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And the two murderers separated – Nanzicele, dejected and feeling as though his freedom had gone from him for ever; Shiminya, chuckling and elate, for the day had been a red letter one, and the human spider was gorged full of human prey.
Chapter Five.
The Meeting of the Ways
The mail-steamer from England had been docked early in Cape Town, and the tables at lunch-time, in the dining room of Cogill’s Hotel at Wynberg, were quite full. There is something unmistakable about the newly landed passenger, male or female, especially when taken gregariously; and this comes out mainly in a wholly abnormal vivacity, begotten presumably of a sense of emancipation from the cooped monotony of shipboard, and a conversational tendency to hark back to the incidents of the voyage, and the idiosyncrasies of the populace of the recent floating prison. Add to this a display of brand new ribbons on the hats of certain of the ornamental sex, bearing the name of the floating prison aforesaid, and a sort of huddled up clannishness as of a hanging together for mutual protection in a strange land.
With this phase of humanity were most of the tables filled. One, however, was an exception, containing a square party of four, not of the exuberantly lively order. To be perfectly accurate, though, only three of these constituted a “party;” the fourth, a silent stranger, wearing more the aspect of a man from up-country than one of the newly landed, was unknown to the residue.
“What an abominable noise those people are making,” remarked one of the trio, a tall, thin, high-nosed person of about thirty, with a glance at a table over the way, where several newly landed females were screaming over the witticisms of a brace of downy lipped youths, who were under the impression the whole room was hanging upon their words. “I only hope they don’t represent the sort of people we shall have to put up with if we stay here.”
“Don’t you be alarmed about that, Mrs Bateman,” said the man on her right. “That stamp of Britisher doesn’t stay here. It melts off into boarding-houses and situations in Cape Town or Johannesburg. Just rolls up here because it’s the thing to run out to Cogill’s and have tiffin first thing on landing; at least, so it thinks. It’ll all have disappeared by to-night.”
“That’s a comfort, anyway, if we do stay. What do you think of this place, Nidia?”
“I think it’ll do. Those views of the mountain we got coming along in the train were perfectly lovely. And then it seems so leafy and cool. You can get about from here, too, can’t you, Mr Moseley?”
“Oh yes, anywhere. Any amount of trains and trams. And I expect you’ll wear out the roads with that bike of yours, Miss Commerell.”
“By the way, I wonder if they brought our bicycles from the station?” said the other of the two ladies. “You saw them last, Nidia.”
“Yes. They are all right. They were standing outside when we came in.”
Now, utterly workaday and commonplace as all this was, not a word of it escaped the silent stranger. This girl, seated at his right, had riveted his attention from the moment she came in, and indeed there was that about Nidia Commerell’s face which was likely to exercise such an effect. It had a way of lighting up – a sudden lifting of the eyelashes, the breaking into a half smile, revealing a row of teeth beautifully even and white. She had blue eyes, and her hair, which was neither brown nor golden, but something between, curled in soft natural waves along the brow, dispensing with the necessity of any attempt at a fringe; and her colouring was of that warm richness which gave the idea that Nature had at first intended her for a brunette, then got puzzled, and finally had given her up in hopeless despair, which was perhaps the best thing that could have happened, for the result was about as dainty, refined, alluring a specimen of young womanhood as the jaded glance of the discriminating male could wish to rest upon.
This, at any rate, was the mental verdict of the stranger, and for this reason he hailed with inward satisfaction the recently expressed decision of the two as to taking up their quarters there for a time.
“You ought to remain here a few days, and show us about, Mr Moseley,” said the elder of the two ladies, after some more desultory conversation.
“Wish I could, Mrs Bateman. No such luck, though. I’ve got to start for Bulawayo to-night. They are hurrying the soul out of me as it is.”
“Isn’t the journey a frightful one?” asked Nidia.
“It isn’t a delightful one,” laughed the man, who was just a fair average specimen of the well-bred Englishman, of good height, well set up, and well groomed. “Railway to Mafeking, then eight days’ coaching; and they tell me the coach is always crammed full. Pleasant, isn’t it?”
