"None at present, Miss Commerell," replied Carb.u.t.t. "Things are slack.

We shall have to go and have another slap at the n.i.g.g.e.rs up yonder, to keep the rust off. They are getting altogether too cheeky, squatting around Government House its very self."

"That'll make a little excitement," said Nidia. "We can watch your deeds of derring-do from here through the gla.s.ses."

"Heavens, no!" said Mrs Bateman, with fervour. "I don't want to see or hear anything more of those dreadful wretches, except that they've all been shot."

"By the way, there is a small item in the way of the latest," said Tarrant, carelessly. "Another man has rolled in who had been given up as a dead 'un."

"Yes. Is it anybody we know?" asked Nidia, quickly.

"I rather think it is," returned Tarrant, watching her face yet while not seeming to. "Ames of Sik.u.mbutana."

Nidia caught her breath with a sort of gasp, and her whole face lit up.

"Not John Ames?" she cried, as though hanging on the answer. Then, as Tarrant nodded a.s.sent, "Oh, I am glad!"

And then all of Nidia's old self seemed to return. She poured forth question upon question, hardly waiting to be answered. How had he escaped? Where was he, and when was he coming to see her? and so on-- and so on.

"He's rather close on the subject, Miss Commerell," Tarrant replied.

"He has a yarn about being chevvied by n.i.g.g.e.rs and tumbling over a _dwala_, and lying unconscious--and then some n.i.g.g.e.rs who knew him piloting him in. He asked after you the first thing, just as if you had never been away from here; and the odd part of it is, he didn't seem in the least surprised to hear you were safe and sound, and quite all right."

But the oddness of John Ames' lack of astonishment did not strike Nidia just then. She talked on, quite in her old way--now freely, too--on the subject of her escape and wanderings, making much of the humorous side thereof, and more of the judgment and courage and resource of her guide.

Her voice had a glad note about it; a very carol of joy and relief seemed to ring out in every tone. Ever unconventional, it never occurred to her to make the slightest attempt to disguise her feelings.

If she was glad that the man who had done so much for her had returned safe and sound, it was not in her to conceal that fact.

"Phew! she's giving away the show," Tarrant was thinking to himself.

"That first shot of mine _re_ John Ames was a plumb centre. I'll have the crow over old Moseley now. Lucky John Ames!"

But at heart he was conscious of a certain not altogether to be controlled sinking. He was not without a weakness for Nidia himself; now, however, in a flash he recognised its utter futility, and was far too much a man of the world not to realise that the sooner he cured himself of it the better.

Upon one other the change in Nidia's manner was not lost, and the discovery struck Susie Bateman with such wild amazement that she at first refused to entertain it. Here, then, lay the secret of the girl's fits of depression and generally low spirits. Such were not due to her recent terrible experiences. She had been secretly grieving on account of the man who had shared them, or why this sudden and almost miraculous restoration which the news of his safety had effected? She recalled her half-playful, half-serious warning to Nidia during their earlier acquaintance with this man--a warning more than once repeated, too.

That had been out of consideration for the man; but that it should ever have been needed on Nidia's own account--oh, Heavens! the idea was ghastly, if it were not so incredible Nidia, who had renounced airily the most alluring possibilities more than once, now to throw herself away upon a mere n.o.body! Nidia, who had never taken any of them seriously in her life, to succ.u.mb in this fashion! No, it could not be allowed. It could be nothing but the result of propinquity, and danger mutually shared. She must be saved from this at all costs. And then the good woman recognised uneasily that John Ames would be rather a difficult person to defeat, once he had made up his mind to opposition.

Ah! but she had one card to play, one weapon wherewith to deal a blow to which one of his mould would be peculiarly vulnerable.

The while she watched Nidia closely. But for the discovery she had made, she would have rejoiced to see her darling so completely her old self, all brightness and animation as she chatted away with the two visitors; now that very gladsomeness was as a poisoned and rankling dart to the dismayed observer, for it confirmed all her direst suspicions.

Susie Bateman's Christianity was about on a par with that of the average British female, in that she would have looked sourly askance at anybody who should refuse to attend church, yet just then she would have given a great deal to learn that Tarrant's report was erroneous, and that John Ames was at that moment lying among the granite wilds of the Matopos, as lifeless as the granite itself, with half a dozen Matabele a.s.segais through him.

Such aspirations, however, were as futile as they usually are, and the best proof of the truth of Tarrant's story lay in the real objective presence of the subject thereof; for hardly had the two men departed when they were replaced by a third--even John Ames him-self.

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX.

THE PACKET MARKED "B."

With her usual frank naturalness and absence of conventionality, Nidia went to meet him in the doorway. Then, as he took her extended hands, it seemed as though he were going to hold them for ever. Yet no word had pa.s.sed between them.

How well he looked! she was thinking. The light, not unpicturesque attire there prevailing, and so becoming to a good-looking, well-made man, suited him, she decided. She had first seen him in the ordinary garments of urban civilisation. She had seen him last a tattered fugitive, haggard and unshaven. Now the up-country costume--silk shirt and leather belt, and riding-trousers with gaiters--endowed his lithe well set-up form with an air of freedom and ease, and looking into the clear-cut face and full grey eyes, framed by the wide, straight brim of the up-country hat, she thought she had never seen him looking so well.

