Chapter Seventeen.“It is Sweeter to Love—It is Wiser to Dare.”Now night had fallen, and at Quaggasfontein the sounds of household and nursery were alike hushed, and these four sat out upon thestoep, enjoying the still freshness; discussing, too, Roden’s trip to the nearest seat of hostilities, on which topic Grace Suffield was inclined to be not a little resentful.“How can you go out of your way to shoot a lot of wretched Kaffirs, who haven’t done you any harm, Mr Musgrave?” she said.“That holds good as regards most of the fellows at the front,” he replied.“No, it doesn’t. Many of them are farmers, who have had their stock plundered, perhaps their homes destroyed. Now, nothing of the kind holds good of yourself. I call it wicked—yes, downright wicked, and tempting Providence, to throw oneself into danger unnecessarily. Your life is given you to take care of, not to throw away.”“I don’t know that it’s worth taking such a lot of care of,” he murmured queerly. But she overheard.“Yes it is, and you’ve no right to say that. Putting it on the lowest grounds, don’t you come out here and help amuse us? That’s being of some use. Didn’t you help me splendidly when we crossed that horrible Fish River in flood? I believe you saved my life that night. Isn’t that being of some use?”“Here, I say, Mrs Suffield, are you all in league to ‘spoil’ a fellow?” he said, in a strange, deep voice that resembled a growl. For more forcibly than ever, her words seemed to bring back to the lonely cynic, how, amid the whole-hearted friendship of these people, he had been forced again to live his life—if indeed he could—if only he could!“Don’t know about ‘spoiling.’ You seem to be catching it pretty hot just now, Musgrave, in my opinion,” laughed Suffield.“And he deserves to,” rejoined that worthy’s wife, with a tartness which all her hearers knew to be wholly counterfeit. “Doesn’t he, Mona?”“I don’t know. As you’re so savagely down upon him, I think I shall have to take his part.”“Hear, hear!” cried Roden. “Well, Mrs Suffield, you have mistaken your vocation. You ought to have been a preacher—a good, out-and-out, whole-souled tub-thumper. However, you seem determined I am destined to glut the assegai of John Kaffir, and as you are so savage on the subject, it is to Mona I shall impart my last will and testament—orally, of course. So, come along, Mona, and give it, and me, your most careful attention.”Left alone on thestoep, the husband and wife laughed softly together, as they watched Mona’s white dress disappear in the darkness.“All is coming right, as I told you it would, Grace. Musgrave is a precious careful bird; but he’s limed safe and sound at last. Mark my words.”“You needn’t be so awfully vulgar about it, Charlie. That’s quite a horrid way of putting things.”Now in the silence and darkness those two wandered on—on beneath the loaded boughs of the fruit garden, and on by the low sod wall, then out in the open, and finally into gloom beneath the drooping, feathery branches of the willows. It was a silence unbroken by either, unless—unless for a soft shuddering sigh, which followed upon a long kiss.In the dark and velvety moonless vault great constellations flashed as though they were fires, throwing out the black loom of the distant mountains away beyond the open waste, and flaming down into the smooth mirror of the water, upon which the willow boughs trailed. Even beneath the shadowy gloom their light pierced; shining upon the white dress, and throwing the large, supple figure of the girl into ghostly relief.“I love you, Mona. Here on the very spot where we first beheld each other, I tell you I love you. And you had better have let me fall to my death, shattered to atoms that day, than that I should tell it you.”The tone, a trifle unsteady, but firm and low, was rather that of a man unfolding a revelation of a painful but wholly unavoidable nature than the joyous certainty of a lover, who knew his passion was returned in measure as full as the most ardent could possibly desire. But the girl for a moment made no answer. Her lips were slightly parted in a smile of unutterable contentment, and the light in her eyes was visible under the stars. Again he kissed the upturned lips, long and tenderly as he had never done before.“Yes. This is the spot where we first met,” she said at last, with a glad laugh in her voice. “My hammock was slung there—and look, there it is still. I remember so well what we were talking about that day. Grace was predicting that my time would certainly come, and I said I didn’t believe anything of the kind, but I rather hoped it would. And I had hardly said so when—oh, darling!youcame up! And it has all been so entrancingly sweet ever since. Life has been entirely different, and I am quite a transformed being.”Thus she ran on—almost rattled on, so airy, so bright and joyous was her tone. But it was so with a purpose; for all her pulses were thrilling; her very mind seemed to reel beneath the surpressed strength of her feeling. She felt giddy. The great stars in the dark vault overhead seemed to be whirling round. With heart panting, she leaned heavily upon the arms which encircled her, then tried to speak, to whisper, but could not.“Dear, I ought not to have told you—ever at all,” he went on. “But I am going away to-morrow—”Then she found her voice.“Whyareyou going away to-morrow? Give it up, my heart’s love, and stay near me.”“That is just why I am going away—to be away from you for a few days. Wait,” seeing she was about to interrupt. “This was my idea. I wanted to be at such a distance that it would be impossible to see you merely by taking one hour’s short ride. I wanted to try if I could break the influence which you were so surely weaving round me.”“Ah, why would you try?”“For the good of us both; but especially for your good. Listen, Mona. I am no longer young, and my experience of the world is not small. Well, nothing lasts. We are both of a strong nature. Two strong natures cannot fuse, cannot intertwine. Then comes disillusion.”“Now, I wonder if, since the world began, any living woman was ever convinced by such reasoning as that,” said Mona decisively. But not heeding her, he went on—“To every one of us the cup of life is filled but once. The contents of mine are nearer the dregs than the brim; whereas you are but beginning to sip at yours.”“Which dark syllogism I quite grasp, and fully appreciate—at its proper value,” she returned. “But come; have we not had about enough solemn wisdom beneath the stars? Why, just before we first saw you—here, on this very spot—Gracie was trying to make me believe you were quite a sober and middle-aged fogey. Those were her words; and if you go on a little longer in this strain, I shall begin to think she was right. I remember, too, how I answered her. I said I was about tired of boys. So let’s hear no more about ‘cups of life’ and ‘dregs,’ but repeat what you said just now—just before—my beloved one!”The glad, laughing voice changed to one of tenderest adjuration. And it may be that he did repeat it.“Now,” he went on, “would you rather I had told you this before going away, or after my return?”“But you are not going away, now?”“I am—more than ever, I was going to say. I want a few days to think.”“Roden!” she exclaimed suddenly, with a catching in her voice; “this is not an artifice? You are coming back—coming back to me?”“If John Kaffir allows me—certainly. Dwelling a moment upon which consideration, perhaps that is why I told you before I left, what I have just told you. Would you rather I had not?”“Would I rather forego one moment of the life, the soul, those words have given me? Love of my heart, I know it is of no use to try and persuade you to give up this plan now. But be careful of your life. You are mine, remember. I won you when I held back your life that awful day upon the brow of the cliff; and that consciousness, and that alone, enabled me to do it. Whatever will and strength was given me then was through that alone. Now, say, are you not mine? mine for ever—throughout all the years?”“Dear, ‘for ever’ is a long time. Had we not better put it, ‘as long as you think me worth keeping’?”“Why do you say such a thing, and in such a voice?” This with a shiver, as though she had received a sudden stab.“Mona, what was it I was trying to impress upon you but a minute or so back? I have got my life all behind me, remember. Nothing lasts. I have seen eyes melt, as those dear eyes of yours are melting now—have heard voices tremble in the same sweet intensity of tone. Well, it did not last. Time, separation, new interests, and it was swept away; nor did the process take very long, either. Nothing lasts! Nothing lasts! It may be my curse; but, child, I have reached a stage at which one believes in nothing and nobody.”“Did they—those of whom you speak—love you as I do? Was their secret wrenched from them at the very jaws of death?”“No. Never did I hear words of love under such, strange circumstances. And yet, Mona, the fact that it was so, nearly turned me against you, for I seemed bound—bound to you in common gratitude. If you had left me to myself, I believe that feeling would have changed into strong dislike.”“And when did the change come—the change for the better?” she said softly.“I don’t know. It has all been so gradual. But there is something, some magic about you, dear, that drew me to you in spite of myself—and kept me there.”“Then one can love, really love, more than once in a lifetime?”“Of course. The notion to the contrary was invented for the purposes of fiction of the most callous sort. More than once, more than twice. But the difference is that through it all runs the interwoven thread of misgiving, that the thing is ill-judged and destined to end in blank—or worse.”“Mine throughout all the years, did I not say just now?” she whispered, again drawing down his head. “This seals it,” and again speech was stilled in a long, clinging kiss. “This is our farewell—only for a few days—and oh, my heart’s life, how slowly they will drag! I will go to the place where I held you up from death, and there—on that, to me the sweetest, spot on earth—pray, and pray with all my soul that no danger may come near you.”Were his very senses slipping away from him in that warm embrace? Was it indeed upon him that this love was outpoured, or upon somebody else? The thought passed with jarring hammer strokes through his brain. And like the distant echo of gibing demon-voices, came that old, grim, cynical refrain, “Nothing lasts! Nothing lasts!”And as a little later he rode homeward through the stillness of the night, on the puffs of the fresh night breeze billowing up the grass, sighing through the coarse bents, still that goading, tormenting refrain kept shrieking in his ears, “Nothing lasts! Nothing lasts!”
Now night had fallen, and at Quaggasfontein the sounds of household and nursery were alike hushed, and these four sat out upon thestoep, enjoying the still freshness; discussing, too, Roden’s trip to the nearest seat of hostilities, on which topic Grace Suffield was inclined to be not a little resentful.
“How can you go out of your way to shoot a lot of wretched Kaffirs, who haven’t done you any harm, Mr Musgrave?” she said.
“That holds good as regards most of the fellows at the front,” he replied.
“No, it doesn’t. Many of them are farmers, who have had their stock plundered, perhaps their homes destroyed. Now, nothing of the kind holds good of yourself. I call it wicked—yes, downright wicked, and tempting Providence, to throw oneself into danger unnecessarily. Your life is given you to take care of, not to throw away.”
“I don’t know that it’s worth taking such a lot of care of,” he murmured queerly. But she overheard.
“Yes it is, and you’ve no right to say that. Putting it on the lowest grounds, don’t you come out here and help amuse us? That’s being of some use. Didn’t you help me splendidly when we crossed that horrible Fish River in flood? I believe you saved my life that night. Isn’t that being of some use?”
“Here, I say, Mrs Suffield, are you all in league to ‘spoil’ a fellow?” he said, in a strange, deep voice that resembled a growl. For more forcibly than ever, her words seemed to bring back to the lonely cynic, how, amid the whole-hearted friendship of these people, he had been forced again to live his life—if indeed he could—if only he could!
“Don’t know about ‘spoiling.’ You seem to be catching it pretty hot just now, Musgrave, in my opinion,” laughed Suffield.
“And he deserves to,” rejoined that worthy’s wife, with a tartness which all her hearers knew to be wholly counterfeit. “Doesn’t he, Mona?”
“I don’t know. As you’re so savagely down upon him, I think I shall have to take his part.”
“Hear, hear!” cried Roden. “Well, Mrs Suffield, you have mistaken your vocation. You ought to have been a preacher—a good, out-and-out, whole-souled tub-thumper. However, you seem determined I am destined to glut the assegai of John Kaffir, and as you are so savage on the subject, it is to Mona I shall impart my last will and testament—orally, of course. So, come along, Mona, and give it, and me, your most careful attention.”
Left alone on thestoep, the husband and wife laughed softly together, as they watched Mona’s white dress disappear in the darkness.
“All is coming right, as I told you it would, Grace. Musgrave is a precious careful bird; but he’s limed safe and sound at last. Mark my words.”
“You needn’t be so awfully vulgar about it, Charlie. That’s quite a horrid way of putting things.”
Now in the silence and darkness those two wandered on—on beneath the loaded boughs of the fruit garden, and on by the low sod wall, then out in the open, and finally into gloom beneath the drooping, feathery branches of the willows. It was a silence unbroken by either, unless—unless for a soft shuddering sigh, which followed upon a long kiss.
In the dark and velvety moonless vault great constellations flashed as though they were fires, throwing out the black loom of the distant mountains away beyond the open waste, and flaming down into the smooth mirror of the water, upon which the willow boughs trailed. Even beneath the shadowy gloom their light pierced; shining upon the white dress, and throwing the large, supple figure of the girl into ghostly relief.
“I love you, Mona. Here on the very spot where we first beheld each other, I tell you I love you. And you had better have let me fall to my death, shattered to atoms that day, than that I should tell it you.”
The tone, a trifle unsteady, but firm and low, was rather that of a man unfolding a revelation of a painful but wholly unavoidable nature than the joyous certainty of a lover, who knew his passion was returned in measure as full as the most ardent could possibly desire. But the girl for a moment made no answer. Her lips were slightly parted in a smile of unutterable contentment, and the light in her eyes was visible under the stars. Again he kissed the upturned lips, long and tenderly as he had never done before.