The stranger looked up quickly as though about to say something, but thought better of it. Nidia rejoined —
“What in the world will we do when our time comes?”
“I am afraid you must make up your minds to some discomforts,” replied Moseley. “One of the conditions of life in a new country, you know. But people are very decent in those parts, and I’m sure would do everything they could to assist you.”
A little more conversation, and, lunch being over, the trio withdrew. John Ames, left alone at the table, was lost in all sorts of wild imaginings. Something seemed to have altered within him, and that owing to the proximity of this girl, a perfect stranger, whom three quarters of an hour ago he had never set eyes on. It was really very absurd, he told himself. But when a man has had fever, he is bound to be liable to fall a victim to any kind of absurdity. Fever! that was it – so he told himself.
Now, as he sat there, dreamily cracking almonds, he began to regret his reticence. The very turn of the conversation favoured him. He might have volunteered considerable information for the benefit of the man who was going up-country, he suspected, for the first time. The conversation would have become general, and might have paved the way to an acquaintanceship. There was no necessity for him to have been so reticent. He had lived too long stowed away, he decided. It was high time he came out of his shell.
He had applied for and obtained his leave, and had come down there to spend it. The sea breezes blowing across the isthmus of the Cape Peninsula, the cool leafiness of the lovely suburbs, were as a very tonic after the hot, steamy, tropical glow of his remote home. But the effects of the fever, combined with a natural reserve, kept him from going much among people, and most of his time was spent alone.
“I wonder who that man is who sat at our table,” Nidia Commerell was saying; for the trio were seated outside trying to converse amid the cackle and din of one of the livelier parties before referred to.
“He looked awfully gloomy,” said Mrs Bateman.
“Did you think so, Susie? Now, I thought he looked nice. Perhaps he wasn’t feeling well.”
“He had a look that way, too,” said Moseley. “Up-country man perhaps. Down here to throw off a touch of fever. I’ve seen them before.”
“Poor fellow! That may have accounted for it,” said Nidia. “Yes; he’s quite nice-looking.”
John Ames, meanwhile, was smoking a solitary pipe on the balcony in front of his room, and his thoughts continued to run on this new – and to him, supremely foolish subject. Then he pulled himself together. He would get on his bicycle and roll down to Muizenberg for a whiff of the briny.
The afternoon was cloudless and still, and the spin along a smooth and, for the most part, level road exhilarating. A brisk stroll on the beach, the rollers tumbling lazily in, and he had brought his mind to other things – the affairs of his district, and whether the other man who was temporarily filling his place would be likely to make a mess of them or not, and how he would pull with Inglefield – whether Madúla had recovered from the sulky mood into which the action of Nanzicele had thrown him – and half a hundred matters of the sort. And so, having re-mounted his wheel, and being about halfway homeward again, he could own himself clear of the foolish vein in which he had set out, when – there whirled round the bend in the road two bicycles, the riders whereof were of the ornamental sex; in fact, the very two upon one of whom his thoughts had been chaotically running.
One quick glance from Nidia Commerell’s blue eyes as they shot by, and John Ames was thrown right back into all that futile vein of meditation which he had only just succeeded in putting behind him. The offender, meanwhile, was delivering herself on the subject of him to her companion in no uncertain terms.
“Susie, that’s the man who was sitting at our table. I think we’ll get to know him. He looks nice, and, as he bikes, he’ll come in handy as escort to a pair of unprotected females.”
“How do you know he’ll appreciate the distinction you propose to confer upon him? He may not, you know. He looks reserved.”
“Oh, he’s only shy. Say something civil to him to-night at dinner. We’ll soon get him out of his shell. He only wants a little judicious drawing out.”
The other looked dubious. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’m not sure we hadn’t better leave him alone. You see, I’m responsible for your good behaviour now, Nidia; and really it is a responsibility. I don’t like being a party to adding this unfortunate man’s to your string of scalps.”
We regret to record that at this juncture Nidia’s exceedingly pretty mouth framed but one word of one syllable. This was it:
“Bosh!”
“No, it isn’t bosh,” went on her friend, emphatically. “And, the worst of it is, they all take it so badly; and this one looks as if he’d be no exception to the general rule, but very much the reverse. I don’t know what there is about you, but you really ought to be cloistered, my child; you’re too dangerous to be at large.”