"How glad I am to see you again!" she said, "Ten thousand welcomes. Do you know, I have been feeling ever since as if _I_ were responsible for--for whatever had befallen you."

"Yes? Imagine, then, what _I_ must have felt at the thought of you, alone in the mountains, not knowing what to do or where to turn. I wonder it didn't drive me stark staring mad. Imagine it, Nidia. Just try to imagine it! Words won't convey it."

"I did have a dreadful time. But I knew nothing would have kept you from returning to me, had you been able. And then your boy, Pukele, arrived, and took such care of me. I sent him out to find you, and he said you had been among the Matabele, but had been able to leave them again--"

"Who? My boy? Pukele?" repeated John Ames, wonderingly.

"Yes. He brought me out of the mountains. One day he went out to hunt.

I heard him, as I thought, fire a couple of shots, and came up to find myself among friends again."

"Nidia," called a voice from within--a voice not untinged with acerbity--"won't Mr Ames come inside?"

John Ames started, and the effect seemed to freeze him somewhat. The coldness of the greeting extended to him as he complied, completed the effect. Instinctively he set it down to its true cause.

"We met last under very different circ.u.mstances, didn't we, Mrs Bateman?" he said easily. "None of us quite foresaw all that has happened since."

"I should think not. The wonder is that one of us is alive to tell the tale," was the rejoinder, in a tone which seemed to imply that no thanks were due to John Ames that 'one of us' was--in short, that he was responsible for the whole rising.

"And do you remember my asking if there wasn't a chance of the natives rising and killing us all?" said Nidia. "I have often thought of that.

What times we have been through!" with a little shudder. "Yet, in some ways it seems almost like a dream. Doesn't it, Susie?"

"A dream we are not awakened from, unfortunately," was the reply. "We don't seem through our troubles yet. Well, as for as we are concerned, we soon shall be. I want to take Miss Commerell out of this wretched country, Mr Ames, as soon as ever it can be managed. Don't you think it the best plan?"

"I think you are both far safer where you are, since you ask me," he answered. "Any amount of reinforcements are on their way, and meanwhile the laager here, though uncomfortable, is absolutely safe, because absolutely impregnable. Whereas the Mafeking road, if still open, is so simply on sufferance of the rebels. Any day we may hear of the Mangwe being blocked."

"I disagree with you entirely," came the decisive reply. "I hear, on first-rate authority, that the coaches are running regularly, under escort, and that the risk is very slight. I think that will be our best plan. I suppose you will be joining one of the forces taking the field as soon as possible, won't you, Mr Ames?"

If there was one thing that impressed itself upon John Ames when he first entered, it was that this woman intended to make herself supremely disagreeable; now he could not but own that she was thoroughly succeeding, and, as we said, he had instinctively seen her bent. She was, in fact, warning him off. The tone and manner, the obtrusive way in which she was mapping out his own movements for him, stirred within him a resentment he could hardly disguise, but her suggestion with regard to disposing of those of Nidia struck him with a pang of dismay, and that accentuated by considerations which will hereinafter appear.

Now he replied--

"My plans are so absolutely in the clouds that I can hardly say what I may decide to do, Mrs Bateman. I might even decide to cut my connection with this country. Take a run home to England, perhaps.

What if I were so fortunate as to come in as your escort?"

This he said out of sheer devilment, and he was rewarded, for if ever a human countenance betrayed disgust, repressed wrath, baffled scheming, all at once, that countenance belonged to Susie Bateman at that moment Nidia came to the rescue.

"You have not told us your adventures yet," she said. "I want to know all that happened since you left me. I only hope none of these tiresome men will come in and interrupt."

_All_ that happened! He could not tell her all, for he had pledged his word to the Umlimo. The latter had predicted that he would meet with every temptation to violate that pledge, and here was one of them. No, not even to her could he reveal all. But he told her of his fall from the dwala, his unconsciousness, and, leaving out that strange and startling experience, he went on to tell her what the reader has yet to learn--how he awoke in the broad light of day to find himself surrounded by armed natives, friendly to himself, however, who, of course, acting under orders from the Umlimo, had escorted him to within safe distance of Bulawayo.

Unconsciously their tones--he narrating, she commenting upon the narrative--became soft. Their glances, too, seemed to say something more than words. Both, in fact, were back again in imagination, roaming the wilds together, alone. They seemed to lose themselves in the recollection, oblivious of the presence of a third party.

The said third party, however, was by no means oblivious of them. Her ear weighed every tone, her keen eye noted every glance, every expression, and she grew proportionately venomous. Yet, looking at the man, she could hardly wonder at Nidia's preference, and the uncomfortable consciousness was forced upon her that whoever might be the object of it, this man or any other, her own feeling would be just the same--one of acute powerless jealousy, to wit, that any should ever stand before herself in her darling's preferences.

"Don't go," said Nidia, putting forth a hand to detain him, for his story had run on late, and he was rising with an apology. "Stay and have dinner with us. It's siege fare, but even then a little more varied than our precarious ration under the rocks--not that one did not positively enjoy that at the time," she added with a laugh. He joined in.

"Did you? I'm sure I did. Considering we were without any adjuncts, your cooking was marvellous, Nidia."

"Nidia" again! Heavens! It had come to that, then! Susie Bateman's hair nearly rose on end.