Chapter Eleven.Love—and some Sport.“You are in no hurry to go on, are you, Colvin?” said Stephanus De la Rey, while they were at breakfast. “Because, if not, we might take guns and go down to thehoek. It’s swarming with duiker and blekbok.”“Haven’t got my gun along, Stephanus, and Aasvogel won’t stand fire.” The speaker deemed he had grim reason to know that, and exchanged a glance with Aletta, who had looked up quickly, at the allusion.“Oh, that is soon got over. You can have your pick of four horses that will, and you can either take my shot-gun or one of the rifles. There will be four of us—you and I and Cornelis and Adrian—and we can drive out thathoekthoroughly.”“I don’t care to hunt to-day, Oom Stephanus,” said Adrian. “I must get back. I have many things to do at home.”Stephanus looked narrowly at his nephew, whose manner struck him as strange. He had replied in Dutch, whereas the conversation hitherto had been in English, but that might be due to his new-born and exuberant patriotism.“Of course, then, you must see to them, nephew,” he said. “The reason why so many of us don’t get on is, that we are too fond of sitting on the stoep and smoking our pipes.” He himself and his son had been at work in the “lands” and at the goatkraals ever since sunrise. At the same time he was rather surprised at the refusal of his nephew, who was a keen sportsman, and would have had a chance of testing his new rifle, which had already been inspected and its points critically discussed.But Adrian had an object in his refusal, and the name of that object was Aletta. Hardly had the other three men got out of sight than he tried to persuade the girl to take a turn in the garden with him. Ordinarily she would have needed no persuasion, but to-day a sort of instinct rendered the idea distasteful to her. But he waxed eloquent upon their common topic—The Cause—and she yielded.He told her about the delegate from Pretoria—“the Patriot,” as he reverentially termed him, and how that Olympian Jupiter had talked with him—had it been the President himself he could hardly have felt more proud. He told her how the seed had been sown on well-watered and well-prepared ground, and she listened with real interest, for they had an ideal in common, these two young people, and were both burning with a lofty enthusiasm. Besides, the girl was really very fond of Adrian, who was a fine, manly fellow. Now she predicted great things for him. He would rise to be one of the most prominent men in the new Dutch South Africa. There was no limit to the dazzling honours she beheld in store for him.Yes, the conspiracy was nearly complete. There was not a Dutchman within a radius of fifty miles, he told her, who was not ready to rise, who would not muster at the appointed time and place, rifle in hand, to throw off the English yoke. Those cursed English! He trusted that their future rulers would not allow one single Englishman to remain in the country—no, not one. He hated them all.This brought a meaning smile to Aletta’s face. She remembered Adrian’s manner when he had first come upon her—and the Englishman—but an hour or two before.“But, Adrian,” she said, “why are you so bitter against the English now? You used not to be. Of course we must get the land back from them, but we need not drive them all out. Some of the better ones might remain.”“There are no ‘better ones,’” he replied, vehemently.“I would not say that. Our English neighbours round here, what few there are, seem nice enough. There is Mrs Wenlock, for instance, and Frank—I haven’t seen the daughter yet. And then there is that Mr Kershaw—he seems a particularly pleasant sort of man.”At this the resentful scowl on Adrian’s face deepened. His strong hand opened and shut once or twice as though gripping at somebody’s throat.“So you seemed to think when I came upon you this morning,” he answered in a sort of growl. Aletta started, and gazed at him in wide-eyed astonishment.“Why, Adrian, I never saw the man until last evening,” she said, gently, but conscious that the colour was flowing over her face in waves. For the blunt retort had, as it were, in a flash opened her mind to herself, and what she saw therein had frightened her.“So? Then you have turned your time to very quick use,” he answered. Then, seeing her start away from him with a cold, yet hurt, look, his tone changed entirely. “Forgive me, Aletta, darling. I am jealous, I suppose, and, of course, a fool. But I love you. I always have since we were children together. And I have been longing and longing for you to come back, and have been counting the weeks to it. Ask Andrina if I have not. Then when you do come back, and I see you for the first time, it is with this Englishman. Forgive me if I have said anything to offend you, Aletta, and say you will marry me. I love you so.”His tone was deep and soft and pleading, and the listener, stealing a look at his face, could not but feel much moved. He was so intensely in earnest. And he was a really fine-looking young fellow was this young Dutchman, a lover of whom any girl might feel the reverse of ashamed. As a matter of fact this one did so feel, and her voice was very soft as she answered:“Oh, Adrian, why did you ask me? I don’t see how I can.”It was a pretty lame answer, and she felt it to be. He, for his part, proceeded to improve the occasion and to urge his cause again and again with all the arguments he could find. She, for hers, was dangerously tempted to temporise, but by some merciful instinct rejected that refuge for the weak. She answered him to the same effect as before, but this time more clearly, more decidedly.Then he began to press her for reasons. Why did she persist in refusing him? He was well off, and could make her thoroughly comfortable. He defied anyone to say a word against his character or life. He was sure his uncle would approve, and so on. Then, waxing bitter, he hinted that since she had been away at Cape Town she had forgotten her own people. Only the English were good enough now.Adrian had better have let that side alone. It spoiled the good effect he was already producing in that it was first of all somewhat childish—in the second place unjust.“That is not true, Adrian,” she answered gravely, but without anger, “and you ought not to say it. I am of my own people as much as ever. I have seen English people, too, whom I like and admire. Those of good blood are second to no race in the world—for good blood is good blood all the world over. But you ought not to say some of the things you have been saying. You wound me and—insult me.”“So? I wound you and insult you? Forgive me, Aletta. I would not do that for all the world. But look! As you say, you have only known this Englishman since last evening. That is good. But the man who comes between you and me—Englishman or who ever he is—had better take care, great care, for it will mean life or death to him or to me. The time is coming when every man’s rifle will be his law—the avenger of his own wrongs.”The tone was quiet now. There was that in it which was so earnest, so free from vehemence as to redeem it from mere bounce or melodramatics. Aletta, listening, was secretly impressed, and secretly more than respected him.“You would not do murder, surely, Adrian?” she said, the narrative she had heard only that morning rising luridly before her mind.“No, not murder, only justice. The time is coming when we can call upon those who have wronged us to face us, man to man. That is not murder.”“N-no. But does it not strike you, Adrian, that you may be doing your best to kill all the liking and regard I have always felt for you? And are you not taking a great deal too much upon yourself?” Then, with a considerable flash of spirit, “Who gave you any right to take possession of me in this cool and calm manner? What right have you to tell me whom I am not to be friendly with—yes, and even more, if I choose that it shall be so? I think you are taking a great deal too much upon yourself, and I tell you so. But there, do not let us quarrel,” she added, with sudden softening. “And I think it is time we returned to the house.”“As you will, Aletta. But I could not help saying that I did, for I mean it—every word of it. Of course we will not quarrel. How could I quarrel with you?”The tone was sad and grave, but there was a dignity about it that appealed to Aletta. She did not fail to notice, either, that the other had not come off badly under somewhat difficult and delicate circumstances.The while those upon slaughter intent were pursuing their way. Colvin Kershaw was a very keen sportsman, and reckoned that life was never so thoroughly well worth living as at moments like this—when mounted on a good shooting-horse, an excellent gun in his hand, the whole day before him, and, spreading around, as fine a bit of veldt for providing a mixed bag as one could wish to range over—just rolling enough to be picturesque—the Karroo bush and the mimosa, which grew in solitary ragged clumps or lined along the river banks, affording plenty of cover for birds or the smaller kind of buck. The sun flamed down from a blue and cloudless vault, but without much power, for it was about midwinter, and the atmosphere of the high veldt was clear and exhilarating to the last degree.Two Kafir boys had been sent round to the further side of the “camp,” with instructions to lure thither and keep occupied such vicious male ostriches as would otherwise have interfered with, and, so far as their jurisdiction extended, entirely prevented sport; and the three horsemen were riding abreast, fifty yards or so apart, at a slow foot’s pace. Behind them walked Gert, armed with a formidable thorntackin case any of the aggressive bipeds should assail them in preference to being fooled by the diversion aforesaid. But just before they took up their positions, Cornelis being out of earshot, Stephanus remarked:“I wonder what is the matter with Adrian, Colvin? I have never known him not want to hunt before. He was looking very strange, too.”“He was,” replied the other, who had his own ideas upon that head.“So? you noticed it, then? Well, my notion is this,” sinking his voice. “Adrian isslim. I believe he remained at home only to have a quiet talk with Aletta.”“Yes?”“I think so. They were always devoted to each other as children and then as they grew up together. I thought it good for her to go away and see something of the world and of people, so I sent her to some relatives of mine to Cape Town.”“She has done them credit I don’t mind telling you, Stephanus, that even the little I’ve seen of your eldest daughter justifies me in saying she would show to advantage anywhere—yes, to the greatest advantage—in London or anywhere you like.”“So?” said Stephanus, hugely delighted. “You think so, eh?”“Think so? I’m sure of it,” replied Colvin, whimsically thinking with what whole-heartedness he was now eulogising one who that time yesterday had existed in his mind as a plain, heavy-looking and absolutely uninteresting girl. So libellous can be the photographer’s art.“I am delighted to hear you say so, Colvin. You are from England and have seen a great deal of the world and ought to know. But I believe you are right. Yes, I am sure you are right. Well, now, my idea is that Adrian has remained behind to try his luck with Aletta.”“By Jove! Has he?” Then changing the quick tone of vivid interest into which he had been momentarily betrayed, he went on tranquilly: “And do you think he will succeed?”“I cannot say. Aletta has seen a great many people, a great many men down at the Cape. She may not care to marry a farmer. But she might do worse than take Adrian. I have a great opinion of him. He is a fine fellow and no fool. But she must please herself.”“Yes, but—are they not—er—rather nearly related?”“I had thought of that side of it, too. It is a disadvantage. Look out! There is a koorhaan running just on your left. He will be up in a second.”Hardly were the words out than the bird rose, shrilling forth his loud, alarmed cackle. Colvin dropped the bridle—his gun was at his shoulder. Crack! and down came the noisy little bustard, shot fair and square through the head. Two more rose, but out of range, and the air for the next minute or two was noisy with their shoutings.Colvin dismounted to pick up the bird, and as he did so up got another. It was a long shot, but down came this bird also.“Get there quick, man! He’s running,” cried Stephanus.The warning was not unneeded. The bird seemed only winged and had the grass been a little thicker would have escaped. As it was, it entailed upon its destroyer a considerable chase before he eventually knocked it out with a stone, and then only as it was about to disappear within an impenetrable patch of prickly pear.“Well, Stephanus, I believe I’m going to score off you both to-day,” said Colvin, as he tied the birds on to the D of his saddle with a bit ofriempje. “Nothing like a shot-gun in this sort of veldt.”Boers, as a rule, seldom care for bird-shooting, looking upon it as sport for children and Englishmen. Birds in their opinion are hardly worth eating, guinea-fowl excepted. When these are required for table purposes they obtain them by the simple process of creeping stealthily up to their roost on a moonlight night, and raking the dark mass of sleeping birds—visible against the sky on the bare or scanty-leaved boughs—with a couple of charges of heavy shot Stephanus laughed good-humouredly, and said they would find buck directly. Then they would see who had the better weapon.They had got into another enclosure, where the ground was more open. Colvin had already bagged another koorhaan and a brace of partridges, and so far was not ill-satisfied. Suddenly Cornelis was seen to dismount. A buck was running across the open some three hundred yards away. Bang! A great splash of dust nearly hid the animal for a moment. A near thing, but yet not quite near enough. On it went, going like the wind, now behind a clump of bushes now out again. Cornelis had another cartridge in, and was kneeling down. A wire fence stretched across the line of the fleeing animal, which would have to slacken speed in order to get through this. Watching his moment, Cornelis let go. The “klop” made by the bullet as it rushed through the poor little beast—through ribs and heart—was audible to them there at upwards of four hundred yards. It never moved afterwards.“Oh, fine shot!” cried Colvin, with a grim afterthought to himself, viewing it by the light of the failure of the Bloemfontein Conference.“It’s a duiker ram, Pa,” sang out the young Dutchman. Then he shouted to the Kafirs to bring it along, and the three moved onward. Soon Colvin got his chance. A blekbok, started by the tread of Stephanus’ horse, raced right across him at about forty-five yards, broadside on. Up went the gun, a second’s aim, and the pretty little animal turned a most beautiful somersault, and lay kicking convulsively, struck well forward in the head.“Well done, well done!Maagtig kerel! but you can do something with shot!” cried Stephanus, approvingly.Presently the metallic grating cackle of guinea-fowl was borne to their ears. They were near the banks of the Sneeuw River, where the mimosa cover and prickly pearklompjeswere a favourite haunt of those splendid game birds. By dint of manoeuvring Colvin got right in among them, their attention being diverted by the other horseman. Up rose quite a number. Bang, bang! right and left, down they came. More rise. Bang, bang! One miss, one more bird down. Then they get up, more and more of them, by twos and threes, and by the time there are no more of them, and Colvin has picked up eight birds and is beginning to search for three more that have run, he is conscious that life can hold no improvement on the sheer ecstasy of that moment.And then, when they return to the homestead in the roseate afterglow of the pearly evening—and the spoils are spread out:“Five bucks, and eighteen birds,” cries Stephanus, counting the bag. “Not so bad for a mixed shoot—and only one bird gun among us. Aletta, this is an Englishman who can shoot.”Colvin is conscious of enjoying this small triumph, as the girl’s bright face is turned towards him approvingly, and she utters a laughing, half-bantering congratulation.“Where is Adrian?” he says, looking around.“Adrian? Oh, he went long ago—soon after you did.”Keenly watching her face, while not appearing to, he does not fail to notice the tinge of colour which comes into it as she answers. So Adrian has been trying his luck then; but, has he succeeded? How shall he find out? But why should he find out? What on earth can it matter to him?Yet throughout the evening the one question he is continually asking himself, and trying to deduce an answer to, is—Has he succeeded?