“Yes. This is the spot where we first met,” she said at last, with a glad laugh in her voice. “My hammock was slung there—and look, there it is still. I remember so well what we were talking about that day. Grace was predicting that my time would certainly come, and I said I didn’t believe anything of the kind, but I rather hoped it would. And I had hardly said so when—oh, darling!youcame up! And it has all been so entrancingly sweet ever since. Life has been entirely different, and I am quite a transformed being.”
Thus she ran on—almost rattled on, so airy, so bright and joyous was her tone. But it was so with a purpose; for all her pulses were thrilling; her very mind seemed to reel beneath the surpressed strength of her feeling. She felt giddy. The great stars in the dark vault overhead seemed to be whirling round. With heart panting, she leaned heavily upon the arms which encircled her, then tried to speak, to whisper, but could not.
“Dear, I ought not to have told you—ever at all,” he went on. “But I am going away to-morrow—”
Then she found her voice.
“Whyareyou going away to-morrow? Give it up, my heart’s love, and stay near me.”
“That is just why I am going away—to be away from you for a few days. Wait,” seeing she was about to interrupt. “This was my idea. I wanted to be at such a distance that it would be impossible to see you merely by taking one hour’s short ride. I wanted to try if I could break the influence which you were so surely weaving round me.”
“Ah, why would you try?”
“For the good of us both; but especially for your good. Listen, Mona. I am no longer young, and my experience of the world is not small. Well, nothing lasts. We are both of a strong nature. Two strong natures cannot fuse, cannot intertwine. Then comes disillusion.”
“Now, I wonder if, since the world began, any living woman was ever convinced by such reasoning as that,” said Mona decisively. But not heeding her, he went on—
“To every one of us the cup of life is filled but once. The contents of mine are nearer the dregs than the brim; whereas you are but beginning to sip at yours.”
“Which dark syllogism I quite grasp, and fully appreciate—at its proper value,” she returned. “But come; have we not had about enough solemn wisdom beneath the stars? Why, just before we first saw you—here, on this very spot—Gracie was trying to make me believe you were quite a sober and middle-aged fogey. Those were her words; and if you go on a little longer in this strain, I shall begin to think she was right. I remember, too, how I answered her. I said I was about tired of boys. So let’s hear no more about ‘cups of life’ and ‘dregs,’ but repeat what you said just now—just before—my beloved one!”
The glad, laughing voice changed to one of tenderest adjuration. And it may be that he did repeat it.
“Now,” he went on, “would you rather I had told you this before going away, or after my return?”
“But you are not going away, now?”
“I am—more than ever, I was going to say. I want a few days to think.”
“Roden!” she exclaimed suddenly, with a catching in her voice; “this is not an artifice? You are coming back—coming back to me?”
“If John Kaffir allows me—certainly. Dwelling a moment upon which consideration, perhaps that is why I told you before I left, what I have just told you. Would you rather I had not?”
“Would I rather forego one moment of the life, the soul, those words have given me? Love of my heart, I know it is of no use to try and persuade you to give up this plan now. But be careful of your life. You are mine, remember. I won you when I held back your life that awful day upon the brow of the cliff; and that consciousness, and that alone, enabled me to do it. Whatever will and strength was given me then was through that alone. Now, say, are you not mine? mine for ever—throughout all the years?”
“Dear, ‘for ever’ is a long time. Had we not better put it, ‘as long as you think me worth keeping’?”
“Why do you say such a thing, and in such a voice?” This with a shiver, as though she had received a sudden stab.
“Mona, what was it I was trying to impress upon you but a minute or so back? I have got my life all behind me, remember. Nothing lasts. I have seen eyes melt, as those dear eyes of yours are melting now—have heard voices tremble in the same sweet intensity of tone. Well, it did not last. Time, separation, new interests, and it was swept away; nor did the process take very long, either. Nothing lasts! Nothing lasts! It may be my curse; but, child, I have reached a stage at which one believes in nothing and nobody.”
“Did they—those of whom you speak—love you as I do? Was their secret wrenched from them at the very jaws of death?”
“No. Never did I hear words of love under such, strange circumstances. And yet, Mona, the fact that it was so, nearly turned me against you, for I seemed bound—bound to you in common gratitude. If you had left me to myself, I believe that feeling would have changed into strong dislike.”
“And when did the change come—the change for the better?” she said softly.
“I don’t know. It has all been so gradual. But there is something, some magic about you, dear, that drew me to you in spite of myself—and kept me there.”
“Then one can love, really love, more than once in a lifetime?”
“Of course. The notion to the contrary was invented for the purposes of fiction of the most callous sort. More than once, more than twice. But the difference is that through it all runs the interwoven thread of misgiving, that the thing is ill-judged and destined to end in blank—or worse.”
“Mine throughout all the years, did I not say just now?” she whispered, again drawing down his head. “This seals it,” and again speech was stilled in a long, clinging kiss. “This is our farewell—only for a few days—and oh, my heart’s life, how slowly they will drag! I will go to the place where I held you up from death, and there—on that, to me the sweetest, spot on earth—pray, and pray with all my soul that no danger may come near you.”
Were his very senses slipping away from him in that warm embrace? Was it indeed upon him that this love was outpoured, or upon somebody else? The thought passed with jarring hammer strokes through his brain. And like the distant echo of gibing demon-voices, came that old, grim, cynical refrain, “Nothing lasts! Nothing lasts!”
And as a little later he rode homeward through the stillness of the night, on the puffs of the fresh night breeze billowing up the grass, sighing through the coarse bents, still that goading, tormenting refrain kept shrieking in his ears, “Nothing lasts! Nothing lasts!”
Chapter Eighteen.The Hostile Ground.Doppersdorp was some distance behind the two horsemen by the time the sun shot up, a wheel of flame, into the cloudless beauty of the blue vault, flooding the great plains and the iron-crowned mountain heights with waves of gold; and the air, though warm, was on these high tablelands marvellously pure and clear. It was the morning for reflections of a dazzling nature to the man who could enjoy the rare luxury of such; and to Roden Musgrave seemed a fitting continuation of the strange, wondrous enchantment of the past night.He had persisted with a purpose in this expedition, he had told Mona, because he wanted to be out of reach of her for a brief while, to think. And now that every hoofstroke was bearing him thus out of reach, the strange prescription was indeed taking effect. Now he realised to the full what she was to his life. He had often been for days without seeing her. But then any day, any hour almost, he might have been at her side. His retrospect went to the time when he had looked upon her with something akin to dislike, even dread—dread lest the subtle power of her influence should steal him from himself, should drown his hard cold reason—the fruit of hard experience—in the sweet fumes of its intoxicating spell. But even through all this had run the misgiving that such dread was not ill-founded; for he knew that she possessed the power to do this, did she but choose to exercise it—knew it from the moment he had first looked into her eyes, and had gazed upon her exquisite grace of form and movement. And she had exercised it, and he—well, he had struggled with all the instinct of self-preservation, yet had struggled in vain. He was bound, and the bonds were of a captivity that was very, very sweet.Yet, nothing lasts. This love of his latter-day life stirring up into a volcanic blaze of activity feelings not only dead and buried, but which he had been wont to scoff at as impossible of existence—how was it to end? In the prosaic, hard-and-fast knot of a legal bond? That, then, would be the beginning of the end. Nothing lasts. The prose, even the vulgarity, of a commonplace tie would be the beginning of disenchantment, disillusion. What then? Thus a sure and certain foresight into the future ran through the glowing, lotus-eating dream of the present, yet, with all its dark and neutral-tinted shades, only seemed to throw out the warm sun-waves of the present into greater contrast.“I say, Musgrave, I can’t congratulate myself on having the liveliest of travelling companions,” said Darrell, with a grin. “Do you know that it’s exactly forty-seven minutes since you’ve let fall a word? I’ve been timing you.”Roden started.“The deuce you have! Excuse me, Darrell, I sometimes get that way. I believe you’re right. Well, I’ll make up for it now, anyway.”The other grinned again, but said no more on the subject, and the two men pursued their way at a quick, easy pace, now halting to off-saddle at some farmhouse, now in the veldt. But Roden afforded his companion no further pretext for rallying him on account of his silence.That night they slept at a Boer’s farm on the border of the hostile ground. The worthy Dutchman and his numerous progeny were in a high state of alarm, for rumours had come through his native hands that whole locations of Gaikas, hitherto peaceful, had risen in arms and joined Sandili, who was now trying to break through the not very closely drawn cordon of patrols, and take refuge in the dense forest fastnesses of the Amatola. He and his were going to trek into laager at once, and when he learned the destination of the two Englishmen, he stared at them as though they were ghosts already.“Nay what. You’ll never get through,” he said, as they took their leave. “Your lives are not worth that,” flinging away a grain of salt, “if you try. Besides, it is very wrong. It is laughing in the face of the good God. You will come to harm, and you will deserve it.”But Darrell’s laugh was loud and irreverent as he bade the utterer of this comforting prognostication farewell. He was a harum-scarum, dare-devil sort of mortal, who was afraid of nothing, yet could be cool enough when occasion arose.Throughout the day they pursued their journey, passing now and then a deserted farmhouse, whose empty kraals and smokeless chimneys, and unreaped crops standing in the mealie lands, spoke eloquently to the desolation that reigned. “The land was dead” indeed, as the native idiom expressed it.They had taken a straight line across the veldt, avoiding roads and beaten tracks as likely to be watched by outlying parties of the enemy. And now the farther and farther they advanced, the brighter the outlook they kept.“You’d better note the lay of the ground well, Musgrave, if you still intend to carry out that lunatic idea of returning alone,” said Darrell.“That’s the very thing I have been doing. It’s easy country, this of yours, to find one’s way about in, Darrell. As for returning alone, I shall have to do that, failing an escort. Can’t stretch my rather irregular leave to straining point.”It was late in the afternoon. They were riding along the side of a slope which was irregularly sprinkled with clusters of thick bush. Below ran a nearly dry river-bed, and beyond this rose a ragged ascent covered with spekboem scrub. Suddenly both men looked at each other, gently checking their steeds.A sound was heard in front, at first faint, as of the displacement of a stone, then nearer, till it resolved itself into a clink of shod hoofs upon the stony veldt. Then the whistling of a popular air.“Now what damned fool can this be kicking up all that shillaloo?” exclaimed Darrell.The horseman appeared round the corner of a cluster of scrub. On finding himself thus unexpectedly confronted, he reined in instinctively, with a startled movement. Then seeing that the others were friends, he broke into a loud, jolly laugh.He was a strongly built, broad-shouldered individual, bearded and sunburnt. He was clad in a nondescript uniform coat, cord trousers, and high boots, and on his head a pith helmet surmounted by a spike. He bestrode a powerful chestnut horse with a white blaze. But—and this was the first point that struck these two—he carried no firearm, not even the inevitable revolver, unless it was in his pocket.“Where’s your gun?” said Darrell, with a grin, as soon as the first greetings and explanations were over.“Haven’t got one.”“But haven’t you got a revolver?”“Devil a bit of a revolver. Look here, though, I’ve got a pipe,” producing that comforting implement. “Give us a fill.”This was soon done. Then Darrell, whom the situation struck in its wholly comic light, laid his head back and roared.“You fellows must have swept this side quite clear of Kaffirs—patrolled it within an inch of its life, I suppose—that you can afford to ride about the veldt in dead war-time unarmed?” he said.The other looked up quickly; an idea seemed to strike him.“No; now you mention it, this is just the very side that hasn’t been much looked after. Let’s off-saddle. I want to get to Cathcart before dark.”“See there now, Musgrave,” said Darrell. “Here you have a type of the species of lunatic this country can produce. At least, I can’t imagine any other turning out a man who might be met with four hours from the Main Camp in a country swarming with hostile Gaikas, armed with nothing but a whip.”“And a pipe,” laughed the stranger. “You’ve forgotten the pipe.”“Well, counting the pipe even. What do you say, Musgrave? Do you know any other part of the world where they manufacture such lunatics?”“I never heard of any,” said Roden gravely.The jolly stranger laughed, enjoying these comments as the best possible of jokes. They had off-saddled together, and were foregathering after the manner of casually met campaigners. Roden had a very substantial flask which was not half emptied yet, and this was drawn upon for the occasion. Their new acquaintance gave the other two all the latest information. There had been a good deal of patrolling, and taking of stock, and hustling the rebel Gaikas, but just lately not much in the killing line. The Gaikas were rather fighting shy of coming to close quarters, and when run too hard, would retreat across the Kei into Kreli’s country only to swarm back again when the coast was clear.Thus they chatted until it became time to saddle up. But just as the last strap was buckled there rang out the sharp crackle of dropping shots. It came from about half a mile lower down the kloof.“Hallo!” cried the stranger. “My fellows are having a row with somebody.”“Your fellows? I thought you were alone,” said Darrell.“Pooh! they don’t count. Only four chaps going back to their billets. They’ve been volunteering and don’t like it, so they’re going back. Store-clerks, or something of the kind. A poor lot, anyway. Why, I’m doing escort to them rather than they to me, if anything. Let’s go down and see what’s the row, anyhow.”As the three, now mounted, made their way down to the scene of strife, the shots, which had ceased for a few moments, rang out again with renewed vigour. From the sound, it was evident that two parties were engaged. Darrell laughed aloud over the delightful prospect of a certain battle, and the stranger, who was unarmed, seemed just as eager to be there as the other two.