Chapter Fourteen.
A Good Understanding
“To let him go?” echoed the girl. “But – ought you not to have had him arrested as a traitor and a murderer? Good Heavens! The whole plot is too awful.”
“And so I divulge it to you first, instead of to my fellow-man Orwell, R.M., or Isard, commanding the Matabeleland Mounted Police in Gandela. Why?”
Clare looked puzzled.
“I don’t know why,” she said. “But it seems a dreadful responsibility.”
“So I was inclined to think – in fact, very much did think – when having mapped out my plans everything seemed to conspire to smash them up. Yourself among the said everything.”
“Myself? Now, how?”
Lamont smiled that queer sour smile again.
“Why, certainly. Didn’t you make a point of my entering for the tent-pegging? What would have happened if I’d won? I couldn’t receive a prize by deputy. Didn’t you want me to help you and your sister, what time to have left the side of our worthy and reverend magician would have been fatal?”
“Yes. I did that,” said Clare penitently. “But, Mr Lamont, how on earth could I have foreseen that anything of the kind was brewing?”
“No, you couldn’t. I’m not blaming you, you understand, no, not for a moment.”
What was this? Not blaming her? Blaming her! Clare Vidal was not accustomed to be ‘blamed’ any more than to have her requests refused, especially in this land where there were not even enough women to go round, as she was fond of putting it. She was wondering what awful and scathing rejoinder she would have made to any man who should have ventured on such a remark to her a day or two ago. Yet to this one, lounging back there with one elbow resting on a big cold stone, lighting his pipe, she had no thought of scathing rejoinder. She was all aglow with admiration of his nerve and self-reliance.
“Then there was a bore of a fellow – Jim Steele – who was rather screwed, and wanted me to fight him, silly ass! Of course I wasn’t going to do that there, under any circumstances, but he – and the other idiots who thought I was afraid of him – little dreamt how they were trying to dig their own graves. For our worthy schemer Qubani would have thought me grotesque with a swelled eye, and you are bound to sustain some such damage in a rough-and-tumble with a big powerful devil like Steele. It was important then that Qubani should not think me grotesque.”
“Yes, I know. I’ve heard about that affair. There’s very little that doesn’t get round to us, in a small place like this, Mr Lamont. And you told him you’d meet him later – I know all about it, you see. Well, you mustn’t. It’s not at all worthy of grown men to act like a lot of overgrown schoolboys. It’s undignified.”
“Oh, I very much more than quite agree with you there. But then I promised the chap. Now, how can I go back on a promise?”
More than ever now did her brother-in-law’s insinuations with regard to this man come back to Clare. And it struck her that he did not plead that cowardice might be imputed to him if he failed – only that having made a promise he ought to keep it. “He isn’t a bad chap at bottom, Jim Steele,” went on Lamont, “except when he’s squiffy, and then he gets quarrelsome. Probably he’ll have forgotten all about everything by the time he wakes, or if not will recognise that he’s made an ass of himself.”
“I should hope so, indeed. But we are getting away from the witch-doctor. Why did you let him go?”
“Instinct, pure instinct. Natives are queer animals, and you don’t always know quite how to take them. If we had kept old Qubani, the township might have been rushed this very night. By turning him loose, full up with what I told him – well the move is justified by results, or you and I would not be talking together up here comfortably at this moment. Now this one has taken on a sort of respect for me – they do that, you know. I asked him what he thought would happen if I gave away for what purpose he was there. He wilted at that. Then I told him I gave him his life, and he must not be less generous. He talked round and round for a little, then said that I had better begin to move with my things at a time of the moon I reckoned out at somewhere about a fortnight hence. So now you see why I want you to get Fullerton to take you in to Buluwayo.”
“But, he won’t do it. He might if you were to put it to him.”
“That’s just when he wouldn’t. You know what they’d say, Miss Vidal ‘Lamont’s got ’em again’ – meaning the funks.”
