The Luck of Gerard Ridgeley

Gerard told who he was. The two white men exchanged looks of surprise.

“Anstey’s relative! So?” they said. “Looking him up, maybe?”

Gerard explained his exact position with regard to Anstey. He noticed that the significance of the look exchanged between the pair did not decrease. The Zulu, however, seemed to receive the answer with but little interest. He made one or two ineffectual attempts at Gerard’s name, but the recurring “r” – a letter which none of the Bantu races can pronounce, always in fact making it a sort of guttural aspirate – baffled him, and he gave it up. Then, with a sonorous farewell, he took his departure.

“If all Zulus are like him, they must be a splendid race,” said Gerard, gazing after the retreating figure. “That’s the first real one I’ve seen, to my knowledge.”

“Ungrateful beggar!” commented one of the men, angrily. “Why, he hardly took the trouble to say ‘Thankee.’ He deserved to have been let go over the fall.”

“I’m afraid I’m nearly as bad,” said Gerard. “I don’t – or rather I do – know where I should be if it hadn’t been for you.”

“That’s nothing, mister,” was the prompt rejoinder. “Help one another’s the rule of the road – eh, George?”

“Ja, that’s so,” assented George again.

They chatted on for a while, and smoked a sociable pipe, and Gerard accepted an invitation to accompany his friends in need to their waggons – which were standing waiting for them at the drift higher up – and take a glass of grog, which, with the torrid heat of the sun, combined to keep off any chill which might result from his wetting. Then with much mutual good will they separated.

Gerard held on his way, pondering over his adventure, which indeed was a pretty stirring one, and the first he had ever had. He was bound on an errand of partly business, partly pleasure; namely, to visit some people he did not greatly care for on some business of Anstey’s. Still the change from the sedentary round of the store was something, and, hot as it was, he enjoyed the ride. It was Sunday, and thus a sort of holiday, though even on the Sabbath we fear that trade was not altogether at a standstill.

That day, however, was destined to be one of incident, of adventure. His visit over, he was riding home in the cool of the evening. The sun was just touching the western sky-line, flooding with a golden light the open, rolling plains. There was nothing specially beautiful in the landscape, in fact it was rather monotonous, but the openness of it gave an idea of free and sweeping space, and the almost unearthly glow of a perfect evening imparted a charm that was all its own. The uncongenial circumstances of his present life faded into insignificance. Gerard felt quite hopeful, quite elated. He felt that it was good even to live.

Suddenly a hubbub of voices rose upon the evening air – of native voices, of angry voices – and mingled with it the jarring clash of kerries. Spurring his horse over the slight eminence which rose in front, the cause of it became manifest. A small native kraal stood just back from the road. Issuing from this were some half-dozen figures. A glance served to show that they were engaged in a highly congenial occupation to the savage mind – fighting, to wit.

It was a running fight, however, and an unequal one. A tall man was retreating step by step, holding his own gallantly against overwhelming odds. He was armed with nothing but a knobkerrie, with which he struck and parried with lightning-like rapidity. His assailants were mostly armed with two kerries apiece, and were pressing him hard; albeit with such odds in their favour they seemed loth to come to close quarters, remaining, or springing back, just beyond the reach of those terrible whirling blows. To add to the shindy, all the women and children in the kraal were shrilly yelling out jeers at the retreating adversary, and three or four snarling curs lent their yapping to the uproar.

“Yauw! great Zulu!” ran the jeers. “We fear you not! Why should we? Ha-ha! We are free people-free people. We are not Cetywayo’s dogs. Ha-ha!”

“Dogs!” roared the tall man, his eyes flashing with the light of battle. “Dogs of Amakafúla! By the head-ring of the Great Great One, were I but armed as ye are, I would keep the whole of this kraal howling like dogs the long night through – I, Sobuza, of the Aba Qulúsi – I alone. Ha!”

And with a ferocious downward sweep of his kerrie, he knocked the foremost of his assailants off his legs, receiving in return a numbing blow on the shoulder from the stick of another. All the warrior blood of the martial Zulu was roused, maddened, by the shock. He seemed to gain in stature, and his eyes blazed, as roaring out the war-shout of his race, the deep-throated “Usútu!” he abandoned the offensive and hurled himself like a thunderbolt upon his four remaining adversaries. These, not less agile than himself, scattered a moment previous to closing in upon him from all sides at once. At the same time he was seen to totter and pitch heavily forward. The man whom he had previously swept off his feet had, lying there, gripped him firmly by the legs.