“Lend us one of your six-shooters,” he said. “I don’t suppose they’ll come close enough to be hurt by that. Still they might.”This remark was addressed about equally to either. Roden, however, was not over anxious to respond. If this fool chose to ride about without weapons, it was rather too much to expect those who were less idiotic to partially disarm themselves for his benefit. He’d see the fellow hanged before doing anything so feeble, he thought. Darrell, however, handed over his revolver.Now they came upon the combatants—the white ones, at any rate. In a small ravine, which ran down at right angles to the river-bed, four men were lying behind stones and bushes. Opposite, puffs of blue smoke were issuing from the dense scrub, and the whizzing screech of potleg or slug hummed viciously over the beleaguered four, and unpleasantly near their newly arrived allies.Clearly, as the stranger had said, his men were not up to much, for, as they lay there behind their scant cover, they were pumping in shots at large, with the whole dense forest-clad slope for a target. For of an enemy, beyond the jetting smoke puffs, and the very unpleasant screech of the missiles overhead, there was no outward and visible sign.“Cease firing, men!” sang out the strange. “Do you want to use up all your darned ammunition at nothing at all?”They looked round, evidently relieved at this fresh accession to their very slender fighting strength. And now the firing from the opposite bank suddenly ceased.The three had secured their horses behind a clump of euphorbia, where they would be protected from stray shots as much as possible. The steeds of the others stood saddled and bridled beside their riders, for the men had been suddenly fired on while advancing along the hillside, and, acting upon their first impulse, had flung themselves from the saddle and rushed into cover. The place was about as bad for defensive purposes as it could well be, for it was commanded at the rear by a horseshoe-like range of rocks.“A real rotten place to ‘stand off’ a war-party from,” muttered Roden. Then louder: “Do you see that bare patch of riverbank, Darrell?” pointing to a rocky shelving bit of shingle just visible where the slope of the hill shut out farther view, some four hundred yards below the left front. “Well, keep your eye brightly upon that, for I have an idea that’s where they’ll try and cross. Ha! I thought so—” he broke off. And with the words his piece was at his shoulder, and through the long jagged stream of smoke and flame Darrell could see a dark form leap with extended arms, and fall in a heap upon the spot indicated.“Maghtaag! What a shot!” cried Darrell, amazed at the other’s quickness and accuracy of aim.“That’ll hold them back a little,” went on Roden rapidly. “Now, you watch all the approaches. I’m going up yonder,” pointing to the overhanging ridge. “That’s where they’ll try next, I know. This isn’t the first time I’ve been in this sort of thing.” And before the other could get in a word, he was gone.Crawling, climbing with the agility of a cat, and the craft of the savages against whom he was pitted, Roden was not long in gaining his self-chosen position. Half-sunk in a cranny, his head hidden by three or four large spiky aloes, he peered forth upon the whole plan of battle. Just then the fire of the concealed Kaffirs broke out afresh, their missiles humming among the rocks beneath.“That means a change of plan,” he said to himself. “They are going to cross below, out of sight, and gain this ridge. Ah!”Bound the slope of the hill, and invisible to the beleaguered ones, was a drift, with something of a waggon track leading up from it. Into this, dark forms were quickly plunging, one by one, then disappearing in the thorn-brake which lined the river on this side. Quite a number had crossed, and meanwhile the fire in front was being kept up hotter than ever.The thorn-brake ended about two hundred yards from the crest of the ridge, and that distance of stony open ground had to be passed in order to gain the latter. Lying there now, with his finger on the trigger, Roden’s glance was fixed upon this area, and there was a hard, set frown upon his brows, as of a man who knew that he had a very stern undertaking indeed upon his hands.There was a stir on the edge of the thorn-brake; a bird or two dashed out in wild alarm. Then there emerged a crouching shape, followed by another and another. These beckoned backward, and soon others stepped forth, till there must have been a score. Roden’s heart beat quick. This game of hide-and-seek was becoming interesting. It was exciting.He gazed upon the advancing Kaffirs—brawny, athletic savages, glistening with red ochre. The roll of their white eyeballs was plainly visible to him as they glided forward a few paces, then halted to listen, then glided on again. There was a gleam of triumph in their cruel eyes, for they knew that, did they once gain that rocky ridge, they would hold the little handful of whites below very much at their mercy. And they were coming straight for it, little knowing the reception that awaited them.Drawing his breath hard, he still waited, letting them come on nearer and nearer. He did not mean more than he could help of that score of warriors to regain the cover of the thorn strip, and the nearer they were to him, the longer they would take to reach it.They were now just within a hundred yards. Carefully sighting the foremost, so as to get two in line, he let go. The effect was startling. Of the two warriors, one dropped on his face, stone dead; the other lay kicking and struggling. The survivors sent up a wild yell of dismay and alarm. Some halted for a moment irresolute, while others dropped down flat, even behind mere pebbles, in their instinctive seeking for cover. But immediately a second ball hummed into their midst, drilling through the heart of another, and spinning him round to the earth. Again from the roar on the smoke-crowned ridge came another messenger of death, and at the same time, by way of keeping up the illusion of numbers, though at too long range to take effect, Roden poured his shot-barrel, loaded with a heavy charge ofloepers, into the disconcerted assailants. The latter waited no longer. Some leaping and zigzagging to render themselves an uncertain mark, others, gliding and crawling like snakes, they made their way back to the cover they had left, just as fast as they could get there.Even then they were not all to escape. For he who held that rock-crowned ridge had learned the art of quick-loading, and that in a hard and sharp school. In a twinkling the smoking shell was out of the breech, and a fresh cartridge in its place; in less than a twinkling an unerring sight was again taken, and an enemy fell. Two more were dropped before the security of the thorns was gained, one dead, the other badly wounded.The crisis over, Roden’s pulse began to beat with excitement. He had driven back a score of enemies with the loss of a quarter of their number, in something less than three minutes; he—single-handed. He had saved the position, and, in all human probability, the lives of his companions. No wonder he felt a little excited. And then immediately he became deadly cool.Was it instinct—second sight—what? Wheeling round, with lightning rapidity, he discharged his piece almost without aiming. The glistening, sinuous frame of a savage heaved itself up from a point of rock not ten yards behind, and toppled heavily over into the hollow beneath. Roden had turned only in the very nick of time. The Kaffir was aiming full at his back, and at that distance could not have missed. He was settled, anyhow; but what about the rest?For contrary to expectation the savages had designed to seize this position from both sides at once. While he had been playing such havoc with one division the other had crept up to occupy the ridge on the side he could command least—for it was a little above him—and indeed had occupied it; for he could see a movement or two among the rocks in the rear of the spot where he had dropped the last enemy.And now he began to realise that he was in a hard, tight place. The newly arrived force of Kaffirs was already beginning to fire down into the hollow beneath. Those whom he had driven back into cover, on learning that they had only one enemy to deal with, would soon find a way of coming up.And indeed this promised to be the case, for now the savages began to shout and call to each other; and all the while the fire upon those in the hollow beneath grew hotter and hotter. Ammunition was probably not profusely plentiful with those four homeward-bound whites, and might soon be exhausted.Just then the enemy’s fire suddenly ceased. What did it mean? Away down the river bank, Roden from his elevated perch could see the stirring of the bushes; and his quick practised eye, following the movement, could see it was aretreatingone. Then against the now declining sun something gleamed and shone forth again in many a sparkle of glittering light. It was the gleam of arms.Away across the plain, advancing at a hard canter, came a number of mounted figures. A glance was enough. It was a patrol, and a strong one. They were saved.But only just in the nick of time.
Doppersdorp was some distance behind the two horsemen by the time the sun shot up, a wheel of flame, into the cloudless beauty of the blue vault, flooding the great plains and the iron-crowned mountain heights with waves of gold; and the air, though warm, was on these high tablelands marvellously pure and clear. It was the morning for reflections of a dazzling nature to the man who could enjoy the rare luxury of such; and to Roden Musgrave seemed a fitting continuation of the strange, wondrous enchantment of the past night.
He had persisted with a purpose in this expedition, he had told Mona, because he wanted to be out of reach of her for a brief while, to think. And now that every hoofstroke was bearing him thus out of reach, the strange prescription was indeed taking effect. Now he realised to the full what she was to his life. He had often been for days without seeing her. But then any day, any hour almost, he might have been at her side. His retrospect went to the time when he had looked upon her with something akin to dislike, even dread—dread lest the subtle power of her influence should steal him from himself, should drown his hard cold reason—the fruit of hard experience—in the sweet fumes of its intoxicating spell. But even through all this had run the misgiving that such dread was not ill-founded; for he knew that she possessed the power to do this, did she but choose to exercise it—knew it from the moment he had first looked into her eyes, and had gazed upon her exquisite grace of form and movement. And she had exercised it, and he—well, he had struggled with all the instinct of self-preservation, yet had struggled in vain. He was bound, and the bonds were of a captivity that was very, very sweet.
Yet, nothing lasts. This love of his latter-day life stirring up into a volcanic blaze of activity feelings not only dead and buried, but which he had been wont to scoff at as impossible of existence—how was it to end? In the prosaic, hard-and-fast knot of a legal bond? That, then, would be the beginning of the end. Nothing lasts. The prose, even the vulgarity, of a commonplace tie would be the beginning of disenchantment, disillusion. What then? Thus a sure and certain foresight into the future ran through the glowing, lotus-eating dream of the present, yet, with all its dark and neutral-tinted shades, only seemed to throw out the warm sun-waves of the present into greater contrast.
“I say, Musgrave, I can’t congratulate myself on having the liveliest of travelling companions,” said Darrell, with a grin. “Do you know that it’s exactly forty-seven minutes since you’ve let fall a word? I’ve been timing you.”
Roden started.
“The deuce you have! Excuse me, Darrell, I sometimes get that way. I believe you’re right. Well, I’ll make up for it now, anyway.”
The other grinned again, but said no more on the subject, and the two men pursued their way at a quick, easy pace, now halting to off-saddle at some farmhouse, now in the veldt. But Roden afforded his companion no further pretext for rallying him on account of his silence.
That night they slept at a Boer’s farm on the border of the hostile ground. The worthy Dutchman and his numerous progeny were in a high state of alarm, for rumours had come through his native hands that whole locations of Gaikas, hitherto peaceful, had risen in arms and joined Sandili, who was now trying to break through the not very closely drawn cordon of patrols, and take refuge in the dense forest fastnesses of the Amatola. He and his were going to trek into laager at once, and when he learned the destination of the two Englishmen, he stared at them as though they were ghosts already.
“Nay what. You’ll never get through,” he said, as they took their leave. “Your lives are not worth that,” flinging away a grain of salt, “if you try. Besides, it is very wrong. It is laughing in the face of the good God. You will come to harm, and you will deserve it.”
But Darrell’s laugh was loud and irreverent as he bade the utterer of this comforting prognostication farewell. He was a harum-scarum, dare-devil sort of mortal, who was afraid of nothing, yet could be cool enough when occasion arose.
Throughout the day they pursued their journey, passing now and then a deserted farmhouse, whose empty kraals and smokeless chimneys, and unreaped crops standing in the mealie lands, spoke eloquently to the desolation that reigned. “The land was dead” indeed, as the native idiom expressed it.
They had taken a straight line across the veldt, avoiding roads and beaten tracks as likely to be watched by outlying parties of the enemy. And now the farther and farther they advanced, the brighter the outlook they kept.
“You’d better note the lay of the ground well, Musgrave, if you still intend to carry out that lunatic idea of returning alone,” said Darrell.
“That’s the very thing I have been doing. It’s easy country, this of yours, to find one’s way about in, Darrell. As for returning alone, I shall have to do that, failing an escort. Can’t stretch my rather irregular leave to straining point.”
It was late in the afternoon. They were riding along the side of a slope which was irregularly sprinkled with clusters of thick bush. Below ran a nearly dry river-bed, and beyond this rose a ragged ascent covered with spekboem scrub. Suddenly both men looked at each other, gently checking their steeds.
A sound was heard in front, at first faint, as of the displacement of a stone, then nearer, till it resolved itself into a clink of shod hoofs upon the stony veldt. Then the whistling of a popular air.
“Now what damned fool can this be kicking up all that shillaloo?” exclaimed Darrell.
The horseman appeared round the corner of a cluster of scrub. On finding himself thus unexpectedly confronted, he reined in instinctively, with a startled movement. Then seeing that the others were friends, he broke into a loud, jolly laugh.
He was a strongly built, broad-shouldered individual, bearded and sunburnt. He was clad in a nondescript uniform coat, cord trousers, and high boots, and on his head a pith helmet surmounted by a spike. He bestrode a powerful chestnut horse with a white blaze. But—and this was the first point that struck these two—he carried no firearm, not even the inevitable revolver, unless it was in his pocket.
“Where’s your gun?” said Darrell, with a grin, as soon as the first greetings and explanations were over.
