pervading mesmerism in the very force and power of her love, which drew him beneath its spell in spite of himself? Whatever the cause, he was soon sleeping soundly and peacefully.

For upwards of an hour Mona sat there watching him, but he never stirred. At last she rose, and gazing intently for a few moments upon the sleeping face, she bent down and imprinted a long kiss upon the unconscious forehead.

“Darling love—mylove! I have won you from Death, and I claim you,” she murmured passionately. “Youshallbe mine. Youaremine.”

And still turning to look at him as though she could not tear herself away, she moved to the door, and was gone—gliding forth as softly and silently as she had come.

Chapter Eleven.“I Hold You!”On the morning following his misadventure Roden Musgrave was far too bruised and feverish to undertake the journey back, and accordingly a note was sent in to his official superior asking for a day’s leave, which missive Suffield undertook to deliver in person, and supplement with his own explanations; and not only was the application readily granted, but Mr Van Stolz, full of concern, must needs ride out with Suffield in the afternoon to see his damaged subordinate, and to impress upon the latter that he was not to think of returning until he felt thoroughly able to do so.“Don’t you break your neck about anything, Musgrave, old boy,” he said, on taking his leave. “We shall manage to get along all right for a day or two. I can put Somers on to copy the letters, and even to write some of them. When a fellow is bruised and shaken about, he wants to lie quiet a little. I wouldn’t mind swapping places with you, to have Miss Ridsdale as a nurse,” he added waggishly, as Mona appeared on the scene. “Take care of him, Miss Ridsdale; good men are scarce, at any rate in Doppersdorp. Well, good-bye, everybody; good-bye, Mrs Suffield. Suffield, old chap, give us a fill out of your pouch to start on; mine has hardly enough in it, I find, to carry me home.”And amid a chorus of hearty farewells, the genial R.M. flung himself into his saddle and cantered off townwards.“What a delightful man Mr Van Stolz is!” said Mrs Suffield, gazing after the retreating horseman.“I agree entirely,” assented Roden. “And now I shall feel bound to go back to-morrow, if only that one is sensitive on the point of seeming to take advantage of his good-nature.”“Well, wait till to-morrow comes, at any rate,” rejoined his hostess. “Meanwhile, whatever you have to suffer you have richly deserved, mind that. Wicked people, who break the Sabbath, are sure to suffer. I told you I had a severe lecture in store for you when you were well enough, and now you are.”“Then all I can say is the moral you want to draw is no moral at all, or a very bad one at best,” laughed Roden. “For I am ‘suffering’ for it in the shape of indulging in the most delicious and perfect laze, and, better still, being made such a lot of, that I feel like Sabbath-breaking again, if only to ensure the same result. For instance, it’s rather nice sitting here taking it easy all day, and being so efficiently taken care of.”“Ah, you didn’t find it such fun in the night, when you couldn’t unscrew the flask top. Do you know, I’ll never forgive you for such foolishness. The idea of being afraid to knock anybody up!” said Mrs Suffield tartly.He dared not look at Mona. The joke was too rich, and he was inwardly bursting with the kind of mirth which is calculated to kill at the longest range of all—mirth of a grim nature, to wit. He had told his tale of Tantalus, when asked what sort of a night he had had. The sequel to that episode, we need hardly say, he had not told.“I never like disturbing anybody’s hard-earned slumbers. Don’t you think I’m right, Miss Ridsdale?”Mona, who was watering flowers just below thestoep, thus appealed to, looked up with a half-start. He had relapsed into the formal again. But she understood.“It depends,” she said. “No one would grudge being disturbed for such a reason as that.”There was a caress in the tone, latent, subtle, imperceptible to any but himself. The voice, the attitude, the supple grace of her beautiful form, emphasised by the occupation she was then engaged in, as indeed it was in almost any and every movement she made, stirred him with a kind of enchantment, an enchantment that was strange, delicious, and rather intoxicating. He thought that he could lie there in his long cane chair, amid the drowsy hum of bees and the far-away bleating of sheep upon the sunny and sensuous air, and watch her for ever.But a very much less soothing sound now rose upon the said air, in the shape of a wild yell, quick, shrill voices, and a series of vehement shrieks.“My goodness! what on earth are those children about?” cried Mrs Suffield, springing to her feet, and hurrying round to the back of the house, where the tumult had arisen, and whence doleful howlings and the strife of tongues still continued to flow.“They’ve been scratching each other’s faces, or got stung by a bee, or something of the kind,” said Mona composedly, her figure drawn up to its full height in an attitude of unconscious grace, as she rose from her occupation and stood for a moment with one foot on the lower step of thestoep, looking half over her shoulder at the flower bed, while calculating how much more watering it needed. Then she put down her watering can and came up the steps.“Hot for the time of year,” she said, sweeping off her wide-brimmed straw hat, which became her so well, and drawing off her gardening gloves.“Perhaps; but you looked such a vision of coolness, moving about among the flowers, that it made up a sort of Paradise. Now, come here, Mona, and talk to me a little. There is something about you which is the very embodiment of all soothing properties.”A soft light grew in the hazel eyes. With a pleased smile she stepped to the head of his couch, and placing a cool hand on his forehead for a moment, bent down and kissed him.“You poor invalid!” she murmured, looking down at him tenderly. “I feel responsible for you now—you seem to belong to me—until you are well.”