This was said with little bitterness, rather with a sort of tolerant contempt. Clare felt ashamed as she remembered all the remarks to which she had listened, reflecting on this man’s courage, and all because he did not take kindly to some low, pothouse brawl. She kindled.
“How can anyone say such a thing – such a wicked thing – when you have saved the whole settlement from massacre?”
“Oh, that wouldn’t count. To begin with, they wouldn’t believe what I’ve just been telling you – would say I’d invented it. They’ll believe it fast enough in a week or two’s time though. By the way, it was the sight of old Qubani and his red cap that made me miss that last tilt at the peg, and a good thing I did miss it. Providential, as Father Mathias would say.”
“Father Mathias? Have you seen him lately?” said Clare.
“We travelled part of the way together when I was coming back from Lyall’s. We were caught in a nasty dry thunderstorm and took refuge in Zwabeka’s kraal. It was there I overheard that nice little conspiracy.”
“And so you travelled with Father Mathias?” said Clare. “I hope you were nice to him. He is a great friend of ours.”
“Nice to him, Miss Vidal?” answered Lamont, raising his brows as if amused at the question. “Why not? He is a very nice man. Why should I be other than nice to him?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Except that – well, he is a priest.”
“What then? Oh, I see what you mean. But I have no prejudice against priests. On the contrary – my experience of them is that they are kindly, tolerant men, very self-sacrificing and with considerable knowledge of human nature. When you’ve said that, it follows that they are almost invariably good company. This one was decidedly so. Why on earth should I not be ‘nice’ to him?”
“Oh well, you know – you Protestants do have prejudices of the kind,” she answered somewhat lamely.
“But I am not a Protestant.”
“Not a Protestant? I don’t quite understand.”
“Certainly not I don’t protest against anything or anybody. I believe in competition, and if the Catholic Church were to capture this country, or England, or the entire world for that matter, I should reckon that the very fact of doing so would be to establish its claim to the right to do so.”
Woman the apostle – woman the missioner – felt moved to say, “Why don’t you examine her claims to do so, and then aid in furthering them?” But Clare Vidal, looking at the speaker, only quoted to herself, “Thou art not far from the kingdom of heaven.”
“As a matter of fact,” went on Lamont, “I find among Catholics far more tolerance – using the word in its broad, work-a-day sense – than among those belonging to any other creed. By the way – are you one, may I ask?”
“Why, of course.”
“I didn’t know. Well, you must take my opinion – given in utter ignorance of the fact – for what it’s worth. There’s a sort of a Catholic colony near my place at home, and the priest is one of my most valued friends.”
Clare brightened.
“Really?” she said. “How nice. But, Mr Lamont, how is it you live over here? Do you prefer this country to England?”
“I think it prefers me. You see, I can’t afford to live in my own place. It’s dipped – mortgaged, you understand – almost past praying for. So it’s let, and here I am.”
“So that’s why you are here?”
“Yes. The life suits me too. I believe if a miracle were to be worked, and my place started again clear for me, I should still stick out here, or at any rate come out every other year.”
Clare looked at him, and the beautiful Irish eyes, their deep blue framed by thick dark lashes, were sympathetic and soft. She was thinking of the abominable stories Ancram had been spreading about this man; how he had been hounded out of his county for cowardice, and so on. She repeated —
“So that is why you are out here?”
“Of course,” he answered looking at her with mild astonishment. “Why else should I be?”
“Oh no. I hope you don’t think me very inquisitive, Mr Lamont. Why, it really seems as if I were trying to – to ‘pump’ you – isn’t that the word?”
“But such a thought never entered my head. Why should it?”
Clare felt uncomfortable. There was manifestly no answer to be made to this. So she said —
“By the way, who is this Mr Ancram? You knew him at home, didn’t you?”