“Haven’t got one.”
“But haven’t you got a revolver?”
“Devil a bit of a revolver. Look here, though, I’ve got a pipe,” producing that comforting implement. “Give us a fill.”
This was soon done. Then Darrell, whom the situation struck in its wholly comic light, laid his head back and roared.
“You fellows must have swept this side quite clear of Kaffirs—patrolled it within an inch of its life, I suppose—that you can afford to ride about the veldt in dead war-time unarmed?” he said.
The other looked up quickly; an idea seemed to strike him.
“No; now you mention it, this is just the very side that hasn’t been much looked after. Let’s off-saddle. I want to get to Cathcart before dark.”
“See there now, Musgrave,” said Darrell. “Here you have a type of the species of lunatic this country can produce. At least, I can’t imagine any other turning out a man who might be met with four hours from the Main Camp in a country swarming with hostile Gaikas, armed with nothing but a whip.”
“And a pipe,” laughed the stranger. “You’ve forgotten the pipe.”
“Well, counting the pipe even. What do you say, Musgrave? Do you know any other part of the world where they manufacture such lunatics?”
“I never heard of any,” said Roden gravely.
The jolly stranger laughed, enjoying these comments as the best possible of jokes. They had off-saddled together, and were foregathering after the manner of casually met campaigners. Roden had a very substantial flask which was not half emptied yet, and this was drawn upon for the occasion. Their new acquaintance gave the other two all the latest information. There had been a good deal of patrolling, and taking of stock, and hustling the rebel Gaikas, but just lately not much in the killing line. The Gaikas were rather fighting shy of coming to close quarters, and when run too hard, would retreat across the Kei into Kreli’s country only to swarm back again when the coast was clear.
Thus they chatted until it became time to saddle up. But just as the last strap was buckled there rang out the sharp crackle of dropping shots. It came from about half a mile lower down the kloof.
“Hallo!” cried the stranger. “My fellows are having a row with somebody.”
“Your fellows? I thought you were alone,” said Darrell.
“Pooh! they don’t count. Only four chaps going back to their billets. They’ve been volunteering and don’t like it, so they’re going back. Store-clerks, or something of the kind. A poor lot, anyway. Why, I’m doing escort to them rather than they to me, if anything. Let’s go down and see what’s the row, anyhow.”
As the three, now mounted, made their way down to the scene of strife, the shots, which had ceased for a few moments, rang out again with renewed vigour. From the sound, it was evident that two parties were engaged. Darrell laughed aloud over the delightful prospect of a certain battle, and the stranger, who was unarmed, seemed just as eager to be there as the other two.
“Lend us one of your six-shooters,” he said. “I don’t suppose they’ll come close enough to be hurt by that. Still they might.”
This remark was addressed about equally to either. Roden, however, was not over anxious to respond. If this fool chose to ride about without weapons, it was rather too much to expect those who were less idiotic to partially disarm themselves for his benefit. He’d see the fellow hanged before doing anything so feeble, he thought. Darrell, however, handed over his revolver.
Now they came upon the combatants—the white ones, at any rate. In a small ravine, which ran down at right angles to the river-bed, four men were lying behind stones and bushes. Opposite, puffs of blue smoke were issuing from the dense scrub, and the whizzing screech of potleg or slug hummed viciously over the beleaguered four, and unpleasantly near their newly arrived allies.
Clearly, as the stranger had said, his men were not up to much, for, as they lay there behind their scant cover, they were pumping in shots at large, with the whole dense forest-clad slope for a target. For of an enemy, beyond the jetting smoke puffs, and the very unpleasant screech of the missiles overhead, there was no outward and visible sign.
“Cease firing, men!” sang out the strange. “Do you want to use up all your darned ammunition at nothing at all?”
They looked round, evidently relieved at this fresh accession to their very slender fighting strength. And now the firing from the opposite bank suddenly ceased.
The three had secured their horses behind a clump of euphorbia, where they would be protected from stray shots as much as possible. The steeds of the others stood saddled and bridled beside their riders, for the men had been suddenly fired on while advancing along the hillside, and, acting upon their first impulse, had flung themselves from the saddle and rushed into cover. The place was about as bad for defensive purposes as it could well be, for it was commanded at the rear by a horseshoe-like range of rocks.
“A real rotten place to ‘stand off’ a war-party from,” muttered Roden. Then louder: “Do you see that bare patch of riverbank, Darrell?” pointing to a rocky shelving bit of shingle just visible where the slope of the hill shut out farther view, some four hundred yards below the left front. “Well, keep your eye brightly upon that, for I have an idea that’s where they’ll try and cross. Ha! I thought so—” he broke off. And with the words his piece was at his shoulder, and through the long jagged stream of smoke and flame Darrell could see a dark form leap with extended arms, and fall in a heap upon the spot indicated.
“Maghtaag! What a shot!” cried Darrell, amazed at the other’s quickness and accuracy of aim.
“That’ll hold them back a little,” went on Roden rapidly. “Now, you watch all the approaches. I’m going up yonder,” pointing to the overhanging ridge. “That’s where they’ll try next, I know. This isn’t the first time I’ve been in this sort of thing.” And before the other could get in a word, he was gone.
Crawling, climbing with the agility of a cat, and the craft of the savages against whom he was pitted, Roden was not long in gaining his self-chosen position. Half-sunk in a cranny, his head hidden by three or four large spiky aloes, he peered forth upon the whole plan of battle. Just then the fire of the concealed Kaffirs broke out afresh, their missiles humming among the rocks beneath.
“That means a change of plan,” he said to himself. “They are going to cross below, out of sight, and gain this ridge. Ah!”
Bound the slope of the hill, and invisible to the beleaguered ones, was a drift, with something of a waggon track leading up from it. Into this, dark forms were quickly plunging, one by one, then disappearing in the thorn-brake which lined the river on this side. Quite a number had crossed, and meanwhile the fire in front was being kept up hotter than ever.
The thorn-brake ended about two hundred yards from the crest of the ridge, and that distance of stony open ground had to be passed in order to gain the latter. Lying there now, with his finger on the trigger, Roden’s glance was fixed upon this area, and there was a hard, set frown upon his brows, as of a man who knew that he had a very stern undertaking indeed upon his hands.
There was a stir on the edge of the thorn-brake; a bird or two dashed out in wild alarm. Then there emerged a crouching shape, followed by another and another. These beckoned backward, and soon others stepped forth, till there must have been a score. Roden’s heart beat quick. This game of hide-and-seek was becoming interesting. It was exciting.
He gazed upon the advancing Kaffirs—brawny, athletic savages, glistening with red ochre. The roll of their white eyeballs was plainly visible to him as they glided forward a few paces, then halted to listen, then glided on again. There was a gleam of triumph in their cruel eyes, for they knew that, did they once gain that rocky ridge, they would hold the little handful of whites below very much at their mercy. And they were coming straight for it, little knowing the reception that awaited them.
Drawing his breath hard, he still waited, letting them come on nearer and nearer. He did not mean more than he could help of that score of warriors to regain the cover of the thorn strip, and the nearer they were to him, the longer they would take to reach it.
They were now just within a hundred yards. Carefully sighting the foremost, so as to get two in line, he let go. The effect was startling. Of the two warriors, one dropped on his face, stone dead; the other lay kicking and struggling. The survivors sent up a wild yell of dismay and alarm. Some halted for a moment irresolute, while others dropped down flat, even behind mere pebbles, in their instinctive seeking for cover. But immediately a second ball hummed into their midst, drilling through the heart of another, and spinning him round to the earth. Again from the roar on the smoke-crowned ridge came another messenger of death, and at the same time, by way of keeping up the illusion of numbers, though at too long range to take effect, Roden poured his shot-barrel, loaded with a heavy charge ofloepers, into the disconcerted assailants. The latter waited no longer. Some leaping and zigzagging to render themselves an uncertain mark, others, gliding and crawling like snakes, they made their way back to the cover they had left, just as fast as they could get there.
Even then they were not all to escape. For he who held that rock-crowned ridge had learned the art of quick-loading, and that in a hard and sharp school. In a twinkling the smoking shell was out of the breech, and a fresh cartridge in its place; in less than a twinkling an unerring sight was again taken, and an enemy fell. Two more were dropped before the security of the thorns was gained, one dead, the other badly wounded.
The crisis over, Roden’s pulse began to beat with excitement. He had driven back a score of enemies with the loss of a quarter of their number, in something less than three minutes; he—single-handed. He had saved the position, and, in all human probability, the lives of his companions. No wonder he felt a little excited. And then immediately he became deadly cool.
Was it instinct—second sight—what? Wheeling round, with lightning rapidity, he discharged his piece almost without aiming. The glistening, sinuous frame of a savage heaved itself up from a point of rock not ten yards behind, and toppled heavily over into the hollow beneath. Roden had turned only in the very nick of time. The Kaffir was aiming full at his back, and at that distance could not have missed. He was settled, anyhow; but what about the rest?
For contrary to expectation the savages had designed to seize this position from both sides at once. While he had been playing such havoc with one division the other had crept up to occupy the ridge on the side he could command least—for it was a little above him—and indeed had occupied it; for he could see a movement or two among the rocks in the rear of the spot where he had dropped the last enemy.
And now he began to realise that he was in a hard, tight place. The newly arrived force of Kaffirs was already beginning to fire down into the hollow beneath. Those whom he had driven back into cover, on learning that they had only one enemy to deal with, would soon find a way of coming up.
And indeed this promised to be the case, for now the savages began to shout and call to each other; and all the while the fire upon those in the hollow beneath grew hotter and hotter. Ammunition was probably not profusely plentiful with those four homeward-bound whites, and might soon be exhausted.
Just then the enemy’s fire suddenly ceased. What did it mean? Away down the river bank, Roden from his elevated perch could see the stirring of the bushes; and his quick practised eye, following the movement, could see it was aretreatingone. Then against the now declining sun something gleamed and shone forth again in many a sparkle of glittering light. It was the gleam of arms.
Away across the plain, advancing at a hard canter, came a number of mounted figures. A glance was enough. It was a patrol, and a strong one. They were saved.
But only just in the nick of time.
