Part 28 (1/2)
BAULKED.
”Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall,” is a good and safe maxim in other senses than the theological, for it goes to the very root of human nature.
Here was a man in the zenith of his strength, at an age when the fire of youth would be tempered and steeled by rare physical powers of endurance; a man to whose lot had befallen stirring and eventful experiences beyond the lot of most men, and in befalling had hardened; a man of cool judgment and keen, clear, reasoning powers far beyond his years; a man to whom the other s.e.x would accord a full share of attention, and who hitherto has been utterly unsusceptible to any such excusable weakness, has. .h.i.therto never known a quickened pulse in response to soft glance or welcoming smile. And this man has now surrendered at sight--absolutely, and without the smallest reservation.
And it had all come about in a single day.
Just so. It is your apparent icicle that annihilates itself with the most startling rapidity when suddenly touched by the scorching beam of the unlooked-for sun. It is the unsusceptible one who goes down forehead to the earth, not pausing to spread rug or carpet in the way, when the self-const.i.tuted idol appears. And oh, how frequently too, not the feet only, but the head, the hands, and the heart of the image prove to be of the veriest clay!
To-morrow!
Who among us ever gives a thought to this commonplace word? Not, I mean, when we are pa.s.sing through some momentous crisis of our lives, some care, some expectation for good or for ill, which may either make us, or crush us well-nigh out of existence. Not then, but when our lives are flowing on, smooth and undisturbed, then it is that we practically ignore the possibility of to-morrow bringing with it anything eventful, or being, in short, other than a mere twenty-four hours' repet.i.tion of to-day.
To-morrow!
We go to bed lightly with the word on our lips, our arrangements for it are all mapped out, all ordered for the next twenty-four hours, ay, and beyond them, as though there existed not in the sublime philosophy of the Wise King that most portentous of all warnings: ”Boast not thyself of the morrow, for thou canst not tell what a day may bring forth.”
For an exemplification of both warnings behold it perfected in him who rides abroad this morning. A single day, and his life has been cut into two halves. Nor is it even a day that has wrought this change, nor yet an hour, nor a minute. A moment, a brief flash of time, just so long as that presence took to appear before him, and he was conquered. One look, and he fell prostrate, to rise again a slave. And this man, till the day before yesterday, had not a care in the world.
He rides slowly on. On the high ground which will directly shut the homestead out of sight, he turns for a moment to gaze upon the quiet old place sleeping embowered in trees; to gaze upon it with a lingering and reverential gaze, as pilgrim taking a last look at some deeply venerated shrine. Then he urges his horse along a narrow track which leads down into the wildest part of the farm. Dark bush covers the valley on either hand, broken only by a beetling _krantz_, frowning down as it were upon great jagged rocks which, hurled at some remote period from its face, lie embedded beneath. Yonder, in a sequestered glade, a couple of spans of fine trek-oxen are grazing, the sun glistening on their sleek hides; a bushbuck ewe stalks timidly across an open clearing, and the alarmed note of a pheasant sounds close to the horseman; but he who rides abroad thus early is neither on business bent nor on the pleasures of the chase. He is only thinking--ruminating.
Mechanically his hand grasps the reins, as his steed, which he makes no attempt to guide, steps briskly out, skilfully avoiding the sweeping boughs which here and there overhang the path. Monkeys grin and gibber at him among the branches, and a large secretary bird floats away from its nest of sticks hard by. In the dewy webs which quiver from the sprays of the bushes, and sparkle in the sun like strings of gems, he reads but one name, one name written as it were, in delicate gossamer characters, and the breaths of morning in this fresh cool retreat are fraught with a faint but thrilling harmony--the music of low, tuneful notes which are something more than a recollection, so clearly present are they in the fancy of the thinker.
Then he ponders over the three months which have slipped by in such calm, easy fas.h.i.+on since he cast in his lot here, and found among these kindly and genial friends a home in its best and truest sense. It seems to him a marvellous thing that he could have enjoyed, so much contentment until this new star suddenly blazed forth in the firmament of his life. He was not susceptible, never had been. How much had not he and Ethel Brathwaite been thrown together, for instance! Ethel with her sunny spirits and laughing, wayward moods, and her capacity for working havoc among his own s.e.x. They had been thrown daily, hourly, together, from sheer force of circ.u.mstances, yet never a pulse of his had been stirred in the faintest degree by any spell of hers.
”Too soon.”
He is again seated in imagination by the moonlit pool while that shade of unhappy recollection steals across his companion's beautiful face.
Again the longing is upon him to clear up the mystery and learn his own fate. In but a couple of days! Ridiculous! And half aloud he utters his thoughts:
”Too soon!”
Zip!--
A metallic ring on the stones behind him. Something lies gleaming on the sun-baked slope of the hill. It is an a.s.segai.
From the weapon, which has missed his body by about six inches, his glance darts searchingly in the direction whence it came. All his coolness has returned, and now his sole idea in life is the discovery of his hidden a.s.sailant. Yet he is unarmed; it is highly probable that there are more spears where the first came from; the spot is a lonely one, and for all present purposes as far removed from human aid as the centre of the Great Sahara.
”Ah, I thought as much. I see you, Mopela, you skulking vagabond. Come down here, you dog, and I'll brain you.”
For a head had appeared from behind a low rock some eighteen or twenty yards from the speaker, and after watching him for a moment, half the body of its owner followed. A strip of thick bush lay between him and Claverton, who he guessed was unarmed, as no weapon was levelled at him.
”Whaow!” mocked the savage, as he poised another a.s.segai. ”Whaow!
Lenzimbi [Note 1]. Yesterday I; to-day, you. What do you say? Can your fists reach me here? You are as good as dead, and then Mopela will hang you to a tree by the hind leg, and in an hour the aasvogels will be tearing away at your carcase;” and springing upon the rock he again levelled his formidable spear.
Claverton never moved in his saddle, but sat confronting his deadly foe as calmly as though he were asking the road; and there, above, stood the athletic form of the huge barbarian, who, entirely naked, and smeared from head to foot with red ochre, which glistened in the sun, looked a very demon of the forest. He knew that the other's words were true, and that the chances were a hundred to one that in five minutes he would be a dead man. He was quite unarmed, and his adversary still had two a.s.segais. Yet he replied quite unconcernedly:
”You're a fool, Mopela. You can't hurt _me_, and, moreover, let me tell you this--you're a d.a.m.ned bad shot.”
His coolness rather disconcerted the other, who laughed mockingly.
”Can't I? Mopela's a.s.segais are too sharp for Lenzimbi's 'charm,' and his G.o.d is asleep; _He_ can't help him. Look, I have two more a.s.segais, one for Lenzimbi, and one for his G.o.d. His G.o.d is asleep, I say.”
”Is he? Look there!” exclaimed Claverton in a sharp, warning tone, pointing behind the other. The superst.i.tious Kafir turned his head, for the moment completely thrown off his guard; quick as thought Claverton slipped from the saddle, and, wrenching off one of the stirrups, dashed into the bush and made straight for his enemy. He was just in time, for the other, having recovered himself, launched an a.s.segai with such unerring effect as to graze the seat of the saddle; the horse, startled by the unwonted proceedings, threw up his head, snorted and backed, and finally trotted off by the way he had come. The Kafir, secure in his point of vantage, awaited the onset, grasping his remaining a.s.segai.