Chapter Three.His Honour the President.“We shall have to turn you into a prisoner of war, Colvin,” said Piet Plessis a week or so after the breaking out of hostilities. “And, as I feel sort of responsible for your safe custody, my orders to you as your custodian are to go over to the Grand, now, at once, and pack up your traps and bring them here. I’d have suggested it before, but everything was souit-makaar, and I didn’t know whether you might not have been wanting to go down-country again.”Whereby it is manifest that the inquiries we heard Piet promise to set afloat had turned out satisfactory, albeit their burden and the result he had characteristically kept to himself.“No. I don’t feel that way inclined, Piet,” answered Colvin. “I am a sort of cosmopolitan rover, without ties—except such as are here,” he added significantly. “Besides, it’s more interesting watching the row from behind your lines than from behind those of the other side. By the way, we are quite alone, just the two of us. What show do you think your crowd has got?”“What show?” said the other, after an instinctive glance on either side. “Look here, Colvin. You’re one of us now. If anybody who wasn’t had asked me that question I should have said: ‘It is all in the hands of Providence, and our cause is just.’ Now I say: ‘It is all within the potentialities of politics, and the potentialities of politics spell Uncertainty.’ What show? Every show. We shall see. But if you really are wanting to go down-country any time later, I dare say I could always get you through the lines.”“Oh, we’ll think of that later. I might feel inclined to go and see some of the fighting—”“What’s that? What might you feel inclined to do?” interrupted the voice of Aletta, who with Mrs Plessis had just come out on the backstoep, where the above conversation was taking place. “Colvin, I am astonished at you! See some of the fighting indeed! Do you think I shall let you?”She had locked her hands together round his arm, just resting her head against his shoulder, and stood facing the other two, with the prettiest air of possession. Piet Plessis spluttered:“Ho, ho! Colvin! A sort of cosmopolitan rover without ties; isn’t that what you were saying just now? Without ties? Ho, ho, ho!” And the jolly Dutchman shouted himself into a big fit of coughing.“He is one of us now, is he not, Piet?” went on the girl, a tender pride shining from her eyes. “Yet he talks about going to fight against us. Yes, you were saying that, Colvin. I heard you when we came out.”“Little termagant!” he rejoined lovingly, drawing one of the hands which was linked round his arm into his. “I wasn’t talking about fighting against anybody. I said I might go andseesome of the fighting. You may go and see a bull-fight, you know, but you needn’t necessarily be taking part in it. In fact, the performers on both sides would object, and that in the most practical manner, to your doing so. Now, I meant to go as a non-combatant. Sort of war-correspondent business.”“Well, we are not going to let you do anything of the sort,” answered Aletta decisively. “Are we, Piet? Why don’t you make a prisoner of war of him, then he can’t do as he pleases?”“‘He is one of us now,’” quoted Colvin, innocently. “I believe those were the words. How can ‘one of us’ be a prisoner of war?”Piet laughed at this deft turning of the tables.“Go away and get your traps, man,” he said, “then you’ll be all snug and fixed up here by lunch-time. Here’s the buggy,” as the sound of wheels came through from the front of the house. “I must get back to office. So long?”Every day some fresh news from the seat of war came flowing in—beginning with the capture of the armoured train at Kraaipan, historical as the first overt act of hostility, the investment of Kimberley and Mafeking, the reverse at Elandslaagte, and the death of the British general, and, later on, the arrival of a good many British prisoners. And over and above authenticated news, of course wild rumour was busy, magnifying this or that skirmish into a Boer victory, diminishing losses, and playing general skittles with most of the facts of the particular event reported, as is invariably the case on either side of the contested field. But what struck Colvin Kershaw after the first week of excitement was the calm, matter-of-fact way in which it was received by the crowd at large. News which would have thrown Cape Town or Durban into a perfect delirium, was treated in Pretoria as so much matter of course, and only to be expected.Day after day, he would watch the muster of burghers or the entraining of the guns, great and small, of the Staats Artillerie, and here again the sober, almost phlegmatic demeanour of the combatants was remarkable. Rough, weather-beaten, somewhat melancholy-looking men were these mounted burghers—many of them large and powerful of stature. They bestrode