Nothing could save him now! With a ferocious shout the others sprang forward, their kerries uplifted. In a moment he would be beaten to a jelly, when —

Down went the foremost like a felled ox, before the straight crushing blow of an English fist; while at the same time a deft left-hander met the next with such force as to send him staggering back a dozen paces. Wrenching the two sticks from the fallen man, Gerard pushed them into the hands of the great Zulu. The latter, finding himself thus evenly armed, raised the war-shout “Usútu!” and charged his two remaining assailants. These, seeing how the tables had been turned, did not wait. They ran away as fast as their legs could carry them.

“Whou!” cried the Zulu, the ferocity which blazed from his countenance fading into a look of profound contempt. “They show their backs, the cowards. Well, let them run. Ha! they have all gone,” he added, noticing that the others, too, had sneaked quietly away. “Whau!”

The last ejaculation was a staccato one of astonishment. For he recognised in Gerard his rescuer of the morning.

“I say, friend, you floored those two chappies neatly. By Jove, you did!”

Both turned towards the voice. It proceeded from a light buggy, which stood drawn up on the road behind them. In this were seated a young man some three or four years older than himself, and an extremely pretty girl, at sight of whom Gerard looked greatly confused, remembering the circumstances under which she had beheld him.

“It was an A1 row,” continued the former. “We saw the whole of it. Allamaghtaag! but I envy the way in which you spun those two to the right and left.”

“Well, I had to,” answered Gerard. “It was five to one. That’s not fair play, you know.” And his eyes met the blue ones of the young lady in the buggy, and were inclined to linger there, the more so that the said blue orbs seemed to beam an approval that was to the last degree heterodox in one of the tenderer sex and therefore, theoretically, an uncompromising opponent of deeds of violence.

“Who’s your long-legged friend?” went on the young man, proceeding to address a query or two to the Zulu, in the latter’s own language, but in a tone that struck even Gerard as a trifle peremptory. “He’s a surly dog, anyhow,” he continued, annoyed at the curtness of the man’s answer.

“He’s a Zulu – a real Zulu – and his name’s Sobuza,” said Gerard.

“A Zulu, is he? Do you know him, then?” was the surprised rejoinder.

“I didn’t before this morning. But I happen to have got him out of one little difficulty already to-day. I never expected to see him again, though.”

“The deuce you did! Was he engaged in the congenial pastime of head-breaking then, too?”

“N-no. The fact is – ” And then Gerard blushed and stuttered, for he saw no way out of trumpeting his own achievements, and somehow there was something about those blue eyes that made him shrink instinctively from anything approaching this. “The truth is he got into difficulties in the river – a bit of string or something twisted round his legs in the water so that he couldn’t swim, and I helped him out.”

The girl’s face lighted up, and she seemed about to say something; but the other interrupted —

“By Jove, we must get on. It’ll be dark directly, and looks like a storm in the offing, and we’ve a good way to go. Well, ta-ta to you, sir. So long!” And the buggy spun away over the flat.

Gerard followed it with his glance until it was out of sight. Then he turned to the Zulu. That worthy was seated on the ground, calmly taking snuff.

“Ha, Umlúngu!” (white man) he exclaimed, as, having completed that operation, he replaced his horn snuff-tube in the hole cut out of the lobe of his ear for that purpose. “This has been a great day – a great day. Surely my inyoka has taken your shape. Twice have you helped me this day. Twice in the same day have you come to my aid. Wonderful – wonderful! The death of the water – to pass through the mighty fall to the Spiritland – that is nothing. It is a fitting end for a warrior. But that I, Sobuza, of the Aba Qulúsi, of the people of Zulu – that I, Sobuza, the second fighting captain of the Udhloko regiment – should be ‘eaten up’ by four or five miserable dogs of Amakafula2. Whau! that were indeed the end of the world. I will not forget this day, Umlúngu. Tell me again thy name.”

