Читать книгу The Fire Trumpet - Mitford Bertram - Страница 23

“Well, you’ll have a fine day for your ride. Hicks, leave a buck or two up at Jim’s in case I should be coming over. I suppose you’ll all be back the day after to-morrow. Good-bye.”

The speaker was Mr Brathwaite; the spoken to, an equestrian group of four, consisting of Claverton, Hicks, and the two girls, who were starting on a long-promised visit to Jim Brathwaite’s place, where a bushbuck hunt was to be organised on the following day. It was the morning after the narrow escape of the luckless Allen from a watery demise—he and Armitage had returned home to fetch their guns, and were to rejoin the others at the farm of a certain Dutchman who abode half-way. The Naylors had gone on ahead in their trap, and the four equestrians were the last to start. And such a morning! The rain had cleared away, and the great deep vault overhead was unflecked by a single feathery cloud. The sun shot his golden darts from his amber wheel, and the outlines of the mountains slept in soft-toned relief beneath the liquid blue. A perfect day, with exhilaration in every breath of the fresh, healthy atmosphere, now cooled by the thunderstorm and rain of the previous evening. And the glorious freshness and radiant sunlight communicated itself to the spirits of the riders, as they cantered gaily along, chatting and laughing in thorough enjoyment of the unclouded present.

“Now, Mr Claverton,” cried Ethel, as their horses bounded along over a smooth level stretch, “we’ll have our race—I’m to have a hundred yards start, you know. Shall we begin?”

“On no account. I received strict injunctions from your aunt not to let you do anything rash, and I intend exerting my authority to the uttermost.”

“Do you? Well now, why don’t you say you’re afraid of being beaten? You are, you know. I’ll tell you what. You shall have the hundred yards start. We shall easily walk in before that lazy old ‘Sticks,’ shan’t we, Springbok, my beauty?” she said, banteringly, patting the neck of her steed, a light, elastic-stepping animal with blood and mettle in him, who arched his neck and shook his mane in response to the caress. She sat him to perfection, the little hand bearing ever so lightly on the reins; and in a habit fitting her like a glove, and a coquettish straw hat surrounded by a sweeping ostrich plume, beneath which the blue eyes danced and sparkled in sheer light-heartedness, she made as pretty a picture as ever one could wish to look upon. At any rate, so thought her companion.

“Well, Sticks is lazy—at times—I grant you; but there’s method in his laziness. Don’t abuse Sticks.”

“Never mind, I know you’re afraid. Don’t think any more about it. Now I suppose you’re dying to. You men always want to do a thing directly you’re told not to.”

What will be the upshot, by-the-bye, of this standing arrangement of quartette? This is not the first ride by any means that those four have taken together. Together! It has been shown that one of the party, at any rate, had reached the “two’s company, three’s a crowd” stage—or for the present purpose four. Thus it followed that however often the group may have started together, it was bound to split up before going very far. Frequently Hicks would manage to drop behind with one, and that one was not Ethel. Frequently, also, Ethel would, manoeuvre to rush ahead in a swinging gallop, in which case she could not be suffered to ride alone, but whoever undertook to superintend her on these occasions, certainly it was not Hicks. Whether she was wont to execute these manoeuvres at Laura’s previous instigation, or whether her motives were less disinterested, deponent sayeth not. As for Claverton, he accepted the situation with, characteristic indifference. Yet what could be more fraught with elements of possible combustion? As for the man, he was perfectly unsusceptible, and wholly devoid of vanity. He looked upon his beautiful companion as a spoilt, pretty child, fond of teasing and chaff, and who amused him, and if he thought anything about himself in the matter, he supposed that he managed to amuse her. This is how he looked at it—but how did Ethel herself?

“Hallo! There goes a buck!” cried Claverton, suddenly. “May as well have a shot,” and he made a movement to dismount.

“No, don’t—please don’t! Springbok won’t stand fire, you know, and he’ll bolt with me.”

“Oh, all right. Then that lazy old Sticks has his good points after all?”

“Yes; a steady old arm-chair has its good points too. You can shoot from it,” she replied, scornfully.

“What a wooden comparison! Why not say a clothes-horse?”

Bang! The report of a gun behind them. “Hicks to the fore,” remarked Claverton, shading his eyes to watch the effect of the shot. But the buck held on its way, caring not a straw for the bullet which buried itself in the earth with a vicious thud some ten or a dozen yards behind.