wiry, undersized nags—which bore besides their riders the frugal ration of biltong and biscuit, with which the Boer can get along for days. Slung round with well-filled bandolier, rifle on thigh, and mostly wearing weather-worn broad-brimmed hats—though some of the older ones were crowned with the white chimney-pot—they would muster in front of the Dutch Reformed church, and pace forth, singing perhaps a Dutch hymn or a snatch of the “Volkslied”—most of them smoking their pipes, tranquil, phlegmatic, as though they were all going home again. The hooraying and handshaking and handkerchief-waving and flag-wagging which would have accompanied a British combatant force under like circumstances, would be conspicuous by its absence.While watching such a muster, a man, who was standing among the spectators, turned at her voice and, lifting his hat, shook hands with Aletta. He was a tall gentlemanly-looking man, with a fair beard and moustache worn after the Vandyke cut, and was a Hollander with a Portuguese name. He, too, had been a high Government official.“I haven’t seen you for a long time, Dr Da Costa,” said Aletta. “I thought you had gone to the front.”“No. I am going very soon, though.” Then, following the direction of his glance, she introduced him to Colvin.“What do you think of our main line of defence?” he went on, speaking English with hardly an accent. “Those men have the most perfect faith in themselves and their cause.”“Yes, they look business-like,” replied Colvin, critically scanning the long string of mounted burghers as they filed past, most of them smoking their pipes, and chatting to each other in a placid undertone. “We had some of their kind in Matabeleland during the rising in ’96, and they were right good men.”“Ah! So you were out in the Matabele rebellion?” said Da Costa, looking at the other with newly-awakened interest.“Yes, had to be.”“I see. And are you, may I ask, likely to be out in this campaign?”“Not in the least, unless as a spectator. Here I am not needed—there I was:—which makes all the difference.”“If you are, I hope we may meet in the field. I shall be pleased to show you all you may be wishing to see to the best advantage.”“Now, Dr Da Costa, you are not to encourage him,” struck in Aletta. “Mr Kershaw is not going to be shot at at all. He is not needed, as he says, and—you are not to encourage him.”The other, who had heard of Piet Plessis’ attractive kinswoman and her Englishfiancé, smiled good-naturedly. Then, to change the conversation, he went on:“Did you make a long stay at Johannesburg, Mr Kershaw?”“At Johannesburg?” echoed Colvin.“Yes. Didn’t I see you in the Rand Club about a fortnight ago? And again on Pritchard Street. Someone told me it was a Mr Kershaw.”“Someone told you all wrong then, doctor, for I came right through Johannesburg. I never even got out of the train there.”“That’s odd,” said Da Costa, with a momentary twinkle in his eye, as though he didn’t believe a word of this statement. “It must have been only a likeness,” he added tactfully.“But the name,” went on Aletta, opening her eyes. “It’s strange they should have got hold of the name.”“Very, because, as I said, I didn’t so much as get out of the train, let alone take a stroll as far as Pritchard Street, let alone the Rand Club, which is farther,” said Colvin. “Well, we most of us have a ‘double’ somewhere.”Which was precisely the remark made by the jovial Piet, when the occurrence was narrated to him on their return home. But for once his official instinct of reticence, even in trifling matters, was misplaced, had he but known it. Had he imparted the results of those enquiries he had caused to be made, what a deal of sorrow, and mistrust, and heart-wringing might have been thereafter saved!“Is that man we met to-day going out with the ambulance department?” asked Colvin.“Who, Da Costa? Ambulance department?” echoed Piet, wonderingly. “Oh, I see,” with a shout of laughter. “No fear. He’s not a medico. He’s a lawyer—running hard for a judgeship. But I say, Colvin, would you like to go up and see the President this afternoon? I think we could get at the old man to-day.”“Just what I would like.”“And, Colvin,” struck in Aletta, “you are not to look upon Oom Paul as an old bear, as most English do. Remember, I have a great admiration for him.”Colvin promised to keep this fact in mind when forming his opinion, and in due course they arrived at the unpretentious-looking bungalow which was the private residence of one of the most famed personalities of modern times. As they went up between the stone lions which guarded, as it were, the entrance, they passed a German officer coming down the steps, a straight martial figure, with upward-pointing moustachesà laKaiser Wilhelm, and wearing the uniform of the Staats Artillerie. He exchanged a salute with Piet, and the latter halted and took him aside for a minute’s conversation.