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

This was better. The killed had been reduced from four to two, the number of widows from three to one. Still, it was sufficiently terrible. Both men had lived in their midst – one for many years, the other for a shorter time – and were more or less well-known to all. This time the news was genuine, for three of the Rangers themselves had ridden in with all particulars. The sensation created was tremendous. Everybody had something to say.

“Tell you what it is, boys,” a weather-beaten, grizzled old farmer was saying – haranguing a gathering of idlers on the stoep of the hotel. “There’s always something of that sort happens every war. Fellers get so darn careless. They think because Jack Kafir funks sixty men he’s in just as big a funk of six. But he ain’t. They reckon, too, that because they can’t see no Kafirs that there ain’t no Kafirs to see. Jest as if they weren’t bein’ watched every blessed step they take. No, if you go out in a big party to find Jack Kafir you won’t find him, but if you go out in a small one, he’ll be dead sure to find you. You may jest bet drinks all round on that. Hey? Did you say you’d take me, Bill?” broke off the old fellow with a twinkle in his eye as he caught that of a crony in the group.

“Haw, haw! No, I didn’t, but I will though. Put a name to it, old Baas.”

“Well, I’ll call it ‘French.’ Three star for choice.”

The liquid was duly brought and the old fellow, having disposed of two-thirds at a gulp, resumed his disquisition.

“It’s this way,” he went on. “I’m as certain of it as if I’d seen it. Them oxen were nothin’ more or less than a trap. The Kafirs had been watching the poor devils all along and jest sent the oxen as a bait to draw them across the river. It’s jest what might have been expected, but I’m surprised they hadn’t more sense than to be took so easily. Hoste and Payne especially – not being a couple of Britishers – ”

“Here, I say, governor – stow all that for a yarn,” growled one of a brace of fresh-faced young Police troopers, who were consuming a modest “split” at a table and resented what they thought was an imputation.

“Well, I don’t mean no offence,” returned the old fellow testily. “I only mean that Britishers ain’t got the experience us Colonial chaps has, and ’ll go runnin’ their heads into a trap where we should know better.”

“All the more credit to their pluck,” interrupted another patriotically disposed individual.

“Oh, shut up, Smith. Who the deuce is saying anything against their pluck?” cried someone else.

“Well, I’m sure I wasn’t,” went on the original speaker. “Tom Carhayes, now, is as plucky a fellow as ever lived – was, rather – and – ”

“You don’t call Tom Carhayes a Britisher, do you?” objected another man.

“Yes, I do. At least, perhaps not altogether. He’s been here a good number of years now and got into our ways. Still, I remember when he first came out. And Milne only came out the other day.”

“Well, Milne’s ‘blanket friends’ have paid him off in a coin he didn’t bargain for. Wonder what he thinks of ’em now – if he can think,” said someone, with an ill-natured sneer – for Eustace, like most men with any character in them, was not beloved by everybody.

“Ah, poor chap,” went on the old man. “Milne was rather too fond of the Kafirs and Carhayes was a sight too much down on ’em. And now the Kafirs have done for them both, without fear, favour, or – ”

“Tsh – tsh – tsh! Shut up, man alive, shut up!”

This was said in a low, warning whisper, and the speaker’s sleeve was violently plucked.

“Eh? What’s the row?” he asked, turning in amazement.

“Why, that’s her!” was the reply, more earnest than grammatical.

“Her? Who?”

“His wife, of course.”

A Cape cart was driving by, containing two ladies and two young girls. Of the former one was Mrs Hoste, the other Eanswyth. As they passed quite close to the speakers, Eanswyth turned her head with a bow and a smile to someone standing in front of the hotel. A dead, awkward silence fell upon the group of talkers.

“I say. She didn’t hear, did she?” stage-whispered the old man eagerly, when the trap had gone by.

“She didn’t look much as though she had – poor thing!” said another whom the serene, radiant happiness shining in that sweet face had not escaped.

“Poor thing, indeed,” was the reply. “She ought to be told, though. But I wouldn’t be the man to do it, no – not for fifty pounds. Why, they say she can hardly eat or sleep since she heard Tom Carhayes was coming back, she’s so pleased. And now, poor Tom – where is he? Lying out there hacked into Kafir mince-meat.” And the speaker, jerking his hand in the direction of the Transkei, stalked solemnly down the steps of the stoep, heaving a prodigious sigh.

