Finished, H. Rider Haggard [easy readers TXT] 📗

“Marriage is better than scrapes,” I remarked sententiously.

“Quite so, but one might get them both together. No, I shall never marry, although I suppose I ought as my brothers have no children.”

“Won’t you, my friend,” thought I to myself, “when the skin grows again on your burnt fingers.”

For I was sure they had been burnt, perhaps more than once. How, I never learned, for which I am rather sorry for it interests me to study burnt fingers, if they do not happen to be my own. Then we changed the subject.

Anscombe’s wagons were delayed for a day or two by a broken axle or a bog hole, I forget which. So, as I had nothing particular to do until the Natal post-cart left, we spent the time in wandering about Pretoria, which did not take us long as it was but a little dorp in those days, and chatting with all and sundry. Also we went up to Government House as it was now called, and left cards, or rather wrote our names in a book for we had no cards, being told by one of the Staff whom we met that we should do so. An hour later a note arrived asking us both to dinner that night and telling us very nicely not to mind if we had no dress things. Of course we had to go, Anscombe rigged up in my second best clothes that did not fit him in the least, as he was a much taller man than I am, and a black satin bow that he had bought at Becket’s Store together with a pair of shiny pumps.

I actually met you, my friend, for the first time that evening, and in trouble too, though you may have forgotten the incident. We had made a mistake about the time of dinner, and arriving half an hour too soon, were shown into a long room that opened on to the verandah. You were working there, being I believe a private secretary at the time, copying some despatch; I think you said that which gave an account of the Annexation. The room was lit by a paraffin lamp behind you, for it was quite dark and the window was open, or at any rate unshuttered. The gentleman who showed us in, seeing that you were very busy, took us to the far end of the room, where we stood talking in the shadow. Just then a door opened opposite to that which led to the verandah, and through it came His Excellency the Administrator, Sir Theophilus Shepstone, a stout man of medium height with a very clever, thoughtful face, as I have always thought, one of the greatest of African statesmen. He did not see us, but he caught sight of you and said testily—

“Are you mad?” To which you answered with a laugh—

“I hope not more than usual, Sir, but why?”

“Have I not told you always to let down the blinds after dark? Yet there you sit with your head against the light, about the best target for a bullet that could be imagined.”

“I don’t think the Boers would trouble to shoot me, Sir. If you had been here I would have drawn the blinds and shut the shutters too,” you answered, laughing again.

“Go to dress or you will be late for dinner,” he said still rather sternly, and you went. But when you had gone and after we had been announced to him, he smiled and added something which I will not repeat to you even now. I think it was about what you did on the Annexation day of which the story had come to him.

I mention this incident because whenever I think of Shepstone, whom I had known off and on for years in the way that a hunter knows a prominent Government official, it always recurs to my mind, embodying as it does his caution and appreciation of danger derived from long experience of the country, and the sternness he sometimes affected which could never conceal his love towards his friends. Oh! there was greatness in this man, although they did call him an “African Talleyrand.” If it had not been so would every native from the Cape to the Zambesi have known and revered his name, as perhaps that of no other white man has been revered? But I must get on with my tale and leave historical discussions to others more fitted to deal with them.

We had a very pleasant dinner that night, although I was so ashamed of my clothes with smart uniforms and white ties all about me, and Anscombe kept fidgeting his feet because he was suffering agony from his new pumps which were a size too small. Everybody was in the best of spirits, for from all directions came the news that the Annexation was well received and that the danger of any trouble had passed away. Ah! if we had only known what the end of it would be!

It was on our way back to the wagon that I chanced to mention to Anscombe that there was still a herd of buffalo within a few days’ trek of Lydenburg, of which I had shot two not a month before.

“Are there, by Jove!” he said. “As it happens I never got a buffalo; always I just missed them in one sense or another, and I can’t leave Africa with a pair of bought horns. Let’s go there and shoot some.”

I shook my head and replied that I had been idling long enough and must try to make some money, news at which he seemed very disappointed.

“Look here,” he said, “forgive me for mentioning it, but business is business. If you’ll come you shan’t be a loser.”

Again I shook my head, whereat he looked more disappointed than before.

“Very well,” he exclaimed, “then I must go alone. For kill a buffalo I will; that is unless the buffalo kills me, in which case my blood will be on your hands.”

I don’t know why, but at that moment there came into my mind a conviction that if he did go alone a buffalo or something would kill him and that then I should be sorry all my life.

“They are dangerous brutes, much worse than lions,” I said.

“And yet you, who pretend to have a conscience, would expose me to their rage unprotected and alone,” he replied with a twinkle in his eye which I could see even by moonlight.” Oh! Quatermain, how I have been mistaken in your character.

“Look here, Mr. Anscombe,” I said, “it’s no use. I cannot possibly go on a shooting expedition with you just now. Only to-day I have heard from Natal that my boy is not well and must undergo an operation which will lay him up for quite six weeks, and may be dangerous. So I must get down to Durban before it takes place. After that I have a contract in Matabeleland whence you have just come, to take charge of a trading store there for a year; also perhaps to try to shoot a little ivory for myself. So I am fully booked up till, let us say, October, 1878, that is for about eighteen months, by which time I daresay I shall be dead.”

“Eighteen months,” replied this cool young man. “That will suit me very well. I will go on to India as I intended, then home for a bit and will meet you on the 1st of October, 1878, after which we will proceed to the Lydenburg district and shoot those buffalo, or if they have departed, other buffalo. Is it a bargain?”

I stared at him, thinking that the Administrator’s champagne had got into his head.

“Nonsense,” I exclaimed. “Who knows where you will be in eighteen months? Why, by that time you will have forgotten all about me.”

“If I am alive and well, on the 1st of October, I878, I shall be exactly where I am now, upon this very square in Pretoria, with a wagon, or wagons, prepared for a hunting trip. But as not unnaturally you have doubts upon that point, I am prepared to pay forfeit if I fail, or even if circumstances cause you to fail.”

Here he took a cheque-book from his letter-case and spread it out on the little table in the tent, on which there were ink and a pen, adding—

“Now, Mr. Quatermain, will it meet your views if I fill this up for #250?”

“No,” I answered; “taking everything into consideration the sum is excessive. But if you do not mind facing the risks of my non-appearance, to say nothing of your own, you may make it #50.”

“You are very moderate in your demands,” he said as he handed me the cheque which I put in my pocket, reflecting that it would just pay for my son’s operation.

“And you are very foolish in your offers,” I replied. “Tell me, why do you make such crack-brained arrangements?”

“I don’t quite know. Something in me seems to say that we shall make this expedition and that it will have a very important effect upon my life. Mind you, it is to be to the Lydenburg district and nowhere else. And now I am tired, so let’s turn in.”

Next morning we parted and went our separate ways.