“In that case I am in no hurry to get well, dear,” was the answer, in a tone strangely soft as coming from the man who, not much more than a dozen hours ago, had been haunted by an uncomfortable dread, lest she should claim and exact this very proprietorship in the life she had saved. And indeed, if Roden Musgrave was in some danger of losing his head it is little to be wondered at—remembering time and place, his own weakened but restful state, the warm and sensuous surroundings, and this magnificent creature bending over him, with the light of love in her eyes, a caress in every tone of her voice. With all his clear-headedness and cynical mind, his was by no means a cold temperament; indeed, very much the reverse. But what kept his head level now was the ice-current of an ingrained cynicism flowing through the hothouse temperature, the intoxicating fragrance of what was perilously akin to a long-forgotten feeling—namely, love. The present state of affairs was delightful, rather entrancing; but how was it going to end? In but one way of coarse—when she was tired of it, tired of him. This sort of thing never did last—oh no! He had seen too much of it in his time.To his last remark, however, Mona made no direct rejoinder. There was nothing unduly effusive about her, and this went far towards enhancing her attractiveness in his eyes. In the tendernesses she showed him there was nothing overpowering, nothing of gush; and keenly observing her every word, every action, he noted the fact, and was duly impressed. About her there was no jarring note; all was in perfect harmony.Now sitting there they talked—talked on matters not limited by the boundaries of the district of Doppersdorp, or those of the Cape Colony, but on matters that were world wide. And on such Mona loved to listen; for of the world he possessed far greater knowledge than falls to the lot of most men, and of human nature likewise—this man who at middle age, for some reason, found himself compelled to fill a position usually occupied by youngsters starting in life. But while delighting in his keen, trenchant views upon men and matters, Mona failed not to note that there was one subject upon which he never dwelt, and that subject was himself.“You give me new life,” he said, dropping his hand upon hers as she sat beside him. “What a pity we did not come together before—before I had made such a hash of the old life. But,” with a queer smile, “I am forgetting. You would have been in short frocks then, in very short frocks. I am quite an old fogey, Mona.”“You are not,” she replied closing her fingers upon his with something of the strong supple grip, in which she had held his hand when to relax her grasp of it meant death—his death. Now it seemed as though that same grasp was in accord with her thoughts, holding him back from something else; from the Past, perhaps; from the effects of that marring of his life to which he had made so direct an allusion. Yet to what nature did that allusion apply? A chill seemed to hold her heart paralysed for the moment. Should she ask him? Here was her opportunity. Would it not be wiser—nay only in accord with the very first dictates of common sense? Confusion to the dictates of common sense! Let the past take care of itself, and the future too. The present was hers—was theirs, and the present was very good, very fair, very sunny; glowing, golden, enchanting with the strong wine of love. Do we refuse to take advantage of a cloudless day because the morrow may be black and overcast, and furious with rolling thunder and volleying squalls of rain? No. The cloudless day was hers—was theirs. Let the morrow take care of itself.“You are nothing of the sort,” she continued. “So I give you new life, do I? Roden dear, I might say the same—I love to talk with you like this. I knew I should from the first moment we met. And Grace had said the very thing you have just said of yourself, when I asked her what you were like, ‘Quite a middle-aged fogey.’”“Oh, the mischief she did! I shall have a row with Mrs Grace about that.”“Ah, but wait. She only said she had heard so, for she hadn’t seen you, and of course had no idea of your identity with her knight errant during the post-cart journey. In the latter capacity you should have heard all the nice things she said about you. Charlie declared himself sick of the very name of the unknown, only he didn’t know it, for that she seemed to have got him on the brain; which I amended by saying I rather thought she had got him on the heart. Then Grace was cross.”Roden laughed queerly.“Well, Mona, and so ought I to be, for that was the very way to prepare me the most unfavourable reception. Come now, isn’t it an invariable rule that the individual much-belauded in advance turns out a sure disappointment on acquaintance?”“It is the rule. But every rule has its exceptions.”“Meaning me. Thank you. I can appreciate the delightfulness of the compliment, for I believe it is sincere. Nevertheless, my dear child, you will find few enough people to agree with you—precious few.”“I know, Roden. You are one of those whom a few people would like very much indeed, but whom the general run would rather dislike.”“Perhaps. And now, disclaiming all idea of being ungracious, how about quitting so profitless a topic as my own interesting self? And indeed here comes that which will assuredly divert all attention from it, or any other matter.”Mona subtly and imperceptibly somewhat widened the distance between them—indeed, in whatever situation or dilemma she had been surprised, she might have been trusted to get out of it gracefully—just as the whole brood came running up. Their mother, having pacified the disturbance, and forthwith taken the whole lot for a walk, whence they were returning.“Well, what was all the grief about?” said Mona. “Frank, I suppose, teasing somebody again.”“It wasn’t me, Cousin Mona,” said the accused urchin resentfully. “I had nothing to do with it. Bah! It was Alfie, as usual. He’d let another slate pencil fall on his toe, I suppose.” And the wrongfully accused one marched off in high dudgeon.Roden laughed unrestrainedly.“That fellow’s a wag, by Jove!” he said. “You’ll have to entrust him with the care of the humour of the family, Mrs Suffield,” as Grace came up, and was delighted with the answer repeated for her benefit, for Frank was rather the favoured one in her eyes, probably because he was the most mischievous and unmanageable. The while Mona was watching with a jealous eye lest any of the small fry in their restive exuberance should come near imparting to the invalid chair a sudden and unpremeditated shake.“I saw that, Mona,” he said, after they had all cleared out. “I have seen the same kind of watchfulness, though in different ways, before, since I have been lying here. Believe me, dear, I keenly appreciate it.”Her eyes lighted up. She seemed about to reply, but thought better of it and, said nothing. In her heart, however, she was echoing gladsomely that resolute, passionate murmur which she had uttered in the silent midnight as she stilled his pain in slumber by the very restfulness of her presence; echoing it with such a thrill of exultation as to tax all her powers of self-command, “Darling love—my love—you are mine! I have won you, and now I hold you!”