Chapter Nineteen.A Dark Mystery of the Veldt.The predominating impulse in the mind of Roden Musgrave when he awoke the next morning in Darrell’s tent, in the Main Camp, was to saddle up his horse, and betake himself back to Doppersdorp as quickly as his steed could convey him thither; and as he stepped forth, and his eye wandered over the array of tents, and waggons, and fires, and cooking pots, and accoutrements, and men of all sorts and sizes, Dutch burghers and town volunteers, and Fingo and Hottentot levies, the impulse grew stronger still. Here was a huge mass of different phases of humanity, hundreds strong, and now that he was here the associations of the place failed to interest him, for he was familiar with them all. The sort of adventure which held any fascination for him was of the nature of that which he had gone through the day before; but all this organised crowd under arms was devoid of attraction for him. He had seen it all before.Darrell, whose tendency never inclined to minimising any exploit in which he had borne a part, had spread the account of the day’s scrimmage far and wide; and how Roden had saved the position, and shot down half-a-dozen Kaffirs in less than that number of minutes. This soon grew to a full dozen, and so on, which to Roden himself was mightily distasteful. For, the affair over, and he and his comrades in safety, his wish was, if anything, that he had not shot anybody at all. He would gladly have brought back the slain Kaffirs to life again, if that were possible; but anyhow, he saw nothing to brag about in the fact of having shot them. He was thoroughly sick of all reference to the matter.Conquering, however, his homing impulses, he suffered Darrell to persuade him into taking part in a two days’ patrol, which turned out a deadly monotonous affair; for no sign of an enemy did they see, and a cold, drizzling rain fell the whole time. Mightily glad was he when it was over, and they returned to the Main Camp, and more than ever was he resolved to start back for Doppersdorp on the following morning.“Where on earth did you pick up your ideas of arranging a fight, Musgrave?” said Darrell, as, having finished their supper of ration beef and Boer brandy, they and two or three others were taking it easy in the tent of the former, their pipes in full blast. “Any fool could see you were no new hand at that sort of thing, by the way in which you grasped the ins and outs of the position the other day.”“Oh, I saw something of the Indian wars out West a few years ago. By the way, Darrell, what was the name of that lunatic we picked up the other day, armed with only a quince switch?”“Bolton. He’s a law-agent, and broker, at Barabastadt. And, confound him, he forgot to give me back the revolver I lent him.”“Serves you right for being such a fool as to lend it him. Now that’s a thing I’d never do. I’d see him hanged first. If the fellow had lost his gun by accident, it would be another thing; but to go about without one, out of mere swagger and bounce, and then come down on the first sensible cuss he meets, to rig him out with his! No, no. It’s a little too thin.”“That’s how fellows come to grief in war-time,” struck in another man. “They get so confoundedly careless, and at last they do it once too often. It always happens. I say, Musgrave, tell us something about that Indian business. Are the redskins as good at a fight as Jack Kaffir?”“They’re just as good at one as any fellow need wish. But now, if you don’t mind, I’m most confoundedly sleepy, and would as soon turn in as not.” And in a very few minutes, in spite of the talk and discussion going on around him, he was fast asleep.Roden held to his resolve and, notwithstanding all persuasion to the contrary, he started soon after sunrise. To many a man, not more timid than his kind, that return journey of seventy or eighty miles, the bulk of it over the hostile ground, might well have seemed a formidable undertaking, the more so that it was a solitary journey. This one, however, entered upon it with no great concern. He had brought off riskier things than that, he said in his casual way, in reply to misgivings more than once expressed by Darrell and the rest. As for the solitary side of the matter, he rather preferred it. Fighting was out of the question. It would be a case of leg-bail entirely, and that was a game at which one could play better than two. Again, the presence of one was more likely to pass unnoticed than that of two.“You keep your weather eye skinned, Musgrave, and a particularly bright look-out for small gangs,” was Darrell’s last injunction having ridden a few miles out from camp with him. “Sandili is trying to slip through into the Amatola at one rush, but sending that, he’s sending his chaps through in driblets. Shouldn’t wonder if you fell in with a patrol or two. But if you’re spotted by the niggers, no matter how few, leg it; do you hear? leg it; for you never know how many more are close by.”“Pho! They ain’t mounted, and if they were, wouldn’t know now to ride. I’ve raced a whole day in front of a wild, mad, yelling war-party of Sioux devils; and if your John Kaffir can make things warmer than that, Darrell, he’s welcome to try.”“Eh? The deuce you have!” said Darrell in amazement. “Here, I’ll come a mile or two farther, and let’s have the yarn.”“No, no. I don’t feel like yarning—anyway just now. Well, so long. No fear about me. I’m not going to turn up missing.”The ride, though lonely, was a delightful one. The day was of unclouded loveliness and the air fresh and exhilarating as a cordial. Away on either hand stretched the grand open country, rolling in wide grassy plains, heaving up into rugged and stony ranges, here and there deepening into a bush-grown river-valley. The life of the wild veldt was never still—the cheery whistle of spreews, glinting from spray to spray in sheeny flashes of light, and the metallic, half-grating note of the yellow thrush; the soft shout of the hoopoe, echoing from the distance, mingling with the softer voices of doves, which were dashing alarmed from the grotesque heads of the plumed euphorbia, disturbed by the horse’s tread. Great webs lay spread from bush to bush, each containing several huge spiders, black and horny; and of these the horseman would now and again receive a shower right in his face—not being always able to guide his horse so as to clear them. But the insects, though hideous, were quite innocuous, and, relishing the encounter as little as the human party to the same, dropped off immediately upon contact. Buck, too—the wary bushbuck and dainty little duiker—would rustle up with a mighty disturbance, to bound away in the scrub or long grass, flashing a white flag of defiance.“Game lies close—that’s a good sign,” meditated the horseman. “But it goes like the devil once it is up—that’s a bad one. Well, it may be a good one too, meaning only that this section has been well patrolled.”It was tantalising, very, as he watched the animals bound away in gracefully flying leaps, affording the sweetest of shots from the saddle. But he who now rode there dared not pull a trigger, for it might easily cost him his life, and that was a possession he did not want to lose just then.It was an exciting ride withal—keenly so; for every turn of the way might bring him face to face with an enemy. If he topped a rise of the ground, might he not run right into the teeth of a hostile band on the other side? As he rode along the slope of a bush-clad hill, for he avoided the bottom of defile or ravine, he more than half expected the “whizz” of missiles from the ambushed savage lurking concealed above. Yes, it was an exciting ride, a perilous ride, yet he travelled at an easy pace, knowing better than to fall into the blunder of pressing his steed in order that it might the more quickly be got over.At first he enjoyed the exciting possibilities of the journey—the strong dash of peril—as, keenly on the alert, he urged his steed forward. It reminded him of old times. But each and every excitement has its limits, and as the hours went by the tension relaxed, the strain upon his nerves subsided. He began to think upon other matters than potential danger. That last farewell under the stars—the recollection of it coursed sweet and warm through his being; his pulses bounded with the very gladsomeness of living. Soon they would meet again, and—what a meeting!For this voluntary absence of his had borne its fruit. But a few days; yet it had seemed to need only this to consolidate and weld this strange, bewildering love of his latter-day life. In the rough duties he had voluntarily undertaken during that brief period—the patrolling, the tireless bivouac under the stars; the shots exchanged with the lurking enemy; the jovial, but not very boisterous revelry of camp life—that image was ever-present, sweet, smiling, radiant-eyed; and try as he might, he could not banish it.Now the shadow of a cloud swept across his path, together with a gleam of blue lightning. Creeping stealthily up, their jagged outlines gradually obliterating the blue arch, leaden cloud-piles were spreading, and puffs of hot wind set the grasses singing. In sharp, staccato boom, the electric voice spoke overhead, but no rain fell. It was a dry thunderstorm, often the most perilous.He was riding just beneath the apex of a long, sparsely-bushed ridge. Already, as he began to descend, the lightning was darting down upon the height in vivid streams, which the sharp, startling thunder-crack seemed to accompany rather than to follow.“This is getting a trifle sultry, and the veldt here is crusted with ironstone,” he said to himself. Then turning his horse, he held ever downward. Half-darkened, the scene was now desolate enough—the long slopes of the kloof, and the ridges cut clear against the livid thundercloud. Down in the hollow several “bromvogels,” the great black hornbill of South Africa, were strutting amid the grass, uttering their drumming bass note. These flapped away heavily on the near approach of the horseman, and rising high overhead, were soon winging their aerial course seemingly to the thundercloud itself.Suddenly the horse stopped short, and, with ears cocked forward, stood snorting, with dilated eyes gazing upon the dark line of bush in front. Roden’s meditations took to themselves wings, and drawing his revolver, as more convenient at close quarters than the rifle, shifted the latter into his bridle hand, and sat for a moment intently listening.Not a sound.It was a nerve-trying moment. The savage war-shout, the crash of firearms, the “whiz” of assegais—that was what it would only too likely bring forth. Still silence, save for the bass grumblings of the thunder.Then there was a winnowing of wings, and a huge bird arose. Roden knew it for a vulture, of the black and non-gregarious kind. A vulture! That meant the presence of death.So far reassured, for the bird would not have been there had the scrub concealed living men, he cautiously made his way between the bushes to the spot whence he had seen the funereal scavenger arise, and again the horse started and shied, spinning half round where he stood. One glance, and the secret was out. In the long grass lay the body of a man—a Kaffir.It had been that of a savage of splendid proportions—tall, broad, thick-set, and muscular. It lay upon its back, staring upward with lacerated eyeless sockets, their contents torn out by the black vulture. Otherwise it was untouched.Stay—not quite. From a great jagged hole in the chest a very lake of blood had welled, staining the long grass. It was a bullet hole; the sort of gap made by a heavy Snider missile. The man had been shot. But how? when?The body was quite naked, and whatever it might have owned in life, in the shape of weapons or other requisites, had disappeared. From its aspect, not many days could have elapsed since death. It was a ghastly find, this black, rigid corpse, with its eyeless sockets and teeth bared and set; a ghastly find in the subdued gloom of the shadowing thundercloud, with the blue lightning playing down upon the lonely veldt. But there was worse to follow.For, exploring farther, Roden came with equal suddenness upon several corpses, half a dozen at least. All were contorted as in the agonies of a violent death, and all were riddled more or less with bullet wounds. What was the secret of this conflict here, he wondered? Who had been engaged in it? Whose the victory? Would he next come upon the bodies of those of his own colour? Looking up suddenly his eyes fell upon a most melancholy object. It was the charred remnant of a burned house.Now the mystery stood explained. Those whose remains he had found had been shot down by the inmates; slain in self-defence. But, those inmates! Clearly the savages had been victorious; and—what of the inmates?The walls stood, the dirty whitewash showing livid in contrast to the black, charring action of the names. The roof had fallen in, and the empty apertures, where the windows had been, gaped wide like the staring, sightless sockets of the corpse. The house had been of no great dimensions, and was clearly the dwelling of some small farmer. A low, crumbling sod wall shut in a sorry-looking “land,” containing now only a few trampled cornstalks; and hard by were the broken-down fences of a sheep kraal.Strong-nerved as he was, Roden Musgrave could not repress a quickening of the pulses, a shrinking of the heart, as he drew near to explore the interior of the ruin. What further dread secret was he about to light upon? The mangled corpses of the white inmates, entombed beneath their own roof-tree, a prey to the devouring assegai of the savage? He expected nothing less.But a very few minutes’ search convinced him that the place contained no human remains. He was puzzled. What had become of the unfortunate settlers? That there had been a fierce and sanguinary battle was evident, but it was impossible that the savages could have been beaten off, else would the house not have been fired. Herein was a mystery.The situation of the place was gloomy and forbidding to the last degree, the black rain standing deep within that lonely kloof, and, lying around, the grim earthly remains of those who had assailed it. Opposite rose a rugged cliff, whose brow was crowned with a grove of fantastically plumed euphorbia; and then as his eye caught a stealthy movement amid the gloom of the straight stems, Roden gave a slight start, and immediately was as ready for action as ever he had been in his life.Yes, something was stirring up there. The moment was rather a tense one, as standing amid those weird ruins he bent his gaze long and eagerly upon the darkness of the straight euphorbia stems, round, regular as organ pipes. Shadowy figures were flitting in and out. Were others creeping up to assail him in the rear, signalled by these? Was he in a trap, surrounded? Then he laughed—laughed aloud; for there went up from the euphorbia clump a strong, harsh, resounding bark:—“Baugh-m! Baugh-m!”“Only baboons after all!” he cried, feeling more relieved than he cared to own. And seeing nothing to be gained by further lingering, by extended investigation, he once more mounted his horse and took his way out of this valley of desolation and of death.And as he gained the opposite ridge, he found that the storm was clearing away, or rather travelling onward. Before him lay a series of grassy flats, fairly open, but dotted withclompjesof bush here and there. The sun had broken forth again, and, the cloud curtain now removed, was flooding the land with dazzling light. The change was a welcome one, and had the effect of restoring the traveller’s spirits, somewhat depressed by the grim and gruesome scene he had just left. And now, as the sun wanted but an hour to his setting, Roden decided to off-saddle for that space of time. Then his steed, rested and refreshed, would carry him on bravely in the cool night air, and but a very few hours should see him safely over the hostile ground, if not among inhabited dwellings once more. So, choosing a sequestered hollow, Roden off-saddled and knee-haltered his steed, and then betook himself to a little clump of bush which grew around a stonykopje, and which afforded him a secure hiding-place and a most serviceable watch-tower, for it commanded a considerable view of the surrounding veldt.
The predominating impulse in the mind of Roden Musgrave when he awoke the next morning in Darrell’s tent, in the Main Camp, was to saddle up his horse, and betake himself back to Doppersdorp as quickly as his steed could convey him thither; and as he stepped forth, and his eye wandered over the array of tents, and waggons, and fires, and cooking pots, and accoutrements, and men of all sorts and sizes, Dutch burghers and town volunteers, and Fingo and Hottentot levies, the impulse grew stronger still. Here was a huge mass of different phases of humanity, hundreds strong, and now that he was here the associations of the place failed to interest him, for he was familiar with them all. The sort of adventure which held any fascination for him was of the nature of that which he had gone through the day before; but all this organised crowd under arms was devoid of attraction for him. He had seen it all before.
Darrell, whose tendency never inclined to minimising any exploit in which he had borne a part, had spread the account of the day’s scrimmage far and wide; and how Roden had saved the position, and shot down half-a-dozen Kaffirs in less than that number of minutes. This soon grew to a full dozen, and so on, which to Roden himself was mightily distasteful. For, the affair over, and he and his comrades in safety, his wish was, if anything, that he had not shot anybody at all. He would gladly have brought back the slain Kaffirs to life again, if that were possible; but anyhow, he saw nothing to brag about in the fact of having shot them. He was thoroughly sick of all reference to the matter.
Conquering, however, his homing impulses, he suffered Darrell to persuade him into taking part in a two days’ patrol, which turned out a deadly monotonous affair; for no sign of an enemy did they see, and a cold, drizzling rain fell the whole time. Mightily glad was he when it was over, and they returned to the Main Camp, and more than ever was he resolved to start back for Doppersdorp on the following morning.
“Where on earth did you pick up your ideas of arranging a fight, Musgrave?” said Darrell, as, having finished their supper of ration beef and Boer brandy, they and two or three others were taking it easy in the tent of the former, their pipes in full blast. “Any fool could see you were no new hand at that sort of thing, by the way in which you grasped the ins and outs of the position the other day.”
“Oh, I saw something of the Indian wars out West a few years ago. By the way, Darrell, what was the name of that lunatic we picked up the other day, armed with only a quince switch?”
“Bolton. He’s a law-agent, and broker, at Barabastadt. And, confound him, he forgot to give me back the revolver I lent him.”
“Serves you right for being such a fool as to lend it him. Now that’s a thing I’d never do. I’d see him hanged first. If the fellow had lost his gun by accident, it would be another thing; but to go about without one, out of mere swagger and bounce, and then come down on the first sensible cuss he meets, to rig him out with his! No, no. It’s a little too thin.”