“Susie, dry up! We’ll exploit our interesting stranger this evening, that is, presently; and now I think we’d better turn, for after three weeks of the ship I can’t ride any further with the slightest hope of getting back to-night.”
The upshot of all this was that when the two sat down to dinner they gave John Ames the “Good evening” with just as much geniality as the frigidity of English manners would allow to be manifested when outside England towards the only other occupant of the same table. It sufficed for its purposes, and soon the three were in converse.
“We passed each other on the road this evening,” said John Ames. “It was some way out, and I wonder you got back in time. Are you fond of bicycling?”
“We simply live on our bikes when the weather is decent,” replied Nidia. “This seems a good locality for it. The roads are splendid, aren’t they?”
“Yes. I generally wheel down to Muizenberg or Kalk Bay for a puff of sea air. It’s refreshing after the up-country heat.”
“Sea air? But can you get to the sea so soon?” said Mrs Bateman, surprised.
“Oh yes. In less than an hour.”
Both then began to enthuse about the sea, after the British method, which was the more inexplicable considering they had just had three weeks of it, and that viewed from its very worst standpoint —upon it, to wit. They must go there to-morrow. Was it easy to find the way? And so forth. What could John Ames do but volunteer to show it them? – which offer was duly accepted. Things were now upon a good understanding.
“Do they ride bikes much up-country – I think you said you were from up-country, did you not?” said Nidia, artlessly, with that quick lift of the eyelids.
“Oh yes, a good deal. But it’s more for the hard practical purpose of getting from one place to another than just riding about for fun. It strikes one though, if one has any imagination, as a sample of the way in which this aggressive civilisation of ours wedges itself in everywhere. You are right away in the veldt, perhaps only just scared away a clump of sable or roan antelope, or struck the fresh spoor of a brace of business-like lions, when you look up, and there are two fellows whirring by on up-to-date bikes. You give each other a passing shout and they are gone.”
“Yes. It is a contrast, if one has an imagination,” said Nidia. “But not everybody has. Don’t you think so?”
“Certainly. But when a man lives a good deal alone, and sees comparatively little of his kind, it is apt to stimulate that faculty.”
Nidia looked interested. The firm, quiet face before her, the straight glance of the grey eyes, represented a character entirely to her liking, she decided. “Is it long since you came out?” she asked.
“Well, in the sense you mean I can’t be said to have come out at all, for I was born and bred out here – in Natal, at least. But I have been in England.”
“Really? I thought you were perhaps one of the many who had come out during the last few years.”
“Am I not colonial enough?” said John Ames, with a quiet laugh.
“N-no. At least, I don’t mean that – in fact, I don’t know what I do mean,” broke off Nidia, with a perfectly disarming frankness.
“Do you know Bulawayo at all?”
The diversion came from the third of the trio.
“Oh yes; I have just come from up that way.”
“Really. I wonder if you ever met my husband. He is a mining engineer. Bateman our name is.”
John Ames thought.
“The name doesn’t seem altogether unknown to me,” he said. “The fact is I am very seldom in Bulawayo. My district lies away out in the wilds, and very wild indeed it is.”
“What sort of a place is Bulawayo?”
“Oh, a creditable township enough, considering that barely three years ago it was a vast savage kraal, and, barring a few traders, there wasn’t a white man in the country.”
“But isn’t it full of savages now?” struck in Nidia.
“Yes; there are a good few – not right around Bulawayo, though. Are you likely to be going up there?”
“We are, a little later,” replied Mrs Bateman. “This is fortunate. You will be able to tell us all about it.”
“With pleasure. I shall be too happy to give you any information I can.”
“Is it safe up there?” said Nidia. “Is there no fear of those dreadful savages rising some night and killing us all?”
Unconsciously the official reserve came over John Ames. He had more than once predicted to himself and one or two confidential friends such a contingency as by no means outside the bounds of practical politics, almost invariably to be laughed at for his pains. Now he replied:
“Everything that precaution can do is against it. They are carefully supervised; in fact, it is my own particular business to supervise a considerable section of them.”