“Oh yes. Slightly, and didn’t care for him at that. He turned up at my place here one night. Peters had picked him up in woeful plight down Pagadi way – and gave me the idea he had come to stay. I’ve nothing to say against the chap, mind, but I don’t care for him.”
Clare was no mischief-maker, still she could not help saying —
“Well, I don’t think he’s any friend of yours, from what I’ve heard.”
“No? I suppose not. He’s been putting about a yarn or two of his own here with regard to me, with just that substratum of truth about it that makes the half lie the most telling. But – good Lord, what does it matter?”
Clare’s eyes opened wide. There was no affectation about this indifference – and how different this man was to the general ruck. Instead of getting into a fume and promising to call the delinquent to account, and so forth, as most men would have done, this one simply lay back against the hard cold stone, puffed out a cloud of smoke, and said, “What does it matter?”
“Then you are indifferent to the opinion of other people about you?” she said.
“Utterly. Utterly and entirely. I look at it from this point of view. If anything is said to my discredit, those whose opinions are worth having won’t believe it. If they do, their opinions are not worth having – from my stand-point. See?”
“Yes, I do. You are a practical philosopher.”
“I don’t aim at being. The conclusion is sheer common-sense.”
Then there fell silence. The rays of the newly risen sun poured down hotter and hotter upon the parched-up land, but the air was wonderfully clear. Behind lay the township, its zinc roofs flashing and shimmering in the unstinted morning radiance. Before lay roll upon roll of billowy verdure, and, on the right, a vast expanse stretching away, blue with distance, to the far skyline. Bright, peaceful and free, yet at that moment seething with demoniacal hate and the planning of demoniacal deeds. Yet here they sat, these two, conversing as unconcernedly as though such things were as completely impossible, as completely of the past, as one of them, at any rate, had up to half an hour ago imagined.
“I must be going back,” said Clare. “This is only a before breakfast constitutional.”
“I’ll go too. I’ve found out all I want to. I shall start back home this evening.”
“This evening? Why, you are never going back to that lonely farm again, with these savages plotting to murder us all?”
“Yes, I am. They won’t do it yet I am persuaded of that.”
Clare’s eyes dilated, as he walked beside her, leading his horse. The ‘coward’ again, she could not help thinking to herself. How many of those who so decried him, knowing what he did, would have started on a long solitary ride across the country to return to a solitary, and practically defenceless, dwelling at the end of the journey?
“But get Fullerton to take you into Buluwayo for a time,” he repeated, as they neared the township. “This place is too small, and straggling, and might be rushed.”
“But he won’t. He’d laugh at the idea, if I put it to him.”
“Yes. I know. Fullerton’s a pig-headed chap – very. Still you needn’t put it on its true grounds. Make out you want to shop, or see a dentist, or something, and get your sister to back you up. It’ll be strange if you can’t work it between you. Only – do it – do it.”
She was impressed by his earnestness, and duly promised.
“Do look in and see us before you go out, Mr Lamont,” she said, as they regained the township. “When do you start?”
“About sundown. There’s a nice new moon, and it’s pleasanter to ride at night, also easier on one’s horse.”
“Well, we shall be at home all the afternoon, Lucy and I. Good-bye for the present.”
Chapter Fifteen.
A Council of War
When the strokes of the horse’s hoofs told that he had mounted and was riding away, Clare could not resist turning to glance back at him. How well he looked in the saddle, she thought, and then the calm strength of the almost melancholy face as he talked to her, the easy indifference to what would have irritated and stung most men, came back to her. This was an individuality absolutely new to her experience, and one of vivid interest, so vivid indeed that she began to recognise with a sort of wonder that she could not get it out of her thoughts. She recalled their conversation. If he had laid himself out to say exactly the right thing all through it, he could not have pleased her more, and yet it was obvious that he was talking perfectly naturally, and without premeditation – certainly without an idea of pleasing anybody. But – was she going to make a sort of hero of the man? Well, it certainly began to look something like it. So when at the breakfast-table Fullerton remarked —
“Didn’t I see you talking to Lamont just now, Clare, over by the Sea Deep stands?” she felt that the mere question evolved within her quite an unexpected degree of combativeness.
