Chapter Eight.Tragical—And Aletta.Hans Vermaak had and had not carried out his instructions; which is to say that in so far as he had he had done so by halves.By nature he was a genial soul was Hans Vermaak, by inclination a jovial one. He would not wantonly have hurt a fly or an Englishman, let alone so companionable a one as Colvin Kershaw; but then the terrible point to which racial hatred was worked up had engendered a feverish thirst for conspiring that was almost Celtic, in the stolid and pre-eminently practical Boer. The discovery of the concealed arms would be a serious thing, a very serious thing, but of its seriousness, great as that was, they took an exaggerated view. Inherently the Boer is a great respecter of the law and of the person of its representative or representatives, and most of these were sufficiently unsophisticated to look upon their undoubtedly treasonable proceeding as a hanging matter if brought to the notice of the authorities. Hence none felt any qualm as to the strong measures to be adopted towards the hostile sharer of the secret.In vino Veritas! When we say that none felt a qualm we should have exempted Hans Vermaak—in his cups. The misgiving expressed by Gideon Roux as to the potential liberality of his spouse in the matter of the grog was not unfounded. There was enough in the bottle to make three Dutchmen—two would not partake—very lively, and the liveliest of all was Hans Vermaak. He became, moreover, enormously fraternal towards Colvin, who was deftly drawing him out, and finally did exactly as Gideon Roux had predicted, insisted upon his remaining the night, for he, Hans, was Gideon’s brother-in-law, and therefore one of the family. He forgot the patriot cause, and only remembered it to declare that this was too good an Englishman to be shot, and so forth, which declaration under ordinary circumstances might mean nothing, but read by the light of subsequent events and the speaker’s manner, Colvin took to mean rather a great deal.The latter made several futile attempts at getting away, and at length succeeded. He himself, although he had borne his share, was in no wise affected by the liquor he had been taking—for the matter of that he could have drunk the lot of them under the table over and over again—and throughout the talk, which became more and more boisterous and unguarded, had kept an ear open and an eye keenly alive to every sign. But by the time he did break loose, and Gert was standing before the door with the horses saddled up, he realised that the more prudential side of his resolution had failed and that an infinitesimal portion of his homeward journey would be accomplished by daylight.He had bidden good-bye all-round—not failing to observe during the process the awful look of scare upon the face of his hostess as she just touched his hand with a limp, moist paw. He had paced his horse about a hundred yards from the door, not sorry to see the last of the frowsy, dirty place, when he heard his name called. Turning in the saddle, he beheld the genial Hans hurrying towards him.“Which way do you go home by?” said the Dutchman, somewhat flurriedly.“Oh, the usual way, Hans.”“So? You are going home, then.”“Oh yes.”“But you must not. Klip Poort is bad to go through at nightJa, it is bad, very bad. Go some other road. There is the road to Stephanus De la Rey’s, for instance. Go by it.”“But it is about twice the distance,” objected Colvin, who began to read considerable meaning into the other’s anxiety regarding his movements.“That matters nothing. Look, you are a good sort of Englishman and I like you. Klip Poort is bad to go through at night, very bad.”“Very well, Hans, I’ll take your advice. So long.”Klip Poort, the point referred to, was a narrow, rugged defile overhung with large rocks, about five miles on his homeward way. As well as the road passing through, it likewise gave passage to the Sneeuw River, which, when full to any great extent, flooded the roadway to some depth. It might very well be to this form of danger that the Boer’s hidden warning applied, and yet some unaccountable instinct warned Colvin that it was not.“Gert.”“Baas?”“Did you hear what Hans Vermaak was saying just now?”“Part of it, sir.”“Why do you think he wanted us not to go back by way of Klip Poort?”“I don’t know, sir.”“Gert, you are an ass.”“Perhaps he thought the river might be ‘down,’ sir. The clouds are very thick and black up in thebergen.”“Yes.”An indescribable feeling of helpless apprehensiveness came over Colvin, and indeed it is a creepy thing the consciousness that at any step during the next half-dozen miles or so you are a target for a concealed enemy whose marksmanship is unerring. For this was about what he had reduced the situation to in his own mind, and within the same heartily anathematised the foolish curiosity which had moved him to go up and explore the hiding-place of the concealed arms. That Gideon Roux and his confederate were aware that he shared their secret he now believed. They must have waited to watch him, and have seen him come out of the cave; and with this idea the full force of Vermaak’s warning came home to him.But was that warning genuine? Was it not destined rather to induce him to take the other way? It was impossible to determine. Sorely perplexed, he rode on, thinking the matter over, and that deeply. The sky overhead grew darker and darker with the spread of a great cloud—the earth with the fall of evening. There was a moon, but it was obscured. By the time the rocks which marked the entrance to the poort came into view it was already night.Two ways branched here—one his ordinary way home, the other that which Hans Vermaak had urged him to take. Some twenty feet down, at the bottom of a precipitous slope, was the river bed, dry save for a shallow, stagnant reach here and there. Which way should he take? Now was the time to decide.“Get on, Aasvogel, you fool! Ah, would you, then?”This to his horse, accompanied by a sharp rowelling with each heel. For the animal had stopped short with a suddenness calculated to unseat and certainly irritate the rider, and was backing and shying like the panic-stricken idiot it was; the cause of all this fluster being a white stone standing almost vertically up from the roadside, in the gloom looking for all the world like the traditional ghost.“Whigge—whirr!” Something hummed through the air, and that so near he could feel the draught. Two jets of flame had darted forth from the hillside above, simultaneously with a dry, double crack. Two more followed, but had it been a hundred Colvin was utterly powerless to investigate, for his horse, which had already sprung forward beneath the sharp dig of the spurs, now took to wild and frantic flight, and for some moments was completely out of hand. By the time he got it in hand again he had been carried a good mile from the scene of this startling though not wholly unexpected occurrence.Two things came into Colvin’s mind, as eventually he reined in his panting, snorting steed. One of the bullets, at any rate, had missed him very narrowly, but by just the distance the animal had backed when shying from the ghostly object which had scared it; and but for the fact of his being a first-rate rider the suddenness of the bolt would have unseated him, and he would now be lying in the road at the mercy of his would-be assassins. But—where was Gert?He looked around. The clouds had parted a little and the moon was visible through a rift thus formed; indeed it was the sudden flash of the moonlight upon the white stone that had so terrified the horse at first. The light revealed the mountain slopes rising up around, but of his servant there was no sign. He listened intently. No sound, save the creaking of the saddle, caused by the violently heaving flanks of his panting steed, and now and again a mutter of distant thunder away up in the mountains. Where was Gert?Dismounting, he led the animal a little way off the road, and sat down under a large boulder to think out the situation. The warning of Hans Vermaak again came into his mind. It looked genuine as viewed by subsequent lights, but whether it was so or not, it was useless, for the murderers had altered their original plan, clearly resolving to provide against the contingency of his choosing the other of the two roads, by shooting him before he should come to the point where these parted. Well, they had not shot him, but it had been a narrow shave—very.But if they had not shot him had they shot Gert? It looked uncommonly like it. Only the four shots had been fired—of that he felt certain—but since his horse had taken matters into its own hands, or, rather, legs, he had obtained neither sight nor sound of Gert. Seated there in the darkness, he was conscious of a very considerable feeling of indignation begotten of a dual reason—that he had had a mean advantage taken of him, and that his property, in the person of Gert Bondelzwart, had been interfered with.What was to be done next? Should he go back? To do so would be to commit an act of fatal rashness, for it would be to expose himself once more to the fire of his concealed cowardly foes, who would not be likely to let slip a second opportunity. True, he had his revolver, but not for a moment would they be likely to come near enough to give him any chance of using it. No—to go back would be simply throwing away his life. Had it been a white man and a comrade, he would unhesitatingly have done so. But Gert was a Griqua, and, though not exactly a savage, had all the cunning and resource and endurance of generations of savage ancestry. If he were alive, why then, amid the rocks and the darkness, he would soon elude his enemies; if he were dead, Colvin did not see any sense in throwing away his own life merely to ascertain that fact.The moon had gone in, and a misty scud-wrack spreading itself overhead was creeping around the dim crags on high. There was a smell of rain in the air, and a fitful puff of wind came singing down the valley, laden with an icy breath. Colvin shivered, and as he looked anxiously skyward a large drop or two of rain plashed down on his face. There would be a deluge in a moment, and he had nothing to meet it with save the clothes in which he stood up.Suddenly the horse, which had been standing with its head down still panting after its race and scare, pricked up its ears and snorted, then began backing away. Colvin had just time to seize the bridle-rein, or it would have been off in wild stampede. And now every vein in his body quivered with excitement. His revolver was in his hand. Let them come. The chances now were something like equal.But it is not a pleasant thing to know that you are being stalked in the dark by a persistent and murderous foe; and as for some minutes no further sign occurred the excitement became dashed with something like apprehension, then succeeded a feeling of relief. The horse had been scared by one of the ordinary sights of the veldt—a sneaking jackal—perhaps a meerkat—in short, anything moving will startle a horse in the dark, let alone one so thoroughly “in the dispositions” for panic as this one now was. But just then a renewed snort, accompanied by a plunge and a violent tugging at the bridle-rein, set all Colvin’s pulses bounding again; and though he endeavoured to do so silently, so as not to betray his exact whereabouts, the hammer of his pistol, as he drew it up, gave forth a sharp click upon the stillness.Out of the darkness came a voice—a beseeching voice—saying in Boer Dutch:“Nay, Baas, don’t shoot. My well-loved Baas, don’t shoot.”“Gert, you fool, come here.”“Yes, it is Gert, Baas,” answered the voice in a tone of intense delight and relief. “Maagtig! I thought it was thoseschelmBoers. I thought you were shot. I thought I was shot. I thought we were all shot.”“Well, we are not. But where is Pansy?”“She was shot, Baas. Ah, the poor mare! She just sank down in the road with her legs under her. I had hardly time to roll off when she was up again, gave a stagger, and toppled over into the river bed. I crouched down in thesluitby the roadside and lay perfectly still—still as a hare—until the moon went in again. Then I crept away.Ja, it was a fearful time. I thought I could feel the bullets through me every minute.Maagtig! but he is aschelmBoer is Gideon Roux.”“Gideon Roux? Why do you think it was Gideon Roux, Gert?”