“Really? But how do you talk, to them? Can they talk English?”
John Ames smiled. “You forget I mentioned that I was raised in Natal.”
“Of course. How stupid I am!” declared Nidia. “And so you know their language and have to look after them? Isn’t it very exciting?”
“No; deplorably prosaic. There are points of interest about the work, though.”
“And you keep them in order, and know all that’s going on?”
“We try to; and I think on the whole we succeed fairly well.”
But at that very moment Shiminya the sorcerer was dooming to death two persons, and filling with seditious venom the minds of three chiefs of importance within the speaker’s district.
Chapter Six.
About some Dallying
John Ames was beginning to enjoy his leave, and that actively.
At first he had done so in a negative kind of way. It was pleasant to have nothing to do, and plenty of time to do it in, to rise in the morning and know that until bedtime at night he had only to please himself and take no thought for anything whatever. He had a few acquaintance in the neighbourhood, more or less busy people whose avocations kept them in Cape Town throughout the working day, and so was mostly thrown upon his own resources. This, however, was not without its advantages, for the change had hardly benefited him much as yet, and he was conscious of a sort of mental languor which rendered him rather disinclined than otherwise for the society of his fellows. He liked to mount his bicycle and spin for miles along the smooth level roads, beneath the oak and fir shade, the towering wall of mountain glimpsed ever and anon athwart the trees; or, gaining the nearest point of sea shore, lie on the beach for hours, watching the rollers come tumbling in, and the revels of bathers skipping amid the surf. Hitherto he had been content to do all this alone, now he was not; and the name of the agency which had effected this change was Nidia Commerell.
Nearly a fortnight has gone by since we introduced that entrancing personality to the reader’s notice; and whatever effects the same had had upon John Ames, one at any rate was certain, viz. a conviction that it was not good to be alone.
They had seen a good deal of each other within that time. Nidia had carried out to the full her expressed intention of using him as an escort, and he, for his part, had gladly welcomed the rôle, and efficiently discharged it; and whether it was along bicycle ride, or a more remote expedition by rail, or a scramble up the Devil’s Peak, that commended itself to the two ladies for the day’s programme, there was John Ames in sure and faithful attendance. It did him good, too. There was an ingredient in the tonic which was stimulating, life-giving indeed, and now in this daily companionship he felt that life was worth living. Decidedly he had begun to enjoy his leave.
“Well, Susie, wasn’t I justified in my prediction?” said Nidia to her friend, as they were dressing for dinner after one of these expeditions.
“Which prediction? You make so many.”
“Concerning John Ames,” – for so they had got into the way of designating him when alone together.
“I said he looked as if he were nice, and also that he would come in handy as an escort for two unprotected females. Well, he is both. Isn’t he?”
“Yes; he is a remarkably well-mannered, pleasant man.”
“With more than two ideas in his head?”
“Yes; he can talk intelligently on any subject, and if he knows nothing about it won’t pretend to.”
“As is the case with the average turned-out-of-a-bandbox, eyeward-twisting-moustache type of Apollo one usually encounters in one’s progress through this vale of woe,” supplied Nidia, with an airy laugh.
“That holds good, too. But, gracious Heavens, child, don’t pile up your adjectives in that mountainous fashion, or you’ll reflect no credit on my most careful training and tuition.”
“All rights Govvie,” cried Nidia, with a peal of merry laughter – the point of the allusion being that prior to her marriage Susie Bateman had been a combination of companion and governess to the girl she was now chaperoning; in fact, was a distant relation to boot. “But the said careful training was such a long time ago. I’m beginning to forget it.”
“Long time ago!”
“Yes, it was. In the days of my youth. I am in my twenty-fourth year, remember. Is that nothing?”
“Of course it’s nothing. But – what were we talking about?”
“Oh, John Ames, as usual.”
“As usual – yes. But, Nidia, isn’t it rather rough on the man? He’s sure to end by falling in love with you.”
Again the girl laughed, but this time she changed colour ever so slightly.
“To end by it! That’s not very complimentary to my transcendent fascinations, O Susie. He ought to begin by it. But – to be serious – perfectly serious – he isn’t that sort.”
