NO WOMAN'S LAND

Wairarapa Times-Age, 14 July 1938, Page 12

NO WOMAN'S LAND

PUBLISHED BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT COPYRIGHT

BY

JANE ENGLAND

(Author of “Sjambok,” “Trader’s License,” &c.)

CHAPTER XVII. —Continued. As he cantered down the wide {rack past his "lands’’ and saw the red, wellploughed slope rising to the blue sky, the malaise slipped from him, and he thought he was rather a fool to knock off work and go and see Hastings, and risk meeting Nella, but went on. He passed a native, who was walking towards his own homestead. A tall man who wore a felt homburg with a hole in it, a ragged singlet, and a pair of blue denim trousers. He carried, incongruously, an assegai, which had been reduced to the level of a stick on which a tramp carries his bundles. “Hullo,” said Archie, who always wanted to know what people were doing on his land “where are you going?” “Look for work, Baas.” The man ( put down the assegai and produced a dirty, crumbled piece of paper, his situpa, or licence, which entitled him to leave his kraal and look fop work. , Archie looked at it, and saw that his last job had been at Klinter’s Dorp store. “Why did you leave?” he asked lyThe native raised his shoulders. “The new Baas wants new boys,” he said. “I can plough, Inkoos,” added the native. "I can train oxen.” “I can find work for you,” said Archie abruptly. “I need a boy who can plough,” he added. He looked again at the situpa, and saw that the man’s name was N’Kiri, and that he came from Nyassaland. “Where are your brothers?” he asked, because it was unusual for a Nyassaland boy to seek work alone. As a rule, they usually wanted work in groups. The man’s face was blank. “I work alone, Inkoos,” he said. “Very well. Go to my kia.” “Ja, Inkoos.” He picked up his assegai and put it over his shoulder. The bundle on the end of it was large and tied up in sacking, and a pair of boots dangled there as well. Archie touched the mare’s flanks with his heels, and- cantered on. He was not quite sure why he had taken on an extra boy simply because that boy had worked at the Klinter’s Dorp store and been sacked by Hudson. He felt that it was a weakness on his part. But all the same,, the boy had been a hefty-looking fellow, solid and reliable. He liked Nyassaland boys, too. They were more dependable than the Mash-

onas. He came to the bush, and rode into the dappled, shifting shade of the track. * $ S 3

Nella had got up early and milked the cows. She took the bucket of milk, covered it with wet muslin, and put it in the shade. It could wait there, but if only Dolly would build a dairy! It would be fun to make butter, and have cream, and do that sort of thing; and after all, it wouldn’t cost much to build a hut for a dairy. As she came back to the Hastings’ homestead, David came out and Jacob brought up the mule cart. “Hullo,” said David,->“l’m just going in to Klinter’s Dorp. 1 Want to come?” She shook her head. “Is . . is Dolly going with you?” “Not she, she’s still in bed. I’ll be back about lunch time, you might.tell her. So long." He got into the cart and drove away. Nella stood and watched him go. Really; he was very odd; but so was Dolly for that matter. But it was most odd of him to suggest that she should drive into Klinter’s Dorp with him, and leave his wife behind. And what was odder still, Dolly wouldn’t have minded. They both had the most strange ideas. She, Nella, might not know much, she might have led a lonely life and not learnt much about society; but one thing she did know, and that was that wives didn’t like their husbands driving round with girls except when they were quite sure that their wives would not find out about it. She shrugged her shoulders and gave up the problem. Possibly, she thought the Hastings didn’t love each other. She couldn’t explain to herself how she knew that, but there was just a something about them. They were very rude to each other; at least it would have been rudeness had it been anyone else, but between them it was just . . . well, there it was. She went into the house and through the sitting room. It was very tidy and bare, and both the french windows were open. Sunlight streamed in and touched the old colonial cupboard, and tinged with pure gold the dusty arches of the roof. Breakfast, she saw, was set on the stoep, and as she hesitated, she heard Dolly's voice, sleepy and goodhumoured. “Hullo. Start eating . .I’ll be with you in a minute.” There came a shuffle of bedclothes being thrown off, and the sound of bare feet padding across the floor. “You’ll get jiggers,” said Nella anxiously. “I always forget. I say, if you can fix it, we’ll start building that dairy you yearn for. The only thing is, we want some more boys.” Nella stood on one foot and contemplatively scratched her calf with the other. “I could go over to the kraal,” she suggested, “and get some labour.” “Could you?” called Dolly. She pulled on a leaf-green silk dressing gown, cut like a man’s, thrust her feet into mules, combed her hair, and came out into the sitting room. “Could you really? Well, go to it. I’m going to spend the morning attacking this room. David’s going to see about some furniture. If we’re going to live here, then we’ve got to have a little decency, at any rate.” Nella gazed at her solemnly. “If you’re poor,” she pointed out!