“That’s how fellows come to grief in war-time,” struck in another man. “They get so confoundedly careless, and at last they do it once too often. It always happens. I say, Musgrave, tell us something about that Indian business. Are the redskins as good at a fight as Jack Kaffir?”
“They’re just as good at one as any fellow need wish. But now, if you don’t mind, I’m most confoundedly sleepy, and would as soon turn in as not.” And in a very few minutes, in spite of the talk and discussion going on around him, he was fast asleep.
Roden held to his resolve and, notwithstanding all persuasion to the contrary, he started soon after sunrise. To many a man, not more timid than his kind, that return journey of seventy or eighty miles, the bulk of it over the hostile ground, might well have seemed a formidable undertaking, the more so that it was a solitary journey. This one, however, entered upon it with no great concern. He had brought off riskier things than that, he said in his casual way, in reply to misgivings more than once expressed by Darrell and the rest. As for the solitary side of the matter, he rather preferred it. Fighting was out of the question. It would be a case of leg-bail entirely, and that was a game at which one could play better than two. Again, the presence of one was more likely to pass unnoticed than that of two.
“You keep your weather eye skinned, Musgrave, and a particularly bright look-out for small gangs,” was Darrell’s last injunction having ridden a few miles out from camp with him. “Sandili is trying to slip through into the Amatola at one rush, but sending that, he’s sending his chaps through in driblets. Shouldn’t wonder if you fell in with a patrol or two. But if you’re spotted by the niggers, no matter how few, leg it; do you hear? leg it; for you never know how many more are close by.”
“Pho! They ain’t mounted, and if they were, wouldn’t know now to ride. I’ve raced a whole day in front of a wild, mad, yelling war-party of Sioux devils; and if your John Kaffir can make things warmer than that, Darrell, he’s welcome to try.”
“Eh? The deuce you have!” said Darrell in amazement. “Here, I’ll come a mile or two farther, and let’s have the yarn.”
“No, no. I don’t feel like yarning—anyway just now. Well, so long. No fear about me. I’m not going to turn up missing.”
The ride, though lonely, was a delightful one. The day was of unclouded loveliness and the air fresh and exhilarating as a cordial. Away on either hand stretched the grand open country, rolling in wide grassy plains, heaving up into rugged and stony ranges, here and there deepening into a bush-grown river-valley. The life of the wild veldt was never still—the cheery whistle of spreews, glinting from spray to spray in sheeny flashes of light, and the metallic, half-grating note of the yellow thrush; the soft shout of the hoopoe, echoing from the distance, mingling with the softer voices of doves, which were dashing alarmed from the grotesque heads of the plumed euphorbia, disturbed by the horse’s tread. Great webs lay spread from bush to bush, each containing several huge spiders, black and horny; and of these the horseman would now and again receive a shower right in his face—not being always able to guide his horse so as to clear them. But the insects, though hideous, were quite innocuous, and, relishing the encounter as little as the human party to the same, dropped off immediately upon contact. Buck, too—the wary bushbuck and dainty little duiker—would rustle up with a mighty disturbance, to bound away in the scrub or long grass, flashing a white flag of defiance.
“Game lies close—that’s a good sign,” meditated the horseman. “But it goes like the devil once it is up—that’s a bad one. Well, it may be a good one too, meaning only that this section has been well patrolled.”
It was tantalising, very, as he watched the animals bound away in gracefully flying leaps, affording the sweetest of shots from the saddle. But he who now rode there dared not pull a trigger, for it might easily cost him his life, and that was a possession he did not want to lose just then.
It was an exciting ride withal—keenly so; for every turn of the way might bring him face to face with an enemy. If he topped a rise of the ground, might he not run right into the teeth of a hostile band on the other side? As he rode along the slope of a bush-clad hill, for he avoided the bottom of defile or ravine, he more than half expected the “whizz” of missiles from the ambushed savage lurking concealed above. Yes, it was an exciting ride, a perilous ride, yet he travelled at an easy pace, knowing better than to fall into the blunder of pressing his steed in order that it might the more quickly be got over.
At first he enjoyed the exciting possibilities of the journey—the strong dash of peril—as, keenly on the alert, he urged his steed forward. It reminded him of old times. But each and every excitement has its limits, and as the hours went by the tension relaxed, the strain upon his nerves subsided. He began to think upon other matters than potential danger. That last farewell under the stars—the recollection of it coursed sweet and warm through his being; his pulses bounded with the very gladsomeness of living. Soon they would meet again, and—what a meeting!
For this voluntary absence of his had borne its fruit. But a few days; yet it had seemed to need only this to consolidate and weld this strange, bewildering love of his latter-day life. In the rough duties he had voluntarily undertaken during that brief period—the patrolling, the tireless bivouac under the stars; the shots exchanged with the lurking enemy; the jovial, but not very boisterous revelry of camp life—that image was ever-present, sweet, smiling, radiant-eyed; and try as he might, he could not banish it.
Now the shadow of a cloud swept across his path, together with a gleam of blue lightning. Creeping stealthily up, their jagged outlines gradually obliterating the blue arch, leaden cloud-piles were spreading, and puffs of hot wind set the grasses singing. In sharp, staccato boom, the electric voice spoke overhead, but no rain fell. It was a dry thunderstorm, often the most perilous.
He was riding just beneath the apex of a long, sparsely-bushed ridge. Already, as he began to descend, the lightning was darting down upon the height in vivid streams, which the sharp, startling thunder-crack seemed to accompany rather than to follow.
“This is getting a trifle sultry, and the veldt here is crusted with ironstone,” he said to himself. Then turning his horse, he held ever downward. Half-darkened, the scene was now desolate enough—the long slopes of the kloof, and the ridges cut clear against the livid thundercloud. Down in the hollow several “bromvogels,” the great black hornbill of South Africa, were strutting amid the grass, uttering their drumming bass note. These flapped away heavily on the near approach of the horseman, and rising high overhead, were soon winging their aerial course seemingly to the thundercloud itself.
Suddenly the horse stopped short, and, with ears cocked forward, stood snorting, with dilated eyes gazing upon the dark line of bush in front. Roden’s meditations took to themselves wings, and drawing his revolver, as more convenient at close quarters than the rifle, shifted the latter into his bridle hand, and sat for a moment intently listening.
Not a sound.
It was a nerve-trying moment. The savage war-shout, the crash of firearms, the “whiz” of assegais—that was what it would only too likely bring forth. Still silence, save for the bass grumblings of the thunder.
Then there was a winnowing of wings, and a huge bird arose. Roden knew it for a vulture, of the black and non-gregarious kind. A vulture! That meant the presence of death.
So far reassured, for the bird would not have been there had the scrub concealed living men, he cautiously made his way between the bushes to the spot whence he had seen the funereal scavenger arise, and again the horse started and shied, spinning half round where he stood. One glance, and the secret was out. In the long grass lay the body of a man—a Kaffir.
It had been that of a savage of splendid proportions—tall, broad, thick-set, and muscular. It lay upon its back, staring upward with lacerated eyeless sockets, their contents torn out by the black vulture. Otherwise it was untouched.
Stay—not quite. From a great jagged hole in the chest a very lake of blood had welled, staining the long grass. It was a bullet hole; the sort of gap made by a heavy Snider missile. The man had been shot. But how? when?
The body was quite naked, and whatever it might have owned in life, in the shape of weapons or other requisites, had disappeared. From its aspect, not many days could have elapsed since death. It was a ghastly find, this black, rigid corpse, with its eyeless sockets and teeth bared and set; a ghastly find in the subdued gloom of the shadowing thundercloud, with the blue lightning playing down upon the lonely veldt. But there was worse to follow.
For, exploring farther, Roden came with equal suddenness upon several corpses, half a dozen at least. All were contorted as in the agonies of a violent death, and all were riddled more or less with bullet wounds. What was the secret of this conflict here, he wondered? Who had been engaged in it? Whose the victory? Would he next come upon the bodies of those of his own colour? Looking up suddenly his eyes fell upon a most melancholy object. It was the charred remnant of a burned house.
Now the mystery stood explained. Those whose remains he had found had been shot down by the inmates; slain in self-defence. But, those inmates! Clearly the savages had been victorious; and—what of the inmates?
The walls stood, the dirty whitewash showing livid in contrast to the black, charring action of the names. The roof had fallen in, and the empty apertures, where the windows had been, gaped wide like the staring, sightless sockets of the corpse. The house had been of no great dimensions, and was clearly the dwelling of some small farmer. A low, crumbling sod wall shut in a sorry-looking “land,” containing now only a few trampled cornstalks; and hard by were the broken-down fences of a sheep kraal.
Strong-nerved as he was, Roden Musgrave could not repress a quickening of the pulses, a shrinking of the heart, as he drew near to explore the interior of the ruin. What further dread secret was he about to light upon? The mangled corpses of the white inmates, entombed beneath their own roof-tree, a prey to the devouring assegai of the savage? He expected nothing less.
But a very few minutes’ search convinced him that the place contained no human remains. He was puzzled. What had become of the unfortunate settlers? That there had been a fierce and sanguinary battle was evident, but it was impossible that the savages could have been beaten off, else would the house not have been fired. Herein was a mystery.
The situation of the place was gloomy and forbidding to the last degree, the black rain standing deep within that lonely kloof, and, lying around, the grim earthly remains of those who had assailed it. Opposite rose a rugged cliff, whose brow was crowned with a grove of fantastically plumed euphorbia; and then as his eye caught a stealthy movement amid the gloom of the straight stems, Roden gave a slight start, and immediately was as ready for action as ever he had been in his life.
Yes, something was stirring up there. The moment was rather a tense one, as standing amid those weird ruins he bent his gaze long and eagerly upon the darkness of the straight euphorbia stems, round, regular as organ pipes. Shadowy figures were flitting in and out. Were others creeping up to assail him in the rear, signalled by these? Was he in a trap, surrounded? Then he laughed—laughed aloud; for there went up from the euphorbia clump a strong, harsh, resounding bark:—
“Baugh-m! Baugh-m!”
“Only baboons after all!” he cried, feeling more relieved than he cared to own. And seeing nothing to be gained by further lingering, by extended investigation, he once more mounted his horse and took his way out of this valley of desolation and of death.
And as he gained the opposite ridge, he found that the storm was clearing away, or rather travelling onward. Before him lay a series of grassy flats, fairly open, but dotted withclompjesof bush here and there. The sun had broken forth again, and, the cloud curtain now removed, was flooding the land with dazzling light. The change was a welcome one, and had the effect of restoring the traveller’s spirits, somewhat depressed by the grim and gruesome scene he had just left. And now, as the sun wanted but an hour to his setting, Roden decided to off-saddle for that space of time. Then his steed, rested and refreshed, would carry him on bravely in the cool night air, and but a very few hours should see him safely over the hostile ground, if not among inhabited dwellings once more. So, choosing a sequestered hollow, Roden off-saddled and knee-haltered his steed, and then betook himself to a little clump of bush which grew around a stonykopje, and which afforded him a secure hiding-place and a most serviceable watch-tower, for it commanded a considerable view of the surrounding veldt.