“You are in no hurry to go on, are you, Colvin?” said Stephanus De la Rey, while they were at breakfast. “Because, if not, we might take guns and go down to thehoek. It’s swarming with duiker and blekbok.”
“Haven’t got my gun along, Stephanus, and Aasvogel won’t stand fire.” The speaker deemed he had grim reason to know that, and exchanged a glance with Aletta, who had looked up quickly, at the allusion.
“Oh, that is soon got over. You can have your pick of four horses that will, and you can either take my shot-gun or one of the rifles. There will be four of us—you and I and Cornelis and Adrian—and we can drive out thathoekthoroughly.”
“I don’t care to hunt to-day, Oom Stephanus,” said Adrian. “I must get back. I have many things to do at home.”
Stephanus looked narrowly at his nephew, whose manner struck him as strange. He had replied in Dutch, whereas the conversation hitherto had been in English, but that might be due to his new-born and exuberant patriotism.
“Of course, then, you must see to them, nephew,” he said. “The reason why so many of us don’t get on is, that we are too fond of sitting on the stoep and smoking our pipes.” He himself and his son had been at work in the “lands” and at the goatkraals ever since sunrise. At the same time he was rather surprised at the refusal of his nephew, who was a keen sportsman, and would have had a chance of testing his new rifle, which had already been inspected and its points critically discussed.
But Adrian had an object in his refusal, and the name of that object was Aletta. Hardly had the other three men got out of sight than he tried to persuade the girl to take a turn in the garden with him. Ordinarily she would have needed no persuasion, but to-day a sort of instinct rendered the idea distasteful to her. But he waxed eloquent upon their common topic—The Cause—and she yielded.
He told her about the delegate from Pretoria—“the Patriot,” as he reverentially termed him, and how that Olympian Jupiter had talked with him—had it been the President himself he could hardly have felt more proud. He told her how the seed had been sown on well-watered and well-prepared ground, and she listened with real interest, for they had an ideal in common, these two young people, and were both burning with a lofty enthusiasm. Besides, the girl was really very fond of Adrian, who was a fine, manly fellow. Now she predicted great things for him. He would rise to be one of the most prominent men in the new Dutch South Africa. There was no limit to the dazzling honours she beheld in store for him.
Yes, the conspiracy was nearly complete. There was not a Dutchman within a radius of fifty miles, he told her, who was not ready to rise, who would not muster at the appointed time and place, rifle in hand, to throw off the English yoke. Those cursed English! He trusted that their future rulers would not allow one single Englishman to remain in the country—no, not one. He hated them all.
This brought a meaning smile to Aletta’s face. She remembered Adrian’s manner when he had first come upon her—and the Englishman—but an hour or two before.
“But, Adrian,” she said, “why are you so bitter against the English now? You used not to be. Of course we must get the land back from them, but we need not drive them all out. Some of the better ones might remain.”
“There are no ‘better ones,’” he replied, vehemently.
“I would not say that. Our English neighbours round here, what few there are, seem nice enough. There is Mrs Wenlock, for instance, and Frank—I haven’t seen the daughter yet. And then there is that Mr Kershaw—he seems a particularly pleasant sort of man.”
At this the resentful scowl on Adrian’s face deepened. His strong hand opened and shut once or twice as though gripping at somebody’s throat.
“So you seemed to think when I came upon you this morning,” he answered in a sort of growl. Aletta started, and gazed at him in wide-eyed astonishment.
“Why, Adrian, I never saw the man until last evening,” she said, gently, but conscious that the colour was flowing over her face in waves. For the blunt retort had, as it were, in a flash opened her mind to herself, and what she saw therein had frightened her.
“So? Then you have turned your time to very quick use,” he answered. Then, seeing her start away from him with a cold, yet hurt, look, his tone changed entirely. “Forgive me, Aletta, darling. I am jealous, I suppose, and, of course, a fool. But I love you. I always have since we were children together. And I have been longing and longing for you to come back, and have been counting the weeks to it. Ask Andrina if I have not. Then when you do come back, and I see you for the first time, it is with this Englishman. Forgive me if I have said anything to offend you, Aletta, and say you will marry me. I love you so.”
His tone was deep and soft and pleading, and the listener, stealing a look at his face, could not but feel much moved. He was so intensely in earnest. And he was a really fine-looking young fellow was this young Dutchman, a lover of whom any girl might feel the reverse of ashamed. As a matter of fact this one did so feel, and her voice was very soft as she answered:
“Oh, Adrian, why did you ask me? I don’t see how I can.”
It was a pretty lame answer, and she felt it to be. He, for his part, proceeded to improve the occasion and to urge his cause again and again with all the arguments he could find. She, for hers, was dangerously tempted to temporise, but by some merciful instinct rejected that refuge for the weak. She answered him to the same effect as before, but this time more clearly, more decidedly.
Then he began to press her for reasons. Why did she persist in refusing him? He was well off, and could make her thoroughly comfortable. He defied anyone to say a word against his character or life. He was sure his uncle would approve, and so on. Then, waxing bitter, he hinted that since she had been away at Cape Town she had forgotten her own people. Only the English were good enough now.
Adrian had better have let that side alone. It spoiled the good effect he was already producing in that it was first of all somewhat childish—in the second place unjust.
“That is not true, Adrian,” she answered gravely, but without anger, “and you ought not to say it. I am of my own people as much as ever. I have seen English people, too, whom I like and admire. Those of good blood are second to no race in the world—for good blood is good blood all the world over. But you ought not to say some of the things you have been saying. You wound me and—insult me.”
“So? I wound you and insult you? Forgive me, Aletta. I would not do that for all the world. But look! As you say, you have only known this Englishman since last evening. That is good. But the man who comes between you and me—Englishman or who ever he is—had better take care, great care, for it will mean life or death to him or to me. The time is coming when every man’s rifle will be his law—the avenger of his own wrongs.”
The tone was quiet now. There was that in it which was so earnest, so free from vehemence as to redeem it from mere bounce or melodramatics. Aletta, listening, was secretly impressed, and secretly more than respected him.
“You would not do murder, surely, Adrian?” she said, the narrative she had heard only that morning rising luridly before her mind.
“No, not murder, only justice. The time is coming when we can call upon those who have wronged us to face us, man to man. That is not murder.”
“N-no. But does it not strike you, Adrian, that you may be doing your best to kill all the liking and regard I have always felt for you? And are you not taking a great deal too much upon yourself?” Then, with a considerable flash of spirit, “Who gave you any right to take possession of me in this cool and calm manner? What right have you to tell me whom I am not to be friendly with—yes, and even more, if I choose that it shall be so? I think you are taking a great deal too much upon yourself, and I tell you so. But there, do not let us quarrel,” she added, with sudden softening. “And I think it is time we returned to the house.”
“As you will, Aletta. But I could not help saying that I did, for I mean it—every word of it. Of course we will not quarrel. How could I quarrel with you?”
The tone was sad and grave, but there was a dignity about it that appealed to Aletta. She did not fail to notice, either, that the other had not come off badly under somewhat difficult and delicate circumstances.
The while those upon slaughter intent were pursuing their way. Colvin Kershaw was a very keen sportsman, and reckoned that life was never so thoroughly well worth living as at moments like this—when mounted on a good shooting-horse, an excellent gun in his hand, the whole day before him, and, spreading around, as fine a bit of veldt for providing a mixed bag as one could wish to range over—just rolling enough to be picturesque—the Karroo bush and the mimosa, which grew in solitary ragged clumps or lined along the river banks, affording plenty of cover for birds or the smaller kind of buck. The sun flamed down from a blue and cloudless vault, but without much power, for it was about midwinter, and the atmosphere of the high veldt was clear and exhilarating to the last degree.
Two Kafir boys had been sent round to the further side of the “camp,” with instructions to lure thither and keep occupied such vicious male ostriches as would otherwise have interfered with, and, so far as their jurisdiction extended, entirely prevented sport; and the three horsemen were riding abreast, fifty yards or so apart, at a slow foot’s pace. Behind them walked Gert, armed with a formidable thorntackin case any of the aggressive bipeds should assail them in preference to being fooled by the diversion aforesaid. But just before they took up their positions, Cornelis being out of earshot, Stephanus remarked:
“I wonder what is the matter with Adrian, Colvin? I have never known him not want to hunt before. He was looking very strange, too.”
“He was,” replied the other, who had his own ideas upon that head.
“So? you noticed it, then? Well, my notion is this,” sinking his voice. “Adrian isslim. I believe he remained at home only to have a quiet talk with Aletta.”
“Yes?”
“I think so. They were always devoted to each other as children and then as they grew up together. I thought it good for her to go away and see something of the world and of people, so I sent her to some relatives of mine to Cape Town.”
“She has done them credit I don’t mind telling you, Stephanus, that even the little I’ve seen of your eldest daughter justifies me in saying she would show to advantage anywhere—yes, to the greatest advantage—in London or anywhere you like.”
“So?” said Stephanus, hugely delighted. “You think so, eh?”
“Think so? I’m sure of it,” replied Colvin, whimsically thinking with what whole-heartedness he was now eulogising one who that time yesterday had existed in his mind as a plain, heavy-looking and absolutely uninteresting girl. So libellous can be the photographer’s art.
“I am delighted to hear you say so, Colvin. You are from England and have seen a great deal of the world and ought to know. But I believe you are right. Yes, I am sure you are right. Well, now, my idea is that Adrian has remained behind to try his luck with Aletta.”
“By Jove! Has he?” Then changing the quick tone of vivid interest into which he had been momentarily betrayed, he went on tranquilly: “And do you think he will succeed?”
“I cannot say. Aletta has seen a great many people, a great many men down at the Cape. She may not care to marry a farmer. But she might do worse than take Adrian. I have a great opinion of him. He is a fine fellow and no fool. But she must please herself.”
“Yes, but—are they not—er—rather nearly related?”
“I had thought of that side of it, too. It is a disadvantage. Look out! There is a koorhaan running just on your left. He will be up in a second.”
Hardly were the words out than the bird rose, shrilling forth his loud, alarmed cackle. Colvin dropped the bridle—his gun was at his shoulder. Crack! and down came the noisy little bustard, shot fair and square through the head. Two more rose, but out of range, and the air for the next minute or two was noisy with their shoutings.
Colvin dismounted to pick up the bird, and as he did so up got another. It was a long shot, but down came this bird also.
“Get there quick, man! He’s running,” cried Stephanus.