In this way they rode on in the pleasant sunshine, and eventually drew rein in front of a prettily situated though roughly built house of red brick, with thatched roof and high stoep. This was the abode of a Dutchman, Isaac Van Rooyen by name, and here they had arranged to stay and have dinner, for on the frontier a standing hospitality is the rule, and in travelling every one makes a convenience of his neighbour and is made a convenience of in turn. The Boer, a large corpulent man of about sixty, advanced to welcome them as the clamorous tongues of a yelping and mongrel pack gave warning of their approach, and consigning their horses to a dilapidated-looking Hottentot, they entered the house. A long, low room furnished with the characteristic plainness of such an abode; a substantial table, several chairs, on some of which none but a lunatic or an inebriate would venture to trust his proportions for a single instant. In one corner stood an ancient and battered harmonium, another contained a sewing-machine and a huge family Bible in ponderous Dutch lettering, while the walls were garnished with sundry grievous prints, high in colour and grisly in design, representing Moses destroying the Tables of the Law, Elijah and the prophets of Baal, and so on. The vrouw arose from her coffee-brewing as they entered—the absorption of coffee is a sine qua non in a Boer domicile on the arrival of visitors—and greeted them with stolid and wooden greeting, and a brace of great shy and ungainly damsels—exact reproductions of their mother at twenty and twenty-one—looked scared as they limply shook hands with the new-comers. But others were there besides the regular inmates, for the Naylors had arrived, as also Armitage and Allen, and our friend Will Jeffreys, and these were keeping up a laborious conversation with the worthy Boer and his ponderous vrouw, whose daughters, aforesaid, eat together in speechless inanity, now and again venturing a “Ja” or a “Nay” if addressed, and straightway relapsing into a spasmodic giggle beneath their kapjes.

“Doesn’t Miss Brathwaite play?” inquired the Boer, with a glance at Ethel and then at the harmonium.

“‘England expects.’ Go now and elicit wheezy strains from yon venerable and timeworn fire-engine,” said Claverton, in a low tone.

She drew off her gloves in a resigned manner, and was about to sit down at the despised instrument, when some one putting a book on the music-stool in order to heighten the seat, that fabric underwent a total collapse and came to the ground with a crash. Another seat was found, and she began to play—but oh! what an instrument of torture it was—more to the performer than to the audience. Every other note stuck fast, keeping up an earsplitting and discordant hum throughout; and the bellows being afflicted with innumerable leaks, were the cause of much labour and sorrow to the player.

“I can’t play on this thing,” she said. “Every other note sticks down, and the bellows are all in holes, and—I won’t.”

Naylor explained to the Dutchman that Ethel was a great pianist but was nothing at harmoniums, which excuse covered her somewhat petulant retreat from the abominable instrument, and just then dinner was brought in. Then it became a question of finding seats, many of the chairs being hors de combat.

“Here you are, Allen; come and sit here,” called out Armitage. In a confiding moment, and the table being full, the unsuspecting youth dropped into the seat indicated, and then—dropped on the floor, for the rickety concern forthwith “resigned,” even as the music-stool had done before it. A roar of laughter went up from the incorrigible joker at the success of his impromptu trap, and Allen arose from the ruins of the chair, like Phoenix from the ashes.

“I say, though, that’s better than the cruise down the river with the bee in your bonnet, isn’t it, old chap?” said Armitage, exploding again. Allen looked rather glum, and another seat, not much less rickety than the other, was found for him.

When he was settled, the Boer stood up and with closed eyes began a long, rambling oration, presumably to the Creator, which was meant for grace, and having discoursed unctuously on everything, or nothing, for the space of several minutes, he set the example of falling to.

“Going up to Jim Brathwaite’s for the hunt to-morrow, Oom Isaac?” asked Armitage of his host. (Note 1.)

“Ja,” replied old Van Rooyen. “Can he shoot?” designating Claverton—the popular idea on the frontier being that an “imported” Briton must necessarily be an ass in all things pertaining to field pursuits.

“He just can. Didn’t you hear how he licked the Pexters down at my place?”

“Yes, I did hear that; I remember now;” and the Dutchman looked at Claverton with increased respect.

“But that’s the fellow to bring down a buck at five hundred yards,” went on Armitage, indicating Allen, who, regardless of what went on around him, was making terrific play with his knife and fork, and who, although seated next the speaker, remained in blissful unconsciousness of being the subject of any chaff, by reason of his ignorance of the Dutch language.

“Is he now? I shouldn’t have thought that,” was the deliberating reply; the matter-of-fact Boer not dreaming for a moment that the other was gammoning him.

