The Luck of Gerard Ridgeley

“Only a few days ago,” answered Gerard. “We came straight on here at once. Travelled up to Maritzburg in a waggon, chartered a horse apiece, and came out to find you.”

“Travelled up in a waggon, did you say? Whose waggon?”

“John Dawes’s. A rattling good chap. Do you know him?”

“Used to. But, between you and me, Gerard, he’s not really much of a chap. Did he – er – seem to know me?”

The covert anxiety of the tone brought back to Gerard’s mind the queer expression which the mention of his relative had called up to the transport-rider’s face. Still it was possible that the two men had but quarrelled. At the same time, do what he would he could not quite overcome a growing aversion to Anstey. This was hardly promising for their future relationship.

“This is my crib,” said Anstey, as they approached the house. “The store’s at the back. We’ll go round and look at it presently. Come in; come in.”

The house was a rough, square, one-storeyed building, roofed over with corrugated iron. A low stoep ran round the front of it, and the door opened into the sitting-room direct, without the intervention of any entrance hall. The floor was of hard clay covered with matting, and the furniture of the very plainest. Accommodation seemed strictly limited, for besides the room which did duty as the proprietor’s bedroom there was only one other, and it was half full of lumber of every description. The whole of the back part of the house was used for the trading store, and from this came a foetid and pungent whiff, mingled with the deep bass hum of native voices.

While they dined – on a baked shoulder of mutton, with pumpkin and sweet potatoes – Anstey questioned his young guests somewhat profusely as to their plans and prospects. Gerard, whose rising aversion had engendered in him suspicions of which he was more than half ashamed, fancied he detected a slight change of manner on his host’s part, as he frankly avowed his own utter lack of prospects or means, and a corresponding increase of cordiality towards Harry Maitland, who was not prone to underrate himself or his possessions.

“I remember your mother perfectly well, Gerard,” said Anstey. “But I never saw your father. So they shipped you off to shift for yourself, eh? Well, we must see what can be done for you. And what are your plans, Maitland?”

“Oh, I must first go round and look up a lot of people I’ve got introductions to,” was the airy reply. “Nothing like looking around a bit before making up one’s mind, eh?”

“Quite right, quite right,” nodded their host approvingly, inking another glass of grog, which, by the way, was the sixth he had taken since he came in. Then he proposed they should light their pipes and stroll round and look in at the store.

The latter was a long low room, with a counter running through it. This, as also the shelves lining the walls, was covered with goods – blankets and rugs, canisters of coffee and sugar, brass wire and bangles and every species of native “track,” biscuit and paraffin tins. Strings of beads of every conceivable hue, overcoats, and flannel shirts, and moleskin trousers hung from pegs, and clusters of reims, or raw-hide thongs – for rope is but little used in South Africa – in fact, half a hundred varieties of the genus “notion” for supplying the needs of customers, native or white.

The room was pretty full of tobacco smoke and natives, who suspended their conversation and nudged each other as they recognised the two young strangers against whom their aid had been invoked for hostile purposes, but who were now hand in glove with the proprietor behind the counter. A lanky youth in shirt-sleeves, with a mud-coloured, wispy face, was presiding over the transactions.

“Well, Smith, how’s ‘biz’?” said Anstey. The wispy youth shrugged his shoulders and growled some inarticulate reply in monosyllable. Then, on being introduced to the new-comers, he extended a limp paw to each, and returned to his former occupation of measuring out roll tobacco to a native, always with the same wooden and vacant expression.

“Well, how do you think you’d like storekeeping?” said Anstey, as he went through the performance which he jocosely termed “showing them round the place,” though, apart from a tumble-down stable and the historic mealie-field before described, there was no “place” to show them round.

Gerard, the recollection fresh in his mind of the dismal room and foetid atmosphere, and the generally depressing aspect of all connected therewith, replied, with an inward shudder, that he hardly thought he would care about it. He would much prefer farming. This was greeted as a huge joke.

“Pooh!” said Anstey. “Farming is a beggar’s trade compared with this. Why, bless my soul, a farmer’s a slave to all the seasons, to every shower of rain, or the want of it, even if his place and stock ain’t mortgaged up to the hilt. Again, the diseases among cattle are legion. Now, in a neat little store like this of mine, you can just coin money hand over fist.”

His listeners thought this last statement hardly borne out by the aspect of the surroundings in general. The other, quick to see this, went on.