“That’s all right, Colvin,” he said, rejoining him, while with a parting salute the German strode on. “He has just come out. Says the old man is in a pretty good-humour.”The President was seated in a substantial armchair as they were shown in. He was likewise smoking a substantial pipe. This looked homely. As Piet introduced Colvin, His Honour did not rise, but merely extended a massive hand, uttering a single monosyllabic word of greeting.“Daag!”“Daag, Oom,” responded Colvin, as he shook the Presidential dexter, right heartily. His Honour, however, subsided into silence, during which Piet Plessis entertained him with a running comment on the lighter aspect of day-to-day events, ignoringthesituation of the hour.“Who is the Englishman?” said the old man at last, designating Colvin with a wave of his pipe-stem.Piet explained that he was engaged to be married to a near kinswoman of his who was staying with him. The Presidential features displayed some faint show of interest.“Your kinswoman!” he said. “Whose daughter is she?”“Stephanus De la Reys, Mynheer. He lives in the Cape Colony.”“De la Rey!Ja, that is a good name, De la Rey,” replied the President, nodding approvingly. “But—an Englishman!” Then, turning to Colvin, he said, still speaking in Dutch.“Can you talk our language?”“Ja, Oom,” came the hearty response. During the conversational nothings fired off so volubly by Piet Plessis, he had been studying this wonderful old man before him, and in the strong massive face could read the extraordinary and iron will-power which had made its owner the prominent figure in history that he was. Something of Aletta’s thoughts came into his mind, and he too was wondering whether, had this born leader of men thrown in his gigantic influence on the British side, he would not have met with greater appreciation, nay would not his very defects be held to be rugged virtues? Being thus immersed, he failed to observe a grim tightening of the mouth, as he uttered that hearty and, as he thought, deferential reply.“Have you been here before?” repeated his catechiser.“Ja, Oom,” replied Colvin. And then there was no mistaking the change which came over His Honour’s countenance. He flushed, and a heavy frown darkened his brows, as removing his pipe from his mouth, he rolled out in deep, chest notes, like the bark of an angry mastiff.“Is nie jou Oom nie. Ik is die Presidént!”(“I am not your uncle. I am the President.”)The tone went up on an ascending scale, ending loud and staccato. Colvin, for a moment dumfoundered, hastened to apologise, then with the utmost suavity of assurance proceeded to explain that he himself owned an uncle whom he deeply revered, and who bore a most extraordinary resemblance to “Mynheer Presidént.” Then, he deftly went on to inquire about His Honour’s earlier experiences in the oldVoortrekkerdays, expressing boundless admiration for those wonderful pioneers, and as he was really well up in their history, the old man, quite mollified, was soon descanting with unusual volubility on the subject of his early doings. Mean while coffee was brought in, and, as soon after as he could, astute Piet Plessis, seeing the conversation was taking a turn likely to excite His Honour, took the opportunity of terminating the visit.“Look after him, Piet,” said the old man as he gave them his hand, and there was the nearest approach to a smile lurking about his mouth. “Look after him. He is an Englishman, but he is going to marry your cousin. See that he does not get into any mischief.”“Say, Piet?” said Colvin when they were well out in the street again, “I believe I put my foot in it some.”“Oh, rather!” answered the other, who could hardly speak for spluttering. “You’re not the only one, though, if the truth were known. You see it was all very well twenty years ago and all that to call him Oom Paul. But now the old man is rather sick of it. Only think, every dirty little Jew ‘winkler’ calling him ‘Oom.’ Besides, he’s a much bigger man now and likes to be treated with a certain amount of state.”But not until he got safely home could Piet give full vent to his mirth, and then he literally laughed till he cried.“You should have seen him, Anna,” he spluttered between his tears. “Oh, Aletta, you should have heard him. Telling theOu’ Baas, so sweetly too, that he reminded him of an uncle of his whom he deeply revered. Oh, oh, you should have been there! I simply didn’t dare look up. I should have disgraced myself for ever if I had.”“Well, it had its effect,” protested Colvin, who was laughing over the recollection almost as hard as Piet. “It smoothed his feathers at once.”“Really? No, really did it?” cried Aletta, who for her part had gone off into rippling peals.“Rather, it did,” confirmed Piet. “Oh, oh, oh! ‘Is nie jou Oom nie. Ik is die Presidént!’ Oh, oh, oh! I shall choke directly.”And he very nearly did.