“I’m not by any means sure. Why should you think so?”
“No signs. He’d have hung out signals long ago if he’d been trending that way. They all do. The monotony of the procedure is simply wearisome.”
“Nidia, you are really a very dreadful child. Your talk is absolutely shocking to the ears of a well brought up British female.”
“Can’t help it. If a series of idiots come to labour under the impression that life outside my presence – ten days after first becoming aware of my existence – is totally unendurable, where am I to blame? I can’t scowl at them, and nothing short of that will restrain them. Now, the reason why I rather like this man is that he has so far shown no signs of mental aberration.”
She meant it all. For one so plenteously, so dangerously, dowered as far as the other sex was concerned, Nidia Commerell was strangely unromantic. In her allusion to the rapidity with which the average male succumbed to her charms there was no exaggeration. She seemed to possess the art of conquest sudden and complete, yet, in reality, art it was not, for she had not a shadow of the flirt in her composition. The very artlessness of her frank unstudied demeanour constituted, in fact, her most formidable armament. But she refused to see why she should avoid the other sex simply because a large percentage of its members were weak enough to fall in love with her upon no sort of warranty or provocation. There was no affectation, either, in her declaration that the unanimity wherewith they did so candidly bored her.
“Just as I begin to like a man,” she would plaintively declare, “and find him of some use, he gets serious, gloomy, and spoils everything.” And for all her airiness on the subject, she was not entirely without a qualm lest John Ames should follow suit, and him she had more than begun to like very much indeed. The roar of a truly demoniacal gong cut short further discussion of the subject, by warning them that it was time to go down and join the object of it at table. Him they found in an amused state.
“Rather fun,” he said. “Some fellow has been going for that most cherished and firmly rooted institution, the great Cape fish-horn, in a letter to the evening Argus. He doesn’t see how a civilised community at the end of the nineteenth century can tolerate their day and night alike being made hideous by an unending procession of dirty Malays blaring weirdly, wildly, deafeningly through a ‘yard of tin;’ and, for the matter of that, no more do I. Look, here it is” – handing the paper across to Mrs Bateman.
The latter, like most high-featured people, was of censorious habit. “Yes; it’s amusing,” she said. “But there are some people who are never happy unless they are finding fault. I suppose even these poor Malays must earn their living.”
“No fear of their not doing that,” rejoined Ames. “Why, they are the most well-to-do crowd on this peninsula. I take it the writer’s point is they could earn it without making life intolerable to the world at large.”
At which remark, ever so faint a droop of the mouth-corners changed the visage of a silent, middle-aged individual seated at an adjacent table; but his back was towards them, and they couldn’t see it. “Oh, nonsense,” retorted Mrs Bateman, breezily. “People who can’t stand a little noise ought to go and live by themselves on a desert island.”
Here the droop on the lips of the silent one became a very pronounced sneer. “A fool of a woman, answering according to her folly,” he thought.
“Let me see it,” cried Nidia. “Yes; it is a good joke, and perfectly true, too. I know I’ve wished that same hideous noise anywhere times out of number. I quite agree – it is amazing how they tolerate it. I wonder who the writer is. Positively I’d like to send him an anonymous letter of cordial thanks.”
This time the silent one laughed to himself, heartily and undisguisedly.
“Write it to the Argus instead and agree with him; that’ll do just as well,” said John Ames. “The fact of the matter is that the Malay vote is a power just here, and it would be about as easy to uproot Table Mountain itself as the diabolical snoek trumpet under discussion.”
“No, I don’t agree with you in the least, Susie,” declared Nidia. “I think unnecessary racket ought to be put down with a stern hand. Don’t you remember all that abominable cannon nuisance when we were in the Bernese Oberland? You didn’t like that any more than I did. Just fancy, Mr Ames. Some of the most picturesque turnings of the road, almost wherever we went, were tenanted by a miscreant volunteering to let off a horrid cannon for half a franc – to raise an echo.”
“I should have felt like offering him a whole one not to raise it,” was the reply. “But the noble Switzer was shrewd enough to appraise his clients at their correct value. The English are never quite happy unless they are making a noise, unless it is when they are listening to one.”