Gerard, who although he understood by no means all of this speech, had picked up sufficient Zulu to grasp most of its burden, repeated his names, slowly and distinctly, again and again. But Sobuza shook his head. He could not pronounce them. The nearest he could come was a sort of Lewis Carrollian contraction of the two – “U’ Jeríji,” pronouncing the “r” as a guttural aspirate.

“I shall remember,” he said; “I shall remember. And now, Jeríji, I journey to the northward to the land of the Zulu. Fare thee well.”

Instinctively Gerard put forth his hand. With a pleased smile the warrior grasped it in a hearty muscular grip. Then with a sonorous “Hlala gahle,” (or farewell), he turned and strode away over the now fast darkening veldt.

The occupants of the buggy, speeding too on their way, were engaged in something of an altercation.

“It was too provoking of you, Tom,” the girl was saying, “to rush me away like that.”

“So? Well, we’ve no time to spare as it is. And that cloud-bank over there means a big thunderstorm, or I’m a Dutchman.”

“I don’t care if it does. And we never found out his name – who he is.”

“No more we did, now you mention it,” said the other in a tone of half-regretful interest. “But, after all, we can survive the loss.”

“But – he was such a nice-looking boy.”

“Oho!” was the rejoinder, accompanied by a roar of laughter. “So that’s the way the cat jumps!”

“Don’t be an idiot,” answered the girl, but in a tone which seemed to say the “chaff” was not altogether displeasing to her. “But you remember the report we heard coming through Howick, about two men being nearly carried over the Umgeni Fall to-day, while one was trying to save the other. That’s the hero of the story, depend upon it. I’d have got it all out of him if you hadn’t been in such a desperate hurry. And now we don’t even know who he is!”

“No more we do. Let’s put an advertisement in the paper. That’ll draw him – eh? Such a nice-looking boy, too!” he added, mimicking her tone.

“Tom, you’re a born idiot,” she rejoined, blushing scarlet.

The “nice-looking boy” meanwhile was cantering homeward in the twilight, building castles in the air at a furious rate. Those blue eyes – that voice – hovered before his imagination even as a stray firefly or so hovered before his path. It was long since he had heard the voice or seen the face of any woman of birth and refinement. Anstey was not wont to mix with such, and the few female acquaintances the latter owned, though worthy people enough, were considerably his inferiors in the social scale. At this time, indeed, his mind and heart were peculiarly attuned to such impressions, by reason of his lonely and uncongenial surroundings; more than ever, therefore, would a feeling of discontent, of yearning home-sickness, arise in his mind. Then, by a turn of retrospect, his memory went back to Mr Kingsland’s hearty, straightforward words of advice: “When you’ve got your foot in the stirrup, keep it there. Stick to it, my lad, stick to it, and you’ll do well.” And now he had got his foot in the stirrup. Was he to kick it out again in peevish disgust because the stirrup was a bit rusty? No; he hoped he was made of better stuff than that. He must just persevere and hope for better times.

He reached home just as the black cloud, which had been rolling up nearer and nearer, with many a red flash and low rumble, began to break into rain. Having hastily put up his horse in the tumble-down stable, and seen him fed, he went indoors, only to find Anstey blind drunk and snoring in an armchair. Utterly disgusted, he helped that worthy to bed, and then, after a cold supper, for which he had little appetite, he sought his own shakedown couch in the comfortless lumber-room. Then the storm broke in a countless succession of vivid flashes and deafening thunder-peals which shook the building to its very foundations; and to the accompaniment of the deluging roar and rush of the rain upon the iron roof he fell fast asleep – to dream that he was rescuing countless numbers of fighting Zulus from the Umgeni Fall, over which a rainbow made up of blue eyes was striving to lure them.

Note 1. “Snake.” Zulus are great believers in tutelary spirits, of which each individual has one or more continually watching over him. To such they frequently, though not invariably, attribute the form of the serpent.

Chapter Eight.

Down

We referred to a change which had come into Anstey’s manner as regarded his intercourse with our young friend. More than once he had returned to the charge and sounded the latter again as to the probability of his relatives being willing to invest some funds for him in what he was pleased to call their joint concern. But Gerard’s reply had been positive and unvarying. So persuaded was he of their inability to do so that he would not even apply to them. Then it was that Anstey’s manner began to change.