Chapter Twenty.Mona’s Dream.Notwithstanding the splendid courage and quickness of resource she had shown upon a certain critical and, but for those qualities on her part, assuredly a fatal occasion, Mona Ridsdale was by no means free from that timidity under given circumstances, which seems second nature with most women. She preferred not to be left alone in the dark if possible to avoid it, and, in fact, had as dread a realisation of what it meant to be “unprotected” as the most commonplace and unheroic of her sex: consequently, when Suffield found it unavoidable to be absent from home a night or two, Mona was apt to conjure up terrors which interfered materially with her peace of mind. Now, just such an absence on the part of her male relative befell some few nights after Roden’s departure for the Main Camp.“Oh, Grace, I do feel so nervous this evening!” she exclaimed, starting, not for the first time, as one of the ordinary nocturnal wild sounds from veldt or mountain-side came floating in through the open windows. “Feel my hands, now cold they are; and yet it is such a hot night that one wants every square foot of air the windows will admit.”“That is foolish, Mona,” replied her cousin. “Yes, your hands are indeed cold. Why, to-morrow will ring back not only Charlie, but perhaps somebody else.”“God grant it may!” was the eager rejoinder. “But do you know, Grace, I have a horrible presentiment on that score too; I believe that is why I feel so shivery to-night. It is like a warning—I feel as if something were going to happen to him—were happening!”There was a wildness in the glance of the dilated eyes, a quick, spasmodic catch of the voice, which disconcerted the other, who, in ordinary matters, was the less timid of the two.“Mona, dear, don’t, for Heaven’s sake, give way to such fancies. They grow upon one so. And how you will laugh at them—at yourself—in the morning, when Charlie comes back, and perhaps somebody else.”“I can’t help it. I wish the night was over. I am sure something is going to happen before the morning.”The two were sitting together, the supper over, and the nursery department tucked up, snug and quiet for the night. Suffield had ridden away to attend a sale at a distance, and would hardly return before the following afternoon. It was, as we have said, a hot night, and both windows of the room were open; indeed, it would have been well-nigh impossible to breathe had they been shut. At the black spaces thus framed Mona would stare ever and again, with a quick glance of apprehension, as though expecting, she knew not what, to heave into view from the gloom beyond. It was a still night, moreover, and every sound from without was wafted in with tenfold clearness—the weird shout of a night-bird from the mountain-side; the yelp of a jackal far out upon the plain; the loud and sudden, but musical twanging note of the night locust, whose cry can hardly be credited to a mere insect, so powerful, so bird-like is it. Even the splash of a mud-turtle waddling into the dam was audible.A rushing, booming, buzzing sound swept past the open window. Mona started again, and her face paled. It was only some big flying beetle, blundering past the oblong of light which had half-attracted, half-scared him; yet so overwrought were her nerves that she could hardly repress a startled scream. Now, this sort of thing is catching, and Grace Suffield felt that a little more of it would probably end by unnerving herself.“My dear Mona,” she said; “this is more than nervousness. You have caught cold somehow. Come now, you must go to bed; and I will make you something hot.”“I can’t go to bed, Grace, and I couldn’t sleep if I did,” she answered. “Let’s go out on thestoep. The air may make one feel better.”To this the other agreed, and they went forth. It was a grand and glorious night. A faint moon hung low down in the heavens, and the great planets gushed their rolling fires in the star-gemmed blackness. Such a night had been that other, when only the dark willows had overheard those whispers—deep, pulsating, passionate—welling from the overcharged hearts and strong natures of those who uttered them.“Look, look! That is almost bright enough for a meteor!” cried Mona as a falling star darted down in a streak of light, seeming to strike the distant loom of the mountain range in its rocket-like course. “There is something weird, to my mind, about these falling stars. What are they, and where do they go to?”“Everything is weird to your mind to-night, dear. Come in now, and go to bed.”“Not yet, Grace. I feel better already. I knew the air would do me good. Look there! what is that—and that?”Her tone now belied her former words—her limbs shook. And now both stood listening intently.For there floated upon the still night air a sound—an eerie, wailing, long-drawn sound—faint, yet clear; very distant, yet plainly audible; rising and falling; now springing to a high pitch, now sinking to a muffled, rumbling roar—yet so faint, so distant. Far away over the darkened waste where the great castellated pile of the Wildschutsberg rose gloomy beneath the horned moon, there hovered a strange reddening glow. At the sound the dogs lying around the house sprang up, baying furiously.“Grace, I believe the Tambookie locations out yonder are up in arms. That is the war-cry—they are dancing the war-dance. Listen!”Here indeed was a potential peril, a tangible one, and removed from the spheres of mere bogeydom. There had been uneasy rumours in the air of late—that the Tembu locations on the confines of the district were plotting and restless, and more than ready to rise and join their disaffected fellow-tribesmen now in open rebellion beneath the slopes of the Stormberg. No wonder if these two unprotected women felt a real apprehension chill their veins, as they stood upon thestoepof their lonely homestead gazing forth with beating hearts, listening to these ominous sounds rising upon the stillness of the night. The distance which separated them from the disaffected savages was not great, hardly more than half a score of miles.“Even if it is so, I don’t think we have anything to fear,” said Grace at last. “They would go in the other direction if they moved at all; either cross over to join Gungubele’s people, or Umfanta’s, or perhaps move down to league forces with the Gaikas. They would hardly venture so near the town as this.”“Move down to league forces with the Gaikas?” echoed Mona, horror-stricken at the suggestion. “Why, that would mean that they would cross the very belt of country over which lay Roden’s return route.”Grace Suffield was quick to grasp her meaning.“No, no; not that, dear,” she said. “I don’t believe myself there is anything to be alarmed at. I believe they are only making a noise; possibly they have a big beer-drinking on, or something. Kaffirs, in their way, are just as fond of jollification as we are, you know; and I think I remember more than once hearing something of the kind before, only as there was no war on, or even dreamt of, we hardly noticed it at the time, I suppose. Yes, I am perfectly certain that is all it means; so now come in, and we’ll go to bed. You shall sleep in my room if you like.”Mona suffered herself to be led in, and to be given wine, and generally taken care of: but curiously inconsistent, for all her nervous fears, she preferred to be alone. Then, bidding her relative good-night, she retired to her room, and having fastened the shutters and locked the door, she sat down to think.Her thoughts flew straight off to one who now was the main object of them. Where was he at that moment? Returning to her, travelling at all speed over a peril-haunted region to return to her, alone perhaps, as he had hinted might be the case; and more than one unspoken prayer went up that it might not be so, or for his safety if it were. Then her recollections went farther back. She recalled many to whom she stood in the same light as she now did to that one—from their point of view, that is—yet none had succeeded in stirring her heart, in causing her pulses to beat quicker, or, if so, for no more than a moment, so to say. She recalled many an impassioned pleading, many a haggard face, grief-stricken, disappointed, down to that of Lambert only the other day, and wondered if they had felt as she would feel were any evil to overtake that one now. How cold, how callous, how inconsiderate she had been to others, she recognised now; and as her thoughts turned to him she felt that, but for the certainty of seeing him again, of all the blissfulness of their reunion, and that in a day or two at the furthest, her life would have been lived—lived and done with for all time.The house was in dead silence, as in the solitude of her room at last she began to prepare for bed. She had just finished brushing out the thick waves of her hair, when a dull rumble, as of many feet, not far from the window, turned her pale and tottering. Her heart beat like a hammer, and the splendid outlines of her breast, now uncovered, rose and fell with the quick regularity of the roll of surf upon a level beach. Then with the stamping tread there arose a low moaning noise, long-drawn and unspeakably dismal in the dead midnight silence.“What a despicable coward I am!” she exclaimed, now with a faint smile. Then, with a glance at her magnificent limbs, “I am large framed, and strong, yet the least little thing makes me quake and quiver like a scared child.”She threw open the shutters, and, as she did so, again went up that unearthly, deep-throated moaning, ending in a short shrill bellow. But she knew the sound. The cattle had returned about the homestead, and were collecting at the spot where a sheep or goat was daily slaughtered for the use of the household and the farm hands. In the faint moonlight she could see the beasts bunched together, their noses down to the blood-soaked spot, sniffing and pawing up the ground as they emitted their dismal mutterings; then they would start off, with tail in air and horns lowered, and career a little way across the veldt, and return, as though the fell fascination was greater than the terror which had first appalled them, to resume their weird, hollow groaning as before. The dogs, well accustomed to this performance, forbore to notice it, beyond a low growl or two. Besides, they held the horns of the excited beasts in wholesome respect.Closing the shutters again, Mona returned into the room. Just as she was about to get into bed, her glance was attracted by something. A great dark object was moving across the floor. Repressing an impulse to shriek aloud, she lowered her candle so as to dispel the shadow in which the thing moved, for it was under the table, and then with a shuddering horror she saw that it was a huge tarantula.The evil-looking beast was of enormous dimensions. Outspread, it was the size of a man’s hand, and its great hairy legs and dull, black, protruding eyes gave it the aspect of a demoniacal looking animal rather than a mere insect, as it came shoggling across the floor; then stopped suddenly, as its instincts warned it of danger.All in a quiver of loathing and repulsion, she snatched up a large book of bound-up music, and dropped it upon the hideous insect. She left it where it lay, not caring to investigate farther; knowing, too, that the thing would be crushed and flattened out of all life and shape beneath the heavy volume. Where did it come from? Tarantulas were quite rare in that high, open, bracing veldt, though plentiful enough in the lower and hotter bush country. But even there she had never seen one anything like this for size.The nervous fears which had beset her throughout the evening had brought something like exhaustion in their train. No sooner was the light out, and her head upon her pillow, than she was fast asleep. Yet sound though her slumbers were, a thread of uneasiness ran through them. Outside, in the faint moonlight, the cattle still clustered about the bloodstained spot, and even in her sleep she could still hear the pawing of their hoofs, and the unceasing refrain of their dismal and hollow groanings, half-soothing, half-terrifying in the mesmeric effect which they produced upon the ever-changing waves of her consciousness, that hovering border-line between wakefulness and the dream world. She murmured the name of her absent lover, and again, in her sleeping visions she was soothing him to rest in the still midnight, as he lay in feverish pain, but a few hours after she had drawn him back from death.Then the great tarantula she had slain seemed to come into her slumbers. She saw the upheaval of the broad book under which it lay crushed, and the hideous thing step slowly forth; and as it did so it spread itself out, black, gigantic, to ten times its original size. It advanced to the side of the bed, and leaped up on to the counterpane and crouched there, glowering at her with its dull black eyes, its great hairy feelers moving, its nippers working threateningly. She felt as one under a demoniacal spell, without even power of movement enough to tremble. Then she feared no longer for herself, for that which the grisly monster threatened seemed to be her absent lover. Now she sees him, sees him faintly and dimly as through darkness; and he, too, is unconscious. It is as though she sees him in a grave, amid the gloomy shadows of the nether world, far down in the dim depths of the black river of Death.And now it seems that the whole room is full of shadowy, hairy shapes, like that which holds her in its demoniacal spell, that the dim darkness is astir with writhing tentacular legs, and they are closing round something—the pale countenance of a sleeping man. There is the glare of blood in their eager eyes, and oh, Heaven! the face of each crawling horror is a human one, dark, savage, bloodthirsty. And he?—Oh, God! oh, God! The countenance of him who now sleeps there, ready for their blood-drinking fangs, is that of her absent lover! She can almost touch him, yet the terrible spell upon her holds her bound. Horror of horrors! she must snatch him again from this grisly peril or he is lost. Too late! too late! no, not yet too late—one moment will do it! This chain that holds her, can she not break it? If she is powerless to touch him, still can she cry aloud in warning? No, she cannot. The gnome-like fiend crouching there has power over every faculty she possesses. Now these appalling shapes are upon the sleeping man, and now their eyes dart fire as from flaming torches. They seem to burn him, for he moves uneasily. Will he not wake? will he not wake? Too late! Then by some means the spell is broken, and with a wild, ringing, piercing cry, she utters aloud her lover’s name in a clarion call of warning, and adjuration, and despair.“Mona, what is it? Mona! Mona! What in the world is the matter? Good heavens!”And Grace Suffield, startled from her bed by the loud ringing cry, stands, candle in hand, within her cousin’s room, shaking with apprehension and alarm. And small blame to her.For Mona is standing at the open window. The shutters are thrown back, and her tall, white-clad form, half shrouded in her streaming hair, is framed against the oblong patch of bright stars. And she is gazing out upon the midnight waste, with eyes dilated in a wild, wistful, anguished look, as though she were striving to pierce the darkness and distance, and would give her life for the power to do so. It was a weird sight, and chilled Grace Suffield with an eerie and awesome creep, for it was evident that, in spite of her erect attitude and open eyes, Mona was not awake.What was she to do? Mona had never been given to sleep-walking. Some appalling and powerful dream must have disturbed her. To wake her might be dangerous—the shock would be too great. But in this dilemma Mona turned round suddenly, and her eyes catching the glare of the light, she shut them. Then passing her hand over them two or three times she opened them once more—and beyond a slight start no sign was there that this was other than an ordinary awakening.“Is that you, Grace!” she said wonderingly. “Why, what’s wrong? Any of the children ill?”“No, dear. But you—I thought I heard you call for something.”Thick and clear the waves of recollection flowed back upon Mona’s mind. She started, shuddered, and again that scared look came into her eyes, but she quickly recovered herself.“It was more than a dream,” she said, speaking half to herself. “Yes, it was not a mere dream—it was a warning. Grace,hehas been in danger, and I have warned him. Yes, I have, and I feel confident now. He is safe. My warning has been heard.”Had it? Had the temporarily released soul, hovering above its slumbering tenement, the power to bridge over such material matter as distance and space? Was it given to the dream-voice, winged by the will-power of the strength and despair of love, to dart forth through the midnight spheres until it should thrill upon the unconscious ears, which a moment later might be beyond hearing aught again in this world? Who can say?
Notwithstanding the splendid courage and quickness of resource she had shown upon a certain critical and, but for those qualities on her part, assuredly a fatal occasion, Mona Ridsdale was by no means free from that timidity under given circumstances, which seems second nature with most women. She preferred not to be left alone in the dark if possible to avoid it, and, in fact, had as dread a realisation of what it meant to be “unprotected” as the most commonplace and unheroic of her sex: consequently, when Suffield found it unavoidable to be absent from home a night or two, Mona was apt to conjure up terrors which interfered materially with her peace of mind. Now, just such an absence on the part of her male relative befell some few nights after Roden’s departure for the Main Camp.
“Oh, Grace, I do feel so nervous this evening!” she exclaimed, starting, not for the first time, as one of the ordinary nocturnal wild sounds from veldt or mountain-side came floating in through the open windows. “Feel my hands, now cold they are; and yet it is such a hot night that one wants every square foot of air the windows will admit.”
