'Tween Snow and Fire: A Tale of the Last Kafir War

by Bertram Mitford

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

  "BUT I AM THY LOVE."

  Three days later Carhayes arrived. He was in high spirits. Theremainder of his stock was under way, and, in charge of Eustace, wastrekking steadily down to his other farm in the Colony, which wassufficiently remote from the seat of hostilities to ensure its safety.He had ridden with them a day and a half to help start the _trek_, andhad then returned with all haste to enrol himself in the KaffrarianRangers--a mounted corps, raised among the stock-farmers of thedistrict, of whom it consisted almost entirely.

  "Wish I was you, Tom," Hoste had said ruefully. "Wouldn't I just liketo be going bang off to the front to have a slap at old Kreli instead ofhumbugging around here looking after stock. This _laager_ business isall fustian. I believe the things would be just as safe on the farm."

  "Well, shunt them back there and come along," was Carhayes' reply.

  "We are not all so fortunate as you, Mr Carhayes," retorted Mrs Hostewith a trifle of asperity, for this advice was to her by no meanspalatable. "What would you have done yourself, I should like to know,but for that accommodating cousin, who has taken all the trouble offyour hands and left you free to go and get shot if you like?"

  "Oh, Eustace? Yes, he's a useful chap," said Carhayes complacently,beginning to cram his pipe. "What do you think the beggar has gone anddone? Why, he has inspanned four or five boys from Nteya's location tohelp him with the _trek_! The very fellows we are trekking away from,by Jove! And they will help him, too. An extraordinary fellow,Eustace--I never saw such a chap for managing Kafirs. He can make 'emdo anything."

  "Well, its a good thing he can. But doesn't he want to go and see someof the fun himself?"

  "Not he. Or, if he does, he can leave Bentley in charge and come backas soon as he has put things straight. Bentley's my man down there. Ilet him live at Swaanepoel's Hoek and run a little stock of his own onconsideration of keeping the place in order and looking after itgenerally. He'll be glad enough to look after our stock now for aconsideration--if Eustace gets sick of it and really does elect to comeand have a shot at his `blanket friends'--Ho-ho!"

  The Kaffrarian Rangers were, as we have said, a corps raised in thedistrict. The farmers composing it mounted and equipped themselves, andelected their own leaders. There was little discipline, in the militarysense of the word, but the men knew each other and had thoroughconfidence in their leaders. They understood the natives, and were asmuch at home on the _veldt_ or in the bush as the Kafirs themselves.They affected no uniforms, but all were clad in a serviceable attirewhich should not be too conspicuous in cover--an importantconsideration--and all were well equipped in the way of arms and othernecessaries. They asked for no pay--only stipulating that they shouldbe entitled to keep whatever stock they might succeed in capturing fromthe enemy--which in many cases would be merely retaking their own. TheGovernment, now as anxious as it had been sceptical and indifferent amonth previously, gladly accepted the services of so useful a corps.The latter numbered between sixty and seventy men.

  This, then, was the corps to which Carhayes had attached himself, andamong the ranks of which, after two or three days of enforced delaywhile waiting for orders--and after a characteristically off-handfarewell to the Hostes and his wife--he proceeded to take his place.

  They were to march at sundown and camp for the night at the Kei Drift.All Komgha--and its wife--turned out to witness their departure.Farmers and storekeepers, transport-riders and Mounted Police, craftsmenand natives of every shade and colour, lined the roadway in serriedranks. There was a band, too, blowing off "God Save the Queen," withall the power of its leathern lungs. Cheer after cheer went up as themen rode by, in double file, looking exceedingly workman-like with theirwell filled cartridge belts and their guns and revolvers. Heartygood-byes and a little parting chaff from friends and intimates wereshouted after them through the deafening cheers and the brazen strainsof the band, and, their numbers augmented by a contingent of mountedfriends, who were to ride a part of the way with them, "just to see themsquarely off," the extremely neat and serviceable corps moved away intoa cloud of dust.

  There was another side to all this enthusiasm, however. A good manyfeminine handkerchiefs waved farewell to that martial band. A good manyfeminine handkerchiefs were, pressed openly or furtively to tearfuleyes. For of those threescore and odd men going forth that evening inall the pride of their strength and martial ardour, it would be strange,indeed, if some, at any rate, were not destined to leave their bones ina far-away grave--victims to the bullet and assegai of the savage.

  The days went by and grew into weeks, but there was no want of life andstir in the little settlement. As Carhayes had remarked grimly duringhis brief sojourn therein--life appeared to be made up of bugle callsand lies. Hardly a half-hour that the bugle was not sounding--either atthe Police camps, or at those of the regular troops now being rapidlymoved to the front, and scarcely a day went by but a corps of mountedburghers or volunteers passed through, _en route_ for the seat of war.The store keepers and Government contractors laughed and waxed fat.

