Bertram Mitford - A Frontier Mystery

“I want you to promise me not to quarrel with my cousin – no matter how rude and provoking he may be.”

“Is that all? Why of course I will.”

“Ah but – you may not find it so easy,” she went on, speaking earnestly, and her wide open glance full on my face. “I have been noticing his behaviour towards you of late, and admiring your forbearance. But as a personal favour to myself, don’t quarrel with him.”

“Oh, I still think that’ll be an easy promise to keep,” I said; and yet, the very fact that she was so anxious on the subject seemed to make the other way. Why was she?

She shook her head slightly and smiled, as though reading my thoughts.

“You see, we are all so friendly together, are we not?” she said. “And a man of your experience and good sense can afford to put up with a good deal from a mere boy who hasn’t much of either.”

“Why of course,” I answered easily, and reassured by her tactful explanation. Yet – was Falkner such “a mere boy” after all?

It is a strange, and I suppose a wholesomely-humiliating thing that we are appointed to go through life learning how little we know ourselves. Here was I, a man no longer young, with considerable experience of the ways of the world, rough and smooth, and under the fixed impression that if there was one man in the said wide and wicked world whom I knew thoroughly, in and out, from the crown of his hat to the soles of his boots – or velschoenen , as the case might be – that man was Godfrey Glanton, trader in the Zulu. And yet I had lived to learn that I didn’t know him at all.

For instance the happy-go-lucky, free-and-easy, semi-lonely life that had satisfied me for so many years seemed no longer satisfying; yet why not, seeing that all its conditions prevailed as before? I had enough for my needs, and if I didn’t make a fortune out of my trade, whether stationary or from time to time peripatetic, I had always made a steady profit. Now, however, it came home to me that this was a state of things hardly the best for a man to live and die in.

Again why not? I had seen contemporaries of my own – men circumstanced like myself who had come to the same conclusion. They had left it – only to come to grief in unfamiliar undertakings. Or they had married; only to find that they had better have elected to go through the rest of life with a chain and ball hung round their necks, than strapped to some nagging woman full of affectations and ailments – and raising a brood of progeny far more likely to prove a curse to them than anything else; thanks to the holy and gentle maternal influence aforesaid. All this I had seen, and yet, here I was, feeling restless and unsatisfied because for several days the recollection of a certain sweet and refined face, lit up by a pair of large, appealing eyes, had haunted my solitary hours.

It was that time since I had seen my neighbours. I had heard of them through my usual sources of information, and they seemed to me to be getting along all right; wherefore I had forborne to pay another visit lest it might have the appearance of “hanging around.” And by way of combating an inclination to do so now, I made up my mind to carry out a deferred intention, viz., pay a visit to Hensley’s place.

Tyingoza had been over to see me a couple of times, but made no allusion whatever to Falkner Sewin’s act of boyish idiocy: presumably rating it at its proper standard. But, I noticed that he wore a new head-ring. However, I hoped that was an incident forgotten; and as I heard nothing to the contrary, and my trade ran on as usual, I made no further reference to it either to Tyingoza or anybody else.

I arrived at the scene of Hensley’s disappearance about mid-day. The homestead stood in a long, narrow valley, thickly bushed. Behind, and almost overhanging it, was a great krantz whose smooth ironstone wall glowed like a vast slab of red-hot metal. The place was wild and picturesque to a degree, but – oh so hot!

Two men in shirts and trousers were playing quoits as I came up. I didn’t know either of them by sight.

“Good day,” said one of them, knocking off his play, and coming up. “Off-saddle won’t you? Dashed hot, isn’t it?”

“Thanks. I’m Glanton, from Isipanga,” I said in answer to his look of enquiry.

“Oh. Glad to know you, Glanton. I’m Kendrew, from nowhere in particular, at least not just now, price of transport being too sleg for anything.”

“Oh, you ride transport then? How many waggons?”

“Three in good times – one in bad; none in worse – as in the present case. This is Sergeant Simcox, of the N.M.P.,” introducing the other man, whom I noticed wore uniform trousers and boots. “He’s been helping me to look for my poor old uncle, you know.”

“Oh, Hensley was your uncle, was he?”

“Rather. But I’m next-of-kin – so if he’s not found I take. See?” with a comprehensive wink and jerk of the head which took in the surroundings.

I couldn’t help laughing at his coolness. He was a tall, rather good-looking young fellow, all wire and whipcord, with a chronically whimsical expression. The police sergeant was a hard bitten looking customer, typical of his line in life.

“Now what do you think of the affair?” I said. “Did you know Hensley well?”

“Hanged if I did. He didn’t like me. Did you?”

“Not very. I used to ride over and look him up now and again. But I can’t imagine him doing anything mysterious. In fact I should say he’d be the last man in the world to do it.”

“ Ja . I don’t know what to think of it. I’ve been running the place since I heard of the affair – luckily I wasn’t on the road just then so was able to. You’ll stop and have some scoff of course – you too, sergeant?”

“Wish I could,” said the latter, “but it’s against rules. Must get back to my camp.”

“Hang rules. Who’s to know? Glanton here won’t split.”

He was right, wherefore I forbear to say whether Sergeant Simcox made the third at that festive board or not.

We talked of trade and transport-riding and frontier matters generally, but surprisingly little of the matter that had brought me there. In fact Kendrew rather seemed to shirk the subject; not in any sort of suspicious manner let me explain, but rather as if he thought the whole thing a bore, and a very great one at that.

“You see, Glanton,” he explained, presumably detecting a surprised look on my face, called there by the exceedingly light way in which he was taking things. “You see it isn’t as if we had had a lot to do with each other. Of course I don’t for a moment hope that the poor old boy has come to grief, in fact I can’t help feeling that he may turn up any moment and want to know what the devil I’ve taken up my quarters at his place for, in this free and easy way.”

After a good dinner, washed down with a glass or so of grog, we went to look at the place where the missing man had slept. This didn’t help towards any theory. If there had been foul play, whoever had been concerned in it had removed all traces long ago.

“A good hound, requisitioned at first, would have done something towards clearing up the mystery,” I said.

“Yes, but you might as well have requisitioned a good elephant, for all you’d get either round here,” laughed Kendrew. “Well, I shall just give it up as a bad job and leave it to Simcox. That’s what he draws his pay for. I’ll just sit tight and boss up things so long. That’s my job.”

“I’d like to have a word or two with the boy who saw him last,” I said. “Alone I mean.”

“Think you can get him to talk, eh? Well perhaps you may – I’ve heard of you, Glanton, and what a chap you are for managing Kafirs. All right, stop on till this evening, the boy’s out herding now. Then you can indaba him to your heart’s content after supper. You’ll stay the night of course.”