He dropped the intimate, elder-brother kind of tone which had heretofore characterised their intercourse, and which poor Gerard in his youth and inexperience had taken for genuine, and for it substituted a master-and-servant sort of demeanour. He would order Gerard about, here and there, or send him off on an errand, with a short peremptoriness of tone as though he were addressing some particularly lazy and useless native. Or he would always be finding fault – more than hinting that the other was not worth his salt. Now, all this, to a lad of Gerard’s temperament, was pretty galling. The relations between the pair became strained to a dangerous tension.

It happened one morning that Gerard was in the tumble-down old stable, saddling up a horse to start upon some errand for his employer. It was a clear, still day, and through the open door came the sound of voices, which he recognised as belonging to two or three transport-riders, whose waggons were outspanned on the flat outside, and who had been lounging in the store making purchases and chatting just before.

“So I hear they’ve got two more writs out against Anstey,” one voice was saying.

“So? Who’s doing it this time?”

“Oh, Butler and Creighton. They ain’t going to allow him any more tick – not even to the tune of a string of beads. Why, he’s dipped three or four times over. His bills ain’t worth the paper they’re written on.”

“Going to sell him up, are they?”

“Ja. They just are. They’ve got out two more writs, I tell you. Shouldn’t wonder if they put in an execution to-day.”

Gerard, to whom every word was as plainly audible as it was to the speakers themselves, felt as though petrified. This relative of his, with his plausible and grandiloquent schemes, stood revealed a bankrupt swindler of the worst type. All the glowing pictures of wealth and success which he had drawn now seemed mere pitiful traps to catch him, Gerard, in his youth and inexperience. Now the motive of Anstey’s change of manner was as clear as daylight. There was nothing further to be got out of him. And with a dire sinking of the heart Gerard thought of how he had been induced to invest his little all in this utterly rotten concern. But no – it could not be. Anstey was his relation. He could not be such a mean, pitiful rascal as that. But the next words were not such as to reassure him.

“How they’ve given him so much law as they have bangs me, I admit,” went on the first speaker. “Why, for the last year past he’s never had a cent he could call his own. This show, and every mortal thing in it, has been dipped up to the hilt.”

“Maybe this young Britisher he’s got hold of has helped bolster him up. Eh!”

“Maybe. So much the worse for the Britisher, for he’ll never see a brass farthing of his money again. But how the mischief even a raw Britisher could be soft-sawdered by Anstey is a stumper. He’s out and away the most infernal scoundrel in this colony.”

All the blood rushed to Gerard’s head. He had been duped, swindled. He had given several months of hard and honest work without receiving any pay, for his employer had always put him off on some pretext or other – that it was more convenient, or usual, to settle up half-yearly, or what not. He had been swindled out of even the few pounds which were all he had in the world; for, as the man had just said, he would never be able to get a farthing out of Anstey. Unfortunately there could be no reason to doubt the truth of what he had just heard, for other signs, now made clear, seemed to point to it. These men, moreover, were talking at ease among themselves, and freely. They evidently knew what and who they were talking about. His first impulse was to walk straight up to them and ask for a further explanation. Instead, however, he went back to the store.

Anstey was there, drinking grog with a transport-rider who had just come in. At sight of Gerard he started up angrily.

“Why, what the deuce is the meaning of this?” he said, in his most offensive and hectoring tone. “Not gone yet, and I sent you to saddle up half an hour ago.”

Gerard made no reply; but there was a look in his face which mightily disquieted his employer. But the latter, who was fuddled to a quarrelsome stage by the grog he had been drinking, roared out, with a volley of curses —

“You disobedient, skulking beggar! What do you suppose I keep you here for at all? Get out of this at once, and do as I tell you. Do you hear, sir?”

Gerard’s face turned livid. The abominable insult of the tone and words was too much. He made a quick move forward, and things would have gone badly for Anstey. But the grip of muscular hands on his shoulders restrained him.

“Hallo, young fellow! What’s all the row about? Keep cool, now, I say. Keep cool!”

The advice was sorely needed, and the restraining touch had a salutary effect. Gerard was not going to throw himself into any vulgar promiscuous struggle, and collected himself with an effort. In the voices of the two men who had just entered, he recognised the two whose conversation he had overheard.