“Ah, you think it don’t look much like it, eh? Well, I don’t wonder. But, you see, it isn’t worth my while bothering about tinkering up this place. Here it doesn’t matter how one lives. But I’m just waiting till I’ve made my pile, and then – ” And the concluding blank left scope for the most magnificent, if somewhat vague possibilities.

They returned indoors, and Anstey made the heat and the walk an excuse for another glass of grog. Then a native knocked at the door to announce that the missing steed had been found and brought back. Harry suggested that it was time to start on their return ride to Maritzburg. But of this their host would not hear.

“Stay the night, anyhow,” he said. “That is, if you don’t mind roughing it. I can knock you up a shakedown of some sort. I meant to have had the spare room arranged when I first heard you were coming out, Gerard. But I dare say you can manage without white sheets.”

Gerard, of course, declared that, if anything, he rather preferred it. That point settled, Anstey became even more the effusively genial host; but, with all his desire to be entertaining, both were sensible of a want of something – a difference between the perfectly frank and self-possessed geniality of John Dawes, for instance. They were joined at supper by the wispy-faced youth, who came straight in from his duties in the store – now closed for the night – without going through any such superfluous ceremony as washing. Afterwards, when the talk was in full swing, Anstey would constantly appeal to his subordinate for confirmation of his statements or anecdotes – “Isn’t that so, Smith?” “Didn’t I, Smith?” and so forth; whereupon the latter would remove his pipe from his mouth, and spit and remark, “Ja, that’s so.” Which was the full extent of his conversation.

Chapter Six.

Gerard is Launched

“Why not stay on here a bit, Gerard, and help me in the store?”

Thus Anstey, on the following day, after dinner. The two were alone. Harry Maitland had returned to Maritzburg, disgusted with the exceeding roughness of his night’s quarters, which together with the booming snores of Smith, who slept in the adjoining store, had effectually hindered him from getting any sleep to speak of. Gerard, however, had yielded to his relative’s urgent invitation to stay a few days and talk matters over. He, too, found his quarters none too comfortable, and he did not like Anstey – indeed, he feared he never should like him; but, he reflected with something of a sigh, beggars cannot be choosers. He was a stranger in a strange land, and after all this man was his relative, though a distant one, and showed every desire to help him.

“It is very good of you,” he replied. “But I know nothing of that sort of business.”

“Pooh! You don’t want to know anything – at least – that is – I mean,” correcting himself hurriedly, “there’s nothing very technical about it. You only want a little commonsense and ordinary smartness, and of that I should say you had plenty. Well, then, we’ll consider the matter settled. Smith is leaving me soon, and until he does I’ll give you ten shillings a week and the run of your teeth. Afterwards I’ll give you more. You see, you’ll be learning a useful business all for nothing – a very paying one, too – and getting a trifle of pay for it besides. The fact is, Gerard, I want a decent kind of fellow-countryman about me, an educated chap like yourself. One falls into rough ways all by one’s self.”

There was such a genuine ring about this speech, that Gerard felt quite ashamed of his former mistrust. What a snob he had been to dislike the man because he was a bit wanting in polish! The thought moved him to throw an extra warmth into his expressions of thanks.

“Pooh! my dear fellow, don’t say another word,” said Anstey. “By-and-by, when you are thoroughly up to the mark, I might leave you here in charge, and open another place somewhere else. Extend the business, don’t you know – extend the business. Storekeeping’s the most paying thing in the world if you only know what you’re about. I’ve always intended to extend as soon as I could get hold of some decent fellow, and that lout Smith’s of no good,” sinking his voice. “I’m getting rid of him. Then, when you know your business, I might take you into partnership, and we might run houses all over the Colony.”

To a practically penniless lad, who had just come out there to seek his fortune, this was very glowing, very tempting sort of talk. Gerard began to see himself already coining wealth, as the other had said “hand over fist,” and again he felt ashamed of his first unfavourable impressions of the man who was now so freely holding out to him a helping hand.