“It was, Baas. He and Hermanus Delport. I would swear to it,” rejoined the Griqua excitedly. “They looked murder when they were talking to me. There was murder in their faces,Ja, it is those two.”Colvin cursed to himself, and vowed revenge. He was fond of his horses, and these two rascals had shot one of his best. At the same time he owned to himself ruefully that the chance of carrying out such vengeance was remote. At present he was far more an object for their vengeance than they for his.“Come now, Gert, we must get along. Lay hold of my stirrup-leather and trot alongside.”They got into the road again, but with the moon behind the cloud and the rain that was beginning to fall it became very dark. What if the vindictive Dutchmen, guessing they had failed, were to take a short cut behind the ridge andvoerlijthem further down? The thought was unpleasant, to put it mildly.Now there was a whirl and a roar in the air, and, in an icy blast, the rain swooped down in torrents. Colvin, destitute of macintosh or wrap of any kind, was soaked through and through in about two minutes, and shivered exceedingly. Fortunately the deluge was behind him, or, coming down obliquely as it did, Aasvogel could hardly have made headway against it. Now and then a vivid flash of lightning gleamed forth, showing the sheer of the great crags overhead and the glistening slopes studded with wet stones.“Hurry up, Gert. Put your best foot forward, man. We have to race the river this shot. The Ratels Hoek drift will be running twelve feet deep before we get there if we don’t look smart.”And the Griqua, puffing and perspiring, did put his best foot forward.Stephanus De la Rey, having just finished his supper, had come out on to the stoep to look at the weather. The deluge of the last hour had subsided, but the clouds, black as ink and unbroken, gave promise of a repetition of the same.“Aha!” he said, gleefully to himself. “The drought is at an end. The river is already coming down well, and the dams must be overflowing. I shall pump a lot of water on to the lucerne beds to-morrow. But— What is that?”The clink of shod horse hoofs came upon the wind through the swirl and roar of the fast-swelling river. He stood listening intently. The sound ceased, then arose again, now on this side of the drift. The next moment a very soaked and dripping horseman emerged into the light of the windows, and beside him trotted a pedestrian, no less soaked and dripping, but very much blown.“Why, Colvin, where are you from?Maagtig, kerel! but you are wet,” he cried. Then raising his voice: “Windvogel, Swaartbooi. Turn out, youschepsels, and take the Baas’ horse.”“Wet? I’m nearly dead with cold, Stephanus. So bring along asoepje, old chap, and let’s get to a fire and dry myself.”“Dry yourself? It’s dry clothes you have to get into. Come this way. Myvolkwill see to your horse. Here now, what can we get you into? My things are too wide for you, Cornelis’ and Jan’s are too small. You will have to get into some of mine.”And having dragged out of a drawer a complete refit for his guest, whom he had marched straight into his own room, the genial Dutchman went out and reappeared in a moment with a decanter of excellent “dop” and glasses.“That’s grand!” ejaculated Colvin, fortifying himself with a liberalsoepjeduring the changing process. But not yet was he going to impart his adventures to his host. The latter had a great laugh over his attempts to carry off the fit of clothes that were both too long and too wide.“Well, no matter,” he said. “You are dry, at any rate, and by this time warm. So come along in and have some supper.”Colvin followed his host into the dining-room. The evening meal was just over, but already a place had been cleared and laid for him. As he shook hands with Mrs De la Rey, he noticed a girl—one he did not recollect ever having seen before. She was just receiving a dish from a Hottentot servant, and arranging it on the table at the place laid for him. Then, turning, she came up to him, with outstretched hand, and a bright smile of cordial welcome on her face.“Oh, I had forgotten,” said Stephanus. “You two have not met before. Colvin, this is my eldest girl—Aletta.”
Hans Vermaak had and had not carried out his instructions; which is to say that in so far as he had he had done so by halves.
By nature he was a genial soul was Hans Vermaak, by inclination a jovial one. He would not wantonly have hurt a fly or an Englishman, let alone so companionable a one as Colvin Kershaw; but then the terrible point to which racial hatred was worked up had engendered a feverish thirst for conspiring that was almost Celtic, in the stolid and pre-eminently practical Boer. The discovery of the concealed arms would be a serious thing, a very serious thing, but of its seriousness, great as that was, they took an exaggerated view. Inherently the Boer is a great respecter of the law and of the person of its representative or representatives, and most of these were sufficiently unsophisticated to look upon their undoubtedly treasonable proceeding as a hanging matter if brought to the notice of the authorities. Hence none felt any qualm as to the strong measures to be adopted towards the hostile sharer of the secret.
In vino Veritas! When we say that none felt a qualm we should have exempted Hans Vermaak—in his cups. The misgiving expressed by Gideon Roux as to the potential liberality of his spouse in the matter of the grog was not unfounded. There was enough in the bottle to make three Dutchmen—two would not partake—very lively, and the liveliest of all was Hans Vermaak. He became, moreover, enormously fraternal towards Colvin, who was deftly drawing him out, and finally did exactly as Gideon Roux had predicted, insisted upon his remaining the night, for he, Hans, was Gideon’s brother-in-law, and therefore one of the family. He forgot the patriot cause, and only remembered it to declare that this was too good an Englishman to be shot, and so forth, which declaration under ordinary circumstances might mean nothing, but read by the light of subsequent events and the speaker’s manner, Colvin took to mean rather a great deal.
The latter made several futile attempts at getting away, and at length succeeded. He himself, although he had borne his share, was in no wise affected by the liquor he had been taking—for the matter of that he could have drunk the lot of them under the table over and over again—and throughout the talk, which became more and more boisterous and unguarded, had kept an ear open and an eye keenly alive to every sign. But by the time he did break loose, and Gert was standing before the door with the horses saddled up, he realised that the more prudential side of his resolution had failed and that an infinitesimal portion of his homeward journey would be accomplished by daylight.
He had bidden good-bye all-round—not failing to observe during the process the awful look of scare upon the face of his hostess as she just touched his hand with a limp, moist paw. He had paced his horse about a hundred yards from the door, not sorry to see the last of the frowsy, dirty place, when he heard his name called. Turning in the saddle, he beheld the genial Hans hurrying towards him.
“Which way do you go home by?” said the Dutchman, somewhat flurriedly.
“Oh, the usual way, Hans.”
“So? You are going home, then.”
“Oh yes.”
“But you must not. Klip Poort is bad to go through at nightJa, it is bad, very bad. Go some other road. There is the road to Stephanus De la Rey’s, for instance. Go by it.”
“But it is about twice the distance,” objected Colvin, who began to read considerable meaning into the other’s anxiety regarding his movements.
“That matters nothing. Look, you are a good sort of Englishman and I like you. Klip Poort is bad to go through at night, very bad.”
“Very well, Hans, I’ll take your advice. So long.”
Klip Poort, the point referred to, was a narrow, rugged defile overhung with large rocks, about five miles on his homeward way. As well as the road passing through, it likewise gave passage to the Sneeuw River, which, when full to any great extent, flooded the roadway to some depth. It might very well be to this form of danger that the Boer’s hidden warning applied, and yet some unaccountable instinct warned Colvin that it was not.
“Gert.”
“Baas?”
“Did you hear what Hans Vermaak was saying just now?”
“Part of it, sir.”
“Why do you think he wanted us not to go back by way of Klip Poort?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“Gert, you are an ass.”
“Perhaps he thought the river might be ‘down,’ sir. The clouds are very thick and black up in thebergen.”
“Yes.”
An indescribable feeling of helpless apprehensiveness came over Colvin, and indeed it is a creepy thing the consciousness that at any step during the next half-dozen miles or so you are a target for a concealed enemy whose marksmanship is unerring. For this was about what he had reduced the situation to in his own mind, and within the same heartily anathematised the foolish curiosity which had moved him to go up and explore the hiding-place of the concealed arms. That Gideon Roux and his confederate were aware that he shared their secret he now believed. They must have waited to watch him, and have seen him come out of the cave; and with this idea the full force of Vermaak’s warning came home to him.
But was that warning genuine? Was it not destined rather to induce him to take the other way? It was impossible to determine. Sorely perplexed, he rode on, thinking the matter over, and that deeply. The sky overhead grew darker and darker with the spread of a great cloud—the earth with the fall of evening. There was a moon, but it was obscured. By the time the rocks which marked the entrance to the poort came into view it was already night.
Two ways branched here—one his ordinary way home, the other that which Hans Vermaak had urged him to take. Some twenty feet down, at the bottom of a precipitous slope, was the river bed, dry save for a shallow, stagnant reach here and there. Which way should he take? Now was the time to decide.
“Get on, Aasvogel, you fool! Ah, would you, then?”
This to his horse, accompanied by a sharp rowelling with each heel. For the animal had stopped short with a suddenness calculated to unseat and certainly irritate the rider, and was backing and shying like the panic-stricken idiot it was; the cause of all this fluster being a white stone standing almost vertically up from the roadside, in the gloom looking for all the world like the traditional ghost.
“Whigge—whirr!” Something hummed through the air, and that so near he could feel the draught. Two jets of flame had darted forth from the hillside above, simultaneously with a dry, double crack. Two more followed, but had it been a hundred Colvin was utterly powerless to investigate, for his horse, which had already sprung forward beneath the sharp dig of the spurs, now took to wild and frantic flight, and for some moments was completely out of hand. By the time he got it in hand again he had been carried a good mile from the scene of this startling though not wholly unexpected occurrence.
Two things came into Colvin’s mind, as eventually he reined in his panting, snorting steed. One of the bullets, at any rate, had missed him very narrowly, but by just the distance the animal had backed when shying from the ghostly object which had scared it; and but for the fact of his being a first-rate rider the suddenness of the bolt would have unseated him, and he would now be lying in the road at the mercy of his would-be assassins. But—where was Gert?
He looked around. The clouds had parted a little and the moon was visible through a rift thus formed; indeed it was the sudden flash of the moonlight upon the white stone that had so terrified the horse at first. The light revealed the mountain slopes rising up around, but of his servant there was no sign. He listened intently. No sound, save the creaking of the saddle, caused by the violently heaving flanks of his panting steed, and now and again a mutter of distant thunder away up in the mountains. Where was Gert?
Dismounting, he led the animal a little way off the road, and sat down under a large boulder to think out the situation. The warning of Hans Vermaak again came into his mind. It looked genuine as viewed by subsequent lights, but whether it was so or not, it was useless, for the murderers had altered their original plan, clearly resolving to provide against the contingency of his choosing the other of the two roads, by shooting him before he should come to the point where these parted. Well, they had not shot him, but it had been a narrow shave—very.