The warning was not unneeded. The bird seemed only winged and had the grass been a little thicker would have escaped. As it was, it entailed upon its destroyer a considerable chase before he eventually knocked it out with a stone, and then only as it was about to disappear within an impenetrable patch of prickly pear.
“Well, Stephanus, I believe I’m going to score off you both to-day,” said Colvin, as he tied the birds on to the D of his saddle with a bit ofriempje. “Nothing like a shot-gun in this sort of veldt.”
Boers, as a rule, seldom care for bird-shooting, looking upon it as sport for children and Englishmen. Birds in their opinion are hardly worth eating, guinea-fowl excepted. When these are required for table purposes they obtain them by the simple process of creeping stealthily up to their roost on a moonlight night, and raking the dark mass of sleeping birds—visible against the sky on the bare or scanty-leaved boughs—with a couple of charges of heavy shot Stephanus laughed good-humouredly, and said they would find buck directly. Then they would see who had the better weapon.
They had got into another enclosure, where the ground was more open. Colvin had already bagged another koorhaan and a brace of partridges, and so far was not ill-satisfied. Suddenly Cornelis was seen to dismount. A buck was running across the open some three hundred yards away. Bang! A great splash of dust nearly hid the animal for a moment. A near thing, but yet not quite near enough. On it went, going like the wind, now behind a clump of bushes now out again. Cornelis had another cartridge in, and was kneeling down. A wire fence stretched across the line of the fleeing animal, which would have to slacken speed in order to get through this. Watching his moment, Cornelis let go. The “klop” made by the bullet as it rushed through the poor little beast—through ribs and heart—was audible to them there at upwards of four hundred yards. It never moved afterwards.
“Oh, fine shot!” cried Colvin, with a grim afterthought to himself, viewing it by the light of the failure of the Bloemfontein Conference.
“It’s a duiker ram, Pa,” sang out the young Dutchman. Then he shouted to the Kafirs to bring it along, and the three moved onward. Soon Colvin got his chance. A blekbok, started by the tread of Stephanus’ horse, raced right across him at about forty-five yards, broadside on. Up went the gun, a second’s aim, and the pretty little animal turned a most beautiful somersault, and lay kicking convulsively, struck well forward in the head.
“Well done, well done!Maagtig kerel! but you can do something with shot!” cried Stephanus, approvingly.
Presently the metallic grating cackle of guinea-fowl was borne to their ears. They were near the banks of the Sneeuw River, where the mimosa cover and prickly pearklompjeswere a favourite haunt of those splendid game birds. By dint of manoeuvring Colvin got right in among them, their attention being diverted by the other horseman. Up rose quite a number. Bang, bang! right and left, down they came. More rise. Bang, bang! One miss, one more bird down. Then they get up, more and more of them, by twos and threes, and by the time there are no more of them, and Colvin has picked up eight birds and is beginning to search for three more that have run, he is conscious that life can hold no improvement on the sheer ecstasy of that moment.
And then, when they return to the homestead in the roseate afterglow of the pearly evening—and the spoils are spread out:
“Five bucks, and eighteen birds,” cries Stephanus, counting the bag. “Not so bad for a mixed shoot—and only one bird gun among us. Aletta, this is an Englishman who can shoot.”
Colvin is conscious of enjoying this small triumph, as the girl’s bright face is turned towards him approvingly, and she utters a laughing, half-bantering congratulation.
“Where is Adrian?” he says, looking around.
“Adrian? Oh, he went long ago—soon after you did.”
Keenly watching her face, while not appearing to, he does not fail to notice the tinge of colour which comes into it as she answers. So Adrian has been trying his luck then; but, has he succeeded? How shall he find out? But why should he find out? What on earth can it matter to him?
Yet throughout the evening the one question he is continually asking himself, and trying to deduce an answer to, is—
Has he succeeded?
Chapter Twelve.“The Only English Girl.”May Wenlock was in a temper.She had got up in one, and throughout the morning her mother and brother had had the full benefit of it. Why she was in it she could not have told, at least with any degree of definitiveness. She was sick of home, she declared; sick of the farm, sick of the very sight of everything to do with it; sick of the eternal veldt. The mountains in the background were depressing, the wide-spreading Karroo plains more depressing still, although, since the rain, they had taken on a beautiful carpeting of flower-spangled green. She wanted to go away—to Port Elizabeth, or Johannesburg; in both of which towns she had relatives; anywhere, it didn’t matter—anywhere for a change. Life was too deadly monotonous for anything.Well, life on a farm in the far Karroo is not precisely a state of existence bristling with excitement, especially for the ornamental sex, debarred both by conventionality and inclination from the pleasures of the chase. But May was not really so hardly used as she chose to imagine. She was frequently away from home visiting, but of late, during almost the last year, she had not cared to go—had even refused invitations—wherein her brother saw another exemplification of feminine unreasonableness and caprice. Her mother, a woman and more worldly wise, was not so sure on that head.“What’s the row, anyhow?” said Frank, bluntly. “What do you want to scoot away for, and leave mother and me to entertain each other? Girls are always so beastly selfish.”“Girls selfish? Men, you mean,” she flashed back. “Men are the most selfish creatures in existence. I hate them—hate them all.”“Why, only the other day you were saying that you had come round to the idea that it was much jollier in the country, and that you hated towns,” went on Frank. “You’ve said it over and over again, and now—”“Oh, go away, Frank, can’t you, and leave her alone,” said his mother. “Why do you take such a delight in teasing her when you see she’s out of sorts?”“Out of sorts, eh? That’s what women always say when they’re in a beastly bad temper. Oh, well, thank goodness I’ve no time for that sort of thing.” And cramming his pipe he went out.Frank was right, if somewhat inconsiderate. May was in a bad temper—a very bad temper indeed. Hardly had he gone than she flung on her whitekapje, the same we first saw her in, and which became her so well, and went out too, but not after him. She went round among her fowl-houses, then strolled along the quince hedges to see if any of the hens had been laying out and in irregular places for the benefit of the egg-lovingmuishond, or similar vermin, but her mind some how was not in it. She gazed out over the surrounding veldt. A little cloud of dust away in the distance caused her to start and her eyes to dilate. But it passed away and was gone. It heralded the approach of nobody. The distant flying cackle of a cock koorhaan alarmed had the same effect, but no sign of life, far or near, save the slow movement of black ostriches grazing, and the occasional triple boom as they lifted up their voices. The sun, flaming down in the cloudless forenoon, caused the great expanse of plains to shimmer and glow with mirage-like effect, giving to each distant table-topped mountain an appearance of being suspended in mid-air.Her eyes filled as she stood thus gazing, and two shining tears rolled down.“Oh, I must get away from here,” she said to herself. “All this is weighing upon my nerves. I hate men—selfish, cruel, heartless wretches!”She caught her voice, and was conscious that the pulsations of her heart had undergone an acceleration. Away in the distance a large dust-cloud was advancing, and with it the white tilt of a Cape cart.“Only some tiresome Dutch people,” she said to herself, with a weary sigh. “I hope to goodness they won’t come here, that’s all.”But her wish was doomed to non-fulfilment, for very soon the cart was seen to turn off the road that should have taken it by and to strike the branch track leading direct to the house. A flutter of feminine garments within it betokened the nature of the visit.“May, where are you? May?” shouted Frank, in stentorian tones. “Oh, there you are. Here’s a whole crowd coming down into the drift. Looks like the De la Reys. They’ll be here in a minute.”“I wish they’d be somewhere else in a minute, then,” muttered May to herself with a frown that quite transformed the pretty, winning face within the ample whitekapje.Frank’s surmise proved correct. The occupants of the cart were the three De la Rey girls and their brother Jan. As they drove up Mrs Wenlock came out in a flutter of excitement and welcome.“How good of you to come over!” she said. “I am so glad to see you. We don’t get many visitors just now. Why, Aletta, I should hardly have known you. My, but you must have been away quite a long time. I suppose you have been having grand times down at the Cape. And how tall you have grown! Well, I always say it does a girl good to send her about among folks and to see a little of the world. Let’s see, I don’t think you and my May have ever met. She was not with us when we first came up.”May, who had already been exchanging greetings with the other girls, now turned to this one.“No, we haven’t,” she said. “How do you do, Miss De la Rey?” And as the two clasped hands each was mentally reading the other.“What a figure!” thought May to herself. “How easily and with what unconscious grace she moves! I wish I had it instead of being fat and dumpy”—which she wasn’t—“and beautifully dressed, yet quite plainly. Well, she isn’t pretty, that’s one thing. Oh no, she isn’t in the least pretty.”“So this is ‘the only English girl,’” Aletta was thinking. “She is pretty. Yes, mother was right, she is very, very pretty. Those blue eyes—like Table Bay when the sun shines on it at noon—I wish I had them. And the gold of her hair, and her beautiful colouring. I do believe old Tant’ Plessis must be right. Frank, too, has improved since I saw him. He has grown quite good-looking.”The said Frank, having shouted ineffectually for one of the boys, presumably away on some other business, was helping Jan to outspan.“Well, Jan,” said Mrs Wenlock as they all went inside, “you have been a long time bringing your sister over to see us.”“Andrina and I have only just got back ourselves, Mrs Wenlock,” struck in Condaas. “Aletta has had a lot to do at home. And we have had old Tant’ Plessis there and ever so many people.”“Ever so many people. Yes, I think you have had some people you would have been better without, if report speaks true,” replied Mrs Wenlock, shaking a finger at the speaker with a good-humoured laugh. “There are those who come a long way to breed sedition and discontent and differences among folks who are quite happy and contented. We quite thought you had deserted us nowadays because we were English.”Mrs Wenlock, you see, was one of those good souls who pride themselves on speaking their minds—in this case an utterly tactless operation. A momentary frost lay upon the whole party. But the situation was relieved by the readiness of Aletta.“Why, Mrs Wenlock, you are forgetting that there is some English blood in us,” she said.“To be sure I was, child. And your father, although there is no English in him, he is a man for whom I have the greatest regard. He is the last man to listen to agitators and sedition-mongers—of that I am quite sure. How is he, by the way, and your mother?” They reassured her as to the perfect state of health and well-being enjoyed by both parents, which had the effect of leading the conversation away from a very delicate subject. May, the while, had been out of the room to see about getting tea ready, and now returned in time to hear the following:—“Why don’t you bring your gun over, Frank?” Jan was saying. “Man, there is a fine lot of guinea-fowl down along the river—if Colvin has left any, that is.Maagtig, but he is fond of shooting birds. Oneklompjedown on thedraaiby the white rock had nearly sixty birds in it, and now there are nine. Colvin has shot all the rest. Guinea-fowl are not easy to get at, you know. There are otherklompjes, but he will do the same with them, so you had better be quick or there will be none left.”“He must have been shooting a lot at your place, Jan.”“He has. Rather. He comes over nearly every other day to have a shoot. Why, we shall soon have hardly anything left if he goes on at that rate. But the season will soon be over now. Not that we care much about season or no season if we want a buck to eat.”“Tut-tut, Jan! What’s that you’re saying? And your father Field-cornet, too!” struck in Mrs Wenlock.May, who was presiding at the tea-tray, hearing this apparently harmless dialogue, felt it to be just about all she could do to restrain the ugly frown which threatened to cloud her face. “He comes over nearly every other day,” Jan had said, yet he had not been near them for about three weeks, or close upon it—not, indeed, since that evening he and Frank had returned from Schalkburg together. He had never been away from them so long as that since he had been settled on his own farm, nor anything like it. Whatdidit mean? What was the attraction? The sport? Well, the sport wasn’t bad at Spring Holt. No—a darker thought gripped her mind and heart, making her miserable. The time corresponded, within a day or two, to that of Aletta’s return. Well, what then? Surely she was tormenting herself unnecessarily. Surely she could hold her own against a Dutch girl—an ugly Dutch girl—she added spitefully to herself. But just then, as she was discharging her duties of deputy hostess mechanically while thus thinking, the voice of the “ugly Dutch girl” broke in upon her broodings, with a remark addressed to herself.“You have been in the Transvaal lately, I hear, Miss Wenlock?”“Not quite lately; not for a year. I have some relations in Johannesburg, and was stopping with them.”“Ah! I have some there too. I may be going up there soon, but have never been. It is a very wonderful place, is it not?”“Oh, yes. Miles ahead of any other in South Africa. It hasn’t got the Sleepy Hollow sort of look all these other musty old places have. English capital and energy have put it in the forefront.”This was no sort of remark to make under the circumstances, and herein was another instance of May’s lack of breeding which would now and again crop up. It may have been that she was stung by a new discovery which had been brought home to her with the first utterance. This “ugly Dutch girl” had a beautiful voice, soft, well modulated, thoroughly refined.It was a time when people were wont to rave at and wrangle with each other over the rights and wrongs of the political situation then nearly at its most acute stage, on far less challenge than May’s tone and words implied. This Dutch girl, however, did nothing of the kind. She went on talking pleasantly as though no such remark had been made—asking questions about the place under discussion, and seeming to take a vivid interest in the answers. Poor May felt very small, very inferior. She was honest enough to own to herself that she had transgressed against the laws of good breeding, and to admire the other’s self-possession and ready tact, though, as constituting another attraction, she loved not the possessor of these qualities any the more.Then Frank and Jan went out to smoke a pipe or two together, and talk shop, and about sport, and the latest rumours from the Transvaal—though this guardedly. The girls, left behind, were chatting, and looking at things, notably some English fashion papers which May had got out. Then they, too, took a stroll out to look at May’s fowl-houses, and finally all met at dinner.There was no lack of conversation. Aletta was telling them about her experiences at the capital—where none of her hearers, save Frank, had ever been—moved thereto by many questions from Mrs Wenlock, and all the good times she had been having—balls, and bicycle picnics, and Government House receptions, and dances on board one or other of the warships at Simonstown. May, listening with vivid interest, almost forgot her ill-humour, only failing where she was reminded of it by envy. That was the sort of life her own soul hankered after, instead of being stuck away on a dismal up-country farm. That was life—this stagnation. Yet could she at that moment have been offered her choice, whether she would be there or here, she would have elected to remain where she was.“I thought Cape Town a beastly place,” declared Frank. “Nothing on earth to do there, and they wanted me to wear a bell-topper hat on Sunday.”Aletta broke into one of her whole-hearted laughs.“That’s the best definition I’ve ever heard,” she said. “No, really, I shall have to tell it to some of them next time I am down there again—if ever I am.”“It’s true, all the same,” persisted Frank, looking remarkably pleased with himself and the consciousness of having said a good thing. But his mother told him he was talking nonsense, and proceeded with her cross-examination of Aletta. Had she seen the Governor, and was he like his portraits? and so on.Oh, yes, she had seen him pretty often. Spoken to him? He had once or twice, in a kindly conventional way, spoken to her, but she was certain he would not know her from Eve if he were to see her again. There were so many people he had to talk to in the same way at officially social functions. But the point in this qualification was lost upon her questioner, whose honest middle-class soul swelled with a congenial respect for one who had actually talked with the Governor.“Hallo! by George, there’s someone coming!” exclaimed Frank, as the raucous coughs of the one decrepit cur whose acquaintance we have already made, together with a sound of hoofs, gave notice of the fact. “Wonder who it is?”May looked up quickly, a whole world of eager expectancy, of forestalled disappointment in her glance. And as she did so she met the eyes of Aletta.
