CHAPTER V
DREAMS ARE FOOLISHNESS
When, at the approach of Frank Muller, John Niel left Bessie on theverandah, he had taken his gun, and, having whistled to the pointer dogPontac, he mounted his shooting pony and started in quest of partridges.On the warm slopes of the hills round Wakkerstroom a large species ofpartridge is very abundant, particularly in the patches of red grasswith which the slopes are sometimes clothed. It is a merry sound to hearthese birds calling from all directions just after daybreak, and one tomake the heart of every true sportsman rejoice exceedingly. On leavingthe house John proceeded up the side of the hill behind it--his ponypicking its way carefully between the stones, and the dog Pontac rangingabout two or three hundred yards off, for in this sort of country itis necessary to have a dog with a wide range. Presently seeing himstop under a mimosa thorn and suddenly stiffen out as if he had beenpetrified, John made the best of his way towards him. Pontac stood stillfor a few seconds, and then slowly and deliberately veered his headround as though it worked on a hinge to see if his master was coming.John knew his ways. Three times would that remarkable old dog look roundthus, and if the gun had not then arrived he would to a certainty runin and flush the birds. This was a rule that he never broke, for hispatience had a fixed limit. On this occasion, however, John arrivedbefore it was reached, and, jumping off his pony, cocked his gun andmarched slowly up, full of happy expectation. On drew the dog, his eyecold and fixed, saliva dropping from his mouth, and his head, onwhich was frozen an extraordinary expression of instinctive ferocity,outstretched to its utmost limit.
Pontac was under the mimosa thorn now and up to his belly in the warmred grass. Where could the birds be? _Whirr!_ and a great featheredshell seemed to have burst at his very feet. What a covey! twelve braceif there was a bird, and they had all been lying beak to beak in a spaceno bigger than a cart wheel. Up went John's gun and off too, a littlesooner than it should have done.
"Missed him clean! Now then for the left barrel." Same result. We willdraw a veil over the profanity that ensued. A minute later and it wasall over, and John and Pontac were regarding each other with mutualcontempt and disgust.
"It was all you, you brute," said John to Pontac. "I thought you weregoing to run in, and you hurried me."
"Ugh!" said Pontac to John, or at least he looked it. "Ugh! youdisgusting bad shot. What is the good of pointing for you? It's enoughto make a dog sick."
The covey--or rather the collection of old birds, for this kind ofpartridge sometimes "packs" just before the breeding season--hadscattered all about the place. It was not long before Pontac found someof them, and this time John got one bird--a beautiful great partridge hewas too, with yellow legs--and missed another. Again Pontac pointed, anda brace rose. Bang! down goes one; bang with the other barrel. Caughthim, by Jove, just as he topped the stone. Hullo! Pontac is still on thepoint. Slip in two more cartridges. Oh, a leash this time! bang! bang!and down come a brace of them--two brace of partridges without moving ayard.
Life has joys for all men, but, I verily believe, it has no joy tocompare to that of the moderate shot and earnest sportsman when hehas just killed half a dozen driven partridges without a miss, or tenrocketing pheasants with eleven cartridges, or, better still, a coupleof woodcock right and left. Sweet to the politician are the cheersthat announce the triumph of his cause and of himself; sweet to thedesponding writer is the unexpected public recognition by reviewers oftalents with which previously nobody had been much impressed; sweet toall men are the light of women's eyes and the touch of women's lips. Butthough he have experienced all these things, to the true sportsman andthe _moderate shot_, sweeter far is it to see the arched wings of thedriven bird bent like Cupid's bow come flashing fast towards him, tofeel the touch of the stock as it fits itself against his shoulder,and the kindly give of the trigger, and then, oh thrilling sight! toperceive the wonderful and yet awful change from life to death, the puffof feathers, and the hurtling passage of the dull mass borne onward byits own force to fall twenty yards from where the pellets struck it.Next session the politician will be hooted down, next year perhapsthe reviewers will cut the happy writer to ribbons and decorate theirjournals with his fragments, next week you will have wearied of thosedear smiles, or, more likely still, they will be bestowed elsewhere.Vanity of vanities, my son, each and all of them! But if you are a truesportsman (yes, even though you be but a moderate shot), it will alwaysbe a glorious thing to go out shooting, and when you chance to shootwell earth holds no such joy as that which will glow in your honestbreast (for all sportsmen are honest), and it remains to be proved ifheaven does either. It is a grand sport, though the pity of it is thatit should be a cruel one.
