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

between us and you – you alone together? I would speak with you apart, Ixeshane.”

      Now, Eanswyth, though living side by side with the natives, was, like most colonial people, but poorly versed in the Xosa tongue. She knew a smattering of it, just sufficient for kitchen purposes, and that was all; consequently, but for a word here and there, the above dialogue was unintelligible to her. But it was otherwise with her companion. His familiarity with the language was all but complete, and not only with the language, but with all its tricks. He knew that the other was “talking dark,” and his quick perception readily grasped the meaning which was intended to be conveyed. With the lurid thoughts indulged in that morning as regarded his cousin still fresh in his mind, it could hardly have been otherwise.

      He hated the man: he loved the man’s wife. “How is it going to end?” had been his unuttered cry just now. “How is it going to end!” she had re-echoed. Well, here was a short and easy solution ready to hand. A flush of blood surged to his face, and his heart beat fiercely under the terrible temptation thus thrown in his way. Yet so fleeting was it as scarcely to constitute a temptation at all. Now that it was put nakedly to him he could not do this thing. He could not consent to a murder – a cold-blooded, treacherous murder.

      “I cannot talk with you apart, Hlangani,” he answered. “I cannot leave the Inkosikazi standing here alone even for a few minutes.”

      The piercing glance of the shrewd savage had been scrutinising his face – had been reading it like a book. Upon him the terrible struggle within had not been lost.

      “Consider, Ixeshane,” he pursued. “What is the gift of a few dozen cows, of two hundred cows, when compared with the happiness of a man’s lifetime? Nothing. Is it to be? Say the word. Is it to be?”

      The barbarian’s fiery eyes were fixed upon his with deep and terrible meaning. To Eustace it seemed as if the blasting glare of the Arch fiend himself shone forth from their cruel depths.

      “It is not to be. The ‘word’ is No! Unmistakably and distinctly No. You understand, Hlangani?”

      “Au! As you will, Ixeshane,” replied the Kafir, with an expressive shrug of his shoulders. “See. You wear a ‘charm’,” referring to a curious coin which Eustace wore hanging from his watch-chain. “If you change your mind send over the ‘charm’ to me at Nteya’s kraal this night – it shall be returned. But after to-night it may be too late. Farewell.”

      And flinging his blanket over his shoulder the savage turned and strode away into the veldt– Eustace purposely omitting to offer him a little tobacco, lest this ordinary token of good will should be construed into a sort of earnest of the dark and terrible bargain which Hlangani had proposed to him – by mere hints it is true – but still had none the less surely proposed.

      Chapter Thirteen.

      ”…And the World is Changed.”

      They stood for some moments watching the receding figure of the Kafir in silence. Eanswyth was the first to break it.

      “What have you been talking about all this time, Eustace? Is it any new danger that threatens us?”

      “N-no. Rather the reverse if anything,” and his features cleared up as if to bear out the truth of his words. “I don’t see, though, why you shouldn’t know it. That’s the man we fell foul of in the veldt yesterday – you remember the affair of the white dog?”

      “Oh!” and Eanswyth turned very pale.

      “Now don’t be alarmed, dearest. I believe he only loafed round here to try and collect some compensation.”

      “Is that really all, Eustace?” she went on anxiously. “You seemed very much disturbed, dear. I don’t think I ever saw you look so thoroughly disturbed.”

      There was no perturbation left in his glance now. He took her face lovingly between his hands and kissed it again and again.

      “Did you not, my sweet? Well, perhaps there has never existed such ground for it. Perhaps I have never met with so inopportune an interruption. But now, cheer up. We must make the most of this day, for a sort of instinct tells me that it is the last we shall have to ourselves, at any rate for some time to come. And now what shall we do with ourselves? Shall we go back to the house or sit here a little while and talk?”

      Eanswyth was in favour of the latter plan. And, seated there in the shade of a great acacia, the rich summer morning sped by in a golden dream. The fair panorama of distant hills and wooded kloofs; the radiant sunlight upon the wide sweep of mimosa-dotted plains, shimmering into many a fantastic mirage in the glowing heat; the call of bird voices in the adjacent brake, and the continuous chirrup of crickets; the full, warm glow of the sensuous air, rich, permeating, life-giving; here indeed was a very Eden. Thus the golden morning sped swiftly by.

      But how was it all to end? That was the black drop clouding the sparkling cup – that was the trail of the serpent across that sunny Eden. And yet not, for it may be that this very rift but served only to enhance the intoxicating, thrilling delights of the present – that this idyl of happiness, unlawful alike in the sight of God or man, was a hundredfold sweetened by the sad vein of undercurrent running through it – even the consciousness that it was not to last. For do we not, in the weak contrariety of our mortal natures, value a thing in exact proportion to the precariousness of our tenure!

      Come good, come ill, never would either of them forget that day: short, golden, idyllic.

      “Guess how long we have been sitting here!” said Eanswyth at last, with a rapid glance at her watch. “No – don’t look,” she added hurriedly, “I want you to guess.”

      “About half an hour, it seems. But I suppose it must be more than that.”

      “Exactly two hours and ten minutes.”

      “Two hours and ten minutes of our last peaceful day together – gone. Of our first and our last day together.”

      “Why do you say our last, dear?” she murmured, toying with his hair. His head lay on her lap, his blue eyes gazing up into her large grey ones.

      “Because, as I told you, I have a strong inkling that way – at any rate, for some time to come. It is wholly lamentable, but, I’m afraid, inevitable.”

      She bent her head – her beautiful stately head – drooped her lips to his and kissed them passionately.

      “Eustace, Eustace, my darling – my very life! Why do I love you like this!”

      “Because you can’t help it, my sweet one!” he answered, returning her kisses with an ardour equalling her own.

      “Why did I give way so soon? Why did I give way at all? As you say, because I couldn’t help it – because – in short, because it was you. You drew me out of myself – you forced me to love you, forced me to. Ah-h! and how I love you!”

      The quiver in her tones would not be entirely suppressed. Even he had hardly suspected the full force of passion latent within this woman, only awaiting the magic touch to blaze forth into bright flame. And his had been the touch which had enkindled it.

      “You have brought more than a Paradise into my life,” he replied, his glance holding hers as he looked up into her radiant eyes. “Tell me, did you never suspect, all these months, that I only lived when in the halo-influence of your presence?”

      “I knew it.”

      “You knew it?”

      “Of course I did,” she answered with a joyous laugh, taking his face between her hands and kissing it again. “I should have been no woman if I had not. But, I have kept my secret better than you. Yes, my secret. I have been battling against your influence far harder than you have against mine, and you have conquered.” He started, and a look of something like dismay came into his face.

      “If that is so, you witching enchantress, why did you not lift me out of my torment long ago,” he said. “But the worst is this. Just think what opportunities we have missed, what a long time we have wasted which might have been –