“We shall have to turn you into a prisoner of war, Colvin,” said Piet Plessis a week or so after the breaking out of hostilities. “And, as I feel sort of responsible for your safe custody, my orders to you as your custodian are to go over to the Grand, now, at once, and pack up your traps and bring them here. I’d have suggested it before, but everything was souit-makaar, and I didn’t know whether you might not have been wanting to go down-country again.”
Whereby it is manifest that the inquiries we heard Piet promise to set afloat had turned out satisfactory, albeit their burden and the result he had characteristically kept to himself.
“No. I don’t feel that way inclined, Piet,” answered Colvin. “I am a sort of cosmopolitan rover, without ties—except such as are here,” he added significantly. “Besides, it’s more interesting watching the row from behind your lines than from behind those of the other side. By the way, we are quite alone, just the two of us. What show do you think your crowd has got?”
“What show?” said the other, after an instinctive glance on either side. “Look here, Colvin. You’re one of us now. If anybody who wasn’t had asked me that question I should have said: ‘It is all in the hands of Providence, and our cause is just.’ Now I say: ‘It is all within the potentialities of politics, and the potentialities of politics spell Uncertainty.’ What show? Every show. We shall see. But if you really are wanting to go down-country any time later, I dare say I could always get you through the lines.”
“Oh, we’ll think of that later. I might feel inclined to go and see some of the fighting—”
“What’s that? What might you feel inclined to do?” interrupted the voice of Aletta, who with Mrs Plessis had just come out on the backstoep, where the above conversation was taking place. “Colvin, I am astonished at you! See some of the fighting indeed! Do you think I shall let you?”
She had locked her hands together round his arm, just resting her head against his shoulder, and stood facing the other two, with the prettiest air of possession. Piet Plessis spluttered:
“Ho, ho! Colvin! A sort of cosmopolitan rover without ties; isn’t that what you were saying just now? Without ties? Ho, ho, ho!” And the jolly Dutchman shouted himself into a big fit of coughing.
“He is one of us now, is he not, Piet?” went on the girl, a tender pride shining from her eyes. “Yet he talks about going to fight against us. Yes, you were saying that, Colvin. I heard you when we came out.”
“Little termagant!” he rejoined lovingly, drawing one of the hands which was linked round his arm into his. “I wasn’t talking about fighting against anybody. I said I might go andseesome of the fighting. You may go and see a bull-fight, you know, but you needn’t necessarily be taking part in it. In fact, the performers on both sides would object, and that in the most practical manner, to your doing so. Now, I meant to go as a non-combatant. Sort of war-correspondent business.”
“Well, we are not going to let you do anything of the sort,” answered Aletta decisively. “Are we, Piet? Why don’t you make a prisoner of war of him, then he can’t do as he pleases?”
“‘He is one of us now,’” quoted Colvin, innocently. “I believe those were the words. How can ‘one of us’ be a prisoner of war?”
Piet laughed at this deft turning of the tables.