On the morning following his misadventure Roden Musgrave was far too bruised and feverish to undertake the journey back, and accordingly a note was sent in to his official superior asking for a day’s leave, which missive Suffield undertook to deliver in person, and supplement with his own explanations; and not only was the application readily granted, but Mr Van Stolz, full of concern, must needs ride out with Suffield in the afternoon to see his damaged subordinate, and to impress upon the latter that he was not to think of returning until he felt thoroughly able to do so.

“Don’t you break your neck about anything, Musgrave, old boy,” he said, on taking his leave. “We shall manage to get along all right for a day or two. I can put Somers on to copy the letters, and even to write some of them. When a fellow is bruised and shaken about, he wants to lie quiet a little. I wouldn’t mind swapping places with you, to have Miss Ridsdale as a nurse,” he added waggishly, as Mona appeared on the scene. “Take care of him, Miss Ridsdale; good men are scarce, at any rate in Doppersdorp. Well, good-bye, everybody; good-bye, Mrs Suffield. Suffield, old chap, give us a fill out of your pouch to start on; mine has hardly enough in it, I find, to carry me home.”

And amid a chorus of hearty farewells, the genial R.M. flung himself into his saddle and cantered off townwards.

“What a delightful man Mr Van Stolz is!” said Mrs Suffield, gazing after the retreating horseman.

“I agree entirely,” assented Roden. “And now I shall feel bound to go back to-morrow, if only that one is sensitive on the point of seeming to take advantage of his good-nature.”

“Well, wait till to-morrow comes, at any rate,” rejoined his hostess. “Meanwhile, whatever you have to suffer you have richly deserved, mind that. Wicked people, who break the Sabbath, are sure to suffer. I told you I had a severe lecture in store for you when you were well enough, and now you are.”

“Then all I can say is the moral you want to draw is no moral at all, or a very bad one at best,” laughed Roden. “For I am ‘suffering’ for it in the shape of indulging in the most delicious and perfect laze, and, better still, being made such a lot of, that I feel like Sabbath-breaking again, if only to ensure the same result. For instance, it’s rather nice sitting here taking it easy all day, and being so efficiently taken care of.”

“Ah, you didn’t find it such fun in the night, when you couldn’t unscrew the flask top. Do you know, I’ll never forgive you for such foolishness. The idea of being afraid to knock anybody up!” said Mrs Suffield tartly.

He dared not look at Mona. The joke was too rich, and he was inwardly bursting with the kind of mirth which is calculated to kill at the longest range of all—mirth of a grim nature, to wit. He had told his tale of Tantalus, when asked what sort of a night he had had. The sequel to that episode, we need hardly say, he had not told.

“I never like disturbing anybody’s hard-earned slumbers. Don’t you think I’m right, Miss Ridsdale?”

Mona, who was watering flowers just below thestoep, thus appealed to, looked up with a half-start. He had relapsed into the formal again. But she understood.

“It depends,” she said. “No one would grudge being disturbed for such a reason as that.”

There was a caress in the tone, latent, subtle, imperceptible to any but himself. The voice, the attitude, the supple grace of her beautiful form, emphasised by the occupation she was then engaged in, as indeed it was in almost any and every movement she made, stirred him with a kind of enchantment, an enchantment that was strange, delicious, and rather intoxicating. He thought that he could lie there in his long cane chair, amid the drowsy hum of bees and the far-away bleating of sheep upon the sunny and sensuous air, and watch her for ever.

But a very much less soothing sound now rose upon the said air, in the shape of a wild yell, quick, shrill voices, and a series of vehement shrieks.

“My goodness! what on earth are those children about?” cried Mrs Suffield, springing to her feet, and hurrying round to the back of the house, where the tumult had arisen, and whence doleful howlings and the strife of tongues still continued to flow.

“They’ve been scratching each other’s faces, or got stung by a bee, or something of the kind,” said Mona composedly, her figure drawn up to its full height in an attitude of unconscious grace, as she rose from her occupation and stood for a moment with one foot on the lower step of thestoep, looking half over her shoulder at the flower bed, while calculating how much more watering it needed. Then she put down her watering can and came up the steps.

“Hot for the time of year,” she said, sweeping off her wide-brimmed straw hat, which became her so well, and drawing off her gardening gloves.

“Perhaps; but you looked such a vision of coolness, moving about among the flowers, that it made up a sort of Paradise. Now, come here, Mona, and talk to me a little. There is something about you which is the very embodiment of all soothing properties.”

A soft light grew in the hazel eyes. With a pleased smile she stepped to the head of his couch, and placing a cool hand on his forehead for a moment, bent down and kissed him.

“You poor invalid!” she murmured, looking down at him tenderly. “I feel responsible for you now—you seem to belong to me—until you are well.”

“In that case I am in no hurry to get well, dear,” was the answer, in a tone strangely soft as coming from the man who, not much more than a dozen hours ago, had been haunted by an uncomfortable dread, lest she should claim and exact this very proprietorship in the life she had saved. And indeed, if Roden Musgrave was in some danger of losing his head it is little to be wondered at—remembering time and place, his own weakened but restful state, the warm and sensuous surroundings, and this magnificent creature bending over him, with the light of love in her eyes, a caress in every tone of her voice. With all his clear-headedness and cynical mind, his was by no means a cold temperament; indeed, very much the reverse. But what kept his head level now was the ice-current of an ingrained cynicism flowing through the hothouse temperature, the intoxicating fragrance of what was perilously akin to a long-forgotten feeling—namely, love. The present state of affairs was delightful, rather entrancing; but how was it going to end? In but one way of coarse—when she was tired of it, tired of him. This sort of thing never did last—oh no! He had seen too much of it in his time.

To his last remark, however, Mona made no direct rejoinder. There was nothing unduly effusive about her, and this went far towards enhancing her attractiveness in his eyes. In the tendernesses she showed him there was nothing overpowering, nothing of gush; and keenly observing her every word, every action, he noted the fact, and was duly impressed. About her there was no jarring note; all was in perfect harmony.