But if they had not shot him had they shot Gert? It looked uncommonly like it. Only the four shots had been fired—of that he felt certain—but since his horse had taken matters into its own hands, or, rather, legs, he had obtained neither sight nor sound of Gert. Seated there in the darkness, he was conscious of a very considerable feeling of indignation begotten of a dual reason—that he had had a mean advantage taken of him, and that his property, in the person of Gert Bondelzwart, had been interfered with.
What was to be done next? Should he go back? To do so would be to commit an act of fatal rashness, for it would be to expose himself once more to the fire of his concealed cowardly foes, who would not be likely to let slip a second opportunity. True, he had his revolver, but not for a moment would they be likely to come near enough to give him any chance of using it. No—to go back would be simply throwing away his life. Had it been a white man and a comrade, he would unhesitatingly have done so. But Gert was a Griqua, and, though not exactly a savage, had all the cunning and resource and endurance of generations of savage ancestry. If he were alive, why then, amid the rocks and the darkness, he would soon elude his enemies; if he were dead, Colvin did not see any sense in throwing away his own life merely to ascertain that fact.
The moon had gone in, and a misty scud-wrack spreading itself overhead was creeping around the dim crags on high. There was a smell of rain in the air, and a fitful puff of wind came singing down the valley, laden with an icy breath. Colvin shivered, and as he looked anxiously skyward a large drop or two of rain plashed down on his face. There would be a deluge in a moment, and he had nothing to meet it with save the clothes in which he stood up.
Suddenly the horse, which had been standing with its head down still panting after its race and scare, pricked up its ears and snorted, then began backing away. Colvin had just time to seize the bridle-rein, or it would have been off in wild stampede. And now every vein in his body quivered with excitement. His revolver was in his hand. Let them come. The chances now were something like equal.
But it is not a pleasant thing to know that you are being stalked in the dark by a persistent and murderous foe; and as for some minutes no further sign occurred the excitement became dashed with something like apprehension, then succeeded a feeling of relief. The horse had been scared by one of the ordinary sights of the veldt—a sneaking jackal—perhaps a meerkat—in short, anything moving will startle a horse in the dark, let alone one so thoroughly “in the dispositions” for panic as this one now was. But just then a renewed snort, accompanied by a plunge and a violent tugging at the bridle-rein, set all Colvin’s pulses bounding again; and though he endeavoured to do so silently, so as not to betray his exact whereabouts, the hammer of his pistol, as he drew it up, gave forth a sharp click upon the stillness.
Out of the darkness came a voice—a beseeching voice—saying in Boer Dutch:
“Nay, Baas, don’t shoot. My well-loved Baas, don’t shoot.”
“Gert, you fool, come here.”
“Yes, it is Gert, Baas,” answered the voice in a tone of intense delight and relief. “Maagtig! I thought it was thoseschelmBoers. I thought you were shot. I thought I was shot. I thought we were all shot.”
“Well, we are not. But where is Pansy?”
“She was shot, Baas. Ah, the poor mare! She just sank down in the road with her legs under her. I had hardly time to roll off when she was up again, gave a stagger, and toppled over into the river bed. I crouched down in thesluitby the roadside and lay perfectly still—still as a hare—until the moon went in again. Then I crept away.Ja, it was a fearful time. I thought I could feel the bullets through me every minute.Maagtig! but he is aschelmBoer is Gideon Roux.”
“Gideon Roux? Why do you think it was Gideon Roux, Gert?”
“It was, Baas. He and Hermanus Delport. I would swear to it,” rejoined the Griqua excitedly. “They looked murder when they were talking to me. There was murder in their faces,Ja, it is those two.”
Colvin cursed to himself, and vowed revenge. He was fond of his horses, and these two rascals had shot one of his best. At the same time he owned to himself ruefully that the chance of carrying out such vengeance was remote. At present he was far more an object for their vengeance than they for his.
“Come now, Gert, we must get along. Lay hold of my stirrup-leather and trot alongside.”
They got into the road again, but with the moon behind the cloud and the rain that was beginning to fall it became very dark. What if the vindictive Dutchmen, guessing they had failed, were to take a short cut behind the ridge andvoerlijthem further down? The thought was unpleasant, to put it mildly.
Now there was a whirl and a roar in the air, and, in an icy blast, the rain swooped down in torrents. Colvin, destitute of macintosh or wrap of any kind, was soaked through and through in about two minutes, and shivered exceedingly. Fortunately the deluge was behind him, or, coming down obliquely as it did, Aasvogel could hardly have made headway against it. Now and then a vivid flash of lightning gleamed forth, showing the sheer of the great crags overhead and the glistening slopes studded with wet stones.
“Hurry up, Gert. Put your best foot forward, man. We have to race the river this shot. The Ratels Hoek drift will be running twelve feet deep before we get there if we don’t look smart.”
And the Griqua, puffing and perspiring, did put his best foot forward.
Stephanus De la Rey, having just finished his supper, had come out on to the stoep to look at the weather. The deluge of the last hour had subsided, but the clouds, black as ink and unbroken, gave promise of a repetition of the same.
“Aha!” he said, gleefully to himself. “The drought is at an end. The river is already coming down well, and the dams must be overflowing. I shall pump a lot of water on to the lucerne beds to-morrow. But— What is that?”
The clink of shod horse hoofs came upon the wind through the swirl and roar of the fast-swelling river. He stood listening intently. The sound ceased, then arose again, now on this side of the drift. The next moment a very soaked and dripping horseman emerged into the light of the windows, and beside him trotted a pedestrian, no less soaked and dripping, but very much blown.
“Why, Colvin, where are you from?Maagtig, kerel! but you are wet,” he cried. Then raising his voice: “Windvogel, Swaartbooi. Turn out, youschepsels, and take the Baas’ horse.”
“Wet? I’m nearly dead with cold, Stephanus. So bring along asoepje, old chap, and let’s get to a fire and dry myself.”
“Dry yourself? It’s dry clothes you have to get into. Come this way. Myvolkwill see to your horse. Here now, what can we get you into? My things are too wide for you, Cornelis’ and Jan’s are too small. You will have to get into some of mine.”
And having dragged out of a drawer a complete refit for his guest, whom he had marched straight into his own room, the genial Dutchman went out and reappeared in a moment with a decanter of excellent “dop” and glasses.
“That’s grand!” ejaculated Colvin, fortifying himself with a liberalsoepjeduring the changing process. But not yet was he going to impart his adventures to his host. The latter had a great laugh over his attempts to carry off the fit of clothes that were both too long and too wide.
“Well, no matter,” he said. “You are dry, at any rate, and by this time warm. So come along in and have some supper.”
Colvin followed his host into the dining-room. The evening meal was just over, but already a place had been cleared and laid for him. As he shook hands with Mrs De la Rey, he noticed a girl—one he did not recollect ever having seen before. She was just receiving a dish from a Hottentot servant, and arranging it on the table at the place laid for him. Then, turning, she came up to him, with outstretched hand, and a bright smile of cordial welcome on her face.
“Oh, I had forgotten,” said Stephanus. “You two have not met before. Colvin, this is my eldest girl—Aletta.”
Chapter Nine.“Only a Boer Girl.”A vision of the portraits flashed through Colvin’s mind—the portraits at which he had so often looked, with but faint interest, representing as they did a heavy-looking awkward girl, with hunched shoulders, whom he had set down in his own mind as a mere squat, ugly replica of Condaas. One of the portraits itself stared him in the face even now, over and beyond the shoulder of its original. And this was the original! He saw before him a tall and graceful girl, straight as a dart. Her head, slightly thrown back, as she greeted him with frank and self-possessed composure, was beautifully poised, and crowned with a bounteous coil of silky brown hair. She had lustrous hazel eyes, which could light up in a wonderful way when animated, and a fresh and delicate colour. He noticed, too, that the hand which he took in his was long and soft and tapering—in short, she looked thoroughbred from head to heel, and yet, judged by the most ordinary canons of beauty, he recognised that Aletta De la Rey was not even pretty.Her features were lacking. They were not regular, and the mouth was somewhat too large. But it was redeemed by white and even teeth, and a way of rippling into a sudden, whole-hearted, and very musical laugh; indeed, the whole expression of her face would light up in a way that rendered it subtly but most unequivocally taking and attractive.Now, as she greeted Colvin Kershaw for the first time a gleam of just that sudden mirth shot from her eyes. He, reading it aright, became alive to the fact that he did not show to his best advantage, rigged out in a suit of her father’s clothes, which was both too long and too wide for him, and, for once in a way, he owned, within his inner self, to a consciousness of feeling ever so slightly disconcerted. But he said quietly:“Be merciful, Miss De la Rey. At any rate, I am dry and warm after my soaking, for which I feel devoutly grateful.”The colour rushed into Aletta’s face as a very wave, but the laugh did not go out of her eyes; on the contrary, it intensified in its struggle not to break forth.“What a thought-reader you are, Mr Kershaw!” she answered. “But, don’t—please don’t think me very rude, but—I’ve—I’ve heard so much about you that—I seem to know you well already—”And then the laugh would no longer be kept down. It broke forth in a merry, hearty, silvery peal.“Aletta!” cried her mother, horror-stricken. “How can you be so rude? What will Mr Kershaw think of you? And when are you going to begin and pour out his coffee for him?”But, whatever Colvin thought or did not think, there was something so entirely infectious in that laugh that he was joining in it himself with a whole-heartedness which left nothing to be desired; and there was the strange spectacle of two people who had just met for the first time, laughing—as they afterwards put it to each other—like a pair of idiots, one at the other, and that other joining heartily in the joke against himself.“It’s—it’s all right, Miss De la Rey,” said the latter, when sufficiently recovered to be able to speak coherently. “I am glad to hear you say you seem to know me so well already, because in that case you wilt know that I like nothing better than to be treated as one of the family.”It was a tactful speech, and the girl looked thoroughly capable of appreciating it. So, too, was her mother, who remarked:“It’s so good of you to say so, Mr Kershaw. Really, I don’t know what has come over Aletta. They don’t seem to have improved at all in Cape Town.”Colvin, to himself, opined that they rather had; indeed, exhaustively so, remembering the weird impression of her set up within his mind by the portraits taken before she left for that capital. He knew, however, that the tone in which this reproach was conveyed took the sting out of the words, which, indeed, it clean belied.