Swallow: A Tale of the Great Trek by H. Rider Haggard (early readers .TXT) 📖

The marriage morning of Ralph and Suzanne broke brightly; never have I seen a fairer. It was spring time, and the veldt was clothed with the fresh green grass and starred everywhere with the lily blooms that sprang among it. The wind blew softly, shaking down the dewdrops from the growing corn, while from every bush and tree came the cooing of unnumbered doves. Beneath the eave of the stoep the pair of red-breasted swallows which had built there for so many years were finishing their nest, and I watched them idly, for to me they were old friends, and would wheel about my head, touching my cheek with their wings. Just then they paused from their task, or perhaps it was at length completed, and flying to a bough of the peach tree a few yards away, perched there together amidst the bright bloom, and nestling against each other, twittered forth their song of joy and love.

It was at this moment that Sihamba walked up to the stoep as though to speak to me.

“The Swallow and the Swallow’s mate,” she said, following my eyes to where the little creatures swung together on the beautiful bough.

“Yes,” I answered, for her fancy seemed to me of good omen, “they have built their nest, and now they are thanking God before they begin to live together and rear their young in love.”

As the words left my lips a quick shadow swept across the path of sunlit ground before the house, two strong wings beat, and a brown hawk, small but very fierce, being of a sort that preys upon small birds, swooped downwards upon the swallows. One of them saw it, and slid from the bough, but the other the hawk caught in its talons, and mounted with it high into the air. In vain did its mate circle round it swiftly, uttering shrill notes of distress; up it went steadily as pitiless as death.

“Oh! my swallow,” I cried aloud in grief, “the accursed hawk has carried away my swallow.”

“Nay, look,” said Sihamba, pointing upwards.

I looked, and behold! a black crow that appeared from behind the house, was wheeling about the hawk, striking at it with its beak until, that it might have its talons free to defend itself, it let go the swallow, which, followed by its mate, came fluttering to the earth, while the crow and the falcon passed away fighting, till they were lost in the blue depths of air.

Springing from the stoep I ran to where the swallow lay, but Sihamba was there before me and had it in her hands.

“The hawk’s beak has wounded it,” she said pointing to a blood stain among the red feathers of the breast, “but none of its bones are broken, and I think that it will live. Let us put it in the nest and leave it to its mate and nature.”

This we did, and there in the nest it stayed for some days, its mate feeding it with flies as though it were still unfledged. After that they vanished, both of them together, seeking some new home, nor did they ever build again beneath our eaves.

“Would you speak with me, Sihamba?” I asked when this matter of the swallows was done with.

“I would speak with the Baas, or with you, it is the same thing,” she answered, “and for this reason. I go upon a journey; for myself I have the good black horse which the Baas gave me after I had ridden to warn you in Tiger Kloof yonder, the one that I cured of sickness. But I need another beast to carry pots and food and my servant Zinti, who accompanies me. There is the brown mule which you use little because he is vicious, but he is very strong and Zinti does not fear him. Will you sell him to me for the two cows I earned from the Kaffir whose wife I saved when the snake bit her? He is worth three, but I have no more to offer.”

“Whither do you wish to journey, Sihamba?” I asked.

“I follow my mistress to the dorp,” she answered.

“Did she bid you follow her, Sihamba?”

“No! is it likely that she would think of me at such a time, or care whether I come or go? Fear not, I shall not trouble her, or put her to cost; I shall follow, but I shall not be seen until I am wanted.”

Now I had made up my mind to gainsay Sihamba, not that I could find any fault with her plan, but because if such arrangements are to be made, I like to make them myself, as is the business of the head of the house. I think Sihamba guessed this; at any rate she answered me before I spoke, and that in an odd way, namely, by looking first at the swallow’s nest, then at the blooming bough of the peach tree, and lastly into the far distances of air.

“It was the black crow that drove the hawk away,” she said, reflectively, as though she were thinking of something else, “though I think, for my eyes are better than yours, that the hawk killed the crow, or perhaps they killed each other; at the least I saw them falling to the earth beyond the crest of the mountain.”

At this I was about to break in angrily, for if there was one thing in the world I hated it was Sihamba’s nonsense about birds and omens and such things, whereof, indeed, I had had enough on the previous night, when she made that lump Jan believe that he saw visions in a bowl of water. And yet I did not—for the black crow’s sake. The cruel hawk had seized the swallow which I loved, and borne it away to devour it in its eyrie, and it was the crow that saved it. Well, the things that happened among birds might happen among men, who also prey upon each other, and—but I could not bear the thought.

“Take the mule, Sihamba,” I said; “I will answer for it to the Baas. As for the two cows, they can run with the other cattle till your return.”

“I thank you, Mother of Swallow,” she answered, and turned to go, when I stopped her and asked:

“Have you heard anything that makes you afraid, Sihamba?”

“I have heard nothing,” she replied, “still I am afraid.”

“Then you are a fool for your pains, to be afraid of nothing,” I answered roughly; “but watch well, Sihamba.”

“Fear not, I will watch till my knees are loosened and my eyes grow hollow.” Then she went away, and that was the last I saw of her for many a weary month. Ah! Suzanne, child, had it not been for the watching of little Sihamba, the walker-by-moonlight, you had not been sitting there to-day, looking much as she used to look, the Suzanne of fifty years ago.

The marriage was to take place at noon, and though I had much to see to, never have I known a longer morning. Why it was I cannot say, but it seemed to me as though twelve o’clock would never come. Then, wherever I went there was Ralph in my way, wandering about in a senseless fashion with his best clothes on, while after him wandered Jan holding his new hat in his hand.

“In the name of Heaven,” I cried at length as I blundered into both of them in the kitchen, “be off out of this. Why are you here?”

“Allemachter!” said Jan, “because we have nowhere else to go. They are making the sitting-room ready for the service and the dinner after it; the predicant is in Ralph’s room writing; Suzanne is in yours trying on her clothes, and the stoep and even the stables are full of Kaffirs. Where, then, shall we go?”

“Cannot you see to the waggon?” I asked.

“We have seen to it, mother,” said Ralph; “it is packed, and the oxen are already tied to the yokes for fear lest they should stray.”

“Then be off and sit in it and smoke till I come to call you,” I replied, and away they walked shamefacedly enough, Ralph first, and Jan following him.

At twelve o’clock I went for them, and found them both seated on the waggon-chest smoking like chimneys, and saying nothing.

“Come, Ralph,” I said, “it is quite time for you to be married,” and he came, looking very pale, and walking unsteadily as though he had been drinking, while after him, as usual, marched Jan, still pulling at the pipe which he had forgotten to take out of his mouth.

Somehow I do not recollect much of the details of that wedding; they seem to have slipped my mind, or perhaps they are buried beneath the memories of all that followed hard upon it. I remember