Chapter Twenty Five.

“The Curse has come upon me…”

The party in the Cape cart were returning from a drive out to Draaibosch, a roadside inn and canteen some ten or a dozen miles along the King Williamstown road. Two troops of Horse, one of them Brathwaite’s, were encamped there the night before on their way homeward, and a goodly collection of their friends and well-wishers had driven or ridden over to see them start.

It was a lovely day, and the scene had been lively enough as the combined troops – numbering upwards of two hundred horsemen, bronzed and war-worn, but “fit” and in the highest of spirits, had struck their camp and filed off upon their homeward way, cheering and being cheered enthusiastically by the lines of spectators. An enthusiasm, however, in no wise shared by groups of Hlambi and Gaika Kafirs from Ndimba’s or Sandili’s locations, who, in all the savagery of their red paint and blankets, hung around the door of the canteen with scowling sneers upon their faces, the while bandying among themselves many a deep-toned remark not exactly expressive of amity or affection towards their white brethren. But for this the latter cared not a jot.

“Hey, Johnny!” sang out a trooper, holding out a bundle of assegais towards one of the aforesaid groups as he rode past, “see these? I took ’em from one of Kreli’s chaps, up yonder. Plugged him through with a couple of bullets first.”

“Haw! haw!” guffawed another. “You fellows had better behave yourselves or we shall be coming to look you up next. Tell old Sandili that, with our love. Ta-ta, Johnny. So long!”

It was poor wit, and those at whom it was directed appreciated it at its proper value. The scowl deepened upon that cloud of dark faces, and a mutter of contempt and defiance rose from more than one throat. Yet in the bottom of their hearts the savages entertained a sufficiently wholesome respect for those hardened, war-worn sharpshooters.

Handkerchiefs waved and hats were flourished in the air, and amid uproarious and deafening cheers the mounted corps paced forth, Brathwaite’s Horse leading. And over and above the clamour and tumult of the voices and the shouting. Jack Armitage’s bugle might be heard, wildly emitting a shrill and discordant melody, which common consent, amid roars of laughter, pronounced to be a cross between the National Anthem and “Vat you goed an trek Ferreia.” (A popular old Boer song.)

Into the fun and frolic of the occasion Eanswyth entered with zest. She had laughed until she nearly cried over the hundred-and-one comic little incidents inseparable from this scene of universal jollity. Even the boldest flights of wit attempted during the multifold and promiscuous good-byes interchanged had moved her mirth. But it was the light, effervescing, uncontrollable laughter of the heart.

The genial, careless jests of the light-hearted crowd, the good humour on every face, found its echo in her. In the unclouded blue of the heavens, the golden sunlit air, there seemed a vibrating chord of joyous melody, a poetry in the sweeping plains, even in the red lines of ochre-smeared savages filing along the narrow tracks leading to or from their respective locations. Her heart sang within her as once more the horses’ heads were turned homeward. Any hour now might bring him. Why, by the time they reached home he might have arrived, or at any rate an express hurried on in advance to announce the arrival of the corps by nightfall.

“Rangers arrived?” repeated in reply to Mrs Hoste’s eager question, one of two acquaintances whom they met upon the road when within a mile of the village. “N-no, not yet. They can’t be far off, though. Three or four of their men have come in – Shelton among them.”

“Oh, thanks, so much!” cried both the ladies, apparently equally eager. “We had better get on as soon as we can. Good-day.”

In the fullness of her joy, the clouded expression and hesitating speech accompanying the information had quite escaped Eanswyth – nor had it struck her friend either. Then laughing and chatting in the highest of spirits, they had driven past the conversing groups upon the stoep of the hotel, as we have seen.

The trap had been outspanned, and the horses turned loose into the veldt. The household were about to sit down to dinner. Suddenly the doorway was darkened and a head was thrust in – a black and dusty head, surmounted by the remnant of a ragged hat.

“Morrow, missis!” said the owner of this get-up, holding out a scrap of paper folded into a note. Mrs Hoste opened it carelessly – then a sort of gasp escaped her, and her face grew white.

“Where – where is your Baas!” she stammered.

“La pa,” replied the native boy, pointing down the street.