“I didn’t know that your eldest daughter was even expected back, Mrs De la Rey,” he said.“No? Aletta came back rather suddenly, and she has come back with all sorts of notions she had better have left behind. Of course, all our people down there belong to the Bond, and we support the Bond ourselves. Yet politics and war-talk over and over again are not fit subjects for girls.”“Now, mother, you are far too old-fashioned. I am going to brush you quite up to date,” answered Aletta brightly, but in a sort of caressing tone. “And you must not start Mr Kershaw with a bad opinion of me, like that. It isn’t fair.”Colvin owned to himself that that would be difficult, inasmuch as he had started with too good a one on sight and his own responsibility. He had been observing her narrowly while he sat there thoroughly enjoying an excellent supper, and already had not failed to notice that she had a soft and perfectly refined voice and pretty ways. Unlike the others, her English was without accent, save for the little tricks of speech by which you may pick out a born Cape Colonist in any crowd, such as clipping the final “r,” or ever so slight a hardening of the vowel at the beginning of the word, and others; tricks of speech which are not unpleasing, and are, moreover, as fully prevalent among children born in the Colony, of emigrated English parents and without a drop of Dutch blood in them.“But where are the other girls, Mrs De la Rey?” he asked.“Away. They went to stay with their uncle, Piet Venter, for a few days just before we knew Aletta was coming back. They will be home to-morrow, or as soon as he can bring them.”“Who is that talking over there?” croaked a feminine voice from a far corner, in Dutch—a voice that sounded both irritable and antique. “It seems like that of an Englishman. Nay—I don’t know what this good land of ours is coming to. The tongue our fathers spoke with before us was good enough for me in my young days. Now everybody must be chattering in English—a tongue only fit for baboons.”“It is Tant’ Plessis,” said Mrs De la Rey in English and an undertone, “a sort of distant cousin of Stephanus’; I had forgotten she was in the room. She doesn’t say a word for a whole day, sometimes.”Colvin, who had now finished his meal, went over to the speaker, who was seated in a huge armchair in a dark corner. She was a typical old-time Boervrouw, large-faced, heavy, and shapeless. She had small eyes, and her thin hair, which, however, was still almost black, was plastered down flat upon her head.“Daag, Tanta,” (Good-day, Aunt) he said, extending his hand. The old woman stared at him for a moment in a sort of semi-distrustful, semi-resentful way, then touched it with a flabby paw.“Daag, Neef,” (Good-day, nephew) she replied, then subsided, leaving the other to carry on the conversation—which he did, descanting mainly upon the fine rain which was still falling. She cut him short ruthlessly by calling out:“Gertruida, who is he?”Mrs De la Rey, thus invoked, came over to explain.“Ah, yes. An Englishman! I could have seen that by the way he talks. He does not talk well.”Colvin, glancing round sedately, caught the flash of mirth which had begun to light up Aletta’s face. He thought there was some fun coming directly.“Who is he? What is his name?” she went on.“It’s Mr Kershaw, Tanta,” explained Mrs De la Rey. “He often comes here.”“I asked what his name was,” shrilled the old woman, bringing the end of her stick down hard upon the floor. “Is it Abram Kershaw, or Izaak Kershaw, or what is it?”“No, Tanta. It’s Colvin—Colvin Kershaw,” replied that worthy himself, conscious of something between a gurgle and a sob in the direction of Aletta.“Calvin. Oh, yes. Calvin—Calvinus, that is. You have a good name, nephew.Ja, I have often heard thepredikanttalk of Calvinus—and preach about him too. Johan was his first name.Ja, he was a good man was Calvinus. He killed a great many Roman Catholics—burnt them all. I have often heard Mynheer say so.”The gurgling in Aletta’s direction was now becoming convulsive. Colvin himself was inconveniently infected.“Perhaps you are of his family, nephew,” went on Tant’ Plessis. “His grandson, perhaps? You must be of his family if you have his name. Well, follow in his footsteps—though to be sure there could not be such a good and great man as Calvinus. He burnt ever so many Roman Catholics. I’ve heard Mynheer say so; and if he does not know, who does?”This was too much. Aletta fairly broke down, and, striving to flee from the room in blind precipitation, was brought up in the doorway by the stalwart and substantial proportions of her father, who was entering, and against whom she collided violently.“So—so! What fun is on now?” cried Stephanus, at once infected by her mirth. “Aletta, you are a very wicked little girl. You are always laughing. Only wicked little girls always laugh, and at their elders too, I believe. What is it, Tanta? You have been amusing the child?”This was carrying the war into the enemy’s camp with a vengeance.“Nee—nee! I have not been amusing anybody,” replied the old lady very testily. “I do not know what girls are coming to in these days—jabbering nothing but English—a tongue only fit for baboons—and laughing at their elders.”“Softly, softly, Tanta. There is an Englishman here!” expostulated Stephanus, with a wink at Colvin.“Ja, I know there is,” was the still more testy reply. “But he is not like other Englishmen. His name is Calvin. He is of the family of that good man Calvinus, who burnt ever so many Roman Catholics. He did. Ask Mynheer if he did not. I have heard him say so ever so many times, both in church and out. And he ought to know. I have been telling this Englishman I hoped he would ever remember his grandfather’s example.”“Let the joke stand, Stephanus,” said Colvin in an undertone. “It’s about the very best I’ve heard for such a long time.”But the next utterance put forward by this weird old party was destined to prove somewhat less amusing—to the object thereof, at any rate.“When is this Englishman going to marry Wenlock’s sister?” she blared out, during an interval of profound silence, and talking sublimely past the object of the remark. “When is it to be, Gertruida?”Poor Mrs De la Rey grew red with confusion.“What are you saying, Tanta?” she stammered.“What am I saying? Why, he is engaged to her. Several people have told me. Of course he is. She is the only English girl here, and he is the only Englishman. So of course they are engaged. That settles it.”“But, Tanta, I assure you I am not engaged to anybody,” struck in Colvin. Coming on the top of his own meditations only that morning the remark jarred on him. Somehow, being made as it was this evening, it more than doubly jarred on him, why, he could not have told then, but he knew afterwards.“Not engaged to her?” repeated this antique terror. “Then you ought to be. All young men ought to be married as soon as possible; it is a duty they owe to themselves and the community, and you are rather an old young man.Nee, I do not believe you. Your grandfather, the great and good Calvinus, would not have said what was not true; and I have heard this from many people, so it must be true.”“Well, it is not true, Tanta, however many people say it,” said Colvin, with emphasis, and an unpleasant consciousness of feeling ever so slightly foolish. Aletta, he could see, was in the wildest throes of suppressed mirth, and Stephanus had to flee the room and go and stand out in the pouring rain and laugh till he cried. “I tell you it is absolutely true that I am not engaged to anybody, and am not in the least likely to be.”“Then you ought to be ashamed of yourself, nephew,” retorted the old woman, whacking the floor with her stick. “What do you suppose the good God gave you health and strength for—”“No, this is getting too thick,” said Colvin in an undertone.“Good-night, Tanta. I want to see Stephanus upon some very important business before he goes to bed. Good-night”; and he made for the door.The old woman subsided, nodded a little, and then made up her mind to go to bed. When she had done so Colvin returned, accompanied by Stephanus. Aletta’s bright face lit up at sight of him, and with the consciousness that she could now laugh unrestrained.“Upon my word, Miss De la Rey,” he said, “your respected relative is something of a terror. First, she wants to make me three or four hundred years old by assigning me for grandfather some historic old bore who flourished in the sixteenth or seventeenth century, I forget which. Then she is eager to rush me into a haphazard matrimonial contract. No, really it is laying it on just a little too thick.”“Oh, it was awfully funny. But, do you know, Mr Kershaw, we had heard just the same thing?Wedidn’t tell her, you know, but we had heard it,” said Aletta, her face brimming over with mischief.“Well, you heard what has no foundation in fact, what is entirely untrue,” he answered, with some vague stirring over the emphasis wherewith he did answer, remembering the psychological moment of two or three nights ago.“You met the Patriot here not long since, did you not, Mr Kershaw?” said Aletta, changing the subject with perfect ease.“Which Patriot? There are so many patriots now,” he replied.“Why,thePatriot. The one from Pretoria, of course.”“Andries Botma? Oh yes, I met him. We had some very interesting talk together. I had long wanted to see him.”“But—but—you are not of us,” said the girl, looking up quickly from her work-basket.“This little girl is a red-hot patriot, Colvin,” said Stephanus, resting a large hand lightly upon the silky brown coil. “But, to be serious, I hope this will all quiet down and find its level.”“Of course; are we not all jolly good friends together, Stephanus? We don’t want to be at each other’s throats at the bidding of other people.”This remark brought Aletta up.“But you said you had long wanted to meet the Patriot, Mr Kershaw. Why did you want to see him, then?”“Because he is something unique—a really honest agitator. He means what he says and believes every word of it most thoroughly. He is full ofverveand fire—in a word, a strong man. His is an immensely striking personality.”“Well done, well done,” cried Aletta, clapping her hands enthusiastically. “I shall make a convert of you yet. Oh yes, I shall.”It became bedtime. As she gave him his candle Colvin once more could not help being struck with the refined grace of Aletta’s every movement—the soft, clear, thoroughbred tone of her voice. She seemed somehow to have been cast in a different mould from her sisters, to whom he had always pictured her as inferior both in looks and presence. It fairly puzzled him. The tones of her voice seemed to linger long after he had retired. He had had a long, tiring, exciting day—had undergone a very narrow escape for his life—which circumstance, by the way, he had not yet mentioned to his host, being desirous to sleep on it first, and having enjoined strict silence upon his retainer—yet, now that he should have dropped into a sound, recuperative slumber, he could not. And the sole reason that he could not—as he must perforce admit to himself in the darkness and privacy of his chamber—was the recollection of this girl whom he had met but the first time that night—here, on a remote Dutch farm in the Wildschutsbergen. And she was “only a Boer girl!”