  All sorts of rumours were in the air, and as usual wildly contradictory.The white forces in the Transkei were in imminent peril ofannihilation. The Gcaleka country had been swept clear from end to end.Kreli was sueing for peace. Kreli had declared himself strong enoughto whip all the whites sent against him, and then with the help of theGaikas and Hlambis to invade and ravage the Eastern Province of theColony. The Gaikas were on the eve of rising, and making common causewith their Gcaleka brethren. The Gaikas had not the slightest wish forwar. The Gaikas were never more insolent and threatening. The Gaikaswere thoroughly cowed and lived in mortal dread of being attackedthemselves. Thus Rumour many tongued.

  The while events had taken place at the seat of war. The Kafirs hadattacked the Ibeka, a hastily fortified trading post in the Transkei, ingreat force, and after many hours of determined fighting had beenrepulsed with great loss, repulsed by a mere handful of the MountedPolice, who, with a Fingo levy, garrisoned the place. Kreli's principalkraal on the Xora River had been carried by assault and burnt to theground,--the Gcaleka chieftain, with his sons and councillors, narrowlyescaping falling into the hands of the Colonial forces--and severalother minor engagements had been fought. But the powerful Gaika andHlambi tribes located throughout British Kaffraria, though believed tobe restless and plotting, continued to "sit still," as if watching theturn of events, and night after night upon the distant hills the signalfires of the savages gleamed beneath the midnight sky in flashing, luridtongues, speaking their mysterious, awesome messages from the Amatola tothe Bashi.

  Hoste--who, with other of his neighbours, was occupied with the armedtending of his stock in _laager_--was growing daily more restless anddiscontented. It was cruelly rough on him, he declared, to be pinneddown like that. He wanted to go and have his share of the fun. The warmight be brought to an end any day, and he would have seen nothing ofit. He would try and make some satisfactory arrangement and then getaway to the front at once, he vowed. In which resolution he met withbut lukewarm encouragement from his wife.

  "You should just see the yarn that friend of Payne's wrote him about thefight at Kreli's kraal, Ada," he remarked one day, having just riddenin. "He says it was the greatest sport he ever had. Eh, Payne?"

  That worthy, who had accompanied him, nodded oracularly--a nod whichmight mean anything. Taught wisdom by the possession of a partner ofhis own joys and sorrows, he was not going to put himself in activeopposition to what he termed the Feminine Controller-General'sDepartment. But he and Hoste had hatched out between them a little planwhich should leave them free, in a day or two, to start off in search ofthe death or glory coveted by their martial souls.

  The cottage which Hoste had taken for his family was a tiny pill-box ofa place on the outer fringe of the settlement, fronting upon the_veldt_, which situation rendered the ladies a little nervous at night,notwithstanding an elaborate system of outposts and p
ickets by which thevillage was supposed to be protected. At such a time the presence ofEanswyth, of whom they were very fond, was a perfect godsend to MrsHoste and her daughters. The latter were nice, bright children offifteen and thirteen, respectively, and there were also two boys--thenaway at a boarding school in Grahamstown. If Eanswyth ever had reasonto complain of the dullness or loneliness of her life on the farm, hereit was quite the reverse. Not only was the house so small that fourpersons were sufficient to crowd it, but somebody or other, situatedlike themselves, was always dropping in, sitting half the day chatting,or gossiping about the progress of the war and the many rumours andreports which were flying around. In fact, there was seldom a respitefrom the "strife of tongues," for no sooner had one batch of visitorsdeparted than another would arrive, always in the most informal manner.Now, of all this excess of sociability, Eanswyth was becoming a trifleweary.

  To begin with, she could obtain little or no privacy. Accustomed tofull measure of it in her daily life, she sorely missed it now. Sheeven began to realise that what she had taken as a matter of course--what, indeed, some of her neighbours had half commiserated her for--wasa luxury, and, like other articles falling under that category, a thingto be dispensed with now that they were living, so to say, in a state ofsiege.

  She was fond of the two girls, as we have said; yet there were timeswhen she would have preferred their room to their company--would havepreferred a long, solitary walk. She was fond of her friend andentertainer; yet that cheery person's voluble tongue was apt to besometimes a trifle oppressive. She liked her neighbours and they likedher; yet the constant and generally harmless gossip of the othersettlers' wives and daughters, who were ever visiting or being visitedby them, regarding work, native servants, babies, engagements, the war,and so forth, would strike her as boring and wearisome to the lastdegree. There were times when she would have given much to be alone--absolutely and entirely alone--and think.