“Yes; aren’t they?” cried Nidia. “You see it in their fondness for banging doors and talking at the top of their voices on every landing at all hours of the day and night, and throwing their boots about and pounding up and down for hours over somebody else’s head, in a house full of other people.”
The silent one hearkened approvingly. “That’s no fool of a girl,” he was saying to himself.
“I know,” replied John Ames. “And, talking about that stumping overhead trick, if you were wantonly to knock a cripple off his crutch you would be voted the greatest brute on earth. Yet that same cripple will go into the room above yours, and, as you say, pound up and down for hours, or perhaps let fall that same crutch with a mighty bang upon the floor, totally callous to the possibility of there being some unfortunate wight underneath with shattered nerves, and generally seedy, and who would give his soul for a square night’s rest. No; if you expect from other people any of the consideration they expect from you, you are simply laughed at for a fool, and a selfish one at that.”
“Oh, well, in life we have to give and take, I suppose,” remarked the censorious one, with striking originality.
John Ames smiled. He had an idea as to the sort of giving and taking this masterful person would be likely to practise, save in one quarter, that is; for he had not spent the time he had in the society of the two without detecting that she had at any rate one soft place, and that was Nidia Commerell. So he agreed easily, and the talk drifted on to other matters.
It was pleasant out in the moonlight. The elder of the two ladies had pronounced herself tired when Nidia, whose freshness nothing seemed to impair, suggested strolling. John Ames was rather inclined to be silent as they wandered on, the light of the southern moon flooding down through the overshadowing firs, the balmy stillness of the night broken by distant snatches of shrill laughter and the chatter of voices from squalid coloured loafers on the main road. He was realising with a sort of pang at the heart how all this time would soon be behind him, as in a flash, only as an episode to look back to. The girl, noting his silence, was wondering whether it was a prelude to what she had airily termed “hoisting the signals,” and, thus conjecturing, was surprised at herself and her lack of the usual eagerness to avoid them.
“You are feeling much better than when you came down, are you not, Mr Ames?” she said softly.
“Ever so much. I shall go back quite set up.”
Her practised ear detected the slightest suspicion of melancholy in the tone, while admiring the strength which controlled it.
“What a strange life you must have to lead up there!” she went on; for he had told her a good deal about himself during the time of their acquaintanceship.
“Oh yes. It gets monotonous at times. But then, I take it, everything does.”
“But it is such a useful life. And you have helped to open up the country, too.”
“Not I. That is left to other people.”
“But you were with the first expedition, and so of course you helped. I don’t wonder you pioneers are proud of the part you took in extending the Empire. Isn’t that the correct newspaper phrase? At any rate, it sounds something big.”
John Ames smiled queerly. He was not especially proud of the extension of the Empire; he had seen a few things incidental to that process which had killed within him any such incipient inflation.
“Oh yes; there’s a good deal of sound about most of the doings of ‘the Empire,’ but there – I must not get cynical on that head, because the said extension is finding me in bread and cheese just now, and I must endeavour to be ‘proud of’ that.”
“You must have great responsibilities holding the position you do. Tell me, are you able to throw them off while you are away, or do you lie awake sometimes at night wondering if things are going right?”
“Oh, I try not to bother my head about them. It’s of no use taking a holiday and thinking about ‘shop’ all the while. Besides, the man who is in my place is all there. He has been at it as long as I have; and if there is one thing I may say without conceit I do know – in fact, both of us know – it is the wily native and his little ways.”
Ah, John Ames, so you thought, and so thought many others in those boding days! But at this moment the man who is in your place is drinking whisky and water and smoking pipes with the Police sub-inspector in a circular hut on the Sikumbutana, and you are dallying beneath a radiant moon upon a fir-shaded road at Wynberg, with more than one lingering glance into the eyes of the sweet-faced, soft-voiced girl beside you. But one could almost read a leering derisive grin into the face of the cold moon, for that moon is now looking down upon that which would give both yourself and ‘the man in your place’ something very serious to think about and to do. It is looking down upon – let us see what.