A vision of the portraits flashed through Colvin’s mind—the portraits at which he had so often looked, with but faint interest, representing as they did a heavy-looking awkward girl, with hunched shoulders, whom he had set down in his own mind as a mere squat, ugly replica of Condaas. One of the portraits itself stared him in the face even now, over and beyond the shoulder of its original. And this was the original! He saw before him a tall and graceful girl, straight as a dart. Her head, slightly thrown back, as she greeted him with frank and self-possessed composure, was beautifully poised, and crowned with a bounteous coil of silky brown hair. She had lustrous hazel eyes, which could light up in a wonderful way when animated, and a fresh and delicate colour. He noticed, too, that the hand which he took in his was long and soft and tapering—in short, she looked thoroughbred from head to heel, and yet, judged by the most ordinary canons of beauty, he recognised that Aletta De la Rey was not even pretty.
Her features were lacking. They were not regular, and the mouth was somewhat too large. But it was redeemed by white and even teeth, and a way of rippling into a sudden, whole-hearted, and very musical laugh; indeed, the whole expression of her face would light up in a way that rendered it subtly but most unequivocally taking and attractive.
Now, as she greeted Colvin Kershaw for the first time a gleam of just that sudden mirth shot from her eyes. He, reading it aright, became alive to the fact that he did not show to his best advantage, rigged out in a suit of her father’s clothes, which was both too long and too wide for him, and, for once in a way, he owned, within his inner self, to a consciousness of feeling ever so slightly disconcerted. But he said quietly:
“Be merciful, Miss De la Rey. At any rate, I am dry and warm after my soaking, for which I feel devoutly grateful.”
The colour rushed into Aletta’s face as a very wave, but the laugh did not go out of her eyes; on the contrary, it intensified in its struggle not to break forth.
“What a thought-reader you are, Mr Kershaw!” she answered. “But, don’t—please don’t think me very rude, but—I’ve—I’ve heard so much about you that—I seem to know you well already—”
And then the laugh would no longer be kept down. It broke forth in a merry, hearty, silvery peal.
“Aletta!” cried her mother, horror-stricken. “How can you be so rude? What will Mr Kershaw think of you? And when are you going to begin and pour out his coffee for him?”
But, whatever Colvin thought or did not think, there was something so entirely infectious in that laugh that he was joining in it himself with a whole-heartedness which left nothing to be desired; and there was the strange spectacle of two people who had just met for the first time, laughing—as they afterwards put it to each other—like a pair of idiots, one at the other, and that other joining heartily in the joke against himself.
“It’s—it’s all right, Miss De la Rey,” said the latter, when sufficiently recovered to be able to speak coherently. “I am glad to hear you say you seem to know me so well already, because in that case you wilt know that I like nothing better than to be treated as one of the family.”
It was a tactful speech, and the girl looked thoroughly capable of appreciating it. So, too, was her mother, who remarked:
“It’s so good of you to say so, Mr Kershaw. Really, I don’t know what has come over Aletta. They don’t seem to have improved at all in Cape Town.”
Colvin, to himself, opined that they rather had; indeed, exhaustively so, remembering the weird impression of her set up within his mind by the portraits taken before she left for that capital. He knew, however, that the tone in which this reproach was conveyed took the sting out of the words, which, indeed, it clean belied.
“I didn’t know that your eldest daughter was even expected back, Mrs De la Rey,” he said.
“No? Aletta came back rather suddenly, and she has come back with all sorts of notions she had better have left behind. Of course, all our people down there belong to the Bond, and we support the Bond ourselves. Yet politics and war-talk over and over again are not fit subjects for girls.”
“Now, mother, you are far too old-fashioned. I am going to brush you quite up to date,” answered Aletta brightly, but in a sort of caressing tone. “And you must not start Mr Kershaw with a bad opinion of me, like that. It isn’t fair.”
Colvin owned to himself that that would be difficult, inasmuch as he had started with too good a one on sight and his own responsibility. He had been observing her narrowly while he sat there thoroughly enjoying an excellent supper, and already had not failed to notice that she had a soft and perfectly refined voice and pretty ways. Unlike the others, her English was without accent, save for the little tricks of speech by which you may pick out a born Cape Colonist in any crowd, such as clipping the final “r,” or ever so slight a hardening of the vowel at the beginning of the word, and others; tricks of speech which are not unpleasing, and are, moreover, as fully prevalent among children born in the Colony, of emigrated English parents and without a drop of Dutch blood in them.
“But where are the other girls, Mrs De la Rey?” he asked.
“Away. They went to stay with their uncle, Piet Venter, for a few days just before we knew Aletta was coming back. They will be home to-morrow, or as soon as he can bring them.”
“Who is that talking over there?” croaked a feminine voice from a far corner, in Dutch—a voice that sounded both irritable and antique. “It seems like that of an Englishman. Nay—I don’t know what this good land of ours is coming to. The tongue our fathers spoke with before us was good enough for me in my young days. Now everybody must be chattering in English—a tongue only fit for baboons.”
“It is Tant’ Plessis,” said Mrs De la Rey in English and an undertone, “a sort of distant cousin of Stephanus’; I had forgotten she was in the room. She doesn’t say a word for a whole day, sometimes.”
Colvin, who had now finished his meal, went over to the speaker, who was seated in a huge armchair in a dark corner. She was a typical old-time Boervrouw, large-faced, heavy, and shapeless. She had small eyes, and her thin hair, which, however, was still almost black, was plastered down flat upon her head.
“Daag, Tanta,” (Good-day, Aunt) he said, extending his hand. The old woman stared at him for a moment in a sort of semi-distrustful, semi-resentful way, then touched it with a flabby paw.
“Daag, Neef,” (Good-day, nephew) she replied, then subsided, leaving the other to carry on the conversation—which he did, descanting mainly upon the fine rain which was still falling. She cut him short ruthlessly by calling out:
“Gertruida, who is he?”
Mrs De la Rey, thus invoked, came over to explain.
“Ah, yes. An Englishman! I could have seen that by the way he talks. He does not talk well.”
Colvin, glancing round sedately, caught the flash of mirth which had begun to light up Aletta’s face. He thought there was some fun coming directly.
“Who is he? What is his name?” she went on.
“It’s Mr Kershaw, Tanta,” explained Mrs De la Rey. “He often comes here.”
“I asked what his name was,” shrilled the old woman, bringing the end of her stick down hard upon the floor. “Is it Abram Kershaw, or Izaak Kershaw, or what is it?”
“No, Tanta. It’s Colvin—Colvin Kershaw,” replied that worthy himself, conscious of something between a gurgle and a sob in the direction of Aletta.
“Calvin. Oh, yes. Calvin—Calvinus, that is. You have a good name, nephew.Ja, I have often heard thepredikanttalk of Calvinus—and preach about him too. Johan was his first name.Ja, he was a good man was Calvinus. He killed a great many Roman Catholics—burnt them all. I have often heard Mynheer say so.”
The gurgling in Aletta’s direction was now becoming convulsive. Colvin himself was inconveniently infected.
“Perhaps you are of his family, nephew,” went on Tant’ Plessis. “His grandson, perhaps? You must be of his family if you have his name. Well, follow in his footsteps—though to be sure there could not be such a good and great man as Calvinus. He burnt ever so many Roman Catholics. I’ve heard Mynheer say so; and if he does not know, who does?”
This was too much. Aletta fairly broke down, and, striving to flee from the room in blind precipitation, was brought up in the doorway by the stalwart and substantial proportions of her father, who was entering, and against whom she collided violently.
“So—so! What fun is on now?” cried Stephanus, at once infected by her mirth. “Aletta, you are a very wicked little girl. You are always laughing. Only wicked little girls always laugh, and at their elders too, I believe. What is it, Tanta? You have been amusing the child?”
This was carrying the war into the enemy’s camp with a vengeance.
“Nee—nee! I have not been amusing anybody,” replied the old lady very testily. “I do not know what girls are coming to in these days—jabbering nothing but English—a tongue only fit for baboons—and laughing at their elders.”
“Softly, softly, Tanta. There is an Englishman here!” expostulated Stephanus, with a wink at Colvin.
“Ja, I know there is,” was the still more testy reply. “But he is not like other Englishmen. His name is Calvin. He is of the family of that good man Calvinus, who burnt ever so many Roman Catholics. He did. Ask Mynheer if he did not. I have heard him say so ever so many times, both in church and out. And he ought to know. I have been telling this Englishman I hoped he would ever remember his grandfather’s example.”
“Let the joke stand, Stephanus,” said Colvin in an undertone. “It’s about the very best I’ve heard for such a long time.”
But the next utterance put forward by this weird old party was destined to prove somewhat less amusing—to the object thereof, at any rate.
“When is this Englishman going to marry Wenlock’s sister?” she blared out, during an interval of profound silence, and talking sublimely past the object of the remark. “When is it to be, Gertruida?”
Poor Mrs De la Rey grew red with confusion.
“What are you saying, Tanta?” she stammered.
“What am I saying? Why, he is engaged to her. Several people have told me. Of course he is. She is the only English girl here, and he is the only Englishman. So of course they are engaged. That settles it.”
“But, Tanta, I assure you I am not engaged to anybody,” struck in Colvin. Coming on the top of his own meditations only that morning the remark jarred on him. Somehow, being made as it was this evening, it more than doubly jarred on him, why, he could not have told then, but he knew afterwards.
“Not engaged to her?” repeated this antique terror. “Then you ought to be. All young men ought to be married as soon as possible; it is a duty they owe to themselves and the community, and you are rather an old young man.Nee, I do not believe you. Your grandfather, the great and good Calvinus, would not have said what was not true; and I have heard this from many people, so it must be true.”
“Well, it is not true, Tanta, however many people say it,” said Colvin, with emphasis, and an unpleasant consciousness of feeling ever so slightly foolish. Aletta, he could see, was in the wildest throes of suppressed mirth, and Stephanus had to flee the room and go and stand out in the pouring rain and laugh till he cried. “I tell you it is absolutely true that I am not engaged to anybody, and am not in the least likely to be.”
“Then you ought to be ashamed of yourself, nephew,” retorted the old woman, whacking the floor with her stick. “What do you suppose the good God gave you health and strength for—”
“No, this is getting too thick,” said Colvin in an undertone.
“Good-night, Tanta. I want to see Stephanus upon some very important business before he goes to bed. Good-night”; and he made for the door.
The old woman subsided, nodded a little, and then made up her mind to go to bed. When she had done so Colvin returned, accompanied by Stephanus. Aletta’s bright face lit up at sight of him, and with the consciousness that she could now laugh unrestrained.
