Read Ebook: Harper's Young People September 13 1881 An Illustrated Weekly by Various

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The Stronger Influence, by F.E. Mills Young.

Among the passengers which the train disgorged on to the little platform at Coerney, the station from which visitors to the Zuurberg proceeded on their journey up the steep mountain road by cart, were an elderly woman and her husband; a middle-aged man, who was acquainted but not otherwise connected with them; and a young girl, who was neither connected nor acquainted with any of her fellow-travellers, and who, after the first cursory glance towards them, evinced no further curiosity in their movements, but walked alone across the sunlit space to where in the shade of the trees the cart waited until such time as it should please the driver to bring up his horses and inspan them in preparation for the long drive up the mountain.

The girl's three fellow-travellers had gone in quest of refreshment; the driver was invisible; an atmosphere of languorous repose brooded over the place, which, with the departure of the train, seemed utterly deserted, given over to the silences and the hot golden light of the afternoon sun.

The girl approached the cart with no thought of taking her seat therein: she preferred to walk and stretch her cramped limbs; and it was obvious that the cart would not start for some while. But the cart stood in the shade, and the day was hot: the girl sought the shadows instinctively and nibbled chocolate while she scrolled about under the trees, and awaited developments.

She had been ill, and was taking a holiday to hasten the period of convalescence so that she would be ready to resume her duties as a teacher of music when the vacation ended. The air of the Zuurberg was more bracing than that of the Bay. She was looking forward to the change with pleasurable anticipation; looking for adventures, as girls in the early twenties do look for the development of unusual and exciting events. Teaching was dull work; routine is always dull; the holiday adventure offers promise of immense distraction when one sets forth in the holiday mood.

Esme Lester's mood, which at starting had been high with expectation, was a little damped. The journey in the train had tired her more than she had realised; and the appearance of her fellow-travellers--people whom she would meet daily, be under the same roof with--was not calculated to excite her curiosity. She wanted companionship. She wanted youth about her--not the immature youth with which her work brought her into daily contact, but contemporaries whose thoughts and tastes would assimilate with her own. The nice elderly couple who had repaired to the small hotel for refreshment, and the rather heavy middle-aged man who had followed them with the same purpose in view, did not answer her requirement in any sense. If this was all the companionship her holiday promised she would find it dull.

At the end of half an hour, during which time Esme had tired of wandering and had seated herself on the pole of the cart, she saw her fellow-travellers emerge from the hotel and come towards her, and in the distance the driver appeared leading two of his horses, followed by a native with the second pair.

Esme stood up and showed a renewed interest in the proceedings. The passengers looked on while the natives inspanned the lean reluctant team, the leader of which, despite a sorry appearance, showed signs of temper, which caused the elderly woman passenger considerable alarm. She took her seat in the back between her husband and Esme; and when, after the start, the leader kicked over the traces, the business of persuading her to remain in her seat occupied all the husband's attention. Esme considered his patience wonderful. The driver handed the reins to the middle-aged man and got down; and after much shouting and jerking and unbuckling and rebuckling matters were righted and the journey resumed. But the old lady was nervous and apprehensive that the team would bolt. The mountain road was sufficiently steep to have conveyed to any reasonable intelligence the improbability of this mischance; but fear lends wings to reason, and the old lady refused to be comforted.

Panting and sweating the horses laboured up the steep incline at a pace that was steady enough to reassure any one; but the further they proceeded along the winding track the deeper yawned the precipice at the side of the road: it fell away sheer in places till it lost itself in the black-green depths of the gorge. The old lady was so positive that the horses would plunge over the precipice and hurl every one to certain death that she closed her eyes in preparation, and clung to her husband's arm in the determination not to be separated from him when the fatal moment arrived.

The old gentleman smiled whimsically at Esme over his wife's drooping head. The girl, feeling that an understanding was established, returned the smile, and then gave her attention to the scenery, which was new to her and which, in its wild beauty, with the tangle of trees below and the green luxuriance of the mountain road revealing ever fresh and greater beauties the higher they climbed it, held her in silent wonder at the surprising incongruities of this great country which is Africa; a country of amazing contrasts, in parts a tangle of luxuriant vegetation, in other parts sterile and savage in the stark nakedness of the land. She had seen something of its sterility, not much; and, save for a brief view of the Cape Peninsular, she had not seen a great deal of its beauty either. The wild green splendour of this mountain journey she found restful and pleasantly stimulating. The air was cooler than in the plains. A soft wind blew furtively down from the heights and met them as they toiled upward in the hot sunshine behind the panting team. The horses' sides were dark and damp with sweat; foam flecked their chests and the greasy leather of the loosened reins. But they kept doggedly on. They were used to the journey, and the end of the journey promised rest. The beat of their hoofs upon the road, the rumbling of the cart, were the only sounds to disturb the stillness. No bird winged its flight across the quivering blue; there was no song of bird from the bush, no sign of any life, save for a number of grey monkeys which infested the trees lower down: these were left behind as the cart travelled upward. But down in the black-green depths of the undergrowth, moving noiselessly and unseen, countless insects and reptiles pursued their busy way; and the boomslaang wound its heavy brown coils around the limbs of trees.

