Part 52 (2/2)

Claverton laughed. ”Well, you see, Mrs Payne, he could hardly have done that, because I was bound in the opposite direction, but I've taken advantage of my opportunity as soon as I fell in with it, and here I am.”

”What! Do you mean to say you've been wandering about up the country ever since?”

”Of course he has,” struck in Payne. ”But hadn't we better get all snug for the evening? It's about feeding-time! Here, Claverton, come this way, I dare say you'll like to put your head into cold water. And, Annie, just tell those kids to shut up that infernal clatter,” he added, as the uproar of juvenile romping, mingled with many a shrill laugh, came rather too distinctly from an inner room.

And how comes it that Lilian Strange, whom we last saw at Seringa Vale, should be quietly installed in this Kaffrarian border dwelling? It will be necessary to glance back.

Not long after we saw her, hopeless and heartbroken, more than three years back, an event happened which caused her to forget for a time her own grief in the sore affliction of others, of her dearest and truest friends. One day Mr Brathwaite started for his accustomed ride round the farm, but the afternoon slipped by and then evening came, and he did not return. His horse, however, did; for just as Mrs Brathwaite, in anxiety and alarm, was about to send forth in search of him, that quadruped put in an appearance, with the rein still on its neck, and limping up to the stable-door as if it had been injured. Then they started in search, leaving Mrs Brathwaite a prey to the most terrible forebodings, which were realised only too soon. The old settler was found lying in the _veldt_, unable to move. His horse, he said, had put its foot in a hole, stumbled and rolled over with him, falling upon him; no bones were broken, but he feared he had received some internal injury as he could not move without great pain. Carefully they carried him home, and he was put to bed. Tenderly did his wife and Lilian watch beside him the night through, while Hicks was riding at a hand-gallop to fetch a doctor from the district town. An errand, alas, which was only too futile; for as the clear dawn quivered glowing and chill over the homestead at Seringa Vale the sufferer's spirit pa.s.sed slowly away, and the beams of the rising sun, darting in at the window, lighted upon the face of a corpse and two watchers weeping by a bedside.

Thus died Walter Brathwaite--the staunch, persevering settler, the pioneer of industry and advancement in a new and far-away land, and, above all, the genial, n.o.ble-hearted gentleman. One who had never turned his back on friend or foe, a man who had never been guilty of a mean action or reaped advantage from the misfortune of his fellows; open of hand, kindly of heart and firm of head, he died as he had lived, regretted, loved, and respected by all who knew him. And that country is fortunate which can show many of his like.

And in the dark and rayless days that followed, it was Lilian's task to whisper words of consolation and hope to the sorrowing widow, crushed to the very earth in her sudden and comfortless grief; and in no better hands could it have devolved. But within the year Mrs Brathwaite had followed her husband, and Lilian, who, up to then, had tended her with more than all the loving care of a daughter, watched over her to the last.

”G.o.d bless you, dearie,” had been the dying woman's parting words to her. ”You have given yourself up to the comfort and happiness of others; some day it will return to you a hundredfold. Only be patient.”

They buried her beside her husband; and in one disastrous day, sad indeed had been the change wrought in that peaceful, happy home. And then Lilian, craving for work and diversion, had gone back to her old line of life, which, involving a constant tax on her energies, would afford her both the one and the other. So here she was, after a lapse of years, installed at Fountain's Gap, ostensibly as the preceptress of Mrs Payne's children, in reality as companion to that good-hearted little woman herself, who had taken an immense fancy to her, and, moreover, hated being left alone, as must, otherwise, inevitably be frequently the case from the very nature of her husband's pursuits.

”Did you hear anything fresh in Komgha to-day, George?” asked his wife, when they were seated at the table. The curtains were drawn and the room looked snug and homelike.

”Two more troops of Police ordered over the Kei.”

”Oh, dear. That looks bad. We are in a dreadful state of scare now, Mr Claverton,” she explained. ”I can hardly sleep at night for thinking of it--and right in the middle of those wretches, too.”

”_We_ are!” rejoined Payne, good-humouredly. ”Say, rather, you are.

The fact is, Claverton, my wife thinks of nothing but fire and sword, morning, noon, and night, till she's worked herself up to such a pitch that every time a drunken n.i.g.g.e.r howls in the _veldt_ she vows they are raising the war-cry.”

”Well, but you know there is reason for it,” retorted she. ”And if it gets any worse, Lilian and I will go away with the children to Grahamstown or somewhere. I really am frightened.”

”That's a long way,” said Payne, banteringly. ”I also heard that the new Governor was coming up to the frontier.”

”Ah, we're getting the news by degrees,” exclaimed his wife. ”What else did you hear?”

”That a policeman rode in from the Transkei this morning.”

”What news did he bring?”

”I don't know.”

”There now. You never find out anything. Some day we shall all be taken by surprise and murdered in our beds.”

”Ha, ha, ha?” laughed Payne. ”Well, at any rate, you're no worse than the people at Komgha. If an express rides in, they jump to the conclusion that Kreli is marching on their precious town at the head of twenty thousand men. For my part I don't believe there'll be a s.h.i.+ndy at all. It's only another case of scare.”

But he did believe it, only he thought a pious fraud justifiable to rea.s.sure the womenkind.

”When I'm big,” remarked Harry Payne, aged seven, ”I'll have a gun and shoot a great _schelm_ Kafir.”

”But, Harry, he may shoot you first,” said Lilian, during the laugh that followed upon this interruption.

”No he won't,” persisted the embryo warrior. ”I'll shoot him.”

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