“Upon my word, Miss De la Rey,” he said, “your respected relative is something of a terror. First, she wants to make me three or four hundred years old by assigning me for grandfather some historic old bore who flourished in the sixteenth or seventeenth century, I forget which. Then she is eager to rush me into a haphazard matrimonial contract. No, really it is laying it on just a little too thick.”
“Oh, it was awfully funny. But, do you know, Mr Kershaw, we had heard just the same thing?Wedidn’t tell her, you know, but we had heard it,” said Aletta, her face brimming over with mischief.
“Well, you heard what has no foundation in fact, what is entirely untrue,” he answered, with some vague stirring over the emphasis wherewith he did answer, remembering the psychological moment of two or three nights ago.
“You met the Patriot here not long since, did you not, Mr Kershaw?” said Aletta, changing the subject with perfect ease.
“Which Patriot? There are so many patriots now,” he replied.
“Why,thePatriot. The one from Pretoria, of course.”
“Andries Botma? Oh yes, I met him. We had some very interesting talk together. I had long wanted to see him.”
“But—but—you are not of us,” said the girl, looking up quickly from her work-basket.
“This little girl is a red-hot patriot, Colvin,” said Stephanus, resting a large hand lightly upon the silky brown coil. “But, to be serious, I hope this will all quiet down and find its level.”
“Of course; are we not all jolly good friends together, Stephanus? We don’t want to be at each other’s throats at the bidding of other people.”
This remark brought Aletta up.
“But you said you had long wanted to meet the Patriot, Mr Kershaw. Why did you want to see him, then?”
“Because he is something unique—a really honest agitator. He means what he says and believes every word of it most thoroughly. He is full ofverveand fire—in a word, a strong man. His is an immensely striking personality.”
“Well done, well done,” cried Aletta, clapping her hands enthusiastically. “I shall make a convert of you yet. Oh yes, I shall.”
It became bedtime. As she gave him his candle Colvin once more could not help being struck with the refined grace of Aletta’s every movement—the soft, clear, thoroughbred tone of her voice. She seemed somehow to have been cast in a different mould from her sisters, to whom he had always pictured her as inferior both in looks and presence. It fairly puzzled him. The tones of her voice seemed to linger long after he had retired. He had had a long, tiring, exciting day—had undergone a very narrow escape for his life—which circumstance, by the way, he had not yet mentioned to his host, being desirous to sleep on it first, and having enjoined strict silence upon his retainer—yet, now that he should have dropped into a sound, recuperative slumber, he could not. And the sole reason that he could not—as he must perforce admit to himself in the darkness and privacy of his chamber—was the recollection of this girl whom he had met but the first time that night—here, on a remote Dutch farm in the Wildschutsbergen. And she was “only a Boer girl!”
Chapter Ten.“If—.”“Well, child, and what do you think of ‘our only Englishman’?” said Mrs De la Rey, as they were putting away the “early coffee” things the following morning.“I like him, mother,” replied Aletta. “I oughtn’t to because I have heard so much about him. That is sure to start one with a prejudice against anybody. Still, I think I shall. Oh, wasn’t Tant’ Plessis killing about ‘the only Englishman’ and ‘the only English girl’? By the way, was there anything in it?”“Don’t ask me.Idon’t know,” laughed her mother. “Only he seemed a little too anxious to deny it. One can never tell. May Wenlock is a very pretty girl.”“Is she? I never saw her. I remember Frank Wenlock—a good sort of boy, but something of a lout. Now, this one is ever so different.”“Oh, mijn Vaterland!” grunted a voice from the armchair. “There they are, jabbering English again—a tongue only fit for baboons.”Mother and daughter looked round quickly, exchanged a meaning smile, and went on with their subject. They were accustomed to the old woman’s growls, and took no more notice of them than if she had been a discontented child.“Let’s drive over and see the Wenlocks one day, mother,” said Aletta. “I am curious to see the only English girl here. Besides, I shall be able to see in a moment whether there is really any fire beneath Tant’ Plessis’ smoke. Yes—that will be great fun.”“What sort of ideas have you brought back with you from Cape Town, child?” cried Mrs De la Rey, apparently shocked though really intensely amused.“That’s all right, old mother. I have become ‘advanced’—in fact, down there everybody took me for an English girl. And I have learnt to ride a bicycle. No, really, I wish I had one here. Only imagine Tanta’s face if I went skimming along the road there down to the gate and back on two wheels. Heavens, I believe it would kill her. She’d get a fit,” And again that silvery peal rang out long and clear.“Aletta! Don’t make such a noise, child. Why, you have quite startled Mr Kershaw—look, away down there at the bottom of the garden. He is looking up this way, quite startled.”“Is he? Where? Oh, I see,” following her mother’s glance through the window. “I think I’ll go and talk to him. He is going to be fun, I believe. You know, I like the English—those of the better sort—although I am a thorough patriot. This one is of the better sort—you can tell directly you see him, and you can hear it directly he opens his mouth. Ohyes, I’ve seen lots of them. Yes, I shall go and talk to him.”Away she went, singing to herself. Her mother could see her through the window, stopping here and there to pick a flower or train up a drooping bough. Colvin did not seem aware of her approach. His head was bent down, and he seemed to be filling a pipe.“Gertruida!”Mrs De la Rey turned with a start.“What is it, Tanta?”“Where has the girl gone?”“Who? Aletta?”“Who? Aletta? What other girl has just gone out, I would like to know?” snapped Tant’ Plessis, bringing down her stick hard upon the floor. “Where has she gone?”“Gone? Only to look at the garden after the rain,” answered poor Mrs De la Rey, somewhat guiltily.“Now you are lying, Gertruida,” rapped out the old woman. “Ah, if I could only give you thestropagain as I used to do when you were a child!” shaking her stick viciously. “You, a mother of a grown-up family, to lie like that. Really you are a case to bring before Mynheer and the Kerkraad (Church Council). You know perfectly well that that girl has gone out to flirt with the Englishman.”“She has not, Tant’ Plessis. You have no right to say such things,” retorted Mrs De la Rey, stung to momentary wrath. “It is you who are saying what is not true about my child.”“Stil, stil! So that is the result of all thestropI used to give you, Gertruida—to call your elders liars! You think I know no English. I do, although I would sooner die than speak the accursed tongue. I heard Aletta say she was going out to flirt with the Englishman.”“She didn’t say ‘flirt,’ Tanta. She said ‘talk.’”“Well, well! What is the difference, I would like to know? To go out like that—to go up to a man and talk with him all alone in a garden! So that is the result of sending her to learn English ways. English ways, indeed! No wonder the English were made, like the heathen of old, to fall before the rifles of the Patriots. They were. I have heard Mynheer say so, and if he doesn’t know, who does?”“I don’t care what Mynheer says—or thinks, Tanta. I shall bring up my children in my own way,” flashed out Mrs De la Rey, losing patience.“In the devil’s own way you mean, Gertruida,” said the other, waxing very portentous and solemn. “Look at my own children—five girls and seven boys. My girls got plenty ofstrop”—(“Surely they did!” interpolated the listener to herself)—“and now that they are married they give theirs plenty too. For what says the Prophet Solomon in the Holy Book: ‘Spare thestropand you spoil the girl.’ The Prophet did say that, for I have heard Mynheer read it out in church.” The speaker herself could scarcely read. “Look at my girls.Theylearnt no English ways.”In imagination Mrs De la Rey did so look, and beheld five women who were exact counterparts of their proud parent, albeit younger presentments, and each owning a large brood as heavy as herself. But she had had enough of this lecture, and began to cast about for a pretext to depart.Aletta the while was tripping down the garden path, pausing, as we have said, as though to tend the flowers had been her sole object in coming out, and as she walked she sang:“Spreek, Bronkersspruit,Met eerbied uit;Noem Potchefstrom by naam.Pretoria en Langsnek pas,Ingogo en Majuba vas,Waar ons Verlosser met ons was,Vermeld die al te saam.Vermeld die al te saam.”Colvin Kershaw pricked up his ears, but did not raise his head. For that which she was singing was a snatch of the Transvaal “Volkslied,” the Republican National Anthem. She was singing itathim, of course. This was really getting funny. She was quite close to him now.“Ons vrye vlagGeef nou onstag,Die vierkleur waal in eer,En wapper oer die Republiek;Geen mag, geen lis, geen politiekVan Kaffer, Brit, of Jingo-kliek,Haal ooit die vlag weer neer.Haal ooit die vlag weer neer!”(Note 2.)“Good morning, Mr Kershaw. You are up early. Englishmen are not fond of early rising as a rule.”“Good morning, Miss De la Rey. You seem in a vastly patriotic mood this morning. Can a poor Englishman by any chance do anything that comes within measurable distance of being right?”Aletta laughed, but not quite in the same whole-hearted way she usually did. There was something in the look of this man, standing there, easy, good-humoured, smiling, which seemed to strike her. She had been favourably impressed with him the evening before, when he had not shown externally to the best advantage, and, whatever cheap ethicists may propound to the contrary, externals and impressions go very much hand in hand. Now he was clad in his own clothes, not in scratch garments many sizes too wide for him. As she had just been telling her mother, she had seen at a glance that he was thoroughbred; now he looked more so than ever.“Oh yes, he can—sometimes,” she said. “You know, I like the English of a certain sort, though I detest those of another.”“Well, why do you bear down upon me singing an aggressive war-song—at me?Atme, of course.”“Was I?”“You know you were. You were rubbing in Bronker’s Spruit, and Ingogo, and Majuba, and all that.”“It’s rather chilly after the rain,” she said, looking around with a shiver. “But it is going to be a lovely day.”Her irrelevant prediction was true enough. Not a cloud remained in the sky, which was deepening more and more to its vivid daylight blue, as the sun, just rising over a great ironstone krantz which crested the range beyond the river, flooded the wide valley, dissipating the faint mist engendered by the night’s moisture, and causing the raindrops still lingering on the Karroo bushes and scattered mimosa to scintillate like the purest diamonds. Birds twittered among the willows by the dam, and in the quince hedges, and away over the wide veldt, the cock koorhaans answered each other in their shrill, barking crow, as though rejoicing in the glowing splendour of the newly-born day.“Yes, I think it is,” he answered. “But, to come back to what we were saying. I don’t think that ‘Volkslied’ is much of a song, you know. For instance, ‘Van Kaffer, Brit, of Jingo-kliek’ is a pretty good sample of doggerel. Then, again, the whole thing is a little too pietistic for ordinary use. The tune is a fine one, but the words—well, they are a trifle poor.”