Flurried, and hardly knowing what she was about, Mrs Hoste started to follow the messenger. Eanswyth had gone to her room to remove her hat, fortunately.

“Oh, Mr Shelton – is it true?” she cried breathlessly, coming right upon the sender of the missive, who was waiting at no great distance from the house. “Is it really true? Can it be? What awful news! Oh, it will kill her! What shall we do?”

“Try and be calm, Mrs Hoste,” said Shelton gravely. “There is no doubt about its truth, I am sorry to say. It is fortunate you had not heard the first report of the affair which arrived here. All four of them were rumoured killed, I’m told. But – No, don’t be alarmed,” he added, hastily interrupting an impending outburst. “Your husband is quite safe, and will be here this evening. But poor Tom is killed – not a doubt about it – Milne too. And, now, will you break it to Mrs Carhayes? It must be done, you know. She may hear it by accident any moment; the whole place is talking about it, and just think what a shock that will be.”

“Oh, I can’t. Don’t ask me. It will kill her.”

“But, my dear lady, it must be done,” urged Shelton. “It is a most painful and heart-breaking necessity – but it is a necessity.”

“Come and help me through with it, Mr Shelton,” pleaded Mrs Hoste piteously. “I shall never manage it alone.”

Shelton was in a quandary. He knew Eanswyth fairly well, but he was by nature a retiring man, a trifle shy even, and to find himself saddled with so delicate and painful a task as the breaking of this news to her, was simply appalling. He was a well-to-do man, with a wife and family of his own, yet it is to be feared that during the three dozen paces which it took them to reach the front door, he almost wished he could change places with poor Tom Carhayes.

He wished so altogether as they gained the stoep. For in the doorway stood a tall figure – erect, rigid as a post – with face of a ghastly white, lips livid and trembling.

“What does this mean?” gasped Eanswyth. “What ‘bad news’ is it? Please tell me. I can bear it.”

She was holding out a scrap of pencilled paper, Shelton’s open note, which Mrs Hoste, in her flurry and horror, had dropped as she went out. It only contained a couple of lines:

Dear Mrs Hoste:

There is very bad news to tell, which regards Mrs Carhayes. Please follow the bearer at once.

Yours truly, Henry Shelton.

“Quick – what is it – the ‘bad news’? I can bear it – Quick – you are killing me,” gasped Eanswyth, speaking now in a dry whisper.

One look at his accomplice convinced Shelton that he would have to take the whole matter into his own hands.

“Try and be brave, Mrs Carhayes,” he said gravely. “It concerns your husband.”

“Is he – is he – is it the worst!” she managed to get out.

“It is the worst,” he answered simply, deeming it best to get it over as soon as possible.

For a minute he seemed to have reason to congratulate himself on this idea. The rigid stony horror depicted on her features relaxed, giving way to a dazed, bewildered expression, as though she had borne the first brunt of the shock, and was calming down.

“Tell me!” she gasped at length. “How was it? When? Where?”

“It was across the Bashi. They were cut off by the Kafirs, and killed.”

“‘They’? Who – who else?”

Shelton wished the friendly earth would open beneath his feet then and there.

“Mrs Carhayes, pray be calm,” he said unsteadily. “You have heard the worst, remember – the worst, but not all. You cousin shared poor Tom’s fate.”

“Eustace?”

The word was framed, rather than uttered, by those livid and bloodless lips. Yet the listener caught it and bent his head in assent.

She did not cry out; she did not swoon. Yet those who beheld her almost wished she had done both – anything rather than take the blow as she was doing. She stood there in the doorway – her tall form seeming to tower above them – her large eyes sparkling forth from her livid and bloodless countenance – and the awful and set expression of despair imprinted therein was such as the two who witnessed it prayed they might never behold on human countenance again.

She had heard the worst – the worst, but not all – her informant had said. Had she? The mockery of it! The first news was terrible; the second – death; black, hopeless, living death. Had heard the worst! Ah, the mockery of it! And as these reflections sank into her dazed brain – driven in, as it were, one after another by the dull blows of a hammer, her lips even shaped the ghost of a smile. Ah, the irony of it!

Still she did not faint. She stood there in the doorway, curdling the very heart’s blood of the lookers on with that dreadful shadow of a smile. Then, without a word, she turned and walked to her room.

