Part 33 (2/2)
”Shocking! You had no right to tell such a story,” she answered, with a laugh.
”Hadn't I? Which would have been best--the lie or the Dutchman? 'Of the two evils,' you know, and I thought the lie the least. Perhaps you would have preferred the Dutchman?”
”No, I would not. But I think--well, I think--you did about the very best thing you could have done,” she replied, breaking into a silvery laugh. ”But don't take that as any encouragement to persevere in the art. It's a dangerous one, and I believe you are quite an adept in it already. In fact, I've heard you tell one or two shocking fibs myself.”
”All's fair in love and war.” Then noting the look which stole over her face he wished the quotation unsaid. ”But I promise you I won't indulge in mendacity any more than I can help.”
”You must not do it at all. Seriously, it isn't right.”
”Except as a choice of evils. How would society get on without its mendacities?”
”Never mind about society,” retorted Lilian, brus.h.i.+ng aside an inconvenient argument in right womanly fas.h.i.+on. ”And now promise you'll do what I'm going to ask you.”
”Oh, cheerfully.”
”I'm going to set you a penance.”
”Consider it performed. But what is it?”
”Well, the next time a choice of evils is offered you, you are to choose the one which does not involve romancing.”
”That must depend upon its nature.”
”Oh, you promised!”
”So I did, and so did Herod, and look what came of it.”
”Never mind about Herod,” was the laughing reply. ”I have got you at a disadvantage, and I mean to keep you at it. Look, are not those Kafirs picturesque, in their red blankets, filing through the dark green of the bush?” she broke off, pointing out half-a-dozen ochre-painted beings who were crossing the valley some distance from them. They were walking in single file, and every now and then one would half stop and throw a remark over his shoulder in a deep ba.s.s tone. Their necklaces of jackals' teeth showed white against their red bodies, which glistened in the sun, and as they marched along, head erect and with their kerries over their shoulders, they certainly did look picturesque.
”Yes, and do you notice how clear the air is? I can make out nearly every word those fellows are saying,” answered Claverton.
”Can you really? What are they talking about?”
”What are they talking about? Now look at them. The n.o.ble savage on his native heath, looking too, as if it actually did belong to him, striding with free and independent bearing, proud and scornful in mien.
You think they are talking of war and tribal greatness, and the extermination of the hated white man, and such-like lofty and ambitious schemes? Nothing of the sort. One fellow is narrating how he got a thorn in his right heel, and how badly his brother extracted it for him, while three of the others are all trying to say at once what a fool the brother was, and that they could have done it much better.”
Lilian broke into a peal of laughter. ”How absurd you are! You have quite taken the poetry out of them, and now they look like a very commonplace lot of beings. But is that really what they were saying?”
”It is, upon my word. To see a lot of Kafirs talking you would think they were letting off a stream of oratory, what with all their gesticulation and modulation of voice. In nine cases out of ten they are discussing the veriest trivialities.”
”I'm not sure that I'm glad I know that. It spoils the romance of the thing. I shan't look at them with the same interest.”
”You are given to idealisation, I see,” he said. ”It is a delightful pastime, and I must not do anything to shock it. But, look! That, at all events, is entirely free from the commonplace.”
They had reached the brow of an eminence, and before them lay unfolded a panorama which brought a flush of delight to Lilian's face. Upland and valley lay sleeping in the golden suns.h.i.+ne, a rolling expanse of verdure, now open and gra.s.sy, now covered with thick bush, or dotted here and there with feathery mimosas. Wave upon wave of rise and swell, there seemed no end to the wide beautiful plains; and the eye wandered on, over and over it, drinking in a new delight in the far-seeing vision, then turning to refresh itself in the grand mountain chain which bounded its range in front. Stretching afar, in a hundred and fifty miles of stately crescent, rose those lofty mountains with their sunny slopes and beetling cliffs, and black forest-clad sides seen through the dim uncertainty of the summer haze; while, towering above the rest, the Great Winterberg raised his weather-beaten crest to the cloudless bine.
The thatch and white walls of a farmhouse or two, visible here and there in the distance, redeemed the spectacle from the utter wildness of a newly-trodden land, but on the other hand added to the peaceful solemnity of the scene. Hard by, the air resounded with the low hum of bees busily gathering their stores from the blossoming sprays of a neighbouring clump of bush; spreuws whistled, and a dainty little sugar-bird--the humming-bird of Southern Africa--flitted across the path, his painted plumage glittering in the sun. Down in the valley two or three pairs of blue cranes roamed about picking in the gra.s.s, and every now and then their strange rasping note floated not unmelodiously through the calm.
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