“Are they? Oh yes—and what about ‘God Save the Queen’? Isn’t that just as pietistic? And ‘Confound their politics, frustrate their knavish tricks’—how is that for doggerel, eh?” And, firing up with her subject, Aletta’s face became quite animated, and the colour rushed over it in such wise as to render it very attractive—at least, so thought the onlooker, and secretly rejoiced in the situation, enjoying it hugely.“H’m, well, perhaps. But, doesn’t it strike you, Miss De la Rey, that you are wasting your cartridges by blazing them into me? Why, I am more than half of your way of thinking already. Ask your father if I am not.”The girl’s face changed entirely, taking on a wondrously pleased expression. The defiant one had utterly vanished. Colvin began fumbling for a match wherewith to relight his pipe, which had gone out. In reality he was thinking what there was about this girl which appealed to him so strongly. She was not even pretty. Yet, standing there, tall and graceful and fresh, in the early morning; a very soul of mind looking out of her eyes with the enthusiasm born of a cherished subject, she was more—she was marvellously attractive. The strange, lingering feeling which her presence had left upon him the night before was intensified here in the prosaic morning hour. What was it?“There are patriots, however,” he went on, “who are not always shining angels of light. Listen now, and I’ll tell you what happened to me yesterday in that connection. Would you like to hear?”“Of course I would.”Then he told her—told her everything, from the discovery of the concealed arms to the suspicious non appearance of the man he had gone to see; of Hans Vermaak’s mysterious warning, and the subsequent ample justification thereof—the narrow escape he and his servant had had for their lives when fired upon murderously in the darkness by ambushed assailants—up to the time of his arriving at Ratels Hoek, when she had first seen him. Told her the whole story—her—this girl whom twelve hours ago he had never seen—this girl only just out of her teens. Told her, when as yet he had not told her father, a strong man of mature age, and one of his most intimate friends. Why did he do it? He hardly knew himself, unless it were that something in her personality appealed to him as marking her out not merely from the rest of her sex, but from the general ruck.She listened attentively, absorbedly; her eyes fixed upon his face.“Yes, that was bad,” she said. “But then, you know, Mr Kershaw, as you English say—there are black sheep in every flock, and the people back there in the Wildschutsberg are a low class of Boer, very little removed frombijwoners(squatter labourers). But”—as if she had said too much and was trying to cover it—“do you not think they may have been only wanting to frighten you; to play a joke on you?”“It was a joke that cost me an uncommonly good mare,” he answered. “The poor brute was plugged through and rolled into the river. I dare say she is half-way down to the sea by this time—as I and Gert would have been but for, I suppose, Providence.”She was looking grave enough now, and for a few moments made no reply.“What are you going to do about it?” she asked.“Nothing.”He fancied a look of relief came into her face. She must be intensely imbued with the cause of her countrymen, with racial partisanship, he decided.“Nothing? But if you think they tried to murder you?”“Oh, I don’t think much of that. I’m not going to bother any more about it. Why should I?”“But you English are always such a—well, vindictive race. It is one of your favourite boasts that you never let anybody get the better of you—that you are always even with them—I think that is the phrase,” she said, and there was a strange look upon her face which rather puzzled him.“Are we? Well, here’s an exception then. Life is too short to bother oneself about trifles merely for the sake of ‘being even with’ somebody. Likely one of these days Gideon Roux will be the first to be sorry he shot at me. He needn’t have done it. The cave affair and the rifles didn’t concern me. I shouldn’t have given it away. But he won’t come down with the value of the mare, because I believe the poor devil is none too flush at any time. So what does it matter?”That strange look upon Aletta’s face deepened. He did not quite know how to read it.“Have you told father about this?” she said.“Not yet. I had meant to. I don’t think I shall at all now. It doesn’t seem worth while.”“Then why did you tell me?”“I don’t know.”Again they stood looking at each other in silence, as though reading each other. He was thinking of how he had seen her last night—bright, sparkling, girlish—full of humour and merriment; yet even then he had judged her temperament to have another side. Now his judgment was borne out. She could show herself serious, grave, judicious—in short, full of character when a matter of moment was under discussion. She for her part was thinking that of all the men she had met, and she had met many—for Stephanus De la Rey was connected with some of the best old Dutch families at the Cape, and in the society of the capital, Dutch or English, Aletta had not merely had theentrée, but had been in request—she had never come into contact with one who was quite like this. He was right outside her ordinary experience.A sound of approaching hoof-strokes aroused them—on Aletta’s part with something of a start. A bridle path threaded the garden here, affording a considerable short cut up from the river drift, and the horseman now advancing along this had come out through the quince hedge almost upon them. In him they recognised Adrian De la Rey.“Daag, Aletta. I have only just heard you were home again,” he said in Dutch, as he sprang from his horse and shook hands with her. But Colvin did not fail to notice that the young Boer’s greeting of himself was markedly cold, not to say grim.“So ho!” said he to himself. “That is the way the cat jumps? I see.” Then aloud, “What sort of rifle have you there, Adrian?” For the latter was clad and armed as though for the chase, and had a bandolier full of cartridges slung round him.“One of the new kind,” was the crisp reply. “A Mauser.Ja, you can kill a man at thousands of yards with this.”“So you could, if you could only see him,” was the perfectly good-humoured reply.“I shall see him plainly enough, at whatever distance.Ja, at whatever distance,” repeated the young Boer with meaning; and, looking as black as thunder, he turned his back upon the other in rather a pointed manner, and began to converse with his cousin.“Yet,” said Colvin to himself, “yet we have always been the best of friends. But that would prove a very awkward customer if— Yes,” he repeated, always to himself. “If—”Note 1.“Speak, Bronkersspruit,With pride speak out;Call Potchefstrom by name.Pretoria and Langnek’s Pass,Ingogo and Majuba,Where our Deliverer was with us,Proclaim them all together.”Note 2.“Our freedom’s flag Give now its praise, ‘Four colours’ hold in renown; It waves above the Republic. No force, intrigue, no politics Of Kafir, Briton, Jingo clique, Shall e’er that flag again haul down.”
“Well, child, and what do you think of ‘our only Englishman’?” said Mrs De la Rey, as they were putting away the “early coffee” things the following morning.
“I like him, mother,” replied Aletta. “I oughtn’t to because I have heard so much about him. That is sure to start one with a prejudice against anybody. Still, I think I shall. Oh, wasn’t Tant’ Plessis killing about ‘the only Englishman’ and ‘the only English girl’? By the way, was there anything in it?”
“Don’t ask me.Idon’t know,” laughed her mother. “Only he seemed a little too anxious to deny it. One can never tell. May Wenlock is a very pretty girl.”
“Is she? I never saw her. I remember Frank Wenlock—a good sort of boy, but something of a lout. Now, this one is ever so different.”
“Oh, mijn Vaterland!” grunted a voice from the armchair. “There they are, jabbering English again—a tongue only fit for baboons.”
Mother and daughter looked round quickly, exchanged a meaning smile, and went on with their subject. They were accustomed to the old woman’s growls, and took no more notice of them than if she had been a discontented child.
“Let’s drive over and see the Wenlocks one day, mother,” said Aletta. “I am curious to see the only English girl here. Besides, I shall be able to see in a moment whether there is really any fire beneath Tant’ Plessis’ smoke. Yes—that will be great fun.”
“What sort of ideas have you brought back with you from Cape Town, child?” cried Mrs De la Rey, apparently shocked though really intensely amused.
“That’s all right, old mother. I have become ‘advanced’—in fact, down there everybody took me for an English girl. And I have learnt to ride a bicycle. No, really, I wish I had one here. Only imagine Tanta’s face if I went skimming along the road there down to the gate and back on two wheels. Heavens, I believe it would kill her. She’d get a fit,” And again that silvery peal rang out long and clear.
“Aletta! Don’t make such a noise, child. Why, you have quite startled Mr Kershaw—look, away down there at the bottom of the garden. He is looking up this way, quite startled.”
“Is he? Where? Oh, I see,” following her mother’s glance through the window. “I think I’ll go and talk to him. He is going to be fun, I believe. You know, I like the English—those of the better sort—although I am a thorough patriot. This one is of the better sort—you can tell directly you see him, and you can hear it directly he opens his mouth. Ohyes, I’ve seen lots of them. Yes, I shall go and talk to him.”
Away she went, singing to herself. Her mother could see her through the window, stopping here and there to pick a flower or train up a drooping bough. Colvin did not seem aware of her approach. His head was bent down, and he seemed to be filling a pipe.
“Gertruida!”
Mrs De la Rey turned with a start.
“What is it, Tanta?”
“Where has the girl gone?”
“Who? Aletta?”
“Who? Aletta? What other girl has just gone out, I would like to know?” snapped Tant’ Plessis, bringing down her stick hard upon the floor. “Where has she gone?”
“Gone? Only to look at the garden after the rain,” answered poor Mrs De la Rey, somewhat guiltily.
“Now you are lying, Gertruida,” rapped out the old woman. “Ah, if I could only give you thestropagain as I used to do when you were a child!” shaking her stick viciously. “You, a mother of a grown-up family, to lie like that. Really you are a case to bring before Mynheer and the Kerkraad (Church Council). You know perfectly well that that girl has gone out to flirt with the Englishman.”
“She has not, Tant’ Plessis. You have no right to say such things,” retorted Mrs De la Rey, stung to momentary wrath. “It is you who are saying what is not true about my child.”
“Stil, stil! So that is the result of all thestropI used to give you, Gertruida—to call your elders liars! You think I know no English. I do, although I would sooner die than speak the accursed tongue. I heard Aletta say she was going out to flirt with the Englishman.”
“She didn’t say ‘flirt,’ Tanta. She said ‘talk.’”
“Well, well! What is the difference, I would like to know? To go out like that—to go up to a man and talk with him all alone in a garden! So that is the result of sending her to learn English ways. English ways, indeed! No wonder the English were made, like the heathen of old, to fall before the rifles of the Patriots. They were. I have heard Mynheer say so, and if he doesn’t know, who does?”
“I don’t care what Mynheer says—or thinks, Tanta. I shall bring up my children in my own way,” flashed out Mrs De la Rey, losing patience.