And the ball of conversation rolled on, and the unseasoned stew was succeeded by a ponderous jar of quince preserve, then another lengthy grace and the inevitable coffee.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the room, Van Rooyen, with the freedom of his countrymen, was discussing “present company.”

“What a pretty girl she is!” he was saying, referring to Ethel. “Is she another of Mr Brathwaite’s daughters?”

“No, a niece,” replied Naylor, to whom the remark was addressed. “Her father is George Brathwaite, the M.L.A.”

“‘Ja,’ I know him,” replied the Dutchman. “He isn’t a good man (in the sense of ‘a good politician’). He voted against our interests in several things. But she’s a pretty girl, a very pretty girl. And the Englishman’s a good-looking fellow, too. Are they engaged?”

“Damned fool!” angrily muttered Claverton, who, while talking to Ethel, had overheard the above conversation and wondered whether Ethel had too.

“What’s the matter now?” said she, and the frown left his brow as the question convinced him she had not heard. But he turned and suggested to Armitage that it was time to saddle up.

“Well, yes—I think it is,” replied that worthy, who was busily debating in his own mind whether it would be carrying a joke too far if he inserted a burr or prickle of some sort beneath the saddle of Allen’s steady-going old mare; and forthwith a general move was made for the horses, which were duly brought to the door.

“Now, Allen, old chap, keep those awful spurs of yours out of my horse’s flank, or there’ll be the deuce to pay,” called out Armitage, as the absent-minded youth backed his steed violently into that of the speaker—whereupon a kicking match became imminent. Meanwhile Ethel was waiting to be put on her horse, and glanced half involuntarily and somewhat angrily in the direction of Claverton, who, whether by accident or of set purpose, was still on the stoep beginning to fill his pipe from Van Rooyen’s pouch, and apparently as ignorant of his actual ungallantry as though the fair sex formed no ingredient of the party. With concealed mortification she resigned herself to Will Jeffreys, who advanced to perform that necessary office, and eagerly seized the opportunity of riding by her side.

“Mr Armitage,” she called out, speaking over her shoulder, “do tell me that story about Spoek Krantz.”

Armitage ranged his horse on her unoccupied side and began his narrative, enlarging to an appalling extent as he went on.

“Don’t take in all he says, Miss Brathwaite. He’s cooking up a yarn for the occasion,” said Jeffreys.

Armitage vehemently protested that nothing was further from his intention, but to the jocular recrimination which followed, Ethel hardly listened. She thought that Claverton should be punished for his neglect by being made to ride behind. A punishment to which, by the way, the delinquent seemed to submit with exemplary patience, for he puffed away at his pipe, discoursing placidly to Allen, whom he was just in time to prevent from inflicting himself on Laura, thereby rendering Hicks a substantial service. Nevertheless Ethel, before they had gone one-third of the way, began to wish that Armitage was less garrulously disposed, and would vacate the place to which she had summoned him, and once when he dropped behind a little to light his pipe, she half turned her head with a strange wistfulness, and her pulses beat quicker as she hoped that the hoof-strokes which she heard overtaking her were not those of his steed. But they were, and as that light-hearted mortal ranged up beside her and launched out into a fresh stream of chaff and jocularity, and the end of the ride drew near, it seemed to her that the sunshine had gone out of the day, although there was not a cloud in the heavens and the whole beautiful landscape was bathed in that wondrous golden glow which precedes a South African sunset; and shall it be confessed, she felt sore and angry, and snubbed poor Jeffreys, and irritably checked the flow of Armitage’s running fire of small wit, till at last they drew rein at Jim Brathwaite’s house and were received by its jovial occupant in person.

“Hallo, Ethel; so you’ve come to help us shoot a buck. But where’s your gun?” chaffed he. “Keep quiet; get away you schelms,” he went on, shying a couple of big stones into the midst of some half-dozen huge rough-haired dogs, which rushed open-mouthed towards the equestrians, baying furiously. The rude but serviceable pack, stopped in their career, thought better of it and turned back, one of their number howling piteously, and limping from the effects of another “rock” hurled by Jim’s forcible and practised hand. “Well, Arthur,” as the other two came up, “we’ll show you some fun to-morrow. But come inside; I’ll send Klaas round to off-saddle.”

Note 1. “Uncle.” Among the Boers, “Oom” and “Tanta,” “Uncle” and “Aunt,” are used as complimentary prefixes when addressing elderly people, though these stand in no relation whatever to the speaker.