The Angels Weep - Smith Wilbur - Страница 46
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Pakamisa, pick it up!" Ralph mounted and backed his horse off the road and watched his laden wagons trundle by. There was 10,000 pounds of profit in that single convoy for him, and he had 200 wagons, plying back and forth across the vast sub-continent. Ralph shook his head in awe as he remembered the single elderly eighteen-footer that he and Isazi had driven out of Kimberley that first time. He had purchased it on borrowed money, and laden it with trade goods that he did not own.
"A long road and a hard one," he said aloud, as he wheeled his horse and kicked it into a gallop in pursuit of the mule coach and the wedding party.
He fell in again beside Louise, and she started from a reverie as though she had not even noticed his absence. "Dreaming," he accused her, and she spread the fingers of one graceful hand in admission of guilt, and then lifted it to point.
"Do look, Ralph. How beautiful it is!" A bird flitted across the track ahead of the coach. It was a shrike with a shiny black back, and a breast of a stunning crimson that burned in the white sunlight like a precious ruby.
"How beautiful it all is," she exulted as the bird disappeared into the scrub, and Louise turned in the saddle to take in the whole horizon with a sweep of her arm that made the tassels of her white buckskin jacket flutter. "Do you know, Ralph, that King's Lynn is the very first real home I have ever- known." And only then Ralph realized that they were still on his father's land. Zouga'Ballantyne had used up the entire fortune he had won from the blue ground of Kimberley's pit to buy the land grants of the drifters and never-contents amongst Doctor Jameson's troopers who had ridden into Matabeleland in the expeditionary force that had defeated Lobengula. Each of them had been entitled to four thousand acres of his choice, and some of them had sold that right to Zouga Ballantyne for as little as the price of a bottle of whisky.
It would take a rider on a good horse three days to ride around the boundary of King's Lynn. The home that Zouga had built for Louise stood on one of those distant hills, overlooking the wide plain of acacia trees and sweet grass, its thick golden thatch and burned brick blending with the shading grove of tall trees, as though it had always been there.
"This beautiful land will be so good to us, she whispered, her voice husky and her eyes brimming with an almost religious joy. "Vicky will be married today, and her children will grow strong here.
Perhaps--" She broke off and a little cloud passed behind her eyes.
She had not yet given up all hope of bearing Zouga's child. Every night, after his gentle loving, she would lie with her hands clasped over her stomach, and her thighs clenched as if to hold his seed within her and she would pray, while he slept quietly beside her. "Perhapsbut it would be ill-ome ned to even mention it and she changed it, "perhaps one day Jonathan or one of your sons yet unborn will be the master of King's Lynn." She reached across and laid her hand on his forearm. "Ralph, I have his strange premonition that our descendants will live here for ever." Ralph smiled fondly at her and covered her hand with his. "Well, now, my dear Louise, even Mr. Rhodes himself only gives it four thousand years. Will you not settle for that?" "Oh you!" She struck him playfully on the shoulder. "Will you never be serious!"
And then she exclaimed, and turned her horse out of the procession.
Under one of the flat-topped acacias beside the track, stood a pair of Matabele boys, neither of them older than ten years. They wore only the little mutsha loincloths, and hung their heads shyly as Louise greeted them in fluent rippling Sindebele. King's Lynn employed dozens of these mujiba to tend the vast herds of native cattle and the fine breeding bulls that Zouga had brought up from the south. These were but two of them, yet Louise knew them by name, and their faces shone with genuine affection as they returned her greeting.
"I see you also, Balela." The praise name the Matabele servants of King's Lynn had given her meant "the One who brings Clear and Sunny Skies" and the two children waited expectantly, answering her questions dutifully, until Louise at last reached into the pocket of her skirt and dropped a morsel of candy into each of their cupped pink palms.
They scampered back to their herds, cheeks bulging like those of squirrels, and their eyes huge with delight.
"You spoil them, "Ralph chided her, as she rejoined him. "They are our people," she said simply, and then almost regretful. "here is the boundary. I hate to leave our own land." And the wedding procession passed the simple roadside peg, and rode onto the land of Khami Mission Station. However, it was almost an hour later that the mules hauled the coach up the steep track, through thick bush, and paused to blow on the level neck of ground high above the whitewashed church and its attendant buildings.
It seemed as though an army was encamped in the valley.
Jordan jumped down from the coach, shrugging off the cotton dust-coat that had protected his beautiful dove-grey suit, and smoothing his dense golden curls as he crossed to his brother.
"What on earth is going on, Ralph?" he demanded. "I never expected anything like this." "Robyn has invited half the Matabele nation to the wedding and the other half invited themselves." Ralph smiled down at his brother. "Some of them have trekked a hundred miles to be here, every patient she has ever treated, every convert she ever turned, every man, woman and child who ever came to beg a favour or advice, everyone who ever called her "Nomusa" they are all here, and they have all brought their families and friends. It's going to be the greatest jollification since Lobengula held the last Chawala ceremony back in "93." "But who is going to feed them all? "Jordan went immediately to the logistics.
"Oh, Robyn can afford to blow a few of her royalties, and I sent her a gift of fifty head of slaughter-bullocks. Then they do say that Gandang's wife, old fat Juba, has brewed a thousand gallons of her famous twa la They will be bloated as pythons and overflowing with good cheer." Ralph punched his brother's arm affectionately. "Which reminds me that I have worked up a fair old thirst myself, let's get on with it." The road was lined on both sides with hundreds of singing maidens, all of them decked with beads and flowers, their skin was anointed with fat and clay so that it shone like cast bronze in the sunlight. Their short aprons swirled about their thighs as they stamped and swayed, and their naked bosoms bounced and joggled. "By God, Jordan, have you ever seen such a fine display?" Ralph teased his brother, well aware of his prudish and reserved attitude to all women.
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