“Oh! I must go to her!” cried Mrs Hoste eagerly. “Oh, this is too fearful.”

“If you take my advice – it’s better not! Not at present, at any rate,” answered Shelton. “Leave her to get over the first shock alone. And what a shock it is. Bereaved of husband and cousin at one stroke. And the cousin was almost like a brother, wasn’t he?”

“Yes,” and the recollection of her recent suspicions swept in with a rush upon the speaker’s mind, deepening her flurry and distress. “Yes. That is – I mean – Yes, I believe she was very fond of him. But how bravely she took it.”

“Rather too bravely,” answered the other with a grave shake of the head. “I only hope the strain may not be too much for her – affect her brain, I mean. Mrs Carhayes has more than the average share of strong-mindedness, yet she strikes me as being a woman of extraordinarily strong feeling. The shock must have been frightful, and although she didn’t scream or faint, the expression of her face was one that I devoutly hope never to see upon any face again. And now, good-bye for the present. I’ll call around later and hear how she’s getting on. Poor thing!”

The sun of her life had set – had gone down into black night – yet the warm rays of the summer sunshine glanced through the open window of her room, glowing down upon the wide veldt outside and upon the distant sparkle of the blue sea. Never again would laughter issue from those lips – yet the sound of light-hearted chat and peals of mirth was ever and anon borne from without. The droning hum of insects in the afternoon air – the clink of horse-hoofs, the deep-toned conversation of natives passing near the window – all these familiar sounds of everyday life found a faint and far-away echo in her benumbed brain. What, though one heart was broken – the world went on just the same.

Stay! Was it but a few minutes ago that she passed out through that door trilling the cheerful fragments of the airiest of songs – but a few minutes since she picked up that fatal scrap of paper, and then stood face to face with those who brought her news which had laid her life in ruins! Only a few minutes! Why, it seemed years – centuries – aeons. Was it a former state of existence that upon which she now looked back as across a great and yawning gulf? Was she now dead – and was this the place of torment? The fire that burned forever and ever! How should she quench the fire in her heart and brain?

There was a very stoniness about her grief as if the blow had petrified her. She did not fling herself upon the couch in her agony of despair. No tears did she shed – better if she had. For long after she had gained her room and locked herself in alone she stood – stood upright – and finally when she sought a chair it was mechanically, as with the movement of a sleep walker. Her heart was broken – her life was ended. He had gone from her – it only remained for her to go to him.

And then, darting in across her tortured brain, in fiery characters, came the recollection of his own words – spoken that first and last blissful morning at Anta’s Kloof. “If we are doing wrong through love for each other we shall have to expiate it at some future time. We shall be made to suffer through each other,” and to this she had responded “Amen.” How soon had those words come true. The judgment had fallen. He had gone from her, but she could not go to him. Their love, unlawful in this world, could never be ratified in another. And then, indeed, there fell upon her the gloom of outer darkness. There was no hope.

Chapter Twenty Six.

“And the Summer’s Night is a Winter’s Day.”

For Eanswyth Carhayes the sun of life had indeed set.

The first numbing shock of the fearful news over, a period of even greater agony supervened. He who had succeeded in setting free the wholly unsuspected volcanic fires of her strong and passionate nature – him, her first and only love – she would never see again in life. If she had sinned in yielding to a love that was unlawful, surely she was expiating it now. The punishment seemed greater than she could bear.

She made no outcry – no wild demonstrations of grief. Her sorrow was too real, too sacred, for any such commonplace manifestations. But when she emerged from her first retirement, it was as a walking ghost. There was something about that strained and unnatural calm, something which overawed those who saw it. She was as one walking outside the world and its incidents. They feared for her brain.

As the days slipped by, people wondered. It seemed strange that poor Tom Carhayes should have the faculty of inspiring such intense affection in anybody. No one suspected anything more than the most ordinary of easy-going attachment to exist between him and his wife, yet that the latter was now a broken-hearted woman was but too sadly obvious. Well, there must have been far more in the poor fellow than he had generally been credited with, said the popular voice, and after all, those outside are not of necessity the best judges as to the precise relationship existing between two people. So sympathy for Eanswyth was widespread and unfeigned.

