In the Whirl of the Rising

“You’re in luck’s way, Lamont. Miss Vidal’s far and away the nicest girl anywhere round here.”

“She’s all that, I allow.” But a subtle note in the tone was not lost upon one – and that one Ancram.

“So there is a girl in the case!” pronounced that worthy to himself. “I thought there would be. And he would have cleared me out? Not yet, friend Lamont. Not yet! Not until I’ve turned you to real good, material use.” And he now congratulated himself upon the Native Commissioner’s invitation to join his expedition, for in the course of the same he would contrive to pump that official on the subject of Lamont and his circumstances and standing in the locality, in such wise that it would be hard if he could not turn the knowledge to the account of his own especial advantage.

Chapter Six.

The Desire of Gandela

“What on earth have you been doing to Jim Steele, Clare?” said Mrs Fullerton, as she came into her drawing-room, and sank into a cane chair. “He passed me in the gate looking as black as thunder. He made a lug at his hat, growled like a dog, and was off like a shot. Look! there he goes,” pointing to a fast-receding figure pounding down the strip of dusty road that fronted the straggling line of unpretentious bungalows.

“I only refused him,” was the half-laughing, half-sad reply. “What else was I to do when I don’t care two brass buttons about the man? Really, Lucy, there are drawbacks attendant on life in a country where there are not enough women to go round. He is only the fifth since I’ve been up here.” Even had there been enough women to go round, as the speaker put it, assuredly she herself would not have come in last among them, if there are any powers of attraction in an oval face and straight features, a profusion of golden-brown hair, deep blue Irish eyes thickly fringed with dark lashes, and a mouth of the Cupid-bow order. Add to this a beautifully proportioned figure, rather tall than short, and it is hardly to be wondered that most of the men in the township of Gandela and all the region round about went mad over Clare Vidal. Her married sister, Lucy Fullerton, formed a complete contrast, in that she was short and matronly of build, but she was a bright, pretty, winsome little thing, and correspondingly popular.

“Well, you shouldn’t be so dangerous, you queenly Clare,” she retorted, unpinning her hat and flinging it across the room. “Really it was an act of deadly hostility towards all our good friends to have brought you up here to play football with their hearts and their peace of mind. Not that Jim Steele is any great catch, poor fellow.”

“Oh, he’ll get over it,” said Clare. “They all do.”

From this it must not be imputed to her that she was vain and heartless. For the first, she was wonderfully free from vanity considering her powers of attraction. For the last, her own heart had never been touched, wherefore she was simply unable to understand the feeling in the case of other people, apart from the fact that her words were borne out by the results of her own observation.

“There was Captain Isard,” went on Mrs Fullerton, “and Mr Slark, who they say has good prospects, and will be a baronet at his father’s death. You sent them to the right-about too.”

“For the first – life in the Matabeleland Mounted Police doesn’t strike me as ideal,” laughed Clare. “For the second – fancy going through life labelled Slark. Even, eventually, Lady Slark wouldn’t palliate it. Besides, I don’t care twopence for either.”

“Who do you care twopence for, among all this throwing of handkerchiefs? There’s Mr Lamont – ”

“He never made a fool of himself in that way. He hasn’t got it in him,” struck in Clare, speaking rather more quickly.

Her sister smiled to herself at this kindling of animation.

“Hasn’t got it in him?” she repeated, innocently mischievous. “You mean he’s too great a fool?”

“I mean just the reverse. He’s got too much in him.”

“But – you know, dear, what they say about him – that he’s – er – a bit of a funkstick.”

“Bit of a funkstick! Pooh! Look at his face, Lucy. How can a man with a face like that have an atom of cowardice in his composition? Why, it’s too ridiculous.” And the whole-souled contempt which Clare infused into this vindication would have inspired wild exultation in the breast of any one of her multifold adorers near and far, had it been uttered in his own behalf. Yet her acquaintance with the object thereof was of the slightest. “Well, you know they say that one evening there was a bit of a row on over at the hotel – horrid, quarrelsome, fighting creatures men are – and someone insulted Lamont, or trod on his toes, or something, and, when he objected, the other wanted him to fight; and he quite climbed down.”