May Wenlock was in a temper.
She had got up in one, and throughout the morning her mother and brother had had the full benefit of it. Why she was in it she could not have told, at least with any degree of definitiveness. She was sick of home, she declared; sick of the farm, sick of the very sight of everything to do with it; sick of the eternal veldt. The mountains in the background were depressing, the wide-spreading Karroo plains more depressing still, although, since the rain, they had taken on a beautiful carpeting of flower-spangled green. She wanted to go away—to Port Elizabeth, or Johannesburg; in both of which towns she had relatives; anywhere, it didn’t matter—anywhere for a change. Life was too deadly monotonous for anything.
Well, life on a farm in the far Karroo is not precisely a state of existence bristling with excitement, especially for the ornamental sex, debarred both by conventionality and inclination from the pleasures of the chase. But May was not really so hardly used as she chose to imagine. She was frequently away from home visiting, but of late, during almost the last year, she had not cared to go—had even refused invitations—wherein her brother saw another exemplification of feminine unreasonableness and caprice. Her mother, a woman and more worldly wise, was not so sure on that head.
“What’s the row, anyhow?” said Frank, bluntly. “What do you want to scoot away for, and leave mother and me to entertain each other? Girls are always so beastly selfish.”
“Girls selfish? Men, you mean,” she flashed back. “Men are the most selfish creatures in existence. I hate them—hate them all.”
“Why, only the other day you were saying that you had come round to the idea that it was much jollier in the country, and that you hated towns,” went on Frank. “You’ve said it over and over again, and now—”
“Oh, go away, Frank, can’t you, and leave her alone,” said his mother. “Why do you take such a delight in teasing her when you see she’s out of sorts?”
“Out of sorts, eh? That’s what women always say when they’re in a beastly bad temper. Oh, well, thank goodness I’ve no time for that sort of thing.” And cramming his pipe he went out.
Frank was right, if somewhat inconsiderate. May was in a bad temper—a very bad temper indeed. Hardly had he gone than she flung on her whitekapje, the same we first saw her in, and which became her so well, and went out too, but not after him. She went round among her fowl-houses, then strolled along the quince hedges to see if any of the hens had been laying out and in irregular places for the benefit of the egg-lovingmuishond, or similar vermin, but her mind some how was not in it. She gazed out over the surrounding veldt. A little cloud of dust away in the distance caused her to start and her eyes to dilate. But it passed away and was gone. It heralded the approach of nobody. The distant flying cackle of a cock koorhaan alarmed had the same effect, but no sign of life, far or near, save the slow movement of black ostriches grazing, and the occasional triple boom as they lifted up their voices. The sun, flaming down in the cloudless forenoon, caused the great expanse of plains to shimmer and glow with mirage-like effect, giving to each distant table-topped mountain an appearance of being suspended in mid-air.
Her eyes filled as she stood thus gazing, and two shining tears rolled down.
“Oh, I must get away from here,” she said to herself. “All this is weighing upon my nerves. I hate men—selfish, cruel, heartless wretches!”
She caught her voice, and was conscious that the pulsations of her heart had undergone an acceleration. Away in the distance a large dust-cloud was advancing, and with it the white tilt of a Cape cart.
“Only some tiresome Dutch people,” she said to herself, with a weary sigh. “I hope to goodness they won’t come here, that’s all.”
But her wish was doomed to non-fulfilment, for very soon the cart was seen to turn off the road that should have taken it by and to strike the branch track leading direct to the house. A flutter of feminine garments within it betokened the nature of the visit.
“May, where are you? May?” shouted Frank, in stentorian tones. “Oh, there you are. Here’s a whole crowd coming down into the drift. Looks like the De la Reys. They’ll be here in a minute.”
“I wish they’d be somewhere else in a minute, then,” muttered May to herself with a frown that quite transformed the pretty, winning face within the ample whitekapje.
Frank’s surmise proved correct. The occupants of the cart were the three De la Rey girls and their brother Jan. As they drove up Mrs Wenlock came out in a flutter of excitement and welcome.
“How good of you to come over!” she said. “I am so glad to see you. We don’t get many visitors just now. Why, Aletta, I should hardly have known you. My, but you must have been away quite a long time. I suppose you have been having grand times down at the Cape. And how tall you have grown! Well, I always say it does a girl good to send her about among folks and to see a little of the world. Let’s see, I don’t think you and my May have ever met. She was not with us when we first came up.”
May, who had already been exchanging greetings with the other girls, now turned to this one.
“No, we haven’t,” she said. “How do you do, Miss De la Rey?” And as the two clasped hands each was mentally reading the other.
“What a figure!” thought May to herself. “How easily and with what unconscious grace she moves! I wish I had it instead of being fat and dumpy”—which she wasn’t—“and beautifully dressed, yet quite plainly. Well, she isn’t pretty, that’s one thing. Oh no, she isn’t in the least pretty.”
“So this is ‘the only English girl,’” Aletta was thinking. “She is pretty. Yes, mother was right, she is very, very pretty. Those blue eyes—like Table Bay when the sun shines on it at noon—I wish I had them. And the gold of her hair, and her beautiful colouring. I do believe old Tant’ Plessis must be right. Frank, too, has improved since I saw him. He has grown quite good-looking.”
The said Frank, having shouted ineffectually for one of the boys, presumably away on some other business, was helping Jan to outspan.
“Well, Jan,” said Mrs Wenlock as they all went inside, “you have been a long time bringing your sister over to see us.”
“Andrina and I have only just got back ourselves, Mrs Wenlock,” struck in Condaas. “Aletta has had a lot to do at home. And we have had old Tant’ Plessis there and ever so many people.”
“Ever so many people. Yes, I think you have had some people you would have been better without, if report speaks true,” replied Mrs Wenlock, shaking a finger at the speaker with a good-humoured laugh. “There are those who come a long way to breed sedition and discontent and differences among folks who are quite happy and contented. We quite thought you had deserted us nowadays because we were English.”
Mrs Wenlock, you see, was one of those good souls who pride themselves on speaking their minds—in this case an utterly tactless operation. A momentary frost lay upon the whole party. But the situation was relieved by the readiness of Aletta.
“Why, Mrs Wenlock, you are forgetting that there is some English blood in us,” she said.
“To be sure I was, child. And your father, although there is no English in him, he is a man for whom I have the greatest regard. He is the last man to listen to agitators and sedition-mongers—of that I am quite sure. How is he, by the way, and your mother?” They reassured her as to the perfect state of health and well-being enjoyed by both parents, which had the effect of leading the conversation away from a very delicate subject. May, the while, had been out of the room to see about getting tea ready, and now returned in time to hear the following:—
“Why don’t you bring your gun over, Frank?” Jan was saying. “Man, there is a fine lot of guinea-fowl down along the river—if Colvin has left any, that is.Maagtig, but he is fond of shooting birds. Oneklompjedown on thedraaiby the white rock had nearly sixty birds in it, and now there are nine. Colvin has shot all the rest. Guinea-fowl are not easy to get at, you know. There are otherklompjes, but he will do the same with them, so you had better be quick or there will be none left.”
“He must have been shooting a lot at your place, Jan.”
“He has. Rather. He comes over nearly every other day to have a shoot. Why, we shall soon have hardly anything left if he goes on at that rate. But the season will soon be over now. Not that we care much about season or no season if we want a buck to eat.”
“Tut-tut, Jan! What’s that you’re saying? And your father Field-cornet, too!” struck in Mrs Wenlock.
May, who was presiding at the tea-tray, hearing this apparently harmless dialogue, felt it to be just about all she could do to restrain the ugly frown which threatened to cloud her face. “He comes over nearly every other day,” Jan had said, yet he had not been near them for about three weeks, or close upon it—not, indeed, since that evening he and Frank had returned from Schalkburg together. He had never been away from them so long as that since he had been settled on his own farm, nor anything like it. Whatdidit mean? What was the attraction? The sport? Well, the sport wasn’t bad at Spring Holt. No—a darker thought gripped her mind and heart, making her miserable. The time corresponded, within a day or two, to that of Aletta’s return. Well, what then? Surely she was tormenting herself unnecessarily. Surely she could hold her own against a Dutch girl—an ugly Dutch girl—she added spitefully to herself. But just then, as she was discharging her duties of deputy hostess mechanically while thus thinking, the voice of the “ugly Dutch girl” broke in upon her broodings, with a remark addressed to herself.
“You have been in the Transvaal lately, I hear, Miss Wenlock?”
“Not quite lately; not for a year. I have some relations in Johannesburg, and was stopping with them.”
“Ah! I have some there too. I may be going up there soon, but have never been. It is a very wonderful place, is it not?”
“Oh, yes. Miles ahead of any other in South Africa. It hasn’t got the Sleepy Hollow sort of look all these other musty old places have. English capital and energy have put it in the forefront.”
This was no sort of remark to make under the circumstances, and herein was another instance of May’s lack of breeding which would now and again crop up. It may have been that she was stung by a new discovery which had been brought home to her with the first utterance. This “ugly Dutch girl” had a beautiful voice, soft, well modulated, thoroughly refined.