“Yes, you very probably did,” she answered. “We met during my morning constitutional while you lazy people were snoring. He’s very interesting.”
“Is he?”
The tone, savouring of curt incredulity, whipped up the combative instinct still more, as she answered, with quite unnecessary crispness —
“Certainly. He’s got ideas, anyhow. So there’s that much interesting about him, if only for the scarcity of those who have.”
“Ideas or not, he funked again yesterday. When Jim Steele wanted him to take his coat off,” sneered Fullerton. Then the accumulated combativeness broke its barriers and fairly overwhelmed the incautious sneerer.
“Funked again!” echoed Clare. “I don’t believe he ever did such a thing in his life – no, nor ever could. Because he was too much of a gentleman to be drawn into a disgusting tap-room brawl to please a drunken rowdy, you call that funking. Well, I don’t, and I shouldn’t have the good opinion I have of Mr Lamont if he had acted otherwise. You forget, too, that we were all there, and even in Gandela I suppose it’s hardly the correct thing to indulge in prize fights in the presence of ladies.”
“Phew!” whistled Fullerton. “So that’s the way the cat jumps; Clare has struck her flag at last, Lucy. Lamont’s captured her.”
“Oh, go easy, Dick. I won’t have Clare teased,” was all the response he got in the conjugal quarter.
“She seems jolly well able to take care of herself anyhow,” pronounced her brother-in-law resentfully.
“I like fair play,” rejoined the girl, “and a great many of you don’t seem to know the meaning of the word. Because somebody says one thing, and somebody else another about a man who is really too much of a man to bother himself about it – you all go to work to make him out this and to make him out that. You’re worse than a pack of spiteful women.”
Oh, how she longed to tell them all she knew – how the man they were decrying had spent the day watching over the safety of all present, how his cool nerve and unflagging resource had averted from them the ghastly peril that threatened. But this she could not do. She was bound over to absolute and entire secrecy.
“By Jingo, I’ll tell you another thing now,” said Fullerton. “Blest if I didn’t meet this very chap, Lamont, at the bend of the road, just beyond the house, at twelve o’clock last night – you know, just after those fellows left us. He was strolling this way, and he’d got a Lee-Metford magazine rifle. I asked him what the deuce he was playing at sentry-go like that for, and he grunted something about getting his hand in, whatever that might mean; and when I wanted him to come in and have a whisky – for you can’t be inhospitable even though you don’t care much for a fellow – he wouldn’t, because he was afraid of scaring you all if you saw him with a rifle at that time of night, and of course he wouldn’t leave it outside. What was he up to, that’s the question. I own it stumps me.”
“Ah!” said Clare, with a provoking smile. “What was he up to?”
But a new light had swept in upon her mind. In view of what she had learned that morning there was nothing eccentric about this lonely watcher and his midnight vigil. And yet – and yet – why should he have singled out Richard Fullerton’s house as the special object of his self-imposed guardianship?
Meanwhile a sort of council of war was going on elsewhere. It consisted of four persons, Orwell the Resident Magistrate, Isard the officer in command of the Mounted Police stationed at Gandela, Driffield the Native Commissioner, and Lamont. To the other three the latter had just unfolded his tale of the conspiracy, and the steps he had taken to avert its execution on the previous day.
It had been received in varying manner. Orwell, a recent importation from England, and who deemed himself lucky in drawing a fixed salary from the Government of the Chartered Company as against years of waiting as a briefless barrister, was inclined to treat it flippantly. Isard, on the other hand, thought there might be something in it, but was resentfully disposed towards Lamont for not consulting him from the very first. He was responsible for the safety of the place, in a way, even more than the R.M., he deemed, and should have been informed of what was going on in order to take the necessary steps. But Driffield was fully awake to the gravity of the situation. He moved constantly among the natives, and understood not only their language perfectly but their ways of thought, and customs, and now this development seemed to fit in with, and piece together, what he had only heard darkly rumoured and hinted at among them.