“I’ll keep cool, right enough,” he said. Then, addressing Anstey, “As for you, the sooner we part the better. I have stood your abominably offensive behaviour long enough, and I won’t stand it a day longer. As long as you behaved decently to me – which you did at first, no doubt for reasons of your own – I would have done anything for you. Now you have got upon the other tack I’ve had about enough of it. So we may as well part at once. Please hand me over what you owe me, and I’ll be off.”

“What I owe you – eh?” said Anstey, with an evil sneer. “But supposing I don’t owe you anything, my fine fellow? If you slink off without giving me proper notice, you forfeit every penny. How does that pan out – eh?”

Gerard’s countenance fell. There was truth in this, he feared.

“Well, never mind about that,” he said. “I’ll waive my claim. I’ll make you a present of these months of hard work. Just return me my twenty-five pounds, and we’ll cry quits.”

Anstey’s face was a study in well-simulated amazement – blank, bewildered amazement.

“Is the fellow drunk,” he said, “or only mad? Your what? I’m not sure if I quite heard. Your twenty-five thousand pounds, did you say?”

“I said my twenty-five pounds, that you induced me to hand over to you to be invested in this business, which I believe to be an utterly rotten concern, and has been for some time past,” replied Gerard, stung out of all prudence or reserve.

The two transport-riders looked at each other with dismayed meaning. Their conversation must have been overheard. Anstey’s face turned livid at this hit.

“You’re slandering me – slandering me before witnesses, by God – and that’s actionable. I’ll have it out of you, you beggarly young sweep!” he yelled, shaking his fist furiously, safe in the conviction that the other men would not suffer Gerard to assault him.

“Well, you can please yourself about that. What I want now is the return of my money?”

“Oh, indeed!” sneered Anstey, affecting a cool sarcasm. “And will you kindly state what money it is you desire returned?”

“Certainly,” answered Gerard, “though I have already done so. I want the twenty-five pounds – all I had in the world – which you induced me to entrust to you to be invested in this rotten business. And I am going to have it!”

“Oh, you are? So you shall, and welcome, when you can produce one scrap of evidence, either in writing or by word of mouth, that I have ever had twenty-five pounds, or shillings, or pence from you. Eh, sonny? What do you say, now?”

Gerard started; stared blankly as he grasped the full extent of the other’s rascality. For, in his rawness and inexperience, he had not required any sort of receipt or acknowledgment from Anstey, and he had handed over the money at a time when there was no witness within sight or earshot.

“And I tell you what it is,” pursued Anstey, marking his undisguised discomfiture, “I’ll be hanged if I don’t have the law of you for trying to extort money out of me by threats and violence. I will, too, if you don’t clear out of this mighty sharp, and give me no more bother! It’s a criminal offence, I tell you; and these gentlemen are witnesses that you tried it on. I’ll have you put in the tronk. I’ll – ”

“Stow all that, Anstey,” said one of the men, sternly and decisively. “D’you mean to deny that this youngster ever handed you twenty-five pounds? Come, now. Speak up, man!”

“Why of course I do,” unhesitatingly replied Anstey, though not without quailing before the indignation and contempt depicted on all three faces.

“Well, then, I for one believe you are telling the most infernal lie ever laid tongue to,” said the transport-rider. “As for you, youngster,” turning to Gerard, “I can only say I’m sorry for you, for you have fallen into the hands of the biggest blackguard in the whole of this Colony. Why on earth didn’t you make him give you a receipt or something?”

“The fact is, he is related to me. I thought I could trust him. How should I know he was no better than a common thief?”

“You’re a mighty virtuous lot, eh, Sam Carruthers?” sneered Anstey. “I’ve heard of a few tricks being played with waybills before to-day, while the load’s on the road.”

“You just shut up, or I’ll about knock your head off, Anstey, and be glad of an opportunity to do it, too!” said another of the transport-riders.

“Will you?” yelled Anstey, moving towards the inner door to ensure a retreat in the event of any of them making an attempt at climbing over the counter which now separated them from him. “I tell you what it is. You’re all in league with this swindling young thief, who is trying to bluff me out of money. But it won’t do – it won’t do. He can take his things and go to the devil. He came to me a beggar, and he can go out a beggar – the ungrateful dog. And, if any one likes to try the smashing trick, I’ve got a barker here that knows how to bite.”

And, making a rapid skip inside, he reappeared in a moment with a long-barrelled revolver.