Part 17 (1/2)
While she rides, her mother is pacing the verandah with Mr Trail. Good Mr Trail, he is soothing that ruffled spirit, deprecating its jealousy of authority in trifles; he a.n.a.lyses Mrs Daveney's motives, he sifts them like wheat before her very face, and he condenses, in the ”half-hour's talk,” almost the history of her moral life since her marriage. He is a very old friend; he has been a.s.sociated with her in her husband's district for years; he has seen her children grow up, and he loves them.
He loves Eleanor best, though: we naturally feel most for those we pity.
And Eleanor--she is riding side-by-side with Major Frankfort. Ah, take heed, Frankfort--she has, as yet, no thought of thee!
It was like a picture of a hunting-party in old times. Eleanor revived to new life on horseback, and her bright bay steed rejoiced in the precious burden he bore. She took the lead with Frankfort, leaving her father with Marion and Ormsby. Poor Ormsby, he deserved some credit for letting Frankfort arrange the reins for Marion; but the rosy lips were pouting, the eyes reproachfully turned towards him, and he could not resist the temptation of joining her in the avenue when her father fell back to see that the escort following them was well armed.
Start not, reader, at the notion of ladies riding for pleasure with armed escorts in a heathen land. Many a time and oft have I traversed these enamelled plains, too much exhilarated with the grandeur of the scene to think of danger.
Eleanor, in her dark riding-habit, fitting so as admirably to display the graceful shape and easy att.i.tude of the rider, a large, simple straw hat shading the face, over which, under the influence of the refres.h.i.+ng breeze, a hue like the inside of a delicate sh.e.l.l was stealing, was a delightful picture to Frankfort, who had often longed to draw her from the shade she always sought; and Marion, in a riding-dress like her sister's, but with an ostrich plume wound round her hat, resembled one of those saucy dames, who ”went a hunting” in the merry days of vicious, pleasant, witty Charles the Second.
They scarce drew rein for four miles. There was no spoor of Kafirs, the hills were silent, and there were herds of bucks gathered on the plains.
The tribes were evidently sitting ominously still.
The Trails and Mrs Daveney were watching at the gateway when the riders came in sight. Those left behind were always anxious till the wanderers came back again, in these uncertain days.
The time of truce was pa.s.sed by the settlers in the district in ”making ready” for the expectant foe--in Kafirland the people were collecting cattle, arms, and ammunition. It was the lull that precedes the storm, and the community at Annerley knew it. All there calmly but resolutely awaited the crisis. The women, children, and old men, occupying the wagon bivouac, were fain to be content with the news they received occasionally from their friends at their homesteads; the Trails kept the even tenor of their way in the school, and among the humble people of the settlement; and Ormsby, unable to restrain his pa.s.sion for Marion, was in a serious dilemma between his wish to remain and Frankfort's advice to him to rejoin his regiment at once, if he was not in earnest.
”In earnest, my good fellow!” exclaimed the incorrigible flirt; ”you don't suppose I am in earnest, do you?”
”Then, if you are not in earnest, according to the world's acceptance of the term,” replied Frankfort, ”you should go. If you remain under such circ.u.mstances, I can neither consider you as a man of honour nor an honourable man.”
Ormsby was selfish, as you know; but he had a great respect for Frankfort, who, without making a fuss about being a ”man of honour,”
_was_ an honourable man. Ah, reader! there is a wide difference between the two, as perhaps you have found before now.
That evening Ormsby went to Mr Daveney, and solicited leave to pay his addresses to his daughter Marion.
Mr Daveney desired time to think; but, at any rate, refused to hear of a definite engagement until the young soldier had reconsidered the subject, and written home to his father for ”consent and approbation.”
Nay, the honest-hearted settler--Mr Daveney and his wife often referred to themselves as settlers--would have had the young man return to his regiment without delay, that he might try the test of time and absence, before Marion was even consulted; but despatches suddenly arrived, bringing accounts of the result of the great meeting with the chiefs, who, contrary to their usual practice, breathed nothing but war and defiance in the very teeth of the authorities. It was clear, the borders of the colony could not be pa.s.sed with any chance of safety.