Now sitting there they talked—talked on matters not limited by the boundaries of the district of Doppersdorp, or those of the Cape Colony, but on matters that were world wide. And on such Mona loved to listen; for of the world he possessed far greater knowledge than falls to the lot of most men, and of human nature likewise—this man who at middle age, for some reason, found himself compelled to fill a position usually occupied by youngsters starting in life. But while delighting in his keen, trenchant views upon men and matters, Mona failed not to note that there was one subject upon which he never dwelt, and that subject was himself.

“You give me new life,” he said, dropping his hand upon hers as she sat beside him. “What a pity we did not come together before—before I had made such a hash of the old life. But,” with a queer smile, “I am forgetting. You would have been in short frocks then, in very short frocks. I am quite an old fogey, Mona.”

“You are not,” she replied closing her fingers upon his with something of the strong supple grip, in which she had held his hand when to relax her grasp of it meant death—his death. Now it seemed as though that same grasp was in accord with her thoughts, holding him back from something else; from the Past, perhaps; from the effects of that marring of his life to which he had made so direct an allusion. Yet to what nature did that allusion apply? A chill seemed to hold her heart paralysed for the moment. Should she ask him? Here was her opportunity. Would it not be wiser—nay only in accord with the very first dictates of common sense? Confusion to the dictates of common sense! Let the past take care of itself, and the future too. The present was hers—was theirs, and the present was very good, very fair, very sunny; glowing, golden, enchanting with the strong wine of love. Do we refuse to take advantage of a cloudless day because the morrow may be black and overcast, and furious with rolling thunder and volleying squalls of rain? No. The cloudless day was hers—was theirs. Let the morrow take care of itself.

“You are nothing of the sort,” she continued. “So I give you new life, do I? Roden dear, I might say the same—I love to talk with you like this. I knew I should from the first moment we met. And Grace had said the very thing you have just said of yourself, when I asked her what you were like, ‘Quite a middle-aged fogey.’”

“Oh, the mischief she did! I shall have a row with Mrs Grace about that.”

“Ah, but wait. She only said she had heard so, for she hadn’t seen you, and of course had no idea of your identity with her knight errant during the post-cart journey. In the latter capacity you should have heard all the nice things she said about you. Charlie declared himself sick of the very name of the unknown, only he didn’t know it, for that she seemed to have got him on the brain; which I amended by saying I rather thought she had got him on the heart. Then Grace was cross.”

Roden laughed queerly.

“Well, Mona, and so ought I to be, for that was the very way to prepare me the most unfavourable reception. Come now, isn’t it an invariable rule that the individual much-belauded in advance turns out a sure disappointment on acquaintance?”

“It is the rule. But every rule has its exceptions.”

“Meaning me. Thank you. I can appreciate the delightfulness of the compliment, for I believe it is sincere. Nevertheless, my dear child, you will find few enough people to agree with you—precious few.”

“I know, Roden. You are one of those whom a few people would like very much indeed, but whom the general run would rather dislike.”

“Perhaps. And now, disclaiming all idea of being ungracious, how about quitting so profitless a topic as my own interesting self? And indeed here comes that which will assuredly divert all attention from it, or any other matter.”

Mona subtly and imperceptibly somewhat widened the distance between them—indeed, in whatever situation or dilemma she had been surprised, she might have been trusted to get out of it gracefully—just as the whole brood came running up. Their mother, having pacified the disturbance, and forthwith taken the whole lot for a walk, whence they were returning.

“Well, what was all the grief about?” said Mona. “Frank, I suppose, teasing somebody again.”

“It wasn’t me, Cousin Mona,” said the accused urchin resentfully. “I had nothing to do with it. Bah! It was Alfie, as usual. He’d let another slate pencil fall on his toe, I suppose.” And the wrongfully accused one marched off in high dudgeon.

Roden laughed unrestrainedly.

“That fellow’s a wag, by Jove!” he said. “You’ll have to entrust him with the care of the humour of the family, Mrs Suffield,” as Grace came up, and was delighted with the answer repeated for her benefit, for Frank was rather the favoured one in her eyes, probably because he was the most mischievous and unmanageable. The while Mona was watching with a jealous eye lest any of the small fry in their restive exuberance should come near imparting to the invalid chair a sudden and unpremeditated shake.

“I saw that, Mona,” he said, after they had all cleared out. “I have seen the same kind of watchfulness, though in different ways, before, since I have been lying here. Believe me, dear, I keenly appreciate it.”

Her eyes lighted up. She seemed about to reply, but thought better of it and, said nothing. In her heart, however, she was echoing gladsomely that resolute, passionate murmur which she had uttered in the silent midnight as she stilled his pain in slumber by the very restfulness of her presence; echoing it with such a thrill of exultation as to tax all her powers of self-command, “Darling love—my love—you are mine! I have won you, and now I hold you!”