It was a time when people were wont to rave at and wrangle with each other over the rights and wrongs of the political situation then nearly at its most acute stage, on far less challenge than May’s tone and words implied. This Dutch girl, however, did nothing of the kind. She went on talking pleasantly as though no such remark had been made—asking questions about the place under discussion, and seeming to take a vivid interest in the answers. Poor May felt very small, very inferior. She was honest enough to own to herself that she had transgressed against the laws of good breeding, and to admire the other’s self-possession and ready tact, though, as constituting another attraction, she loved not the possessor of these qualities any the more.
Then Frank and Jan went out to smoke a pipe or two together, and talk shop, and about sport, and the latest rumours from the Transvaal—though this guardedly. The girls, left behind, were chatting, and looking at things, notably some English fashion papers which May had got out. Then they, too, took a stroll out to look at May’s fowl-houses, and finally all met at dinner.
There was no lack of conversation. Aletta was telling them about her experiences at the capital—where none of her hearers, save Frank, had ever been—moved thereto by many questions from Mrs Wenlock, and all the good times she had been having—balls, and bicycle picnics, and Government House receptions, and dances on board one or other of the warships at Simonstown. May, listening with vivid interest, almost forgot her ill-humour, only failing where she was reminded of it by envy. That was the sort of life her own soul hankered after, instead of being stuck away on a dismal up-country farm. That was life—this stagnation. Yet could she at that moment have been offered her choice, whether she would be there or here, she would have elected to remain where she was.
“I thought Cape Town a beastly place,” declared Frank. “Nothing on earth to do there, and they wanted me to wear a bell-topper hat on Sunday.”
Aletta broke into one of her whole-hearted laughs.
“That’s the best definition I’ve ever heard,” she said. “No, really, I shall have to tell it to some of them next time I am down there again—if ever I am.”
“It’s true, all the same,” persisted Frank, looking remarkably pleased with himself and the consciousness of having said a good thing. But his mother told him he was talking nonsense, and proceeded with her cross-examination of Aletta. Had she seen the Governor, and was he like his portraits? and so on.
Oh, yes, she had seen him pretty often. Spoken to him? He had once or twice, in a kindly conventional way, spoken to her, but she was certain he would not know her from Eve if he were to see her again. There were so many people he had to talk to in the same way at officially social functions. But the point in this qualification was lost upon her questioner, whose honest middle-class soul swelled with a congenial respect for one who had actually talked with the Governor.
“Hallo! by George, there’s someone coming!” exclaimed Frank, as the raucous coughs of the one decrepit cur whose acquaintance we have already made, together with a sound of hoofs, gave notice of the fact. “Wonder who it is?”
May looked up quickly, a whole world of eager expectancy, of forestalled disappointment in her glance. And as she did so she met the eyes of Aletta.
Chapter Thirteen.Two Verdicts and some Rancour.“Hallo, Colvin!” cried Frank, going out on the stoep. “Why, man, we had begun to think you were dead.”“So?” said Colvin Kershaw, who was busy loosening the girths preparatory to off-saddling. “Whose cart is that, Frank? Looks like Stephanus’.”“It is.”“Is he here then?”“No; only the girls.”“Which of them?”“All three.”“Oh—. No, don’t have him put in the camp,” as a Hottentot came up to take the horse. “Just knee-halter him, and let him run. He can pick up enough round the house.”As he entered, and greeted the girls, a subtle instinct told him that two of them were watching each other and him. May’s reception of him was somewhat brusque and rather too studiously off-handed. He read her face like the page of a book. She, keenly observant, noticed that he greeted the other three with the easy friendliness of people who know each other well, but without the faintest difference of tone or inflection in talking to each and all of them.“Why, Mr Kershaw, we were thinking you were dead,” said Mrs Wenlock, in her cordial, breezy way. “It is a long time since we saw you last.”“So Frank was saying, Mrs Wenlock. But I am not. Death has not given me a call yet.”None there knew how very near truth their jesting words came—save one. One knew it, and with her Colvin, for the life of him, could not help exchanging a look. It was an exchange, and, swiftly as it flashed between them in its fulness of meaning, it did not go unobserved—by one.“Hallo, Colvin, you’ve got your rifle along this time,” cried Frank, through the open window, who was examining the piece. “Why, I thought you never carried anything but a shot-gun down here.”“I don’t generally. But I might be going up into the Wildschutsberg,” and again he brought his eyes round to those of Aletta. “Now and then you get a long shot at a reebok up there.”“Why, this is the same old gun you had up in Matabeleland,” went on Frank, sighting the weapon and pointing and recovering it. “Nothing like these Lee-Metfords with the Martini block. By George, Miss De la Rey, how he used to make the niggers skip in the Matopos with this same pea-shooter!”“Yes?” said Aletta, brightly, with simulated interest, but with a dire chill at her heart. What if this weapon should come to be pointed at others than dark-skinned barbarians, and that soon? Truth to tell for some occult reason the patriotic enthusiasm had cooled a little of late.“Adrian had one of the new guns round at our place the other day,” said Jan. “A Mauser. He said it would shoot three miles. It is wonderful. I can hardly believe it.”“Well, try a shot or two out of that, Jan,” said Colvin. “Only leave a few cartridges, in case I should come in for a good chance, riding along.”Jan did—making some excellent practice, at ant-heaps scattered at varying distances over the veldt. Then his sisters declared that he had better see about inspanning, for it was time they were getting home.“I shall have to be moving soon myself,” said Colvin. “I want to be in Schalkburg to-night.”“In Schalkburg?” echoed Mrs Wenlock. “Why, you are in a hurry—and we haven’t seen you for such a time.”“Yes; it’s a pity. But I have to do some business there first thing in the morning, so it’s as well to get there over-night.”“I thought you said you might be going up to the Wildschutsberg,” said Aletta, with a spice of mischief. “Isn’t that rather a long way round?”“It is rather. Only in the opposite direction. But I won’t go that way.”And then, the cart being inspanned, they exchanged farewells. The handclasp between Colvin and Aletta was not one fraction more prolonged than that which he exchanged with the other two girls—if anything shorter. May, watching, could not but admit this, but did not know whether to feel relieved or not.“So that is ‘the only English girl’!” said Aletta to herself as they drove off. “Old Tant’ Plessis was both right and wrong. They are not engaged, but still there is a sort of something between them, and that something is all, or nearly all, on her side. She would not make him happy, either—or be happy with him. She is pretty, very pretty, but common. She is gusty-tempered, has no self-command, and would be horribly jealous. No. She could never make him happy.”Those whom she had left, however, were at that very moment formulating their opinions upon her, but aloud.“What a nice girl Aletta has grown into!” Mrs Wenlock was saying. “She used to be shy and awkward, and nothing to look at, before she went away, and now she’s so bright, and smart, and stylish, and almost pretty. It’s wonderful what her stay at Cape Town has done for her.”“I don’t think she’s pretty at all,” said May decisively. “I call her ugly.”“No, I’ll be hanged if she’s ugly,” said Frank.“No, indeed,” agreed his mother; “look what pretty hair she has, and pretty hands, and then her manner is so delightful. And there is such a stylish look about her, too! Don’t you agree with me, Mr Kershaw?”“Yes; I do,” was the reply, made as evenly as though the subject under discussion had been Andrina or Condaas, or any other girl in the district.“Well, I think she’s a horrid girl,” persisted May. “Style, indeed? What you call style, I call ‘side.’ She puts on a kind of condescending, talk-down-to-you sort of manner. These Dutch girls,” with withering emphasis on the national adjective, “are that way. They go away from home for a little and come back as stuck-up as they can be. That one is too grand for anything—in her own estimation. A horrid, stuck-up thing.”Colvin, listening, winced. The idea expressed, the very wording of its expression, grated upon him horribly, apart from the identity of the subject thereof. In such wise would May from time to time lapse, and become, as Aletta had put it to herself, “common.”He made no comment upon her vehement and ill-natured dictum, knowing perfectly well that it was uttered quite as much as a challenge to himself as to relieve the utterer’s feelings; and he was far too old and experienced to be drawn by any such transparent device. But as they re-entered the sitting-room the jarring effect of the words was intensified, bringing back in vivid contrast the last time he was there; that evening when he had been so near turning the most momentous corner which could meet him within the career of life. He had not turned it. A warning hand had, so to speak, been held up. This girl—he could see her as she was then, in her sweet alluring beauty, soft-voiced, appealing. He could see her now, hard-eyed, vindictive, and expressing herself in a manner that savoured of the wash-tub. What a near thing it had been—how narrow his escape!He would have been tied fast, bound hand and foot. Even now there was a certain length of loose coil around him, which would need some care and judgment entirely to cast off. Still there was no hard-and-fast bond, and looking backward over the events of the past three weeks or so, he felt lost in thankfulness because of the trivial, fortuitous incident which had availed to stay his tongue when it had so nearly spoken.“You are not particularly lively, after all this time, Colvin.”He started, and put down the paper he had pretended to read, while the above reflections were coursing through his brain. They were alone together in the room, he and May. Frank, divested of his coat and waistcoat, could be seen in the distance doing odd jobs, and Mrs Wenlock had withdrawn for an afternoon nap. Her visitors, she declared, although dear girls, had tired her.“No, I’m afraid I’m not,” he said. “I believe I’m tired. Well, let’s talk.”Something in the words brought back that last evening they were thus alone together. The recollection softened her, but only for a moment.“I can imagine it seems dull now that your Dutch friends are gone,” she began, in a crisp, gunpowdery way which was more than a declaration of war. It was in fact the firing of the first shell.“Oh, bother it, May, why will you harp on that insane prejudice of nationality?” he expostulated, but quite good-humouredly, purposely ignoring her real drift. “A good sort is a good sort, no matter what his or her nationality. And I think you’ll allow that old Stephanus and his crowd come under that heading.”“So you seem to think,” was the acid reply. “You have been there a good deal of late, haven’t you?”“Yes, I like them very much, and the shoot is choice.” And then he went on to tell her about the bags he had made, and old Tant’ Plessis and her absurd perversities, and the ridiculous muddle the old woman had made between his name and that of the sixteenth-century Reformer. His object was to keep her attention away from personalities. But that object she saw through.“You were not so fond of them three or four weeks ago,” she said, half turned away from him, and beginning to speak quickly, while the sea-blue eyes filled. “That is just the time that girl has been back. Goodness! I never thought to see you—you—running after an ugly Dutch girl.”Every word grated upon Colvin’s mind—grated intensely, so much so indeed as to leave no room for anger, only disgust and disillusionment. At that moment, too, there flashed vividly through his mind a vision of the speaker, as contrasted with this “ugly Dutch girl” here in this very room but a few minutes ago, and the contrast was all in favour of the latter—yes, a hundred times over in her favour, he told himself. And now this one was going to make a scene; so much was evident. She was crudely, unsophisticatedly jealous, and had no self-control whatever.Heavens! what an escape he had had!“See here, May,” he said. “That sort of remark is not to my liking at all. It is—well, exceedingly unpleasant, and really I don’t care about listening to all this. I am responsible to nobody for my actions, remember, and there is not one living soul who has the slightest right or title to call me to account for anything I do or don’t do. And I am a little too old to begin to obey orders now. So if you will kindly give up abusing people I like, and with whom I happen to be very friendly, I shall be grateful. I don’t like to hear it, and it doesn’t come well from you.”But the girl made no answer. She had dropped her face into her hands, and was silently sobbing. He, watching her, was softened directly. His first impulse was to take her in his arms and strive to comfort her. He still had a very weak place for her, although the scales had fallen from his eyes, owing to two causes. But an instinct of prudence and a great deal of cynicism born of experience rose up to restrain him. He had gone through this sort of thing before. He had seen women utterly miserable and heart-broken seemingly, on his account, as they said, meaning it, too, at the time; but six months or a year thence had found them laughing in his face, if not playing the same game with somebody else; but he himself had not taken them seriously, wherefore it didn’t matter. Yet it was all part of an education, and of what use was an education save to be applied?“Don’t cry like that, little one,” he said gently. “Why should we say hard things to each other, you and I? We never used to.”The gentle tone melted her at once. She dropped her hands. All the hardness had gone out of her face, and the sea-blue eyes were limpid and tender and winning.“No, we used not. I have become very bad-tempered—very quarrelsome. But—oh, Colvin, I am so tired of life—of life here. It gets upon my nerves, I think. And I have hardly any friends, and you—you the greatest of them all, hardly seem to care for me—for us—now. I—we—never see you in these days, and—I feel it somehow.”Colvin’s heart smote him. He need not have stayed away so long and so markedly, but there was a reason, and he had acted with the best intentions. Wherein he had blundered, as people invariably do when they suffer their actions to be guided by such tissue-paper motives, instead of by the hard and safe rule of judiciousness, expediency, and knowledge of human nature.“Poor little girl! You must not run away with all those ideas,” he said. “And, you are flattering me. Well, I will come over again soon, and have a talk, but I must go now. There, will that do?”He was talking to her quite gently, quite soothingly, just as he used to do, and the effect was wonderful. All the dejection, the sullenness, disappeared from her face, dispelled by a bright, almost happy smile.“Good-bye, then,” she said. “I don’t think I’ll come and see you start this time. Good-bye, dear.”Her eyes shone soft and dewy in the upturned face. Her lips were raised invitingly. It was not in mortal man to refuse them, however stern rectitude under the circumstances might dictate such a course. This one did not refuse them.“Good-bye, my darling!” she breathed into his ear, in a voice so barely audible as to be almost inarticulate. And as he left her and went out to find his horse and see about saddling up, it was with a vague misgiving that the loose coil, to which he had made allusion in his own mind, had, within the last few moments, very perceptibly tightened.We made use just above of the expression “under the circumstances.” The “circumstances” were, that by that time this cautious, and cynical and experienced man of the world was deeply, devotedly, and entirely in love with Aletta De la Rey.