“That is foolish, Mona,” replied her cousin. “Yes, your hands are indeed cold. Why, to-morrow will ring back not only Charlie, but perhaps somebody else.”
“God grant it may!” was the eager rejoinder. “But do you know, Grace, I have a horrible presentiment on that score too; I believe that is why I feel so shivery to-night. It is like a warning—I feel as if something were going to happen to him—were happening!”
There was a wildness in the glance of the dilated eyes, a quick, spasmodic catch of the voice, which disconcerted the other, who, in ordinary matters, was the less timid of the two.
“Mona, dear, don’t, for Heaven’s sake, give way to such fancies. They grow upon one so. And how you will laugh at them—at yourself—in the morning, when Charlie comes back, and perhaps somebody else.”
“I can’t help it. I wish the night was over. I am sure something is going to happen before the morning.”
The two were sitting together, the supper over, and the nursery department tucked up, snug and quiet for the night. Suffield had ridden away to attend a sale at a distance, and would hardly return before the following afternoon. It was, as we have said, a hot night, and both windows of the room were open; indeed, it would have been well-nigh impossible to breathe had they been shut. At the black spaces thus framed Mona would stare ever and again, with a quick glance of apprehension, as though expecting, she knew not what, to heave into view from the gloom beyond. It was a still night, moreover, and every sound from without was wafted in with tenfold clearness—the weird shout of a night-bird from the mountain-side; the yelp of a jackal far out upon the plain; the loud and sudden, but musical twanging note of the night locust, whose cry can hardly be credited to a mere insect, so powerful, so bird-like is it. Even the splash of a mud-turtle waddling into the dam was audible.
A rushing, booming, buzzing sound swept past the open window. Mona started again, and her face paled. It was only some big flying beetle, blundering past the oblong of light which had half-attracted, half-scared him; yet so overwrought were her nerves that she could hardly repress a startled scream. Now, this sort of thing is catching, and Grace Suffield felt that a little more of it would probably end by unnerving herself.
“My dear Mona,” she said; “this is more than nervousness. You have caught cold somehow. Come now, you must go to bed; and I will make you something hot.”
“I can’t go to bed, Grace, and I couldn’t sleep if I did,” she answered. “Let’s go out on thestoep. The air may make one feel better.”
To this the other agreed, and they went forth. It was a grand and glorious night. A faint moon hung low down in the heavens, and the great planets gushed their rolling fires in the star-gemmed blackness. Such a night had been that other, when only the dark willows had overheard those whispers—deep, pulsating, passionate—welling from the overcharged hearts and strong natures of those who uttered them.
“Look, look! That is almost bright enough for a meteor!” cried Mona as a falling star darted down in a streak of light, seeming to strike the distant loom of the mountain range in its rocket-like course. “There is something weird, to my mind, about these falling stars. What are they, and where do they go to?”
“Everything is weird to your mind to-night, dear. Come in now, and go to bed.”
“Not yet, Grace. I feel better already. I knew the air would do me good. Look there! what is that—and that?”
Her tone now belied her former words—her limbs shook. And now both stood listening intently.
For there floated upon the still night air a sound—an eerie, wailing, long-drawn sound—faint, yet clear; very distant, yet plainly audible; rising and falling; now springing to a high pitch, now sinking to a muffled, rumbling roar—yet so faint, so distant. Far away over the darkened waste where the great castellated pile of the Wildschutsberg rose gloomy beneath the horned moon, there hovered a strange reddening glow. At the sound the dogs lying around the house sprang up, baying furiously.
“Grace, I believe the Tambookie locations out yonder are up in arms. That is the war-cry—they are dancing the war-dance. Listen!”
Here indeed was a potential peril, a tangible one, and removed from the spheres of mere bogeydom. There had been uneasy rumours in the air of late—that the Tembu locations on the confines of the district were plotting and restless, and more than ready to rise and join their disaffected fellow-tribesmen now in open rebellion beneath the slopes of the Stormberg. No wonder if these two unprotected women felt a real apprehension chill their veins, as they stood upon thestoepof their lonely homestead gazing forth with beating hearts, listening to these ominous sounds rising upon the stillness of the night. The distance which separated them from the disaffected savages was not great, hardly more than half a score of miles.
“Even if it is so, I don’t think we have anything to fear,” said Grace at last. “They would go in the other direction if they moved at all; either cross over to join Gungubele’s people, or Umfanta’s, or perhaps move down to league forces with the Gaikas. They would hardly venture so near the town as this.”
“Move down to league forces with the Gaikas?” echoed Mona, horror-stricken at the suggestion. “Why, that would mean that they would cross the very belt of country over which lay Roden’s return route.”
Grace Suffield was quick to grasp her meaning.
“No, no; not that, dear,” she said. “I don’t believe myself there is anything to be alarmed at. I believe they are only making a noise; possibly they have a big beer-drinking on, or something. Kaffirs, in their way, are just as fond of jollification as we are, you know; and I think I remember more than once hearing something of the kind before, only as there was no war on, or even dreamt of, we hardly noticed it at the time, I suppose. Yes, I am perfectly certain that is all it means; so now come in, and we’ll go to bed. You shall sleep in my room if you like.”
Mona suffered herself to be led in, and to be given wine, and generally taken care of: but curiously inconsistent, for all her nervous fears, she preferred to be alone. Then, bidding her relative good-night, she retired to her room, and having fastened the shutters and locked the door, she sat down to think.
Her thoughts flew straight off to one who now was the main object of them. Where was he at that moment? Returning to her, travelling at all speed over a peril-haunted region to return to her, alone perhaps, as he had hinted might be the case; and more than one unspoken prayer went up that it might not be so, or for his safety if it were. Then her recollections went farther back. She recalled many to whom she stood in the same light as she now did to that one—from their point of view, that is—yet none had succeeded in stirring her heart, in causing her pulses to beat quicker, or, if so, for no more than a moment, so to say. She recalled many an impassioned pleading, many a haggard face, grief-stricken, disappointed, down to that of Lambert only the other day, and wondered if they had felt as she would feel were any evil to overtake that one now. How cold, how callous, how inconsiderate she had been to others, she recognised now; and as her thoughts turned to him she felt that, but for the certainty of seeing him again, of all the blissfulness of their reunion, and that in a day or two at the furthest, her life would have been lived—lived and done with for all time.
The house was in dead silence, as in the solitude of her room at last she began to prepare for bed. She had just finished brushing out the thick waves of her hair, when a dull rumble, as of many feet, not far from the window, turned her pale and tottering. Her heart beat like a hammer, and the splendid outlines of her breast, now uncovered, rose and fell with the quick regularity of the roll of surf upon a level beach. Then with the stamping tread there arose a low moaning noise, long-drawn and unspeakably dismal in the dead midnight silence.
“What a despicable coward I am!” she exclaimed, now with a faint smile. Then, with a glance at her magnificent limbs, “I am large framed, and strong, yet the least little thing makes me quake and quiver like a scared child.”
She threw open the shutters, and, as she did so, again went up that unearthly, deep-throated moaning, ending in a short shrill bellow. But she knew the sound. The cattle had returned about the homestead, and were collecting at the spot where a sheep or goat was daily slaughtered for the use of the household and the farm hands. In the faint moonlight she could see the beasts bunched together, their noses down to the blood-soaked spot, sniffing and pawing up the ground as they emitted their dismal mutterings; then they would start off, with tail in air and horns lowered, and career a little way across the veldt, and return, as though the fell fascination was greater than the terror which had first appalled them, to resume their weird, hollow groaning as before. The dogs, well accustomed to this performance, forbore to notice it, beyond a low growl or two. Besides, they held the horns of the excited beasts in wholesome respect.
Closing the shutters again, Mona returned into the room. Just as she was about to get into bed, her glance was attracted by something. A great dark object was moving across the floor. Repressing an impulse to shriek aloud, she lowered her candle so as to dispel the shadow in which the thing moved, for it was under the table, and then with a shuddering horror she saw that it was a huge tarantula.
The evil-looking beast was of enormous dimensions. Outspread, it was the size of a man’s hand, and its great hairy legs and dull, black, protruding eyes gave it the aspect of a demoniacal looking animal rather than a mere insect, as it came shoggling across the floor; then stopped suddenly, as its instincts warned it of danger.
All in a quiver of loathing and repulsion, she snatched up a large book of bound-up music, and dropped it upon the hideous insect. She left it where it lay, not caring to investigate farther; knowing, too, that the thing would be crushed and flattened out of all life and shape beneath the heavy volume. Where did it come from? Tarantulas were quite rare in that high, open, bracing veldt, though plentiful enough in the lower and hotter bush country. But even there she had never seen one anything like this for size.
The nervous fears which had beset her throughout the evening had brought something like exhaustion in their train. No sooner was the light out, and her head upon her pillow, than she was fast asleep. Yet sound though her slumbers were, a thread of uneasiness ran through them. Outside, in the faint moonlight, the cattle still clustered about the bloodstained spot, and even in her sleep she could still hear the pawing of their hoofs, and the unceasing refrain of their dismal and hollow groanings, half-soothing, half-terrifying in the mesmeric effect which they produced upon the ever-changing waves of her consciousness, that hovering border-line between wakefulness and the dream world. She murmured the name of her absent lover, and again, in her sleeping visions she was soothing him to rest in the still midnight, as he lay in feverish pain, but a few hours after she had drawn him back from death.
Then the great tarantula she had slain seemed to come into her slumbers. She saw the upheaval of the broad book under which it lay crushed, and the hideous thing step slowly forth; and as it did so it spread itself out, black, gigantic, to ten times its original size. It advanced to the side of the bed, and leaped up on to the counterpane and crouched there, glowering at her with its dull black eyes, its great hairy feelers moving, its nippers working threateningly. She felt as one under a demoniacal spell, without even power of movement enough to tremble. Then she feared no longer for herself, for that which the grisly monster threatened seemed to be her absent lover. Now she sees him, sees him faintly and dimly as through darkness; and he, too, is unconscious. It is as though she sees him in a grave, amid the gloomy shadows of the nether world, far down in the dim depths of the black river of Death.
And now it seems that the whole room is full of shadowy, hairy shapes, like that which holds her in its demoniacal spell, that the dim darkness is astir with writhing tentacular legs, and they are closing round something—the pale countenance of a sleeping man. There is the glare of blood in their eager eyes, and oh, Heaven! the face of each crawling horror is a human one, dark, savage, bloodthirsty. And he?—Oh, God! oh, God! The countenance of him who now sleeps there, ready for their blood-drinking fangs, is that of her absent lover! She can almost touch him, yet the terrible spell upon her holds her bound. Horror of horrors! she must snatch him again from this grisly peril or he is lost. Too late! too late! no, not yet too late—one moment will do it! This chain that holds her, can she not break it? If she is powerless to touch him, still can she cry aloud in warning? No, she cannot. The gnome-like fiend crouching there has power over every faculty she possesses. Now these appalling shapes are upon the sleeping man, and now their eyes dart fire as from flaming torches. They seem to burn him, for he moves uneasily. Will he not wake? will he not wake? Too late! Then by some means the spell is broken, and with a wild, ringing, piercing cry, she utters aloud her lover’s name in a clarion call of warning, and adjuration, and despair.
“Mona, what is it? Mona! Mona! What in the world is the matter? Good heavens!”
And Grace Suffield, startled from her bed by the loud ringing cry, stands, candle in hand, within her cousin’s room, shaking with apprehension and alarm. And small blame to her.
For Mona is standing at the open window. The shutters are thrown back, and her tall, white-clad form, half shrouded in her streaming hair, is framed against the oblong patch of bright stars. And she is gazing out upon the midnight waste, with eyes dilated in a wild, wistful, anguished look, as though she were striving to pierce the darkness and distance, and would give her life for the power to do so. It was a weird sight, and chilled Grace Suffield with an eerie and awesome creep, for it was evident that, in spite of her erect attitude and open eyes, Mona was not awake.
What was she to do? Mona had never been given to sleep-walking. Some appalling and powerful dream must have disturbed her. To wake her might be dangerous—the shock would be too great. But in this dilemma Mona turned round suddenly, and her eyes catching the glare of the light, she shut them. Then passing her hand over them two or three times she opened them once more—and beyond a slight start no sign was there that this was other than an ordinary awakening.
“Is that you, Grace!” she said wonderingly. “Why, what’s wrong? Any of the children ill?”
“No, dear. But you—I thought I heard you call for something.”
Thick and clear the waves of recollection flowed back upon Mona’s mind. She started, shuddered, and again that scared look came into her eyes, but she quickly recovered herself.
“It was more than a dream,” she said, speaking half to herself. “Yes, it was not a mere dream—it was a warning. Grace,hehas been in danger, and I have warned him. Yes, I have, and I feel confident now. He is safe. My warning has been heard.”
Had it? Had the temporarily released soul, hovering above its slumbering tenement, the power to bridge over such material matter as distance and space? Was it given to the dream-voice, winged by the will-power of the strength and despair of love, to dart forth through the midnight spheres until it should thrill upon the unconscious ears, which a moment later might be beyond hearing aught again in this world? Who can say?