Yet amid all her heart-torture, all her aching and hopeless sorrow, poor Tom’s fate hardly obtruded itself. In fact, had she been capable of a thorough and candid self-analysis she would have been forced to admit that it was rather a matter for gratulation than otherwise, for under cover of it she was enabled to indulge her heart-broken grief to the uttermost. Apart from this, horrible as it may seem, her predominating feeling toward her dead husband was that of intense bitterness and resentment. He it was who had led the others into peril. That aggressive fool-hardiness of his, which had caused her many and many a long hour of uneasiness and apprehension, had betrayed him to a barbarous death, and with it that other. The cruel irony of it, too, would burst upon her. He had avenged himself in his very death – had broken her heart.

Had Tom Carhayes been the only one to fall, it is probable that Eanswyth would have mourned him with genuine – we do not say with durable – regret. It is possible that she might have been afflicted with acute remorse at the part she had played. But now all thoughts of any such thing faded completely from her mind, obliterated by the one overwhelming, stunning stroke which had left her life in shadow until it should end.

Then the Rangers had returned, and from the two surviving actors in the terrible tragedy – Payne and Hoste, to wit – she learned the full particulars. It was even as she had suspected – Tom’s rashness from first to last. The insane idea of bushbuck hunting in a small party in an enemy’s country, then venturing across the river right into what was nothing more nor less than a not very cunningly baited trap – all was due to his truculent fool-hardiness. But Eustace, knowing that her very life was bound up in his – how could he have allowed himself to be so easily led away? And this was the bitterest side of it.

To the philosophic and somewhat cynical Payne this interview was an uncomfortable one, while Hoste subsequently pronounced it to be the most trying thing he had ever gone through in his life.

“Is there absolutely no hope?” Eanswyth had said, in a hard, forced voice.

The two men looked at each other.

“Absolutely none, Mrs Carhayes,” said Payne. “It would be sham kindness to tell you anything different. Escape was an impossibility, you see. Both their horses were killed and they themselves were surrounded. Hoste and I only got through by the skin of our teeth. If our horses had ‘gone under’ earlier it would have been all up with us, too.”

“But the – but they were not found, were they? They may have been taken prisoners.”

Again the two men looked at each other. Neither liked to give utterance to what was passing through his mind. Better a hundredfold the unfortunate men were dead and at rest than helpless captives in the hands of exasperated and merciless savages.

“Kafirs never do take prisoners,” said Payne after a pause. “At least, never in the heat and excitement of battle. And it is not likely that Carhayes or Milne would give them a chance, poor chaps.”

“You mean – ?”

“They would fight hard to the bitter end – would sell their lives dearly. I am afraid you must face the worst. I wish I could say otherwise, but I can’t. Eh, Hoste?”

The latter nodded. He had very willingly allowed the other to do all the talking. Then, as all things come to an end sooner or later – even Wigmore Street – so eventually did this trying interview.

“I say, George. That just was a bad quarter of an hour,” said Hoste, as the two companions-in-arms found themselves once more in their favourite element – the open air, to wit. “I don’t want to go through it again many times in a lifetime. If ever there was ‘broken heart,’ writ large in any woman’s face, it is on that of poor Mrs Carhayes. I believe she’ll never get over it.”

Payne, who had shown himself far from unfeeling during the above-mentioned trying interview, regarded this remark as a direct challenge to the ingrained cynicism of his nature.

“You don’t, eh?” he replied. “Well, I don’t want to seem brutal, Hoste, but I predict she’ll be patching up that same ‘broken heart’ in most effective style at some other fellow’s expense, before the regulation two years are over. They all do it. Lend us your ’bacco pouch.”

Hoste said nothing. But for that little corner of the curtain of her suspicions which his wife had lifted on the first night of Eanswyth’s arrival, he might have been three parts inclined to agree with his friend. As things stood, he wasn’t.

But could they at that moment have seen the subject of their conversation, it is possible that even the shelly and cynical Payne might have felt shaken in his so glibly expressed opinion. In the seclusion of her room she sat, soft tears coming to the relief of the hitherto dry and burning eyes as she pressed to her lips, forehead, and heart, a little bit of cold and tarnished metal. It was the broken spur which Eustace had been wearing at the time of the disaster, and which her recent visitors had just given her. And over this last sorry relic she was pouring out her whole soul – sorrowing as one who had no hope.