“Hallo, Colvin!” cried Frank, going out on the stoep. “Why, man, we had begun to think you were dead.”
“So?” said Colvin Kershaw, who was busy loosening the girths preparatory to off-saddling. “Whose cart is that, Frank? Looks like Stephanus’.”
“It is.”
“Is he here then?”
“No; only the girls.”
“Which of them?”
“All three.”
“Oh—. No, don’t have him put in the camp,” as a Hottentot came up to take the horse. “Just knee-halter him, and let him run. He can pick up enough round the house.”
As he entered, and greeted the girls, a subtle instinct told him that two of them were watching each other and him. May’s reception of him was somewhat brusque and rather too studiously off-handed. He read her face like the page of a book. She, keenly observant, noticed that he greeted the other three with the easy friendliness of people who know each other well, but without the faintest difference of tone or inflection in talking to each and all of them.
“Why, Mr Kershaw, we were thinking you were dead,” said Mrs Wenlock, in her cordial, breezy way. “It is a long time since we saw you last.”
“So Frank was saying, Mrs Wenlock. But I am not. Death has not given me a call yet.”
None there knew how very near truth their jesting words came—save one. One knew it, and with her Colvin, for the life of him, could not help exchanging a look. It was an exchange, and, swiftly as it flashed between them in its fulness of meaning, it did not go unobserved—by one.
“Hallo, Colvin, you’ve got your rifle along this time,” cried Frank, through the open window, who was examining the piece. “Why, I thought you never carried anything but a shot-gun down here.”
“I don’t generally. But I might be going up into the Wildschutsberg,” and again he brought his eyes round to those of Aletta. “Now and then you get a long shot at a reebok up there.”
“Why, this is the same old gun you had up in Matabeleland,” went on Frank, sighting the weapon and pointing and recovering it. “Nothing like these Lee-Metfords with the Martini block. By George, Miss De la Rey, how he used to make the niggers skip in the Matopos with this same pea-shooter!”
“Yes?” said Aletta, brightly, with simulated interest, but with a dire chill at her heart. What if this weapon should come to be pointed at others than dark-skinned barbarians, and that soon? Truth to tell for some occult reason the patriotic enthusiasm had cooled a little of late.
“Adrian had one of the new guns round at our place the other day,” said Jan. “A Mauser. He said it would shoot three miles. It is wonderful. I can hardly believe it.”
“Well, try a shot or two out of that, Jan,” said Colvin. “Only leave a few cartridges, in case I should come in for a good chance, riding along.”
Jan did—making some excellent practice, at ant-heaps scattered at varying distances over the veldt. Then his sisters declared that he had better see about inspanning, for it was time they were getting home.
“I shall have to be moving soon myself,” said Colvin. “I want to be in Schalkburg to-night.”
“In Schalkburg?” echoed Mrs Wenlock. “Why, you are in a hurry—and we haven’t seen you for such a time.”
“Yes; it’s a pity. But I have to do some business there first thing in the morning, so it’s as well to get there over-night.”
“I thought you said you might be going up to the Wildschutsberg,” said Aletta, with a spice of mischief. “Isn’t that rather a long way round?”
“It is rather. Only in the opposite direction. But I won’t go that way.”
And then, the cart being inspanned, they exchanged farewells. The handclasp between Colvin and Aletta was not one fraction more prolonged than that which he exchanged with the other two girls—if anything shorter. May, watching, could not but admit this, but did not know whether to feel relieved or not.
“So that is ‘the only English girl’!” said Aletta to herself as they drove off. “Old Tant’ Plessis was both right and wrong. They are not engaged, but still there is a sort of something between them, and that something is all, or nearly all, on her side. She would not make him happy, either—or be happy with him. She is pretty, very pretty, but common. She is gusty-tempered, has no self-command, and would be horribly jealous. No. She could never make him happy.”
Those whom she had left, however, were at that very moment formulating their opinions upon her, but aloud.
“What a nice girl Aletta has grown into!” Mrs Wenlock was saying. “She used to be shy and awkward, and nothing to look at, before she went away, and now she’s so bright, and smart, and stylish, and almost pretty. It’s wonderful what her stay at Cape Town has done for her.”
“I don’t think she’s pretty at all,” said May decisively. “I call her ugly.”
“No, I’ll be hanged if she’s ugly,” said Frank.
“No, indeed,” agreed his mother; “look what pretty hair she has, and pretty hands, and then her manner is so delightful. And there is such a stylish look about her, too! Don’t you agree with me, Mr Kershaw?”
“Yes; I do,” was the reply, made as evenly as though the subject under discussion had been Andrina or Condaas, or any other girl in the district.
“Well, I think she’s a horrid girl,” persisted May. “Style, indeed? What you call style, I call ‘side.’ She puts on a kind of condescending, talk-down-to-you sort of manner. These Dutch girls,” with withering emphasis on the national adjective, “are that way. They go away from home for a little and come back as stuck-up as they can be. That one is too grand for anything—in her own estimation. A horrid, stuck-up thing.”
Colvin, listening, winced. The idea expressed, the very wording of its expression, grated upon him horribly, apart from the identity of the subject thereof. In such wise would May from time to time lapse, and become, as Aletta had put it to herself, “common.”
He made no comment upon her vehement and ill-natured dictum, knowing perfectly well that it was uttered quite as much as a challenge to himself as to relieve the utterer’s feelings; and he was far too old and experienced to be drawn by any such transparent device. But as they re-entered the sitting-room the jarring effect of the words was intensified, bringing back in vivid contrast the last time he was there; that evening when he had been so near turning the most momentous corner which could meet him within the career of life. He had not turned it. A warning hand had, so to speak, been held up. This girl—he could see her as she was then, in her sweet alluring beauty, soft-voiced, appealing. He could see her now, hard-eyed, vindictive, and expressing herself in a manner that savoured of the wash-tub. What a near thing it had been—how narrow his escape!
He would have been tied fast, bound hand and foot. Even now there was a certain length of loose coil around him, which would need some care and judgment entirely to cast off. Still there was no hard-and-fast bond, and looking backward over the events of the past three weeks or so, he felt lost in thankfulness because of the trivial, fortuitous incident which had availed to stay his tongue when it had so nearly spoken.
“You are not particularly lively, after all this time, Colvin.”
He started, and put down the paper he had pretended to read, while the above reflections were coursing through his brain. They were alone together in the room, he and May. Frank, divested of his coat and waistcoat, could be seen in the distance doing odd jobs, and Mrs Wenlock had withdrawn for an afternoon nap. Her visitors, she declared, although dear girls, had tired her.
“No, I’m afraid I’m not,” he said. “I believe I’m tired. Well, let’s talk.”
Something in the words brought back that last evening they were thus alone together. The recollection softened her, but only for a moment.
“I can imagine it seems dull now that your Dutch friends are gone,” she began, in a crisp, gunpowdery way which was more than a declaration of war. It was in fact the firing of the first shell.
“Oh, bother it, May, why will you harp on that insane prejudice of nationality?” he expostulated, but quite good-humouredly, purposely ignoring her real drift. “A good sort is a good sort, no matter what his or her nationality. And I think you’ll allow that old Stephanus and his crowd come under that heading.”
“So you seem to think,” was the acid reply. “You have been there a good deal of late, haven’t you?”
“Yes, I like them very much, and the shoot is choice.” And then he went on to tell her about the bags he had made, and old Tant’ Plessis and her absurd perversities, and the ridiculous muddle the old woman had made between his name and that of the sixteenth-century Reformer. His object was to keep her attention away from personalities. But that object she saw through.
“You were not so fond of them three or four weeks ago,” she said, half turned away from him, and beginning to speak quickly, while the sea-blue eyes filled. “That is just the time that girl has been back. Goodness! I never thought to see you—you—running after an ugly Dutch girl.”
Every word grated upon Colvin’s mind—grated intensely, so much so indeed as to leave no room for anger, only disgust and disillusionment. At that moment, too, there flashed vividly through his mind a vision of the speaker, as contrasted with this “ugly Dutch girl” here in this very room but a few minutes ago, and the contrast was all in favour of the latter—yes, a hundred times over in her favour, he told himself. And now this one was going to make a scene; so much was evident. She was crudely, unsophisticatedly jealous, and had no self-control whatever.
Heavens! what an escape he had had!
“See here, May,” he said. “That sort of remark is not to my liking at all. It is—well, exceedingly unpleasant, and really I don’t care about listening to all this. I am responsible to nobody for my actions, remember, and there is not one living soul who has the slightest right or title to call me to account for anything I do or don’t do. And I am a little too old to begin to obey orders now. So if you will kindly give up abusing people I like, and with whom I happen to be very friendly, I shall be grateful. I don’t like to hear it, and it doesn’t come well from you.”
But the girl made no answer. She had dropped her face into her hands, and was silently sobbing. He, watching her, was softened directly. His first impulse was to take her in his arms and strive to comfort her. He still had a very weak place for her, although the scales had fallen from his eyes, owing to two causes. But an instinct of prudence and a great deal of cynicism born of experience rose up to restrain him. He had gone through this sort of thing before. He had seen women utterly miserable and heart-broken seemingly, on his account, as they said, meaning it, too, at the time; but six months or a year thence had found them laughing in his face, if not playing the same game with somebody else; but he himself had not taken them seriously, wherefore it didn’t matter. Yet it was all part of an education, and of what use was an education save to be applied?
“Don’t cry like that, little one,” he said gently. “Why should we say hard things to each other, you and I? We never used to.”
The gentle tone melted her at once. She dropped her hands. All the hardness had gone out of her face, and the sea-blue eyes were limpid and tender and winning.
“No, we used not. I have become very bad-tempered—very quarrelsome. But—oh, Colvin, I am so tired of life—of life here. It gets upon my nerves, I think. And I have hardly any friends, and you—you the greatest of them all, hardly seem to care for me—for us—now. I—we—never see you in these days, and—I feel it somehow.”
Colvin’s heart smote him. He need not have stayed away so long and so markedly, but there was a reason, and he had acted with the best intentions. Wherein he had blundered, as people invariably do when they suffer their actions to be guided by such tissue-paper motives, instead of by the hard and safe rule of judiciousness, expediency, and knowledge of human nature.
“Poor little girl! You must not run away with all those ideas,” he said. “And, you are flattering me. Well, I will come over again soon, and have a talk, but I must go now. There, will that do?”
He was talking to her quite gently, quite soothingly, just as he used to do, and the effect was wonderful. All the dejection, the sullenness, disappeared from her face, dispelled by a bright, almost happy smile.