gravely, “you don’t want to bother about furniture at first. The thing is to have some cows, a dip, a plough, and all that.” Dolly giggled. “How right you are!” she said. “But then you see, my dear literal one, we’re broke in one sense, and not in another. I’ve sent David to cable to England, and make my trustees disgorge the money that I’ve been saving for a rainy day. There’s quite a lot of it, and it’s been very virtuous of me not to dip into it until now. And the end of the month is upon us, when we get some income in—so all is well.” “Besides,” she added blandly, as Jacob appeared with coffee and eggs, “this is a great land for credit.” She broke off with an exclamation, and peered over the breakfast table and out of the stoep. “Who on earth are those?” she asked. Nella looked out. There were five natives advancing towards the homestead. One, a spare man with grizzled hair, walked in front. He carried a small hatchet, and carried his shoulders very squarely. “They look like Nyassas, asking for work,” said Nella. ■ “Well, let’s give them work,” said Dolly cheerfully. “It’s very odd,” said Nella, still doubtfully, “we hardly ever get Nyassa boys round here; they don’t like the way the farmers treat them. The farmers round about here are rather —.well, rather mean about food, and all that. And that sort of news always gets round. So, you see, we haven’t had any Nyassas here for ages and ages.” Dolly chuckled. “The news has got to them that a couple of poor half-wits, called Hastings, are in the district. That’s why they’ve come. Take them on, Nella. You’ll have to shoot buck for meat because David couldn’t hit a haystack at 25 yards. My dear, you’re going to be remarkably busy.” Nella’s face lit up. “If you’ll lend me a rifle —” she began. Dolly looked at her curiously, and her mouth twitched slightly. “My dear,” she interrupted, “it does riot take much to make you happy does it? . You shall have your gun and your dairy and your cement. Now trot out and get me those handsome henchmen. Go on, my dear.” She lit a cigarette after Nella had gone out, and smoked thoughtfully. “I wish that Wentworth man would turn up. I want to ask him a lot of things.” She remembered the young trooper called Fingall, and her mouth twitched into laughter. “I- might ask that lad out here,” she thought. “He might take Nella’s mind off Archie Fellowes, and incidentally bring Archie Fellowes to his senses. Nella came back. Her face was flushed and her eyes bright and excited. 1 “I’ve engaged them,” she said, “and they’ve gone to get themselves fixed in those old huts. I’m going to take the pony and see where the best mud is. And I may go over to the farm, because that man may be there; and if he is, then I’ll tell him he can rent my farm.”

There came the sound of galloping hoofs, and Nella on the mustard-col-oured pony tore past the homestead. She leaned low over the pony’s neck, and hei’ hat was pulled down over her eyes. Dolly watched from the french windows, and frowned. All that frenzied energy was quite plainly to keep her mind off Archie Fellowes, and it would be sheer cruelty to keep her round the house. But what about a maniac Engleburg? Was there one? She went over to the cupboard, and got out some notepaper. “The Wentworth can darn well do something,” she said aloud. CHAPTER XVIII.

Where the huts had been burned on the Howard farm, only a blackened patch was left, and through that sprouted vivid emerald shoots of grass. The colony of doves in the patch of bush near-by still kept up their monotonous murmuring, and away on the rising ground to the left, the native kraal was like a row of beehives against the clear, blue sky. The man on the black horse was silhouetted against the sky. He sat quite still and watched Nella Howard come cantering along the track from the Hastings’ homestead. She looked very slender in her shirt and shorts, and the hat gave her a rakish air. She saw Peter Drew sitting on his black horse, and she felt a new halfscared, half-defiant, excitement. He was quite apart from the old life. She had never known him while her father was alive; she had met him on new ground, as it were. And he was attractive.

He waited for her by the ruins of her own home, and she pulled up the mus-tard-coloured pony and said breathlessly: “I’ll rent you the farm.” He smiled, and his mouth, usually rather sour and thin, curved into a charming smile. “For fifty pounds a year, including the dip?” he asked. “Yes. But I’m afraid that the dip leaks. It was never very good.” He smiled again. “You’d never make a business woman running down your own property.”

“Oh, but that’s only fair. To tell you, I mean.” “Well, who’s your agent? Where do I sign on the dotted line?” “Oh ,” she hesitated. “Well, I suppose that Mr Hastings would see to that for me. I'm living with them, you know.”

“So I heard,” he said, and looked at her with a long slow glance that brought the blood to her cheeks. “How many years,” she began doubtfully, “for how many years would you want it?”

“Ten, I should think. Hardly worth starting to farm for less than ten years.

Do you think I could make a fortune in ten years, and then retire?” There was a delicate undercurrent of sarcasm in his voice, and she kept her eyes fixed on her pony’s ears. Nella moved her shoulders slightly. “Perhaps,” she suggested, “you’d better not take the land after all, if you want to make a fortune.” He laughed, and manoeuvred his horse nearer to hers. He leaned his bitter, good-looking face towards here. I’ll take it,” he said, “there may be compensation even if I don’t make a fortune. I take a philosophical view of life.” “Then, if you’ll come over and see the Hastings,” she suggested, “it could be arranged. Will you come?” (To be Continued).