Esme leaned back against the hot cushions of the cart and looked about her with quiet enjoyment. Despite fatigue and the weariness behind her eyes caused by the hard brightness of the day, she experienced a feeling of exhilaration. Every sense was on the alert to note and appreciate each fresh beauty along the rugged road. The scenery became tamer as the ascent was neared. Coarse grass and stunted bush took the place of the massed foliage of the trees. The land at the summit was flat and shadeless. But the air was light and wonderfully invigorating; and patches of green showed in places where the land dipped abruptly and lost itself in a kloof, amid a tangle of vegetation in the stony bed of a mountain stream.

The horses took a fresh spurt when the level road was reached and trotted briskly towards the hotel and drew up in style before the entrance. Esme surveyed the low rambling building with interested eyes. It was a quaint old-fashioned place, this hotel on the veld, one-storied, with a stoep in front and a flight of low steps leading up to it. The garden gate stood open, and a man, who was possibly the proprietor Esme decided, waited at the gate to receive the arrivals. A coloured boy came out to help with the luggage.

Esme alighted and walked up the garden path, conscious of the curious gaze of a little knot of people gathered on the stoep to participate in the great excitement of the day,--the arrival of the cart with its load of passengers. The hotel was fairly full; there were men and women on the stoep and several children. The girl was too shy to note any of these people particularly; she took them in collectively at a glance and passed on and went inside. A woman stepped forward out of the gloom of the narrow passage, took her name and conducted her to her room.

Left alone in her room, Esme crossed to the open window and stood looking out upon the wild bit of garden with its kei-apple hedge and the small vley quite close to the window. The glint of the water in the sunshine was pleasing to watch. That the water would breed mosquitoes, and other things likely to disturb one's repose at night, did not trouble her; she liked to see it. It stretched cool and clear as a mirror reflecting the blue of the unclouded sky.

The scene from the window was peaceful and pleasing. The whole place was peaceful: an atmosphere of drowsy detachment hung over everything. One felt out of the world here, and at the same time intensely alive. A sense of well-being and of contentment came to the girl while she knelt before the window with her arms on the low sill, looking out upon the unfamiliar scene. She had come to this isolated spot in search of health; and already she felt invigorated by the fresh pure air; her mind worked more clearly, threw off its morbid lethargy in newly kindled interest in everything about her. The clean homelike simplicity of her little bedroom pleased her; the view from the window pleased her; it was expansive, uncultivated--a vast stretch of veld, green and brown in the glow of the declining day, with the azure sky overhead remotely blue as a sapphire is blue, a jewel lit with the yellow flame of the sun.

The dining-room at the hotel was a low, narrow room, rather dark. Its French windows opened on to the stoep, which was creeper veiled and shaded with the shrubs in the garden. Down the centre of the room was a long table. A smaller room led off from the principal dining-room, where the guests with families took their meals.

Esme, entering later than the rest, found a seat at the principal table reserved for her. On her right was seated the old gentleman who had been her fellow-traveller. He looked up when she took her seat and spoke to her. She turned from answering him and took quiet observation while she leisurely unfolded her napkin of the man who was seated on her left.

He was a man of about twenty-eight, tall and broadly built, with however an air of delicacy about him altogether inconsistent with his physique. He was round-shouldered, and his hands, long and remarkably white, suggested that their owner had never performed any hard work in his life. His face was altogether striking, strong and fine, with clear cut features, and keen dominating grey eyes. When Esme sat down he was bending forward over his plate and did not once glance in her direction. He seemed wholly unaware of her entrance, unaware of, or indifferent to the presence of any one in the room. He confined his attention to his food, and did not talk, or evince any interest in the talk about him.

Esme, while she looked at him, was keenly alive to the fact that he was conscious of her presence and of her scrutiny, though he chose to ignore both. A faint colour showed in his face and mounted to the crisp light brown hair, which, cut very short, had a tight kink in it as though it might curl were it allowed to grow. She liked the look of this man, and, oddly, she was attracted rather than repelled by his taciturn and unsociable manner. Why should a man staying at a sanatorium not remain aloof if he wished? The fact of being under the same roof with other people should not of itself enforce an obligation to be sociable when one inclines towards an opposite mood. Doubtless, like herself, he had come to the Zuurberg in quest of health. He looked as if he had been ill. His hand, she observed when he lifted his glass, was unsteady.

She watched his hands, fascinated and puzzled. It was obvious that he could not control their shaking, that he was aware of this shakiness and was embarrassed by it. She felt intensely sorry for him. She also felt surprise at his self-consciousness. She noticed that he ate very little. He rose before the sweets, and went out by the window and seated himself on the stoep.