Chapter Twelve.Breathing of War.The town of Doppersdorp was in the wildest state of excitement and delight. We say delight, because anything which tended to stir the soporific surface of life in that centre of light and leading was productive of unqualified satisfaction, and the tidings which had now arrived to effect this result were of no less importance than the announcement that hostilities had actually broken out in the Transkei.At the street corners men stood in knots discussing the news; in the stores, swinging their legs against counters, and blowing out clouds of Boer tobacco, this was the topic of conversation, while semi-nude and perspiring natives rolled the great wool bales in and out, and those at the receipt of custom dispensed wares or took payment in listless, half-absent fashion; of such enthralling interest was the turn events had taken. But it was in the bars, where glasses filled and emptied to-day with abnormal briskness, that the Doppersdorp tongue wagged fast and free.True, the Transkei was a long way off, but the ruction would never stop there. It was bound to spread. The Gaikas and Hlambis in British Kaffraria were bound to respond to the call of the Paramount Chief. The contagion would spread to the Tembus, or Tambookies, within the Colonial territory, and were there not extensive Tembu locations along the eastern border of the district of Doppersdorp itself? This was bringing the matter very near home indeed. The enterprise of Doppersdorp was aroused, its martial spirit glowing at white heat. This indeed has its disadvantages; for at such a rate, with every citizen burning to sally forth and distinguish himself in the tented field, Doppersdorp would be deserted; and it was clear that with all its male inhabitants occupied at a distance, subduing Kreli and his recalcitrant Gcalekas, that illustrious Centre of the Earth would be left at the mercy of all comers.At Jones’ hospitable board, as the shades of evening fell, the tidings were discussed far more eagerly than the painted yellow bones and rice to which allusion has been made. From Jones himself in the pride of office at the head of the table, through the manager of the local bank and a storekeeper’s clerk or two, down to the journeymen stonemasons and waggon-maker’s apprentices at the lower end, the same topic was on every tongue. The Gcalekas had attacked and routed a strong body of Police in the Transkei, and had killed several men and an officer. Indeed, the Inspector in command had undergone a narrow escape, having turned up at a distant post the following day without his hat. Such was the report which had come in; every word of which, especially the latter circumstance, being implicitly believed by the good burgesses of Doppersdorp—probably because Inspectors in that useful force, the Frontier Armed and Mounted Police, did not at any time, when on duty, wear “hats.” But it was all the same to Doppersdorp.“Any more news, Mr Musgrave?” said Jones eagerly, as Roden entered.“If there is, for the Lord’s sake wait until we’ve all done,” struck in Emerson, the bank-manager, who was of a grim and sardonic habit of mind. “As it is, we can scarcely any of us get through our oats, we are all in such a cast-iron hurry to start for the Transkei.”“There isn’t any.”“Good. Then we needn’t prepare for the siege of Doppersdorp just yet—we poor devils who can’t rush forth, to death or glory.”“We could hold out for ever, for we should always have Emerson’s Chamber of Horrors to fall back upon,” laughed a storekeeper opposite; “that is, if it is not already dead of fright from theschrekit got last week.”While others guffawed the bank-manager grinned sourly at this allusion. It happened that the premises provided by his Corporation for the housing of its employé’s contained a spacious backyard, with an open shed and some stabling. This yard Emerson had seen fit to populate with the most miscellaneous of zoological collections, comprising a youngaasvogel, two or three blue cranes, an owl and a peacock, besides a few moulting and demoralised-looking fowls, a tame meerkat, a shocking reprobate of a baboon—whose liberty and influences for evil were only restricted by a post and chain—several monkeys; item, Kaffir curs of slinking and sinister aspect; and, in fact, innumerable specimens which it was impossible to include within the inventory with any degree of assurance, for the inhabitants of the menagerie were continually being added to, or disappearing, the latter according to the degree of watchfulness maintained on their own part, or that of aggression on the part of their neighbours. This collection was known in Doppersdorp as Emerson’s Chamber of Horrors.“You weren’t here that night, Musgrave. Away at Suffield’s place, I think,” went on the last speaker, with a wink at the others. “Well, some fellow got hold of a cur dog in the middle of the night, and thinking it had escaped from Emerson’s Zoo, reckoned it a Christian duty to restore the wanderer. So he took it to the street leading to the bank-yard, tied one of those detonating squibs to its tail, and headed it for the gate. Heavens! you never heard such an awful row in your life. Phiz! bang! went the cracker, and there was the mongrel scooting round and round the yard, dragging a shower of fiery sparks, and every now and then bang would go the cracker like pistol-shots. You can just imagine the result. Everything kicked up the most fearful clamour—the dogs, and the cats, and the peacock, and theaasvogel, and the monkeys, all yelling at once; and the more they yelled, the more the thing seemed to bang off. It didn’t hurt the cur though, for it was a long way behind him. But the best of the joke is that the banging of the crackers started the notion that the town was being attacked, and Lambert and some other fellows—myself among them—came slinking up gingerly with rifles. The squib had long burnt out by the time we got there; but the sight that met our astonished gaze was magnificent. Emerson was standing on the top step, clad in a short nightshirt, emptying all the furniture into the backyard, and, oh, his language! Well, I can only give you some idea of it by saying that it was so thick, that the chairs and tables he was hurling out stuck in it. They could not even reach the ground.”“It looks as if you had a finger in the pie yourself, Smith. You seem to know all the details,” said Roden. But Emerson merely grinned sardonically. He did not think the recital worthy of comment. Besides, he had heard it so often.“I? Not I. It only came in at the end, as I tell you,” protested Smith.At this juncture a note was handed to Roden. It was from Mr Van Stolz.“Here’s a little more excitement for Doppersdorp to-night,” he said when he had read it. This was its burden. “One hundred and thirty-three mounted men from Barabastadt,en routefor the front, are passing through. They will camp here to-night. Volunteers and band going out to meet them. Tell everybody.”This was news indeed. In a trice the table was deserted. All who heard it were in first-rate spirits—those who belonged to the newly formed Volunteer Corps, because it would afford an opportunity for a lively game of soldiers; those who did not, because it meant more excitement; while Jones, perhaps, was in the greatest feather of all, for would there not be a prodigious consumption of drinks in the bar of the Barkly Hotel that night? Roden and Emerson were left alone at the table.