“Good-bye, then,” she said. “I don’t think I’ll come and see you start this time. Good-bye, dear.”
Her eyes shone soft and dewy in the upturned face. Her lips were raised invitingly. It was not in mortal man to refuse them, however stern rectitude under the circumstances might dictate such a course. This one did not refuse them.
“Good-bye, my darling!” she breathed into his ear, in a voice so barely audible as to be almost inarticulate. And as he left her and went out to find his horse and see about saddling up, it was with a vague misgiving that the loose coil, to which he had made allusion in his own mind, had, within the last few moments, very perceptibly tightened.
We made use just above of the expression “under the circumstances.” The “circumstances” were, that by that time this cautious, and cynical and experienced man of the world was deeply, devotedly, and entirely in love with Aletta De la Rey.
Chapter Fourteen.Jelf—Civil Commissioner.Nicholas Andrew Jelf was Civil Commissioner and Resident Magistrate for the town and division of Schalkburg.In person he was a tall, middle-aged, rather good-looking man, with dark hair, and a grizzled, well-trimmed moustache, and whose general appearance fostered an idea which constituted one of his favourite weaknesses—that he resembled a retired military man. When mistaken for such openly, he positively beamed; and more than one shrewd rogue got the benefit of the doubt, or obtained material mitigation of the penalty due to his misdeeds, by appealing, with well-feigned ignorance, to the occupant of the Bench as “Colonel.” By disposition he was easy-going and good-natured enough, and bore the reputation among his brother Civil servants of being something of a duffer.By these the magistracy of Schalkburg was regarded as anything but a plum. It was very remote, the district large, and peopled almost entirely by Dutch farmers. The town itself was a great many miles from the nearest railway station; moreover, it was a dull little hole, with the limited ideas and pettifogging interests common to up-country townships. It boasted a large Dutch Reformed church—an unsightly, whitewashed parallelogram with staring, weather-beaten windows—item about a dozen stores, a branch of the Standard Bank, and two “hotels,” designed to afford board and lodging, of a kind, to such of the storekeepers’ clerks or bank clerks—to whom means, or inclination or opportunity, denied the advantages and felicities of the connubial state, for a stranger was an exceeding rarity. Half of its houses were untenanted, save for a few days on the occasion of the quarterlyNachtmaal(The Lord’s Supper) when the township would be filled with a great multitude of Boers and their families from far and near, those who did not own or hire houses, camping with their waggons on the town commonage. But it boasted no natural beauty to speak of, just dumped down, as it were, on a wide, flat plain. Some few of the houses had anerfor two of garden ground attached, which in the spring constituted by contrast a pleasing spot of green amid the prevailing red dust, but for the rest the impression conveyed was that of a sun-baked, wind-swept, utterly depressing sort of place.Nicholas Andrew Jelf was seated at his office table amid a pile of papers, and his countenance wore a very worried expression indeed. The post had just been delivered, and the contents of the bag had consisted of a greater crop than usual of Government circulars, eke requests for returns, as it seemed, upon every subject under heaven. Moreover, the newspapers, through which he had glanced hurriedly, were mainly remarkable for the number and conspicuousness of their scare headlines. Sensation was the order of the day, and out of the chances of a rupture with the two Republics the canny editor managed to suck no small advantage. But poor Mr Jelf could lay to himself no such consolation. His thoughts were for his already large and still increasing family, and the ruinous hole it would make in the by no means extravagant pay of a Civil servant were he obliged to send it away to a safer locality, as he greatly feared he ought to lose no time in doing.He turned to his correspondence. The Government desired to be informed of this—or the member for Slaapdorp had moved for a return of that—or Civil Commissioners were requested to obtain the opinion of the leading farmers of their divisions as to how far rinderpest microbes were likely to affect donkeys, given certain conditions of temperature and climate... and nearly a dozen more of like practical utility. Mr Jelf threw down the papers with a grunt of disgust and swore mildly to himself.“They seem to think a Civil Commissioner must be a whole damned walking ‘Encyclopaedia Britannica,’” he growled. “What’s this? More of the same stuff, I suppose.”But, as he read, his attention became more riveted and his face anxious and graver. For the official communication, marked “Confidential,” was one urgently requesting information as to the tone and disposition of the Dutch farmers in his division as bearing upon the present state of affairs, and desiring a full and circumstantial report at the very earliest opportunity. The effect of this was to deepen the worried look upon his face and to cause him to swear a little more. Just then a tap came at the door, and his clerk entered.“Anything by the post that wants seeing to, sir?”“Anything? I should think so. Just look at all this, Morkel,” pointing to the heap of stuff upon the table.Morkel did look at it—looked somewhat blue, moreover. He was fond of sport and had intended to ask for a day or two’s leave to join a buck hunt on one of the farms, and was fully capable of grasping the amount of work all that confounded correspondence was going to entail. He was a well-set-up, good-looking young fellow of five and twenty, very proud of his fair proportions and waxed moustache and somewhat dandified attire; for there were three or four passable-looking girls in Schalkburg, and the Civil Commissioner’s clerk was Somebody in the place.“One would think, at such a time as this, Government would have plenty to do without off-loading all these insane circulars upon us,” went on his chief, irritably. “It isn’t as if the things they want to know were of any practical use—they might as well move for a return of the number of buttons on every prisoner’s breeches over at the gaol as some of the things they do ask, but we’ve got to humour them. By the way, though, there’s one thing they want to know that has a practical side, and that ought to be looked after by a special department manufactured for this emergency.Wehave quite enough to do without going on the stump, so to say. Look at this.”He handed the letter marked “Confidential” to his subordinate. The latter read it through carefully, and as he did so he saw light. He thought he was going to get his shoot after all, and a good deal more of it than he had at first hoped for.“The thing is so unreasonable,” went on Mr Jelf. “Every mortal fad sprung on the House by some tin-pot country member, some retired canteen-keeper and proportionately consequential, is off-loaded on the Civil Commissioner. The Civil Commissioner is requested to do this, and the Civil Commissioner is desired to supply information upon that—as if we hadn’t quite enough to do with our financial and judicial duties. Why the deuce can’t Government have its own Secret Service department as Oom Paul is supposed to have?”Morkel listened sympathetically, as he always did when his chief indulged in a grumble. The two were on very good terms. Jelf had a liking for his subordinate, who officially was smart and well up to his work, and socially was the only man in the place with whom he could associate on even terms, except the District Surgeon, who was a trifle too fond of his glass, and inclined to be dictatorial. Morkel, for his part, reciprocated the liking. His chief was easy-going, and good-natured in the matter of leave officially, and socially took a sort of paternal and friendly interest in him. These two Civil servants, therefore, got on admirably together.“Well, the thing has got to be done,” went on Jelf, “and the only way to find out Dutch feeling is to go around among the Dutch. I haven’t the time to do it, and if I had it wouldn’t help, because they’d all shut up like oysters before me. But with you it would be different, Morkel. They’d look upon you as one of themselves.” He little thought how hard he was stamping on the corns of his subordinate; the fact being that, although born of Dutch parentage on either side, Morkel’s weakness was to imagine himself thoroughly and intensely English. “You would have to affect Boer sympathies, though, and we know that under the present Ministry that doesn’t damage a Civil servant at headquarters, eh? What do you think of the idea?”“It’s a first-rate one, sir. I might go around as if on a sort of wandering shoot.”“Yes. Take your gun with you. That’ll give colour to the affair. You can have my trap and horses, only spare the springs all you can in going through some of those bad drifts. You’d better take a week of it. Harvey can do a lot of your work for you. He’s almost too good a man for a chief constable. You’d better get as far up into the Wildschutsberg part as you can; they say the Boers up that way are the worst—especially since that firebrand, Andries Botma, has been his rounds. Look up Kershaw too; they say the fellow is three parts Boer in his sympathies. You might be able to get something out of him.”A knock at the door and the Court constable, being bidden to enter, announced that Mynheer Stephanus De la Rey wanted to see the Civil Commissioner.“The very man,” exclaimed the latter. “You must get to his farm, Morkel. You’re sure to hear something there. Show him in, Hendrik.”Stephanus entered, and as he did so Morkel went out, laden with the circulars that needed attention.Left alone with the magistrate, Stephanus looked a trifle ill-at-ease. His frank geniality seemed to have left him as he replied to that official’s inquiries after his family and concerns wherewith the Boer is wont to preface any and every interview if on anything like friendly terms with his interlocutor. Then he came to the point. He wished to resign his field-cornetcy.Jelf looked annoyed, and felt it too. What was the reason, he asked. A reliable, influential man like Stephanus was just the man for the office. He would be hard to replace. Would he not reconsider his decision?But Stephanus was firm; the fact being that since he had become converted to the “patriot” cause he was too honest to continue holding a post under the British Government, honorary as such might be. He did not, however, desire to say as much to the Government representative before him.But the latter saw through his constraint, and went straight to the root of the thing. He was irritated at the obstinacy, as he called it, of this Boer, and the latter, to his amazement and indignation, found himself being roundly lectured. The Civil Commissioner had heard reports of disaffection among some of the farmers—notably those in the Wildschutsberg district, but he had never expected to find among the disloyal a man so universally respected as the one before him, and much more to the same effect Stephanus, however, kept both his temper and his dignity.If that was the way the representative of the Government regarded him, he replied, all the more reason why he should adhere to his original resolve, and resign the field-cornetcy in favour of somebody who would be more acceptable. Would Mynheer kindly receive his formal resignation?Yes, Mynheer would, in that case. But the farewell greeting between the two was stiff and unfriendly.Left alone, Jelf felt rather small. He had failed in judiciousness, in tact, and he knew it. He had rubbed his interviewer the wrong way, just at a time when it was essential to keep such a man well disposed and friendly. At any rate, here was one item for his report. If Stephanus De la Rey was disaffected, why, then, the whole of the Wildschutsberg district must be a hotbed of seething sedition.Thus he expressed matters to his subordinate, as, Stephanus having departed, he called Morkel in to talk over their plan.“He has all but come round, sir,” said the latter. “I talked him over a good deal, and his is one of the places I’m to go to. He won’t give way about the field-cornetcy, though.”“Oh, well, we must find somebody else, I suppose. They are all rebels at heart, I believe, and he’s as great a rebel as any. Yes? Come in.”Again the Court constable entered.“Mynheer Grobbelaar wishes to see you, sir.”“Grobbelaar? Is it Jan Grobbelaar?”“Yes, sir.”“Show him in. This is getting warm, Morkel. Another damned Field-cornet. I supposehewants to resign now.”Swaart Jan entered, his projecting buck-teeth more prominent than ever in an oily grin, as he shook hands with the two officials. Jelf’s manner was short, and he wasted no time in preliminaries.“Well, Mynheer Grobbelaar, and what can I do for you?”“Nay, Mynheer, thank you. I have not called on business; just to make a little friendly visit.”“Oh, not on business?” said the magistrate, greatly relieved in his own mind, yet wishing his visitor at the devil, bothering in like that during office hours. But he changed his mind when the Boer explained that he had been shooting a few springbuck lately, and he had brought in a little matter of a saddle and a couple of haunches, which Mrs Jelf might find good for roasting. It was from a young buck, and would eat well—he went on, in his shambling, diffident way.Jelf thawed at once, and thanked his visitor. Here was another opportunity of getting at the state of Dutch feeling; and by way of preliminary he told the other about Stephanus’ resignation, adding, with a laugh:“I thought you had come to resign too, Mynheer Grobbelaar.”But the little man deprecated the possibility of any such idea having entered his head. It was a pity Stephanus had resigned, though. In answer to other questions—yes, there was some foolish talk among the Boers around him, but it was only talk, and they were young men. The Patriot? Oh, yes, he had visited some of them, but only on a flying visit. Held meetings? Oh, no—and here Swaart Jan’s hands went up in pious horror. What did Mynheer think of him, and those around him, to imagine that he, or they, would countenance such a thing for a single moment?Jelf felt intensely relieved. Here was loyalty at last, anyhow—another item for his report. And he and his visitor parted with the most cordial of farewells; and Field-cornet Jan Marthinus Grobbelaar,aliasSwaart Jan, went out grinning till his tusks nearly came below the level of his chin, as he thought of the cases of Mauser rifles snugly stored in a safe recess within his house, and the ammunition, a quantity sufficient to blow up half the mountain, which was stowed away in a cleft of an adjacent krantz, conveyed and deposited thither by authority of no permit given under the hand of Nicholas Andrew Jelf, Resident Magistrate.Here was loyalty at last, anyhow! as that astute official had put it to himself.