Such was the paean that John sang in his heart as he contemplated thosefine partridges before lovingly transferring them to his bag. But hisluck to-day was not destined to stop at partridges, for hardly had heridden over the edge of the boulder-strewn side, and on to the flattable-top of the great hill which covered some five hundred acres ofland, before he perceived, emerging from the shelter of a tuft of grassabout a hundred and seventy yards away, nothing less than the tall neckand whiskered head of a large _pauw_ or bustard.
Now it is quite useless to try and ride straight up to a bustard, andthis he knew. The only thing to do is to excite his curiosity and fixhis attention by moving round and round him in an ever-narrowing circle.Putting his pony to a canter, John proceeded to do this with a heartbeating with excitement. Round and round he went; the _pauw_ hadvanished now, he was squatting in the tuft of grass. The last circlebrought him to within seventy yards, and he did not dare to ride anynearer, so jumping off his pony he ran in towards the bird as hard as hecould go. When he had covered ten paces the _pauw_ was rising, but theyare heavy birds, and he was within forty yards before it was fairly onthe wing. Then he pulled up and fired both barrels of No. 4 into it.Down it came, and, incautious man, he rushed forward in triumph withoutreloading his gun. Already was his hand outstretched to seize the prize,when, behold! the great wings spread themselves out and the bird wasflying away. John stood dancing upon the veldt, but observing that itsettled within a couple of hundred yards, he ran back, mounted his pony,and pursued it. As he drew near it rose again, and flew this timea hundred yards only, and so it went on till at last he got withingun-shot of the king of birds and killed it.
By this time he was across the mountain-top, and on the brink of themost remarkable chasm he had ever seen. The place was known as Lion'sKloof, or Leeuwen Kloof in Dutch, because three lions had once beenpenned up by a party of Boers and shot there. This chasm or gorge wasbetween a quarter and half a mile long, about six hundred feet in width,and a hundred and fifty to a hundred and eighty feet deep. Evidently itowed its origin to the action of running water, for at its head, just tothe right of where John Niel stood, a little stream welling from hiddensprings in the flat mountain-top trickled from stratum to stratum,forming a series of crystal pools and tiny waterfalls, till at last itreached the bottom of the mighty gorge, and pursued its way throughit to the plains beyond, half-hidden by the umbrella-topped mimosa andother thorns that were scattered about. Without doubt this little streamwas the parent of the ravine it trickled down and through, but, wonderedJohn Niel, how many centuries of patient, never-ceasing flow musthave been necessary to the vast result before him? First centuriesof saturation of the soil piled on and between the bed rocks that laybeneath it and jutted up through it, then centuries of floods causedby rain and perhaps by melting snows, to carry away the loosened mould;then centuries upon centuries more of flowing and of rainfall to washthe debris clean and complete the colossal work.
I say the rocks that jutted up through the soil, for the kloof was notclean cut. All along its sides, and here and there in its arena, stoodmighty columns or fingers of rock, not solid indeed, but formed by hugeboulders piled mason fashion one upon another, as though the Titans ofsome dead age had employed themselves in building them up, overcomingtheir tendency to fall by the mere cru
shing weight above, that kept themsteady even when the wild breath of the storms came howling down thegorge and tried its strength against them. About a hundred paces fromthe near end of the chasm, some ninety or more feet in height, rosethe most remarkable of these giant pillars, to which the remains atStonehenge are but as toys. It was formed of seven huge boulders, thelargest, that at the bottom, about the size of a moderate cottage,and the smallest, that at the top, perhaps some eight or ten feet indiameter. These boulders were rounded like a cricket-ball--evidentlythrough the action of water--and yet the hand of Nature had contrivedto balance them, each one smaller than that beneath, the one uponthe other, and to keep them so. But this was not always the case. Forinstance, a very similar mass which once stood on the near side of theperfect pillar had fallen, all except its two foundation stones, andthe rocks that formed it lay scattered about like monstrous petrifiedcannon-balls. One of these had split in two, and seated on it, lookingvery small and far off at the bottom of that vast gulf, John discoveredJess Croft, apparently engaged in sketching.