But when he set to work in real earnest, he discovered, as many another had done before him and will do again, that the royal road to wealth, if sure, was desperately slow, and to one of his temperament intolerably irksome. The whole day, from early morning till long after dark, was spent in the close atmosphere of that stuffy room, rendered foetid by the chronic presence of uncleanly natives, and such unsavoury goods as hides, sheepskins, etc., handing things over the counter in exchange for the hard-earned sixpences and threepenny-bits of his dusky customers. Now and then, too, a white traveller or transport-rider would look in to make a purchase, and the short, offhand manner of some of these would try his temper sorely. Was it for this he had come out to Natal? Where was the free, healthy, open-air life he and his young companions at home had so glowingly evolved? He remembered the envy with which his schoolfellows had regarded him when they knew he was going out to a colony. Would he be an object for envy if they could see him now? Why, he was more of a prisoner than ever he had been when chained, as he thought, to the school desks. He had, in fact, become nothing more nor less than a shopkeeper.

Smith had in no wise seemed to resent the presence of his supplanter. He was even impassively good-natured, and in his stolid way would give Gerard the benefit of his experience. He put him up to all the little tricks of the native customers, and showed him innumerable dodges for lightening his own labour. As for books, why, there were none to speak of, or at any rate they were precious queerly kept, he said. Anstey would just clear the till when he thought there was enough in it, or when he wanted to go away anywhere; then it would fill up again as before, with like result.

“I suppose you know,” said Smith, in his wooden, expressionless manner, “I’ve got the sack on your account?”

Gerard started.

“On my account! Surely not. Why, I thought you were going anyhow.”

“So? Well, I wasn’t. Soon as you came, Anstey gave me notice to clear.”

“Good heavens! But that would be beastly unfair to you,” cried Gerard, in great distress. “I’ll tell him I won’t agree. I’ll go and tell him now at once.”

“Sit still, Ridgeley. That wouldn’t help me any. You’re a good fellow, I believe, and if it was any one but Anstey, I’d say it was kind of natural to want to stick in his own relation. Still, I’ve done very well for him, and for less pay than most chaps would ask. But, to tell the truth, I’m sick of the berth, dead sick of it, and had made up my mind to clear anyhow. Don’t you get bothering Anstey over it. I say, though. He was pretty boozy last night, eh?”

Gerard shrugged his shoulders with a look of mingled distress and disgust. He had noted with some anxiety that his relative was too much addicted to the bottle, but he had never seen him quite so bad as on the occasion just alluded to. Anstey himself had referred to this failing once or twice, declaring that the sort of life was of a nature to make any man feel “hipped,” and take a “pick-me-up” too many, but that now he had got a decent fellow for company he reckoned it might make a difference. He seemed, in fact, to have taken a real liking to his young kinsman, and would sit at home of an evening on purpose to talk to him, instead of riding off to the nearest bar. Gerard had begun to think he might even be instrumental in getting him out of his drinking habits.

One day Smith, while absent for some minutes from the store, was attracted back again by something of a hubbub going on therein. Returning, he beheld Gerard confronted by three natives, the latter haranguing and gesticulating wildly in remonstrance, the former gesticulating almost as wildly, but tongue-tied by reason of his inability to master more than a few words of their language. The natives were holding out to Gerard two large bottles filled with some liquid, which he was as emphatically refusing to accept.

“What’s the row, Ridgeley?”

“Row?” answered Gerard, in a disgusted tone. “Row? Why, these fellows asked me to fill their bottles with paraffin, and I did so. Now they won’t pay for it, and want me to take it back.”

Smith opened his head, and emitted as large a guffaw as he ever allowed himself to indulge in. Then he went to the front door and looked out over the veldt, and returning took the two bottles and emptied their contents back into the paraffin tin. Then he gave the bottles a brief rinse in a tub of water, and filling them up from another tin precisely similar to the first, handed them to the natives. The latter paid down their money, and stowing the bottles carefully away among their blankets, departed, now thoroughly satisfied.

“Didn’t I give them the right kind?” said Gerard, who had witnessed this performance with some amazement. “Ah, I see!” he broke off, as an odour of spirits greeted his nostrils.

“You just didn’t give them the right kind. Look here. When a nigger brings a bottle and asks for paraffin, and goes like this – see?” making a rapid sort of drinking sign, “you fill it out of this tin.”

“But why don’t they ask for it outright? Isn’t there a word for it in their language? Those fellows distinctly said ‘paraffin.’”

Again Smith emitted that half-hearted guffaw.

“Look here, Ridgeley. I’d have put you up to the ropes, but reckoned it was Anstey’s business. Don’t you know the law of the Colony doesn’t allow grog to be sold to niggers, even in licenced houses, but there’s a sight of it done for all that. This isn’t a licenced house, but we’ve got to run with the times.”

“And what if you’re caught?”