“I don’t believe it – or, at any rate, the motive they put upon it,” said Clare decidedly. “People have a way of piling on to their stories in the most recklessly top-heavy manner. In all probability he was more than the other’s match, and kept out of it on that account.”

“You make an effective champion, Clare,” laughed the other, mischievously. “Well I don’t know the ins and outs of it. Dick knows more about it than I do.”

“Oho! What does Dick know more about than you do?” hailed a voice outside the window, and its owner immediately entered, accompanied by another man. “Anyhow, that’s a big bit of news to start with – that Dick should know more about anything under the sun than you do. Here’s Driffield, and he’s going to stay lunch.”

“Dick, don’t be silly. How do you do, Mr Driffield,” greeting the Native Commissioner. “We were talking about Mr Lamont, and what they say about him. Clare says she doesn’t believe a word of it, and I was saying you knew more about it than I do, Dick.”

“Do you mean the breeze at Foster’s?”

“Yes.”

“Well, he did climb down. There’s no doubt about it. And the funny part of it is, that with the gloves on there’s hardly a man anywhere in these parts who can touch him.”

“There you are, Lucy,” cried Clare triumphantly. “Didn’t I tell you it was because he was more than the other’s match?”

“Well, it hadn’t got a look that way at the time, and that was what struck everybody who saw it. Certainly it struck me,” replied Fullerton. “But the next time you girls start taking away your neighbours’ characters, don’t do it at the top of your voices with window and door wide open. We could hear you all down the road. Couldn’t we, Driffield?”

“Mr Driffield sets a higher value on his immortal soul than you do on yours, Dick,” retorted Mrs Fullerton loftily. “Consequently he isn’t going to back you in your – ahem! – unveracity.”

“No. But he’s dying of thirst, Lucy. So am I.”

She laughed, and took the hint. Then as the two men put down their glasses, Fullerton went on —

“Talking of the gloves – that reminds me of another time when Lamont climbed down. That time he put on the gloves with Voss. It was a beautiful spar, and really worth seeing. Then, just as the fun was at its height, Lamont suddenly turned quite white – as white as such a swarthy beggar can turn, that is – and chucked up the sponge then and there.”

“Yes. I remember that. It looked rum certainly – but all the same I’ll maintain that Lamont’s no coward. He showed no sign of it in the war of ’93 anyway. If anything rather the reverse.”

“Ah!” exclaimed Clare significantly.

“May have lost his nerve since,” said her brother-in-law, also significantly.

“Well, I like Lamont,” said Driffield decidedly.

“I don’t,” said Fullerton, equally so.

“Mind you, he’s a chap who wants knowing a bit,” went on the Native Commissioner. “Then he’s all right.”

“Is he coming to the race meeting, Mr Driffield?” said Clare.

“Yes. He didn’t intend to, though, until I gave him your message, Miss Vidal. We pointed out to him that he couldn’t stop away after that.”

“Message! But I sent him no message.”

“Oh, Miss Vidal! Come now – think again.”

“Really, Mr Driffield, I ought to be very angry with you for twisting my words like that,” laughed Clare. “But – you mean well, so let it pass. You are forgiven.”

“Talking of Lamont,” struck in Fullerton, who had a wearisome way of harking back to a subject long after everybody else had done with it, “there’s a yarn going about that he had to leave his own neighbourhood in England for showing the white feather. And it looks like it, remembering what a close Johnny he is about himself.”

Driffield looked up quickly.

“I believe I know who put that yarn about,” he said. “Wasn’t it Ancram – that new man who’s putting up at Foster’s?”

“Most likely,” said Fullerton. “I never heard it myself till a day or two ago.”

“Why, what a sweep the fellow must be,” declared Driffield. “Lamont has been putting him up since Peters picked him up in the mopani veldt, nearly dead with thirst. Saved his life, in fact. I know it’s Ancram, because he pitched me the same yarn – of course ‘in strict confidence.’ Confidence indeed!”

“What a cur!” pronounced Clare. “Oh, what a completely loathsome cur!”

“Hear – hear!” ejaculated Driffield.