“Go away and get your traps, man,” he said, “then you’ll be all snug and fixed up here by lunch-time. Here’s the buggy,” as the sound of wheels came through from the front of the house. “I must get back to office. So long?”
Every day some fresh news from the seat of war came flowing in—beginning with the capture of the armoured train at Kraaipan, historical as the first overt act of hostility, the investment of Kimberley and Mafeking, the reverse at Elandslaagte, and the death of the British general, and, later on, the arrival of a good many British prisoners. And over and above authenticated news, of course wild rumour was busy, magnifying this or that skirmish into a Boer victory, diminishing losses, and playing general skittles with most of the facts of the particular event reported, as is invariably the case on either side of the contested field. But what struck Colvin Kershaw after the first week of excitement was the calm, matter-of-fact way in which it was received by the crowd at large. News which would have thrown Cape Town or Durban into a perfect delirium, was treated in Pretoria as so much matter of course, and only to be expected.
Day after day, he would watch the muster of burghers or the entraining of the guns, great and small, of the Staats Artillerie, and here again the sober, almost phlegmatic demeanour of the combatants was remarkable. Rough, weather-beaten, somewhat melancholy-looking men were these mounted burghers—many of them large and powerful of stature. They bestrode wiry, undersized nags—which bore besides their riders the frugal ration of biltong and biscuit, with which the Boer can get along for days. Slung round with well-filled bandolier, rifle on thigh, and mostly wearing weather-worn broad-brimmed hats—though some of the older ones were crowned with the white chimney-pot—they would muster in front of the Dutch Reformed church, and pace forth, singing perhaps a Dutch hymn or a snatch of the “Volkslied”—most of them smoking their pipes, tranquil, phlegmatic, as though they were all going home again. The hooraying and handshaking and handkerchief-waving and flag-wagging which would have accompanied a British combatant force under like circumstances, would be conspicuous by its absence.
While watching such a muster, a man, who was standing among the spectators, turned at her voice and, lifting his hat, shook hands with Aletta. He was a tall gentlemanly-looking man, with a fair beard and moustache worn after the Vandyke cut, and was a Hollander with a Portuguese name. He, too, had been a high Government official.
“I haven’t seen you for a long time, Dr Da Costa,” said Aletta. “I thought you had gone to the front.”
“No. I am going very soon, though.” Then, following the direction of his glance, she introduced him to Colvin.
“What do you think of our main line of defence?” he went on, speaking English with hardly an accent. “Those men have the most perfect faith in themselves and their cause.”
“Yes, they look business-like,” replied Colvin, critically scanning the long string of mounted burghers as they filed past, most of them smoking their pipes, and chatting to each other in a placid undertone. “We had some of their kind in Matabeleland during the rising in ’96, and they were right good men.”
“Ah! So you were out in the Matabele rebellion?” said Da Costa, looking at the other with newly-awakened interest.
“Yes, had to be.”
“I see. And are you, may I ask, likely to be out in this campaign?”
“Not in the least, unless as a spectator. Here I am not needed—there I was:—which makes all the difference.”
“If you are, I hope we may meet in the field. I shall be pleased to show you all you may be wishing to see to the best advantage.”
“Now, Dr Da Costa, you are not to encourage him,” struck in Aletta. “Mr Kershaw is not going to be shot at at all. He is not needed, as he says, and—you are not to encourage him.”
The other, who had heard of Piet Plessis’ attractive kinswoman and her Englishfiancé, smiled good-naturedly. Then, to change the conversation, he went on:
“Did you make a long stay at Johannesburg, Mr Kershaw?”
“At Johannesburg?” echoed Colvin.
“Yes. Didn’t I see you in the Rand Club about a fortnight ago? And again on Pritchard Street. Someone told me it was a Mr Kershaw.”
“Someone told you all wrong then, doctor, for I came right through Johannesburg. I never even got out of the train there.”
“That’s odd,” said Da Costa, with a momentary twinkle in his eye, as though he didn’t believe a word of this statement. “It must have been only a likeness,” he added tactfully.
“But the name,” went on Aletta, opening her eyes. “It’s strange they should have got hold of the name.”