“One thing about it puzzles me,” said Orwell. “You say that these fellows were actually posted up there on Ehlatini watching us all the time, Lamont. Now, how on earth could you find that out for certain?”
“Spoor. A considerable body like that could not have got up there and gone away again without leaving plenty of tracks, even when the ground is as dry as it is now. Now could it?”
“Oh, I suppose not,” answered Orwell rather hastily, for to him the mysteries of spoor were simply a blank page.
Lamont went on, “I’ll take you up there and point it all out to you. What do you say, Isard?”
“Yes, I’d like to see it,” was the answer, sceptically made, for Isard was a retired military man, with but little experience of veldt-craft.
“Here is another trifle or two which is corroborative evidence,” went on Lamont, producing the cow-tail ornament which Clare had picked up, as also one he himself had found.
“Ah yes. Well, but two swallows don’t make a summer,” said Orwell, still flippant.
“No, and two cow-tails don’t make an impi,” rejoined Lamont equably. “But these things are never worn as peaceable adornments. Driffield will bear me out in that.”
“That’s a fact,” said the Native Commissioner decisively.
“We ought to have been told, Orwell and I,” pronounced Isard briskly. “We’d have arrested this witch-doctor, and laid him by the heels as a hostage.”
“You’d have spoilt the whole show,” answered Lamont calmly. “The rest would have seen that something was wrong and would have rushed us at a disadvantage. What then? There wasn’t a man Jack on that race ground yesterday with so much as a six-shooter in his hip pocket. Where would they all have come in – and the women and children? Think it out a moment. No, my plan was the best.”
“Lamont’s right,” said Driffield. “By Jove, Lamont’s right! I’ve always said we go about a deuced sight too careless in this country, with no more means of defence than a toothpick, a pipe, and a bunch of keys.”
“Well, the point is,” struck in Orwell, rather testily, “what are we going to do now? Yes. What the very devil are we going to do now? Supposing I – or rather Isard and I – get laagering up the township, we incur the devil’s own responsibility, and then, if nothing comes of it, maybe we shan’t get into high hot water at Buluwayo for raising an all-searching scare.”
“I still think we ought to have boned the witch-doctor,” said Isard, “even if we waited until everybody had gone home. How’s that, Lamont?”
“It isn’t. In the first place, I had pledged myself to let him go away safe. In the next, you’d have brought matters to a head a lively sight sooner than was wanted. As it is, we have nearly a fortnight to get ready in.”
“How do you get at that?”
“Well, I’ve got at it – never mind how. The point is to see that you profit by the knowledge. I shall. I’m going back to my farm to-night.”
“Going back to your farm? The devil you are!” exclaimed Orwell.
“Of course. I’m not going to be the one to start the scare. I’ve warned every fellow I could, but they took it as a howling joke – like in the case of old Noah when he was knocking up the ark.”
There was a laugh at this.
“Well, I’ve done all I could,” he went on. “If you see an idiot sprinting straight for the edge of a precipice and when you warn him off he persists in swearing there’s no precipice there – what can you do? Nothing. Your responsibility ceases, unless you are physically strong enough to hold him back. Now, I am not physically strong enough to hold back the whole Matyantatu district. Give us another fill of your ’bacco, Orwell. Mine has all run to dust.”
“The thing is, what’s to be done?” went on Orwell, now rather testily.