“Come along, Musgrave; let’s go and have a look at these Barabastadt heroes,” said the latter. “The Light Brigade is nothing to them. We are sure to see some first-class fun.”“Not a doubt of it,” was the reply. And these two cynics rose to follow the crowd, but with a different motive.Outside, in the starlight, the whole town was astir. The two men who had ridden in to notify the arrival of the main body were beset with questions—and drinks. What was the latest news? Had Government called out the burgher forces all round; and if not, would it do so? and so on, and so on. Meanwhile the local Volunteer Corps, numbering about sixty of all ages and sizes, had formed in marching order, and, preluded by a few sounding whacks on the big drum, the band struck up, and that doughty force marched off to quick-step time, accompanied by a moving mass of humanity; even the inhabitants of Doppersdorp and its ‘location’—some mounted, the larger proportion on foot, amid much talking and laughing and horseplay and lighting of pipes; a squad of ragged Hottentots of both sexes, chattering shrilly, hanging on the rear.“Here come the heroes,” said Emerson satirically, as, having proceeded about a couple of miles out, a cloud of dust and a dark, moving mass came indistinctly into sight. So the Volunteers were halted, eke the civilians; and Mr Van Stolz rode forward to welcome the leaders of the Barabastadt burgher force. Then forming into double file, and preceded by the band, the new arrivals resumed their route for Doppersdorp.Now it happened, unfortunately, that the band of that doughty corps, the Doppersdorp Rifles, was very much in a state of embryo. Its available repertory consisted of but two tunes, for the simple reason that it knew no others. These were “Silver Threads among the Gold,” and “Home, Sweet Home.” The first of these had enlivened the march out; and although it was started to effect the same object on the return, it would hardly last over a space of two miles. The second, though admirably adapted for welcoming the returning warriors, as a God-speed was clearly inappropriate. The bandmaster—our old acquaintance Darrell, the attorney, whose persuasive eloquence had not availed to save the mutton thief, Gonjana, from the just reward of his crime—was in a quandary. Music they must have. Music, however, repeated to endless iteration point, was worse than none. In this dilemma he bethought him of “John Brown.” Surely they could play that. The inspiration was a happy one. No sooner did the well-known air bray forth—with somewhat discordant and quavering note it is true—than those nearest seized upon the chorus. It was caught up, and went rolling along the whole line. Then it occurred to somebody to alter the chorus to, “We’ll hang old Kreli to a sour apple-tree,” an idea received with the wildest enthusiasm, having the effect of redoubling the volume of song.But over and above, and throughout all this rollicking jollity, there was a something about those dark, mounted figures filing here in the starlight, the gleam of the rifles, the sombre simplicity of the accoutrements, which told of the sterner side, which seemed to bring home the idea that this was no toy contingent; that the task of quelling a barbarian rising was not all child’s play; and that some of these might return with strange experiences, while some might not return at all.The weeks that followed this passing through of the first band of defenders of their “’arths, ’omes, and haltars,” as their spokesman graphically put it, while returning thanks for attentions received during their sojourn, constituted to Doppersdorp a period of the most delicious excitement. Some startling and sensational report was of daily occurrence, borne mainly on the wings of rumour and impracticable of verification; for that centre of light and leading, notwithstanding its huge importance in the eyes of its citizens, was yet without such an appliance of modern civilisation as telegraphic communication. What mattered it, as long as things were kept alive, and everybody was happy! And things were kept alive, with felicitous results.To begin with, there arose a large demand for firearms of all sorts. This was good for the store-keepers, who booked orders briskly; for the farmers in the district, Dutch or English, were particular as to the quality of their weapons, but at such a juncture were less so as to price, as long as they were quickly supplied. So great consignments of rifles, and revolvers, and ammunition, were slowly and painfully hauled up to Doppersdorp from the coast ports, and the store-keepers were delighted. So too were the Government contractors; for the Barabastadt contingent, if the first, was not the only mounted corps to pass through the township; and did not each and all require forage and rations? Again, the martial ardour gave a great impetus to volunteering, distinctly to the advantage of the community at large, in that this afforded an outlet to the energy of the local youth in the shape of nightly drill. Such energy was thus better utilised than in taking to pieces the vehicle of some unoffending and unsuspecting Boer, which might be standing unguarded in an accessible spot, or in balancing a beam of wood with murderous intent against the door of some unpopular citizen. Further, it had the effect of drafting off a selection of volunteers upon active service to the front; and, whereas these consisted, for the most part, of rowdy and undisciplined spirits, their absence could not fail to be advantageous to Doppersdorp. What their respective commanders at the seat of hostilities might be found to say on the matter was another thing. Even the Resident Magistrate was bitten with the prevailing death-or-glory fever; but alas! his proposal to turn out the whole district under arms at a day’s notice, and to lead it in the field at the service of the Government, provided the requisite leave and Field-commandant’s commission were granted him, was met on the part of that unappreciative entity with signal ingratitude—curt refusal, to wit, bordering on snub. So having sworn for about five minutes upon the perusal of this reply, cheery little Peter Van Stolz lounged into the clerk’s office, and having once more delivered himself of his views on the subject of Governments in general, and that of the Cape Colony in particular, lighted his pipe, declared that he didn’t care a damn, and that, after all, he’d be the same sort of fool to fling away his accumulation of leave, roughing it in the veldt and feeding on unvaried trek-ox, instead of running down to Cape Town to put in the same period among his relatives and old friends, and having a particularly good time. So he stayed at home perforce, to direct the labours of the Civil establishment of Doppersdorp, which, in common with most of those in the border districts, were very much swelled by the outbreak of hostilities.

