VOLUME ONE, CHAPTER NINE.
IN WHICH THE READER BECOMES A PARTY TO MORE CHAFF.
They rode merrily along, or rather two of them did, for ever and anonAllen's steed would drop behind, and its sorry pace wax slower andslower, till at length, taking advantage of its rider's abstraction, itwould stop and snatch up a tuft of grass here and there by the way-side.
"What the deuce has become of that fellow again?" exclaimed Armitage forthe fifth time since their start, as he rose in his stirrups and turnedto look back. "Hi--Allen. Come on, man, we shan't get there to-night!"he bawled.
"All right," echoed feebly from afar; and the white top of a pithhelmet, which had escaped its owner's immersion, hove in sight over thescrub like a peripatetic mushroom, as the laggard came trotting up.
"Come on! We thought you had got another bee in your bonnet," wasArmitage's salutation. "Hi--Bles you _schelm_--hold up!" This to hishorse, which started violently as something sprang up at its very feet;something lithe and red, with curious pointed ears, which darted awayover the ground with lightning speed. "A _rooi-cat_ [lynx], by Moses!"he went on, "after some of the late lambs. Hicks, _where is_ that oldshooting-iron of yours?" and thinking that though powerless to hurt theobjectionable feline, at any rate he could frighten it, Armitage openedhis mouth and gave vent to a true Kafir war yell, which certainly hadthe desired effect.
"Didn't bring it. Sunday, you know; must respect people's prejudices,"replies Hicks.
"Oh, Lord! and I would have liked to have peppered that chap's hide,"groaned Armitage.
They rode on over hill and dale. Suddenly the rasping cry of the wildguinea-fowl brought Hicks' heart into his mouth, and he certainly didnot bless the good old-world prejudice in deference to which he had lefthis beloved gun at home on the first day of the week, and as a cloud ofthose splendid game birds rose from a grassy bottom within a few yardsof them and winged away with their chattering note, poor Hicks fairlygroaned.
"Look at that. Only look at that!" he exclaimed in tones of wrathfuldisgust. "Such a chance; did you ever see them rise like that! When afellow has his gun and is all ready for them, blest if they won't runhundreds of yards before they'll get up, whereas--"
"I suppose they know it's Sunday," put in Allen, with a feeble attemptat chaff.
The other turned from him impatiently, without replying. Good-naturedas he was habitually, there were moments when even Hicks feltjustifiably cantankerous. This was one of them.
They continued their way without event, and, cresting the last ridge,descended into the long valley, at whose head stood the old farmhouse.
"Hallo! some one's turned up," said Armitage, indicating the white tentof a Cape cart, which stood outspanned before the stable-door, with theharness lying beside the swingle bars.
"Looks like Naylor's trap," said Hicks.
"Good. The more the merrier," rejoined Armitage, as they cantered upand dismounted.
An air of perfect rest and peace seemed to enshroud the place, as thoughnature would supply the absence of all outward signs of the Sabbath.The gates of the empty kraals stood open, and save for a sickly sheep ortwo feeding about near the homestead, there was not a sign of animallife. Here and there a long rakish-looking hornet flitted beneath theleaves of a trellised vine, or sought the entrance of his pendulouspaper-like nest in the verandah. In the garden a few butterfliesdisported, vying with the flowers in their bright colours; and bigbumble-bees boomed in the burning glow of the noonday sun. There wasthat about the sultry stillness which warned of thunder in the air, apresage not unlikely to be borne out towards evening, judging from thegreat solid bank of clouds which loomed up blackly from behind thedistant mountains.
Hicks was right as to the identity of the visitors, whose conveyancethey had descried. Edward Naylor, Mr Brathwaite's son-in-law, a jollybluff frontiersman, whose weather-tanned face heavily bearded, was thesoul of geniality, was seated on the disselboom of a waggon, discoursingon the state of the country with his host. His wife, a pretty,fair-haired woman of about thirty, was sitting with Ethel and Laura inthe verandah, and was at that moment arbitrating, amid much laughter, inan argument which the former had started with Claverton, by way ofpassing the time.
"Hallo, Armitage," said that worthy, as the new arrivals drew nigh. "Iwas expecting to be summoned to your funeral."
"My funeral! What the dev--er--what d'you mean?"
"Well, you see, it's such a time since I beheld the light of yourcountenance that I began to think you must be dead."