There seemed no alternative now but to await the reiteration of the war-cry, and stand to arms from Port Elizabeth to Natal. The Dutch in the upper districts refused their aid in the Colonial cause, and the Kafirs chuckled at hearing that the _Amahulu_ and the _Amaglezi_--(the Boers and the English)--were ”barking at each other like dogs.”
The little episode of which Marion was the heroine had been the means of bringing Eleanor and Frankfort into nearer communion than during the first week of their acquaintance. The young widow's gravity of manner was little changed, but the deep melancholy was gradually giving way before the influence of a mind that opened its stores chiefly for her.
She did not talk more than usual, but she listened, and Frankfort felt he had gained a vantage-ground.
He kept it, too. Like Scheherazade in the ”Arabian Nights,” he always contrived, when he quitted this fair, sad creature's side, to leave something for her mind to rest upon; some subject which she would wish resumed. I am wrong in using the word ”contrived”--that was not Frankfort's ”way”--but the interest Eleanor took in all that he so pleasantly and intelligently discussed invested it with an additional charm to himself.
Meanwhile, father, mother, friends, looked on, and hoped that a light was dawning on the horizon of Eleanor's clouded life, and they rejoiced.
They had no doubt of Frankfort's honesty of purpose. His bearing and his sentiments were alike frank, just, kind, manly, and single-minded.
He was not blindly, pa.s.sionately in love with the soft voice and mournful eyes that had certainly at first enchained his attention-- bewitched him, as some would have it--but he was most deeply interested in the young widow; anxious to penetrate the cloud of sorrow that even in his presence shaded her brow, and, as he reluctantly admitted to himself, created a gulf between her and him, which he only _hoped_ to remove or pa.s.s over. Every night, as he paced the avenue after the sentinels were posted, did he resolve on openly addressing Mr Daveney on the subject of his widowed daughter's position; but the resolve faded into air, when he reconsidered what had pa.s.sed between himself and Eleanor in the day. He had two weighty reasons for pausing. He was by no means sure of Eleanor's sentiments towards himself, and he had a dread, though this he was unwilling to acknowledge, in his own mind, of lifting the veil of mystery with which he _felt_ more than he _knew_ she was invested.
But as soon as he did gain courage to sound the depths of his own heart, he recognised the duty he owed to her, to her family, especially his gracious, generous host, and to himself; and he resolved that another sun should not set till the question, on which he felt whole years of happiness must depend, was decided.
The dew was on the leaves and the sun high in the east, when Eleanor Lyle came through the cool hall into the glowing verandah on the morning when Frankfort had at last resolved on requesting an interview with her father.
He had a very strong idea that she liked him. She was one who had evidently suffered from the treachery or the evil humour of man; everything she said or did was tinged with some fatal remembrance. She shrunk from the sound of the name she bore; she could not believe in Ormsby's faith; she did not openly ignore all honourable feelings in the other s.e.x, but she clearly set no store by men's promises to women. She did not volunteer these strong opinions--they were drawn from her; but Frankfort soon discovered that it was he only who could elicit them.
Yes, she most certainly liked him--she had a good opinion of him, too, he fancied; he had tested it at times in his own quiet way.
They met together in the verandah this fine, warm, balmy, dewy morning, while the world was pleasantly astir. Children creeping out of the wagon bivouacs with ”s.h.i.+ning morning faces;” herd-boys coming by the house with baskets of meelies and fine burnished English tins of milk; graceful Fingo girls, with fresh-gathered pumpkins and cool green water-melons on their heads; Mrs Trail's Bechuana nursemaid and ruddy children--such contrasts to their dusky Abigail--loaded with heather, lilac, pink, and white, and purple; and then there swung out from the old mulberry-tree in the vineyard the call to prayers in the school.