He dismounted from his shooting pony, and looking about him perceivedthat it was possible to descend by following the course of the streamand clambering down the natural steps it had cut in its rocky bed.Throwing the reins over the pony's head, and leaving him with the dogPontac to stand and stare about him as South African shooting poniesare accustomed to do, he laid down his gun and game and proceeded todescend, pausing every now and again to admire the wild beauty of thescene and examine the hundred varieties of moss and ferns, the lastmostly of the maiden-hair (_Capillus Veneris_) genus, that clothed everycranny and every rock where they could find foothold and win refreshmentfrom the water or the spray of the cascades. As he drew near the bottomof the gorge he saw that on the borders of the stream, wherever the soilwas moist, grew thousands upon thousands of white arums, "pig lilies" asthey call them in Africa, which were now in full bloom. He had noticedthese lilies from above, but thence, owing to the distance, they seemedso small that he took them for everlastings or anemones. John could notsee Jess now, for she was hidden by a bush that grows on the banks ofthe streams in South Africa in low-lying land, and which at certainseasons of the year is completely covered with masses of the mostgorgeous scarlet bloom. His footsteps fell very softly on the mossand flowers, and when he passed round the glorious-looking bush it wasevident that she had not heard him, for she was asleep. Her hat wasoff, but the bush shaded her, and her head had fallen forward overher sketching block and rested upon her hand. A ray of light that camethrough the bush played over her curling brown hair, and threw warmshadows on her white face and the whiter wrist and hand by which it wassupported.
John stood there and looked at her, and the old curiosity tookpossession of him to understand this feminine enigma. Many a man beforehim has been the victim of a like desire, and lived to regret that hedid not leave it ungratified. It is not well to try to lift the curtainof the unseen, it is not well to call to heaven to show its glory, orto hell to give us touch and knowledge of its yawning fires. Knowledgecomes soon enough; many of us will say that knowledge has come too soonand left us desolate. There is no bitterness like the bitterness ofwisdom: so cried the great Koheleth, and so hath cried many a son of manfollowing blindly on his path. Let us be thankful for the dark placesof the earth--places where we may find rest and shadow, and the heavysweetness of the night. Seek not after mysteries, O son of man, becontent with the practical and the proved and the broad light of day;peep not, mutter not the words of awakening. Understand her who would beunderstood and is comprehensible to those that run, and for the otherslet them be, lest your fate should be as the fate of Eve, and as thefate of Lucifer, Star of the morning. For here and there beats a humanheart from which it is not wise to draw the veil--a heart in which manythings are dim as half-remembered dreams in the brain of the sleeper.Draw not the veil, whisper not the word of life in the silence where allthings sleep, lest in that kindling breath of love and pain pale shapesarise, take form, and fright you!
A minute or so might have passed when suddenly, and with a little start,Jess opened her great eyes, wherein the shadow of darkness lay, andgazed at him.
"Oh!" she said with a little tremor, "is it you or is it my dream?"
"Don't be afraid," he answered cheerfully, "it is I--in the flesh."
She covered her face with her hand for a moment, then withdrew it, andhe noticed that her eyes had changed curiously in that moment. They werestill large and beautiful as they always were, but there was a change.Just now they had seemed as though her soul were looking through them.Doubtless it was because the pupils had been enlarged by sleep.
"Your dream! What dream?" he asked, laughing.
"Never mind," she answered in a quiet way that excited his curiositymore than ever. "It was about this Kloof--and you--but 'dreams arefoolishness.'"
Jess Page 5