Nicholas Andrew Jelf was Civil Commissioner and Resident Magistrate for the town and division of Schalkburg.
In person he was a tall, middle-aged, rather good-looking man, with dark hair, and a grizzled, well-trimmed moustache, and whose general appearance fostered an idea which constituted one of his favourite weaknesses—that he resembled a retired military man. When mistaken for such openly, he positively beamed; and more than one shrewd rogue got the benefit of the doubt, or obtained material mitigation of the penalty due to his misdeeds, by appealing, with well-feigned ignorance, to the occupant of the Bench as “Colonel.” By disposition he was easy-going and good-natured enough, and bore the reputation among his brother Civil servants of being something of a duffer.
By these the magistracy of Schalkburg was regarded as anything but a plum. It was very remote, the district large, and peopled almost entirely by Dutch farmers. The town itself was a great many miles from the nearest railway station; moreover, it was a dull little hole, with the limited ideas and pettifogging interests common to up-country townships. It boasted a large Dutch Reformed church—an unsightly, whitewashed parallelogram with staring, weather-beaten windows—item about a dozen stores, a branch of the Standard Bank, and two “hotels,” designed to afford board and lodging, of a kind, to such of the storekeepers’ clerks or bank clerks—to whom means, or inclination or opportunity, denied the advantages and felicities of the connubial state, for a stranger was an exceeding rarity. Half of its houses were untenanted, save for a few days on the occasion of the quarterlyNachtmaal(The Lord’s Supper) when the township would be filled with a great multitude of Boers and their families from far and near, those who did not own or hire houses, camping with their waggons on the town commonage. But it boasted no natural beauty to speak of, just dumped down, as it were, on a wide, flat plain. Some few of the houses had anerfor two of garden ground attached, which in the spring constituted by contrast a pleasing spot of green amid the prevailing red dust, but for the rest the impression conveyed was that of a sun-baked, wind-swept, utterly depressing sort of place.
Nicholas Andrew Jelf was seated at his office table amid a pile of papers, and his countenance wore a very worried expression indeed. The post had just been delivered, and the contents of the bag had consisted of a greater crop than usual of Government circulars, eke requests for returns, as it seemed, upon every subject under heaven. Moreover, the newspapers, through which he had glanced hurriedly, were mainly remarkable for the number and conspicuousness of their scare headlines. Sensation was the order of the day, and out of the chances of a rupture with the two Republics the canny editor managed to suck no small advantage. But poor Mr Jelf could lay to himself no such consolation. His thoughts were for his already large and still increasing family, and the ruinous hole it would make in the by no means extravagant pay of a Civil servant were he obliged to send it away to a safer locality, as he greatly feared he ought to lose no time in doing.
He turned to his correspondence. The Government desired to be informed of this—or the member for Slaapdorp had moved for a return of that—or Civil Commissioners were requested to obtain the opinion of the leading farmers of their divisions as to how far rinderpest microbes were likely to affect donkeys, given certain conditions of temperature and climate... and nearly a dozen more of like practical utility. Mr Jelf threw down the papers with a grunt of disgust and swore mildly to himself.
“They seem to think a Civil Commissioner must be a whole damned walking ‘Encyclopaedia Britannica,’” he growled. “What’s this? More of the same stuff, I suppose.”
But, as he read, his attention became more riveted and his face anxious and graver. For the official communication, marked “Confidential,” was one urgently requesting information as to the tone and disposition of the Dutch farmers in his division as bearing upon the present state of affairs, and desiring a full and circumstantial report at the very earliest opportunity. The effect of this was to deepen the worried look upon his face and to cause him to swear a little more. Just then a tap came at the door, and his clerk entered.
“Anything by the post that wants seeing to, sir?”
“Anything? I should think so. Just look at all this, Morkel,” pointing to the heap of stuff upon the table.
Morkel did look at it—looked somewhat blue, moreover. He was fond of sport and had intended to ask for a day or two’s leave to join a buck hunt on one of the farms, and was fully capable of grasping the amount of work all that confounded correspondence was going to entail. He was a well-set-up, good-looking young fellow of five and twenty, very proud of his fair proportions and waxed moustache and somewhat dandified attire; for there were three or four passable-looking girls in Schalkburg, and the Civil Commissioner’s clerk was Somebody in the place.
“One would think, at such a time as this, Government would have plenty to do without off-loading all these insane circulars upon us,” went on his chief, irritably. “It isn’t as if the things they want to know were of any practical use—they might as well move for a return of the number of buttons on every prisoner’s breeches over at the gaol as some of the things they do ask, but we’ve got to humour them. By the way, though, there’s one thing they want to know that has a practical side, and that ought to be looked after by a special department manufactured for this emergency.Wehave quite enough to do without going on the stump, so to say. Look at this.”
He handed the letter marked “Confidential” to his subordinate. The latter read it through carefully, and as he did so he saw light. He thought he was going to get his shoot after all, and a good deal more of it than he had at first hoped for.
“The thing is so unreasonable,” went on Mr Jelf. “Every mortal fad sprung on the House by some tin-pot country member, some retired canteen-keeper and proportionately consequential, is off-loaded on the Civil Commissioner. The Civil Commissioner is requested to do this, and the Civil Commissioner is desired to supply information upon that—as if we hadn’t quite enough to do with our financial and judicial duties. Why the deuce can’t Government have its own Secret Service department as Oom Paul is supposed to have?”
Morkel listened sympathetically, as he always did when his chief indulged in a grumble. The two were on very good terms. Jelf had a liking for his subordinate, who officially was smart and well up to his work, and socially was the only man in the place with whom he could associate on even terms, except the District Surgeon, who was a trifle too fond of his glass, and inclined to be dictatorial. Morkel, for his part, reciprocated the liking. His chief was easy-going, and good-natured in the matter of leave officially, and socially took a sort of paternal and friendly interest in him. These two Civil servants, therefore, got on admirably together.
“Well, the thing has got to be done,” went on Jelf, “and the only way to find out Dutch feeling is to go around among the Dutch. I haven’t the time to do it, and if I had it wouldn’t help, because they’d all shut up like oysters before me. But with you it would be different, Morkel. They’d look upon you as one of themselves.” He little thought how hard he was stamping on the corns of his subordinate; the fact being that, although born of Dutch parentage on either side, Morkel’s weakness was to imagine himself thoroughly and intensely English. “You would have to affect Boer sympathies, though, and we know that under the present Ministry that doesn’t damage a Civil servant at headquarters, eh? What do you think of the idea?”
“It’s a first-rate one, sir. I might go around as if on a sort of wandering shoot.”
“Yes. Take your gun with you. That’ll give colour to the affair. You can have my trap and horses, only spare the springs all you can in going through some of those bad drifts. You’d better take a week of it. Harvey can do a lot of your work for you. He’s almost too good a man for a chief constable. You’d better get as far up into the Wildschutsberg part as you can; they say the Boers up that way are the worst—especially since that firebrand, Andries Botma, has been his rounds. Look up Kershaw too; they say the fellow is three parts Boer in his sympathies. You might be able to get something out of him.”
A knock at the door and the Court constable, being bidden to enter, announced that Mynheer Stephanus De la Rey wanted to see the Civil Commissioner.
“The very man,” exclaimed the latter. “You must get to his farm, Morkel. You’re sure to hear something there. Show him in, Hendrik.”
Stephanus entered, and as he did so Morkel went out, laden with the circulars that needed attention.
Left alone with the magistrate, Stephanus looked a trifle ill-at-ease. His frank geniality seemed to have left him as he replied to that official’s inquiries after his family and concerns wherewith the Boer is wont to preface any and every interview if on anything like friendly terms with his interlocutor. Then he came to the point. He wished to resign his field-cornetcy.
Jelf looked annoyed, and felt it too. What was the reason, he asked. A reliable, influential man like Stephanus was just the man for the office. He would be hard to replace. Would he not reconsider his decision?
But Stephanus was firm; the fact being that since he had become converted to the “patriot” cause he was too honest to continue holding a post under the British Government, honorary as such might be. He did not, however, desire to say as much to the Government representative before him.
But the latter saw through his constraint, and went straight to the root of the thing. He was irritated at the obstinacy, as he called it, of this Boer, and the latter, to his amazement and indignation, found himself being roundly lectured. The Civil Commissioner had heard reports of disaffection among some of the farmers—notably those in the Wildschutsberg district, but he had never expected to find among the disloyal a man so universally respected as the one before him, and much more to the same effect Stephanus, however, kept both his temper and his dignity.
If that was the way the representative of the Government regarded him, he replied, all the more reason why he should adhere to his original resolve, and resign the field-cornetcy in favour of somebody who would be more acceptable. Would Mynheer kindly receive his formal resignation?
Yes, Mynheer would, in that case. But the farewell greeting between the two was stiff and unfriendly.
Left alone, Jelf felt rather small. He had failed in judiciousness, in tact, and he knew it. He had rubbed his interviewer the wrong way, just at a time when it was essential to keep such a man well disposed and friendly. At any rate, here was one item for his report. If Stephanus De la Rey was disaffected, why, then, the whole of the Wildschutsberg district must be a hotbed of seething sedition.
Thus he expressed matters to his subordinate, as, Stephanus having departed, he called Morkel in to talk over their plan.
“He has all but come round, sir,” said the latter. “I talked him over a good deal, and his is one of the places I’m to go to. He won’t give way about the field-cornetcy, though.”
“Oh, well, we must find somebody else, I suppose. They are all rebels at heart, I believe, and he’s as great a rebel as any. Yes? Come in.”
Again the Court constable entered.
“Mynheer Grobbelaar wishes to see you, sir.”
“Grobbelaar? Is it Jan Grobbelaar?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Show him in. This is getting warm, Morkel. Another damned Field-cornet. I supposehewants to resign now.”
Swaart Jan entered, his projecting buck-teeth more prominent than ever in an oily grin, as he shook hands with the two officials. Jelf’s manner was short, and he wasted no time in preliminaries.
“Well, Mynheer Grobbelaar, and what can I do for you?”
“Nay, Mynheer, thank you. I have not called on business; just to make a little friendly visit.”
“Oh, not on business?” said the magistrate, greatly relieved in his own mind, yet wishing his visitor at the devil, bothering in like that during office hours. But he changed his mind when the Boer explained that he had been shooting a few springbuck lately, and he had brought in a little matter of a saddle and a couple of haunches, which Mrs Jelf might find good for roasting. It was from a young buck, and would eat well—he went on, in his shambling, diffident way.
Jelf thawed at once, and thanked his visitor. Here was another opportunity of getting at the state of Dutch feeling; and by way of preliminary he told the other about Stephanus’ resignation, adding, with a laugh:
“I thought you had come to resign too, Mynheer Grobbelaar.”
But the little man deprecated the possibility of any such idea having entered his head. It was a pity Stephanus had resigned, though. In answer to other questions—yes, there was some foolish talk among the Boers around him, but it was only talk, and they were young men. The Patriot? Oh, yes, he had visited some of them, but only on a flying visit. Held meetings? Oh, no—and here Swaart Jan’s hands went up in pious horror. What did Mynheer think of him, and those around him, to imagine that he, or they, would countenance such a thing for a single moment?
Jelf felt intensely relieved. Here was loyalty at last, anyhow—another item for his report. And he and his visitor parted with the most cordial of farewells; and Field-cornet Jan Marthinus Grobbelaar,aliasSwaart Jan, went out grinning till his tusks nearly came below the level of his chin, as he thought of the cases of Mauser rifles snugly stored in a safe recess within his house, and the ammunition, a quantity sufficient to blow up half the mountain, which was stowed away in a cleft of an adjacent krantz, conveyed and deposited thither by authority of no permit given under the hand of Nicholas Andrew Jelf, Resident Magistrate.
Here was loyalty at last, anyhow! as that astute official had put it to himself.