"Wheuw! That's what I call a cheerful greeting," replied Armitage,shaking hands with the rest of the party.
The two who had been talking shop now appeared on the scene.
"How do, Armitage? Hallo, Allen, who's your outrigger?" said Naylor,eyeing the unwonted garb of that luckless youth, which garb boreunmistakable appearance of makeshift from head to foot.
"Er--I stumbled into the river, and--"
"What; boots and all?" There was a joke about Allen's jack-boots, whichhe was seldom seen without.
"`What is good for a bootless bene?'" quoted Claverton. "Never mind,Allen, don't you let them chaff you."
Naylor was an inveterate joker. When he and Armitage got together thesame room would hardly hold them, and when the two got Allen betweenthem, then, Heaven help Allen. Now this is precisely what happened, forat that moment the dinner-bell rang, and all adjourned to the festiveboard, when, as luck would have it, the unfortunate youth foundhimself--partly owing to that curious practice which is, or was, sooften found in frontier houses, of all the men hanging together on oneside of the table, leaving the other to the fair sex--in theneighbourhood of his tormentors; but he was a good-natured fellow, andtook chaff very equably.
"I say," began Armitage, "here's a riddle--a regular Sunday one."
"Is there? Roll it up this way," said Claverton, from the other end ofthe table, where he was seated between Mrs Naylor and Ethel, for heresolutely defied the dividing custom above mentioned.
"Here you are, then. Why is Allen like Moses?" asked Armitage.
"Oh, villainous!" laughed Claverton. "Don't anybody attempt it. Ireally think you might trot out something a little more original,Armitage."
Of course, every one then and there tried hard to solve the conundrum,and, of course, half of them gave it up, and, of course, the reply cameeven as was to be expected: "Because he was drawn out of the water."
"Oh-h!" groaned the whole party; while the object of the aqueous jestsat and grinned placidly, and made play with his knife and fork asthough he were the perpetrator of it instead of its butt.
"I say, Allen," put in Naylor, on the other side, "has that shootingmatch between you and Hicks come off yet?"
"What are the conditions?" asked Armitage.
"Dollar a side--Target, the shearing-house door--Distance, five yards--Hicks to be allowed four yards on account of his want of practice. I'llbet on Hicks;" and the speaker roared at his own sorry wit.
"Eh! what's that about me?" called out Hicks from the other end of thetable, which was longer than usual, by reason of the advent of theNaylors with their five olive-branches. He had just caught his name.
"Nothing, old man, nothing; we were only talking of those threeguinea-fowl you shot this morning, coming up," replied Armitage,grinning mischievously.
"But bother it, I had no gun," said Hicks, thrown off his guard for themoment by this bare-faced accusation of Sabbath-breaking, and fairlylosing his head as he caught a reproachful glance from Laura, whichseemed to say: "Didn't you promise me you'd leave your gun at home whenyou went out this morning?" For he had confidentially imparted to herhis intention to take the trusty shooting-iron, as he was starting soearly that there would be no one about to be scandalised; and Laura, whohad her own ideas of right and wrong, had peremptorily forbidden hisdoing anything of the kind.
"I say!" exclaimed Armitage, with admirably-feigned amazement. He hadtaken in the other's look of confusion, and,
incorrigible joker as hewas, resolved to turn it to his own mischief-loving account.
"But, confound it!" began Hicks, wrathfully; for that mute upbraidingglance made him really savage with his tormentor, who he thought wascarrying the joke too far. Chaff was all very well, but this kind ofthing went beyond chaff, and he would give him a piece of his mindby-and-by.
"Er--n-no--of course--you hadn't a gun--I forgot--er--I--was thinking ofyesterday," rejoined Armitage, with the well-simulated air of a man whohas "put his foot in it," and is endeavouring to withdraw that unluckymember--and endeavouring deucedly badly, too.
"I say, Jack, what about the scorpion fight, eh?" and Hicks proceeded tonarrate how he had found that unscrupulous joker in the thick of theuseful and intellectual little amusement at which we saw him in the lastchapter, thus drawing upon him the laughter and sallies of theassemblage, under cover of which he said quietly to Laura: "I didn'treally take the gun this morning, 'pon my word of honour I didn't; it'sonly that fellow's lies. He might draw the line somewhere; chaff's allvery well, you know, but hang it, that's beyond a joke."