The town of Doppersdorp was in the wildest state of excitement and delight. We say delight, because anything which tended to stir the soporific surface of life in that centre of light and leading was productive of unqualified satisfaction, and the tidings which had now arrived to effect this result were of no less importance than the announcement that hostilities had actually broken out in the Transkei.

At the street corners men stood in knots discussing the news; in the stores, swinging their legs against counters, and blowing out clouds of Boer tobacco, this was the topic of conversation, while semi-nude and perspiring natives rolled the great wool bales in and out, and those at the receipt of custom dispensed wares or took payment in listless, half-absent fashion; of such enthralling interest was the turn events had taken. But it was in the bars, where glasses filled and emptied to-day with abnormal briskness, that the Doppersdorp tongue wagged fast and free.

True, the Transkei was a long way off, but the ruction would never stop there. It was bound to spread. The Gaikas and Hlambis in British Kaffraria were bound to respond to the call of the Paramount Chief. The contagion would spread to the Tembus, or Tambookies, within the Colonial territory, and were there not extensive Tembu locations along the eastern border of the district of Doppersdorp itself? This was bringing the matter very near home indeed. The enterprise of Doppersdorp was aroused, its martial spirit glowing at white heat. This indeed has its disadvantages; for at such a rate, with every citizen burning to sally forth and distinguish himself in the tented field, Doppersdorp would be deserted; and it was clear that with all its male inhabitants occupied at a distance, subduing Kreli and his recalcitrant Gcalekas, that illustrious Centre of the Earth would be left at the mercy of all comers.

At Jones’ hospitable board, as the shades of evening fell, the tidings were discussed far more eagerly than the painted yellow bones and rice to which allusion has been made. From Jones himself in the pride of office at the head of the table, through the manager of the local bank and a storekeeper’s clerk or two, down to the journeymen stonemasons and waggon-maker’s apprentices at the lower end, the same topic was on every tongue. The Gcalekas had attacked and routed a strong body of Police in the Transkei, and had killed several men and an officer. Indeed, the Inspector in command had undergone a narrow escape, having turned up at a distant post the following day without his hat. Such was the report which had come in; every word of which, especially the latter circumstance, being implicitly believed by the good burgesses of Doppersdorp—probably because Inspectors in that useful force, the Frontier Armed and Mounted Police, did not at any time, when on duty, wear “hats.” But it was all the same to Doppersdorp.

“Any more news, Mr Musgrave?” said Jones eagerly, as Roden entered.

“If there is, for the Lord’s sake wait until we’ve all done,” struck in Emerson, the bank-manager, who was of a grim and sardonic habit of mind. “As it is, we can scarcely any of us get through our oats, we are all in such a cast-iron hurry to start for the Transkei.”

“There isn’t any.”

“Good. Then we needn’t prepare for the siege of Doppersdorp just yet—we poor devils who can’t rush forth, to death or glory.”

“We could hold out for ever, for we should always have Emerson’s Chamber of Horrors to fall back upon,” laughed a storekeeper opposite; “that is, if it is not already dead of fright from theschrekit got last week.”

While others guffawed the bank-manager grinned sourly at this allusion. It happened that the premises provided by his Corporation for the housing of its employé’s contained a spacious backyard, with an open shed and some stabling. This yard Emerson had seen fit to populate with the most miscellaneous of zoological collections, comprising a youngaasvogel, two or three blue cranes, an owl and a peacock, besides a few moulting and demoralised-looking fowls, a tame meerkat, a shocking reprobate of a baboon—whose liberty and influences for evil were only restricted by a post and chain—several monkeys; item, Kaffir curs of slinking and sinister aspect; and, in fact, innumerable specimens which it was impossible to include within the inventory with any degree of assurance, for the inhabitants of the menagerie were continually being added to, or disappearing, the latter according to the degree of watchfulness maintained on their own part, or that of aggression on the part of their neighbours. This collection was known in Doppersdorp as Emerson’s Chamber of Horrors.

“You weren’t here that night, Musgrave. Away at Suffield’s place, I think,” went on the last speaker, with a wink at the others. “Well, some fellow got hold of a cur dog in the middle of the night, and thinking it had escaped from Emerson’s Zoo, reckoned it a Christian duty to restore the wanderer. So he took it to the street leading to the bank-yard, tied one of those detonating squibs to its tail, and headed it for the gate. Heavens! you never heard such an awful row in your life. Phiz! bang! went the cracker, and there was the mongrel scooting round and round the yard, dragging a shower of fiery sparks, and every now and then bang would go the cracker like pistol-shots. You can just imagine the result. Everything kicked up the most fearful clamour—the dogs, and the cats, and the peacock, and theaasvogel, and the monkeys, all yelling at once; and the more they yelled, the more the thing seemed to bang off. It didn’t hurt the cur though, for it was a long way behind him. But the best of the joke is that the banging of the crackers started the notion that the town was being attacked, and Lambert and some other fellows—myself among them—came slinking up gingerly with rifles. The squib had long burnt out by the time we got there; but the sight that met our astonished gaze was magnificent. Emerson was standing on the top step, clad in a short nightshirt, emptying all the furniture into the backyard, and, oh, his language! Well, I can only give you some idea of it by saying that it was so thick, that the chairs and tables he was hurling out stuck in it. They could not even reach the ground.”

“It looks as if you had a finger in the pie yourself, Smith. You seem to know all the details,” said Roden. But Emerson merely grinned sardonically. He did not think the recital worthy of comment. Besides, he had heard it so often.

“I? Not I. It only came in at the end, as I tell you,” protested Smith.

At this juncture a note was handed to Roden. It was from Mr Van Stolz.

“Here’s a little more excitement for Doppersdorp to-night,” he said when he had read it. This was its burden. “One hundred and thirty-three mounted men from Barabastadt,en routefor the front, are passing through. They will camp here to-night. Volunteers and band going out to meet them. Tell everybody.”

This was news indeed. In a trice the table was deserted. All who heard it were in first-rate spirits—those who belonged to the newly formed Volunteer Corps, because it would afford an opportunity for a lively game of soldiers; those who did not, because it meant more excitement; while Jones, perhaps, was in the greatest feather of all, for would there not be a prodigious consumption of drinks in the bar of the Barkly Hotel that night? Roden and Emerson were left alone at the table.