Conversation brightened with his exit. The people near her seemed in Esme's imagination to relax: the talk flowed more freely. Even the old gentleman on her right appeared to share in the general relief: he turned more directly towards her and entered into conversation. While the man outside sat alone, smoking his pipe, and looking into the shadows as the dusk drew closerand their help secured the whole of the boys' crop.

Bob had no gin or cotton-press, but there were both on the plantation twelve miles down the river; and when the picking was over, the boys built a raft, and loading their whole crop of cotton on it, floated it down to this neighbor's gin.

They had not made the three bales per acre which the land was said to be capable of producing under good cultivation, but they had made twelve bales, worth--at the high price which cotton at that time commanded--somewhat more than one thousand dollars.

Bob and Ned now closed their hut, turned the mule out to browse, and took passage for Vicksburg on the boat that carried their cotton.

One morning the rumor ran through their native village that "Bob and Ned Towne had come home, ragged, and looking like tramps."

But there was one woman and there were three little girls in that town in whose eyes Bob and Ned looked like anything but tramps. Their clothes were worn, indeed, but they were hugged and kissed by their mother and sisters just as heartily as if they had been the best-dressed youths in the village.

"Now you'll stay at home, won't you, you naughty runaway boys?" said their proud and happy mother when they had fully recounted their fifteen months' experiences. "I want my boys."

"We can't, mother," said Bob. "We're the two heads of this family, you know. I'm one head, and Ned has fairly earned the right to be the other; and we've got property interests now. We stopped at Major Singer's on the way home, and have made a new bargain with him. We've bought a plantation."

Then Bob explained that the Major had agreed that they should mark off a tract of four hundred acres where their hut stood, and take it at five dollars an acre--quite all that it would sell for then, because of the difficulty of getting labor for clearing land. They were to have their own time in which to pay for the tract, but they meant to work the debt off within a year or two by hiring one or two hands for their crop, and thus increasing their force and their earnings.

"So you see, mother," said Bob, "we've got to go back to our plantation."

"Very well," she replied; "and we are going with you. The family mustn't be separated from its heads, and I want my boys, and I think my boys want me too when they are lonely down there in the swamp."

"Indeed we do," exclaimed both boys. "Hurrah for mother!"

Three years later, as I happen to know, the last dollar of debt on the plantation was paid. The boys have built a good house there, which their mother has made a home for them. They have now, after a dozen years' work, a gin-house, a cotton-press, twelve mules, a good many cows, and Bob has a baby of his own, having found a wife on one of his business trips.

THE COUNT OF CORFU.

One danger alarms them. War is threatened between Greece and Turkey. The Greeks have gathered an army of seventy thousand men at Athens to take possession of the part of Epirus and Thessaly given them under the Berlin Treaty. They are resolved to march to the frontier and defend their countrymen. It is feared that the Turks will resist their claims, and war must yet break out. The Greeks can defend themselves by land, but on the sea the Turks have a powerful fleet that may ravage all the coasts of Greece. The Turks are savage and brutal. They may attack Athens, and batter down its palace and its ruins. But it is hoped that the war may be averted, and King George and his young family live in peace among his people.

CAUGHT IN A SHOWER.

BY MRS. MARGARET SANGSTER.

On, where did it come from, I wonder? There wasn't a cloud in the sky, And the first thing I heard was the thunder, The first thing I did was to cry.

There goes a bright flash! there's another! I was never caught this way before. I wish I was home with my mother, And out of this terrible pour.

TIM AND TIP;

OR, THE ADVENTURES OF A BOY AND A DOG.

BY JAMES OTIS,

TIP'S HURRIED LANDING.

"What is the matter, Tim?" he asked, in a half-whisper.

"Nothin'," was the sobbing reply; and then the boy ran to the only living thing he knew that would sympathize with him in his grief.

Bobby stood back in astonishment as he saw Tim lie down by the side of that wonderful hunting dog, and, pouring out his grief in indistinct words, sob and cry in deepest distress.

It was some time before Tim would speak; but when once he did open his heart to his newly made friend, he told the entire story from the time he ran away from Captain Babbige's house up to this last whipping he had received. When he had concluded, he said, in the most sorrowful tone, "I jest wish I was dead, Bobby; for there don't seem to be anybody in all this great big world who wants to have me 'round, 'less it is to lick me when they ain't got nothin' else to do."

"I wouldn't stand it, Tim: that's what I wouldn't do," said Bobby, indignantly. "I'd jest leave this old boat the very first time she stops."

But Tim had more wisdom now than he had the day he ran away from Captain Babbige, and he said, mournfully: "Where could I go if I did run away again? Nobody wants me an' Tip, an' we've got to have somethin' to eat."

This way of putting the matter rather confused Bobby; he had never known what it was to be without a home, and Tim's lonely position in the world opened his eyes to a new phase of life.

"I'll tell you what you can do; you can come to my house, an' stay jest as long as you want to."

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