“In the devil’s own way you mean, Gertruida,” said the other, waxing very portentous and solemn. “Look at my own children—five girls and seven boys. My girls got plenty ofstrop”—(“Surely they did!” interpolated the listener to herself)—“and now that they are married they give theirs plenty too. For what says the Prophet Solomon in the Holy Book: ‘Spare thestropand you spoil the girl.’ The Prophet did say that, for I have heard Mynheer read it out in church.” The speaker herself could scarcely read. “Look at my girls.Theylearnt no English ways.”
In imagination Mrs De la Rey did so look, and beheld five women who were exact counterparts of their proud parent, albeit younger presentments, and each owning a large brood as heavy as herself. But she had had enough of this lecture, and began to cast about for a pretext to depart.
Aletta the while was tripping down the garden path, pausing, as we have said, as though to tend the flowers had been her sole object in coming out, and as she walked she sang:
“Spreek, Bronkersspruit,Met eerbied uit;Noem Potchefstrom by naam.Pretoria en Langsnek pas,Ingogo en Majuba vas,Waar ons Verlosser met ons was,Vermeld die al te saam.Vermeld die al te saam.”
“Spreek, Bronkersspruit,Met eerbied uit;Noem Potchefstrom by naam.Pretoria en Langsnek pas,Ingogo en Majuba vas,Waar ons Verlosser met ons was,Vermeld die al te saam.Vermeld die al te saam.”
Colvin Kershaw pricked up his ears, but did not raise his head. For that which she was singing was a snatch of the Transvaal “Volkslied,” the Republican National Anthem. She was singing itathim, of course. This was really getting funny. She was quite close to him now.
“Ons vrye vlagGeef nou onstag,Die vierkleur waal in eer,En wapper oer die Republiek;Geen mag, geen lis, geen politiekVan Kaffer, Brit, of Jingo-kliek,Haal ooit die vlag weer neer.Haal ooit die vlag weer neer!”(Note 2.)
“Ons vrye vlagGeef nou onstag,Die vierkleur waal in eer,En wapper oer die Republiek;Geen mag, geen lis, geen politiekVan Kaffer, Brit, of Jingo-kliek,Haal ooit die vlag weer neer.Haal ooit die vlag weer neer!”(Note 2.)
“Good morning, Mr Kershaw. You are up early. Englishmen are not fond of early rising as a rule.”
“Good morning, Miss De la Rey. You seem in a vastly patriotic mood this morning. Can a poor Englishman by any chance do anything that comes within measurable distance of being right?”
Aletta laughed, but not quite in the same whole-hearted way she usually did. There was something in the look of this man, standing there, easy, good-humoured, smiling, which seemed to strike her. She had been favourably impressed with him the evening before, when he had not shown externally to the best advantage, and, whatever cheap ethicists may propound to the contrary, externals and impressions go very much hand in hand. Now he was clad in his own clothes, not in scratch garments many sizes too wide for him. As she had just been telling her mother, she had seen at a glance that he was thoroughbred; now he looked more so than ever.
“Oh yes, he can—sometimes,” she said. “You know, I like the English of a certain sort, though I detest those of another.”
“Well, why do you bear down upon me singing an aggressive war-song—at me?Atme, of course.”
“Was I?”
“You know you were. You were rubbing in Bronker’s Spruit, and Ingogo, and Majuba, and all that.”
“It’s rather chilly after the rain,” she said, looking around with a shiver. “But it is going to be a lovely day.”
Her irrelevant prediction was true enough. Not a cloud remained in the sky, which was deepening more and more to its vivid daylight blue, as the sun, just rising over a great ironstone krantz which crested the range beyond the river, flooded the wide valley, dissipating the faint mist engendered by the night’s moisture, and causing the raindrops still lingering on the Karroo bushes and scattered mimosa to scintillate like the purest diamonds. Birds twittered among the willows by the dam, and in the quince hedges, and away over the wide veldt, the cock koorhaans answered each other in their shrill, barking crow, as though rejoicing in the glowing splendour of the newly-born day.
“Yes, I think it is,” he answered. “But, to come back to what we were saying. I don’t think that ‘Volkslied’ is much of a song, you know. For instance, ‘Van Kaffer, Brit, of Jingo-kliek’ is a pretty good sample of doggerel. Then, again, the whole thing is a little too pietistic for ordinary use. The tune is a fine one, but the words—well, they are a trifle poor.”
“Are they? Oh yes—and what about ‘God Save the Queen’? Isn’t that just as pietistic? And ‘Confound their politics, frustrate their knavish tricks’—how is that for doggerel, eh?” And, firing up with her subject, Aletta’s face became quite animated, and the colour rushed over it in such wise as to render it very attractive—at least, so thought the onlooker, and secretly rejoiced in the situation, enjoying it hugely.
“H’m, well, perhaps. But, doesn’t it strike you, Miss De la Rey, that you are wasting your cartridges by blazing them into me? Why, I am more than half of your way of thinking already. Ask your father if I am not.”
The girl’s face changed entirely, taking on a wondrously pleased expression. The defiant one had utterly vanished. Colvin began fumbling for a match wherewith to relight his pipe, which had gone out. In reality he was thinking what there was about this girl which appealed to him so strongly. She was not even pretty. Yet, standing there, tall and graceful and fresh, in the early morning; a very soul of mind looking out of her eyes with the enthusiasm born of a cherished subject, she was more—she was marvellously attractive. The strange, lingering feeling which her presence had left upon him the night before was intensified here in the prosaic morning hour. What was it?
“There are patriots, however,” he went on, “who are not always shining angels of light. Listen now, and I’ll tell you what happened to me yesterday in that connection. Would you like to hear?”
“Of course I would.”
Then he told her—told her everything, from the discovery of the concealed arms to the suspicious non appearance of the man he had gone to see; of Hans Vermaak’s mysterious warning, and the subsequent ample justification thereof—the narrow escape he and his servant had had for their lives when fired upon murderously in the darkness by ambushed assailants—up to the time of his arriving at Ratels Hoek, when she had first seen him. Told her the whole story—her—this girl whom twelve hours ago he had never seen—this girl only just out of her teens. Told her, when as yet he had not told her father, a strong man of mature age, and one of his most intimate friends. Why did he do it? He hardly knew himself, unless it were that something in her personality appealed to him as marking her out not merely from the rest of her sex, but from the general ruck.
She listened attentively, absorbedly; her eyes fixed upon his face.
“Yes, that was bad,” she said. “But then, you know, Mr Kershaw, as you English say—there are black sheep in every flock, and the people back there in the Wildschutsberg are a low class of Boer, very little removed frombijwoners(squatter labourers). But”—as if she had said too much and was trying to cover it—“do you not think they may have been only wanting to frighten you; to play a joke on you?”
“It was a joke that cost me an uncommonly good mare,” he answered. “The poor brute was plugged through and rolled into the river. I dare say she is half-way down to the sea by this time—as I and Gert would have been but for, I suppose, Providence.”
She was looking grave enough now, and for a few moments made no reply.
“What are you going to do about it?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
He fancied a look of relief came into her face. She must be intensely imbued with the cause of her countrymen, with racial partisanship, he decided.
“Nothing? But if you think they tried to murder you?”
“Oh, I don’t think much of that. I’m not going to bother any more about it. Why should I?”
“But you English are always such a—well, vindictive race. It is one of your favourite boasts that you never let anybody get the better of you—that you are always even with them—I think that is the phrase,” she said, and there was a strange look upon her face which rather puzzled him.
“Are we? Well, here’s an exception then. Life is too short to bother oneself about trifles merely for the sake of ‘being even with’ somebody. Likely one of these days Gideon Roux will be the first to be sorry he shot at me. He needn’t have done it. The cave affair and the rifles didn’t concern me. I shouldn’t have given it away. But he won’t come down with the value of the mare, because I believe the poor devil is none too flush at any time. So what does it matter?”
That strange look upon Aletta’s face deepened. He did not quite know how to read it.
“Have you told father about this?” she said.
“Not yet. I had meant to. I don’t think I shall at all now. It doesn’t seem worth while.”
“Then why did you tell me?”
“I don’t know.”
Again they stood looking at each other in silence, as though reading each other. He was thinking of how he had seen her last night—bright, sparkling, girlish—full of humour and merriment; yet even then he had judged her temperament to have another side. Now his judgment was borne out. She could show herself serious, grave, judicious—in short, full of character when a matter of moment was under discussion. She for her part was thinking that of all the men she had met, and she had met many—for Stephanus De la Rey was connected with some of the best old Dutch families at the Cape, and in the society of the capital, Dutch or English, Aletta had not merely had theentrée, but had been in request—she had never come into contact with one who was quite like this. He was right outside her ordinary experience.
A sound of approaching hoof-strokes aroused them—on Aletta’s part with something of a start. A bridle path threaded the garden here, affording a considerable short cut up from the river drift, and the horseman now advancing along this had come out through the quince hedge almost upon them. In him they recognised Adrian De la Rey.
“Daag, Aletta. I have only just heard you were home again,” he said in Dutch, as he sprang from his horse and shook hands with her. But Colvin did not fail to notice that the young Boer’s greeting of himself was markedly cold, not to say grim.
“So ho!” said he to himself. “That is the way the cat jumps? I see.” Then aloud, “What sort of rifle have you there, Adrian?” For the latter was clad and armed as though for the chase, and had a bandolier full of cartridges slung round him.
“One of the new kind,” was the crisp reply. “A Mauser.Ja, you can kill a man at thousands of yards with this.”
“So you could, if you could only see him,” was the perfectly good-humoured reply.
“I shall see him plainly enough, at whatever distance.Ja, at whatever distance,” repeated the young Boer with meaning; and, looking as black as thunder, he turned his back upon the other in rather a pointed manner, and began to converse with his cousin.
“Yet,” said Colvin to himself, “yet we have always been the best of friends. But that would prove a very awkward customer if— Yes,” he repeated, always to himself. “If—”
Note 1.
“Speak, Bronkersspruit,With pride speak out;Call Potchefstrom by name.Pretoria and Langnek’s Pass,Ingogo and Majuba,Where our Deliverer was with us,Proclaim them all together.”
“Speak, Bronkersspruit,With pride speak out;Call Potchefstrom by name.Pretoria and Langnek’s Pass,Ingogo and Majuba,Where our Deliverer was with us,Proclaim them all together.”
Note 2.
“Our freedom’s flag Give now its praise, ‘Four colours’ hold in renown; It waves above the Republic. No force, intrigue, no politics Of Kafir, Briton, Jingo clique, Shall e’er that flag again haul down.”