"Yes, I think it's really too bad of him. I oughtn't to have thoughtyou did what you told me you wouldn't do," she replied, with an almostimperceptible stress on "me," and a glance which Hicks thought fullycompensated for the former doubt. Leave we them beneath the friendlyshelter of the noise at the other end of the table, and turn to therest.
"Don't care, I won my bet," Armitage was saying.
"What! And so you were betting on it, too--and on Sunday! I think it'sdisgraceful of you," said Ethel.
"He's come up here to be reformed," put in Allen.
"Oh, you needn't talk," said Armitage, turning off the attack on to thelast speaker. "Miss Brathwaite, what do you think of a fellow who comesdown to my place on a Sunday, and bothers me to take out a bees' nest;on a Sunday, too!"
There was a great laugh at this. The notion of Allen bothering any oneto take out a bees' nest, Sunday or any other day, struck them all asineffably rich. He would rather travel twenty miles than embarkknowingly in that lively enterprise. And then the joke about thestings, and the plunge into the river came out, and poor Allen wasroasted unmercifully on the strength of it, and the fun grew apace, whena vivid flash darting in upon them, and playing upon the knives andglasses with a blue steely gleam, brought the conversation up with around turn.
"We shall have a storm," said Mr Brathwaite, glancing at the window.The deep azure of the heavens had become dark and overcast, and even ashe spoke there pealed forth a long, angry roll of thunder.
A general move from the table now took place, and every one adjourned tothe verandah, which looked out on the wide sweep of country constitutingthe great charm of the situation of the house. But now the joyoussunlight had disappeared, and the earth slept in a dread and bodingstillness. Tall pillars of cloud, black as night, moved steadily on,their jagged edges taking the forms and faces of hideous andopen-mouthed monsters. All nature seemed waiting for the battle of theforces of the air, the discharge of the pent-up cloud artillery whichwas to strike the awed surface of earth with its blasting fire. Then,athwart the hot, listening deadness of the atmosphere comes a dazzlingflash, bathing the valley in a sea of flame; and a roll of thunder,long, loud, and close at hand, makes the expectant group, which isstanding on the verandah to watch the storm, involuntarily start, andthe silence is more intense than before. And now a great chain of fireshoots from the blackness immediately overhead, and before you couldcount one, an appalling crash shakes the solid old house to its veryfoundations, while the windows rattle like castanets.
"Let's go inside," suggested Ethel; "I don't like this."
"It's getting wicked," said Armitage. "It was just such a shot as thisthat killed old Simmonds. That was up in Kaffraria, where the stormsare about as bad as anywhere. He and I were standing in the doorwaywatching the fun; I went in to light my pipe, and while I was fumblingabout for the matches something knocked me clean over, and I heard abang and a crash enough to wake the dead. At first I thought I hadupset the crockery shelf on top of me; but no, there it stood; then myhead felt queer, and there was a smell of burning about the place. ThenI remembered, and got up and went to the door. There lay poor Simmonds,half in and half out, as dead as a log. The lightning had caught himbang on the head, burnt his coat and waistcoat to rags, and mauled himabout horribly. I can tell you it wasn't a nice thing for a fellow tosee, having just narrowly escaped the same luck himself--Ah!"
Again a sheet of flame darts down, and a roar and a crash as of thedischarge of a dozen eighty-one-ton guns follows upon it. This timethey beat a retreat indoors; and when they had a little recovered fromthe momentary shock, Armitage goes on.
"Well, as I was saying, poor Simmonds was so knocked about, that hisearly sepulture became a matter of necessity; besides, the first thingto do was to get him into the house. He was enormously heavy, and Icouldn't get a Kafir on the place to give me a hand. Not for the cattleupon a thousand hills will they so much as touch anything that has beenkilled by lightning with the end of their little fingers, and thenearest neighbour was twenty miles off. However, I managed to lug thepoor fellow in, and the next day we buried him."
"That's a cheerful old yarn of yours, Jack, and well calculated toreassure Miss Brathwaite," struck in Claverton.
"I believe he's only trying to frighten us," said Ethel.
"'Pon my word of honour, every word of what I told you's true,"protested Armitage; and with that love for the horrific implanted in thehuman breast, one story led to another, and the storm raved and flashedwithout, and a few preliminary hailstones rattled at intervals upon theroof.