Bertram Mitford - The Luck of Gerard Ridgeley

“You must please yourself, of course, Harry,” was the perfectly good-humoured reply. “Unfortunately I can’t afford to do that. I’ve none too much cash as it is, and when that’s gone, I don’t see the slightest prospect of getting any more until I can make it myself. So, as I’ve got to rough it anyhow, I may as well begin now, and save the ‘chips’ at the same time. It won’t do you any harm either. Try it, for one night at any rate.”

The other sulkily acquiesced. The fact was he did not care to cut adrift from Gerard just then. He felt very much a fish out of water, in that strange country; were he alone, he would feel ten times more so. So comfort must give way to companionship, and he made no further objections.

A few inquiries soon brought them to the object of their search – a long low house standing back from the road. It was roofed with corrugated iron, and on each side were wings containing apparently bedrooms, opening onto the high stoep , for the doors stood wide open. In front of the house was a barren-looking garden, shaded by a couple of eucalyptus trees, growing one in each corner.

As they swung back the wooden gate which opened into the garden, the owner came out onto the stoep . He was a tall, loosely hung man, with the sallow complexion characteristic of the dwellers in the semi-tropical coast country of Natal.

“Good day, gentlemen. Did you want to see me? I am Wayne.”

Briefly Gerard explained the object of their visit.

“I don’t quite know what to say,” said Wayne. “We don’t care as a rule to take in boarders for so short a time, besides being pretty full up just now. However, as you’re new to the country, we’ll do the best we can for you, if you can manage with a room between you, that is; it’s not a very big one at that. Here it is.”

He showed them into one of the rooms aforesaid, opening onto the stoep . It certainly was not palatial, being about twelve feet square. Its fittings consisted of a small iron bedstead, a ditto washstand with a zinc basin and ewer, a rather dilapidated chair, a few pegs, and a cupboard.

“But there’s only one bed, and even that is too small for two people,” cried Harry, in dismay.

The proprietor laughed.

“That’s so. One of you will have to shake down on the floor. You can toss up which it’s to be.”

“It will do us all right,” said Gerard. “Now about terms.”

The man named a figure which seemed reasonable enough.

“You see, we could put you in lower if you were going to stop. As it is it wouldn’t pay us.”

“I see. We are quite satisfied,” said Gerard.

“Right. Maybe you’d like to stroll up into the town a bit. Tea is at seven. So long!”

“Pretty offhand, that chap,” remarked Harry, as they walked along the broad dusty road towards the town.

Lines of houses, similar to their new abode, and all built apart in their own grounds, stood on each side of the road, behind hedges of tamarisk or pomegranate. Tall bananas hung out their feathery tufts, and the verandahs twined with cactus or jessamine looked cool and inviting. A stretch of flat marshy land, extending to the blue waters of the land-locked bay, was still dotted with shaggy tufts of the “forest primeval.”

But the streets showed plenty of life in all its human varieties, black or white. The red or yellow dresses of the Indian coolies made quite a glow of colour in the dusty streets. Here and there a tall head-ringed native from some inland kraal strode down the street, his head in the air, and majestic in the proud possession of a rather cloudy check shirt, his kerries on his shoulder, and a bevy of his obedient womenkind following in his wake. At these original lords of the soil Gerard could not but look with considerable interest, as he noted with approval the massive limbs and stately bearing which seemed to raise the scantily clad savage a head and shoulders above the groups of slightly built, effeminate Orientals through which he somewhat disdainfully took his way. Whites, sallow-complexioned townspeople, there were too, standing about exchanging conversation – rather listlessly, for the close of a hot summer day in Durban is apt to find men not a little languid – and here and there a bronzed planter or farmer cantering down the street, bound for his country home among the sugar-canes or the bush.

A couple of hours’ stroll, and our two young friends began to feel a little of the enervating influence of the hot moist climate. Accordingly, having hailed a tramcar, they were soon set down at the door of their new lodgings.

The evening meal had already begun as they entered. Some seven or eight men, of the class described by the friendly Customs official, were seated at a long table, making great play with their knives and forks. The landlord sat at one end of the table and his wife at the other. The latter, a wooden-faced, middle-aged person, pointed to two seats which had been kept for the new boarders, and subsided again into silence. The other inmates, after a furtive stare, resumed their knife-and-fork play.

The meal, though plain, was extremely good. It consisted of tea, roast mutton, and potatoes, followed by some splendid pineapples. There was also boiled Indian corn served up in the ear, and plenty of bread and jam.

“Never ate ‘green mealies’ before, eh, mister?” sung out Wayne from the other end of the table, noticing that Harry half shied at the edible in question. “You just try one; you’ll find them first rate.”

Some one at the same time handed him the dish. The tender, smoking ears of corn looked tempting enough. Harry helped himself to one, and without much thinking what he was doing, put it endways into his mouth, and took a bite. A shout of laughter went up from the men. They had been furtively watching him, on the look-out for this. Harry reddened with anger, then tried to look dignified and indifferent.

“Never mind, mister,” cried Wayne, reassuringly. “You ain’t the first by a long chalk who has to learn how to eat green mealies. Half these chaps grinning here did just the same thing at first. Why, Robertson there, alongside you, bit the mealie cob clean in half, and then said it seemed rather dry sort of forage – eh, Robertson?”

“That’s just a fact, Wayne,” answered the man referred to, a tall, good-humoured young mechanic, seated next to Gerard, and with whom the latter had already been having some conversation.

The incident led to a good deal of chaff and bantering recrimination among the men themselves, during the progress of which Harry managed to smooth down his ruffled feelings.

Supper over, a move was made outside. Some of the men started off for the town to amuse themselves for the evening, while the others remained quietly at home, smoking their pipes in the verandah. After the noise and steamy heat of the dining-room, this was an example our two friends were not sorry to follow.

“Well, Harry, you can have the bedstead; I’ll take the floor,” said Gerard, as a couple of hours later they found themselves in possession of their room. “I feel like sleeping anywhere, I’m so tired.”

“I don’t,” grumbled the other, on whom the dearth of comfort, together with the uncongeniality of the position, was beginning to tell. “I feel more inclined to take the first ship home again than to do anything else, I can tell you.”

“Pooh, man, don’t be so easily put off! I suppose that’s what most fellows think at first, though.”

Gerard soon dropped off to sleep. Tired as he was, however, and with every disposition to adapt himself to circumstances, in less than two hours he awoke. The heat of the room, notwithstanding that the window was wide open, was suffocating, and, added to this, he awoke with the sensation of being devoured alive. A subdued groan from his companion, who was tossing restlessly upon his bed, caught his ear.