“You and Isard must settle that,” answered Lamont. “I’m not responsible for the safety of the township. Only remember,” and here he became impressive, “you have women and children in the place, and lots of the houses are rather outlying. What I would suggest is to formulate some scheme by which you could run together some sort of laager at very short notice. Get all the waggons you can, and sand-bags and store-bags and so on, and warn quietly all the most level-headed of the community, and fix up that they shall get inside it if necessary. Only, do the thing quietly, so you will escape the obloquy of posing as scare-mongers and yet not give it away to the natives that you’re funking them. Isard, with his knowledge of strategy, ought to be able to arrange all that to a hair.”
This was rather a nasty one to Isard, whom the speaker happened to know had been one of those who was too ready to take in the insinuations of cowardice that had been made against himself, and had been a bit short and supercilious in consequence.
“That’s all very fine and large,” retorted the police captain. “But what we should like to know is, how the devil we’re going to get that very short notice.”
“You have native detectives attached to your force,” answered Lamont, “who may or may not be reliable – probably not. But failing them, or in any case, if I’m above ground I’ll contrive to give it you.”
“You? Why, how?”
“I told you I was going to start out for my farm to-night. After that I’m going to pay another visit to Zwabeka’s kraal.”
“The devil you are!” And Orwell and the police captain looked at each other. The same thought was in both their minds. This Lamont had acquired a reputation for being careful of his skin. Why, even the new arrival, Ancram, who had known him at home, had added to such reputation by the tale he had put about as to the reason why Lamont had found his own county too hot to hold him. Yet here he was proposing to go and put his head into the lion’s mouth. The subject of their thoughts, reading them, smiled to himself.
“Certainly I am,” he said. “You see, now, I was right in keeping faith with old Qubani. I’ll be able to find out something, and when I do I’ll let you know by hook or by crook. Meanwhile get everything prepared – quietly if you can, but – prepared. Now I don’t think we’ve any more to talk about, so I shall get back to Foster’s. Coming, Driffield?”
“Yes,” answered the Native Commissioner.
The two officials left together looked at each other for a moment in silence.
“Can’t make that fellow out,” said Orwell, breaking it. “I like Lamont well enough, but there’s no doubt about it that on at least two occasions, irrespective of Ancram’s yarn about him, he – well, er – caved in. Yet now he’s as cool and collected as a cucumber.”
“’M – yes. A collected cucumber,” said Isard.
“Oh, don’t be an ass, Isard. Now, I wonder if it’s a case of the nigger lion-tamer who used to stick his head in the lion’s mouth every evening, but when some fighting rough threatened to take it out of him he ran. That cad wouldn’t have gone into that lion’s cage even, let alone stick his head into the brute’s mouth. No, I expect we are all funksticks on some point or other. What?”
“Perhaps,” said Isard frostily, not in the least agreeing. Outwardly he was a tall, fine, soldierly man, looking well set up and smart in his uniform and spurs, and ‘Jameson’ hat. He had a bit of a reputation for ‘side,’ and now he little relished playing second fiddle to a man he esteemed as lightly as he did Lamont. “I don’t know that the fellow’s yarn isn’t all cock-and-bull and mare’s-nest,” he went on. “You see, it’s in his interest to pose as the saviour of Gandela.”
And he clanked out, not quite so convinced of what he preached, all the same.
“Say, Mr Lamont,” grinned the bar-keeper, as he and Driffield entered the hotel, “I’m afraid you won’t be able to pull off that scrap with Jim Steele to-day. He’s much too boozed.”
“Is he? Oh well, I really can’t be expected to hang about Gandela waiting till Jim Steele condescends to be sober again. Now can I? I put it to anyone.”
“Certainly not,” said Driffield. “You’ve given him every chance.”
A murmur of assent went up from those in the room, with one or two exceptions. These, charitably opined, though they did not say so, that it was ‘slim’ of Lamont putting off the affair, knowing what sort of state the other man would be in for the next three days at least. Lamont went on —
“He can take it on any time he likes. For the matter of that he can come out to my place and have it there. I’ll put him up for the occasion. Peters ’ll see fair play. What more can I do!”
It was agreed that the speaker stood vindicated.