The Angels Weep Read Online Free PDF Page A

horse-hair mattresses on each cot, comfortable
canvas chairs to sit on, and a long trestle-table to eat off
under the fly of the open-sided dining tent. There were canvas
coolers for the champagne and lemonade bottles, food safes
screened with insect-proof gauze, and thirty servants. Servants
to cut wood and tend fires, servants to wash and iron so that the
women could change their clothing daily, others to make the bed
and sweep up every fallen leaf from the bare ground between the
tents and then sprinkle it with water to lay the dust, one to
wait exclusively upon Master Jonathan, to feed him and bathe him
and ride him on a shoulder or sing to him when he grew petulant.
Servants to cook the food and to wait upon the table, servants to
light the lanterns and lace up the flies of the tents at
nightfall and even one to empty the bucket of the hand-painted
commode whenever the little bell tinkled.
    Ralph rode in through the gate of the high thornbush stockade
that surrounded the entire camp to protect it from the nocturnal
visits of the lion prides. Cathy was still on the saddle in front
of him and his son up behind.
    He looked about the camp with satisfaction, and squeezed
Cathy’s waist. ‘By God, it’s good to be home, a
hot bath, and you can scrub my back, Katie.’ He broke off,
and exclaimed with surprise. ‘Damn it, woman! You might
have warned me!’
    ‘You never gave me a chance,’ she protested.
    Parked at the end of the row of wagons was a closed coach, a
vehicle with sprung wheels, the windows fitted with teak shutters
that could be raised against the heat. The body of the coach was
painted a cool and delightful green under the dust and dried mud
of hard travel, the doors were picked out in gold leaf and the
high wheels piped with the same gold. The interior was finished
in glossy green leather with gold tassels on the curtains. There
were fitted leather and brass steamer trunks strapped to the roof
rack, and beyond the coach in Ralph’s kraal of thornbush,
the big white mules, all carefully matched for colour and size,
were feeding on bundles of fresh grass that Ralph’s
servants had cut along the river bank.
    ‘How did Himself find us?’ Ralph demanded, as he
let Cathy down to the ground. He did not have to ask who the
visitor was, this magnificent equipage was famous across the
continent.
    ‘We are camped only a mile from the main road up from
the south,’ Cathy pointed out tartly. ‘He could
hardly miss us.’
    ‘And he has his whole gang with him, by the looks of
it,’ Ralph muttered. There were two dozen blood horses in
the kraal with the white mules.
    ‘All the king’s horses and all the king’s
men,’ Cathy agreed, and at that moment Zouga hurried in
through the gate with Louise on his arm. He was as excited by
their visitor as Ralph was irritated.
    ‘Louise tells me that he has broken his journey
especially to talk to me.’
    ‘You had better not keep him waiting then, Papa,’
Ralph grinned sardonically. It was strange how all men, even the
aloof and cool-headed Major Zouga Ballantyne, came under the
spell that their visitor wove. Ralph prided himself that he alone
was able to resist it, although at times it required a conscious
effort.
    Zouga was striding eagerly down the row of wagons towards the
inner stockade with Louise skipping to keep up with him. Ralph
dawdled deliberately, admiring the remarkable animals that
Jonathan had moulded from river clay and now paraded for his
approbation.
    ‘Beautiful hippos, Jon-Jon! Not hippo? Oh, I see, the
horns fell off, did they? Well then, they are the most beautiful,
fattest hornless kudu that I have ever seen.’
    Cathy tugged at his arm at last. ‘You know he wants to
speak to you also, Ralph,’ she urged, and Ralph swung
Jonathan up onto his shoulder, took Cathy on his other arm, for
he knew that such a display of domesticity would irritate the man
they were going to meet, and