  For she had enough to think about now, enough to occupy every moment ofher thoughts, day and night. But was it good that it should be so--wasit good?

  "I am a wicked woman!" she would say to herself, half bitterly, halfsadly, but never regretfully--"a fearfully wicked woman. That is why Ifeel so restless, so discontented."

  Never regretfully? No; for the sudden rush of the new dawn which hadswept in upon her life had spread over it an enchanted glamour that wasall-powerful in its surpassing sweetness. That first kiss--alone in thedarkness of that peril-haunted midnight--had kindled the Fire of theLive Coal; that one long, golden day, they two alone together, hadriveted the burning link. There was no room for regret.

  Yet there were times when she was a prey to the most poignant anguish--awoman of Eanswyth's natural and moral fibre could never escape that--could never throw herself callously, unthinkingly, into the perilousgulf. A mixture of sensuousness and spirituality, the spirit would everbe warring against the mind--which two are _not_ convertible terms byany means--and often in the dark, silent hours of night a sense of theblack horror of her position would come upon her in full force. "Heavenhelp me!" she would cry half aloud in the fervour of her agony. "Heavenhelp me!" And then would be added the mental reservation, "But _not_through the means of loss--not through the loss of this new andenthralling influence which renders the keenest of mental anguish,engrossingly, indescribably sweet!"

  "Save me from the effect, but, oh, remove not the cause!" A strange, aparadoxical prayer, but a genuine one; a terribly natural one. Thuspoor humanity, from--and before--the days of Augustine of Hippo untilnow--until the consummation of the world.

  As the days grew into weeks, the strain upon such a nature as Eanswyth'sbegan to tell--as it was bound to do. She began to look pale and worn,and in such close companionship the change could not escape the eyes ofher friends.

  "Don't you let yourself be anxious, my dear," said a motherly settler'swife one day, bursting with a desire to administer comfort. "TheRangers will soon be back now. And they're all right so far--have hadsome rough work and haven't lost a man. Your husband knows how to takecare of himself; never fear. Yes, they'll soon be back now."

  This was the sort of consolation she had to acquiesce in--to receivewith a glad smile at the time, and for hours after to torture herselfwith the miserable guilty consciousness that the fate of the KaffrarianRangers was to her a matter of infinitesimal account. There was one,however, whom appearances were beginning no longer to deceive, who, inpursuance of the strange and subtle woman's instinct, which had movedher to make that remark to her husband _in camera_, as recorded in aformer chapter, began to feel certain that the real object of Eanswyth'ssolicitude was to be found west, not east--back in the peaceful Colonyinstead of in the Transkei braving peril at the hands of the savageenemy. That one was Mrs Hoste. She was not a clever woman by anymeans--not even a sharp woman, yet her mind had leaped straight to theroot of the matter. And the discovery made her feel exceedinglyuncomfortable.

  That farewell, made in outwardly easy social fashion, under severalpairs of eyes, had been a final one. Eustace had not ridden over onanother visit, not even a flying one, as Eanswyth had hoped he would.Still, bitterly disappointed as she was, she had appreciated the wisdomof his motives--at first. If there was one quality more than anothershe had admired in him in times past, it was his thorough and resoluteway of doing a thing. If anything had to be done, he did it thoroughly.The undertaking upon which he was then engaged certainly demanded allhis time and attention, and he had given both, as was his wont. Stillshe had hoped he would have found or made some opportunity for seeingher once more.

  She had heard from him two or three times, but they were letters thatall the world might have seen, for Eustace was far too prudent to sendanything more meaning into a house full of other people, and a small andcrowded house at that. The mere glance of an eye--purely accidental,but still a mere glance--on the part of a third person, no matter who,would be more than sufficient to tumble down his fair house of cards ingreat and irreparable ruin. He was not a man to take any such risks.

  She had appreciated his caution--at first. But, as time went by, theblack drop of a terrible suspicion distilled within her heart. What ifhe had begun to think differently! What if he had suffered himself tobe carried away by a mere moment of passing passion! What if time andabsence had opened his eyes! Oh, it was too terrible! It could not be.Yet such things had happened--were happening every day.

  An awful sense of desolation was upon her. She hungered for hispresence--for the sound of his voice--for even a scrap of papercontaining one loving word which his hand had written. To this had theserene, proud, strong-natured woman come. Her love had humbled her tothe dust. Thus do we suffer through those for whom we transgress--thusdoes the delight of an hour become the scourge of a year.