Читать книгу John Ames, Native Commissioner: A Romance of the Matabele Rising - Mitford Bertram - Страница 5

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.