“Come along, Musgrave; let’s go and have a look at these Barabastadt heroes,” said the latter. “The Light Brigade is nothing to them. We are sure to see some first-class fun.”

“Not a doubt of it,” was the reply. And these two cynics rose to follow the crowd, but with a different motive.

Outside, in the starlight, the whole town was astir. The two men who had ridden in to notify the arrival of the main body were beset with questions—and drinks. What was the latest news? Had Government called out the burgher forces all round; and if not, would it do so? and so on, and so on. Meanwhile the local Volunteer Corps, numbering about sixty of all ages and sizes, had formed in marching order, and, preluded by a few sounding whacks on the big drum, the band struck up, and that doughty force marched off to quick-step time, accompanied by a moving mass of humanity; even the inhabitants of Doppersdorp and its ‘location’—some mounted, the larger proportion on foot, amid much talking and laughing and horseplay and lighting of pipes; a squad of ragged Hottentots of both sexes, chattering shrilly, hanging on the rear.

“Here come the heroes,” said Emerson satirically, as, having proceeded about a couple of miles out, a cloud of dust and a dark, moving mass came indistinctly into sight. So the Volunteers were halted, eke the civilians; and Mr Van Stolz rode forward to welcome the leaders of the Barabastadt burgher force. Then forming into double file, and preceded by the band, the new arrivals resumed their route for Doppersdorp.

Now it happened, unfortunately, that the band of that doughty corps, the Doppersdorp Rifles, was very much in a state of embryo. Its available repertory consisted of but two tunes, for the simple reason that it knew no others. These were “Silver Threads among the Gold,” and “Home, Sweet Home.” The first of these had enlivened the march out; and although it was started to effect the same object on the return, it would hardly last over a space of two miles. The second, though admirably adapted for welcoming the returning warriors, as a God-speed was clearly inappropriate. The bandmaster—our old acquaintance Darrell, the attorney, whose persuasive eloquence had not availed to save the mutton thief, Gonjana, from the just reward of his crime—was in a quandary. Music they must have. Music, however, repeated to endless iteration point, was worse than none. In this dilemma he bethought him of “John Brown.” Surely they could play that. The inspiration was a happy one. No sooner did the well-known air bray forth—with somewhat discordant and quavering note it is true—than those nearest seized upon the chorus. It was caught up, and went rolling along the whole line. Then it occurred to somebody to alter the chorus to, “We’ll hang old Kreli to a sour apple-tree,” an idea received with the wildest enthusiasm, having the effect of redoubling the volume of song.

But over and above, and throughout all this rollicking jollity, there was a something about those dark, mounted figures filing here in the starlight, the gleam of the rifles, the sombre simplicity of the accoutrements, which told of the sterner side, which seemed to bring home the idea that this was no toy contingent; that the task of quelling a barbarian rising was not all child’s play; and that some of these might return with strange experiences, while some might not return at all.

The weeks that followed this passing through of the first band of defenders of their “’arths, ’omes, and haltars,” as their spokesman graphically put it, while returning thanks for attentions received during their sojourn, constituted to Doppersdorp a period of the most delicious excitement. Some startling and sensational report was of daily occurrence, borne mainly on the wings of rumour and impracticable of verification; for that centre of light and leading, notwithstanding its huge importance in the eyes of its citizens, was yet without such an appliance of modern civilisation as telegraphic communication. What mattered it, as long as things were kept alive, and everybody was happy! And things were kept alive, with felicitous results.

To begin with, there arose a large demand for firearms of all sorts. This was good for the store-keepers, who booked orders briskly; for the farmers in the district, Dutch or English, were particular as to the quality of their weapons, but at such a juncture were less so as to price, as long as they were quickly supplied. So great consignments of rifles, and revolvers, and ammunition, were slowly and painfully hauled up to Doppersdorp from the coast ports, and the store-keepers were delighted. So too were the Government contractors; for the Barabastadt contingent, if the first, was not the only mounted corps to pass through the township; and did not each and all require forage and rations? Again, the martial ardour gave a great impetus to volunteering, distinctly to the advantage of the community at large, in that this afforded an outlet to the energy of the local youth in the shape of nightly drill. Such energy was thus better utilised than in taking to pieces the vehicle of some unoffending and unsuspecting Boer, which might be standing unguarded in an accessible spot, or in balancing a beam of wood with murderous intent against the door of some unpopular citizen. Further, it had the effect of drafting off a selection of volunteers upon active service to the front; and, whereas these consisted, for the most part, of rowdy and undisciplined spirits, their absence could not fail to be advantageous to Doppersdorp. What their respective commanders at the seat of hostilities might be found to say on the matter was another thing. Even the Resident Magistrate was bitten with the prevailing death-or-glory fever; but alas! his proposal to turn out the whole district under arms at a day’s notice, and to lead it in the field at the service of the Government, provided the requisite leave and Field-commandant’s commission were granted him, was met on the part of that unappreciative entity with signal ingratitude—curt refusal, to wit, bordering on snub. So having sworn for about five minutes upon the perusal of this reply, cheery little Peter Van Stolz lounged into the clerk’s office, and having once more delivered himself of his views on the subject of Governments in general, and that of the Cape Colony in particular, lighted his pipe, declared that he didn’t care a damn, and that, after all, he’d be the same sort of fool to fling away his accumulation of leave, roughing it in the veldt and feeding on unvaried trek-ox, instead of running down to Cape Town to put in the same period among his relatives and old friends, and having a particularly good time. So he stayed at home perforce, to direct the labours of the Civil establishment of Doppersdorp, which, in common with most of those in the border districts, were very much swelled by the outbreak of hostilities.

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