“Very, because, as I said, I didn’t so much as get out of the train, let alone take a stroll as far as Pritchard Street, let alone the Rand Club, which is farther,” said Colvin. “Well, we most of us have a ‘double’ somewhere.”
Which was precisely the remark made by the jovial Piet, when the occurrence was narrated to him on their return home. But for once his official instinct of reticence, even in trifling matters, was misplaced, had he but known it. Had he imparted the results of those enquiries he had caused to be made, what a deal of sorrow, and mistrust, and heart-wringing might have been thereafter saved!
“Is that man we met to-day going out with the ambulance department?” asked Colvin.
“Who, Da Costa? Ambulance department?” echoed Piet, wonderingly. “Oh, I see,” with a shout of laughter. “No fear. He’s not a medico. He’s a lawyer—running hard for a judgeship. But I say, Colvin, would you like to go up and see the President this afternoon? I think we could get at the old man to-day.”
“Just what I would like.”
“And, Colvin,” struck in Aletta, “you are not to look upon Oom Paul as an old bear, as most English do. Remember, I have a great admiration for him.”
Colvin promised to keep this fact in mind when forming his opinion, and in due course they arrived at the unpretentious-looking bungalow which was the private residence of one of the most famed personalities of modern times. As they went up between the stone lions which guarded, as it were, the entrance, they passed a German officer coming down the steps, a straight martial figure, with upward-pointing moustachesà laKaiser Wilhelm, and wearing the uniform of the Staats Artillerie. He exchanged a salute with Piet, and the latter halted and took him aside for a minute’s conversation.
“That’s all right, Colvin,” he said, rejoining him, while with a parting salute the German strode on. “He has just come out. Says the old man is in a pretty good-humour.”
The President was seated in a substantial armchair as they were shown in. He was likewise smoking a substantial pipe. This looked homely. As Piet introduced Colvin, His Honour did not rise, but merely extended a massive hand, uttering a single monosyllabic word of greeting.
“Daag!”
“Daag, Oom,” responded Colvin, as he shook the Presidential dexter, right heartily. His Honour, however, subsided into silence, during which Piet Plessis entertained him with a running comment on the lighter aspect of day-to-day events, ignoringthesituation of the hour.
“Who is the Englishman?” said the old man at last, designating Colvin with a wave of his pipe-stem.
Piet explained that he was engaged to be married to a near kinswoman of his who was staying with him. The Presidential features displayed some faint show of interest.
“Your kinswoman!” he said. “Whose daughter is she?”
“Stephanus De la Reys, Mynheer. He lives in the Cape Colony.”
“De la Rey!Ja, that is a good name, De la Rey,” replied the President, nodding approvingly. “But—an Englishman!” Then, turning to Colvin, he said, still speaking in Dutch.
“Can you talk our language?”
“Ja, Oom,” came the hearty response. During the conversational nothings fired off so volubly by Piet Plessis, he had been studying this wonderful old man before him, and in the strong massive face could read the extraordinary and iron will-power which had made its owner the prominent figure in history that he was. Something of Aletta’s thoughts came into his mind, and he too was wondering whether, had this born leader of men thrown in his gigantic influence on the British side, he would not have met with greater appreciation, nay would not his very defects be held to be rugged virtues? Being thus immersed, he failed to observe a grim tightening of the mouth, as he uttered that hearty and, as he thought, deferential reply.
“Have you been here before?” repeated his catechiser.
“Ja, Oom,” replied Colvin. And then there was no mistaking the change which came over His Honour’s countenance. He flushed, and a heavy frown darkened his brows, as removing his pipe from his mouth, he rolled out in deep, chest notes, like the bark of an angry mastiff.
“Is nie jou Oom nie. Ik is die Presidént!”
(“I am not your uncle. I am the President.”)
The tone went up on an ascending scale, ending loud and staccato. Colvin, for a moment dumfoundered, hastened to apologise, then with the utmost suavity of assurance proceeded to explain that he himself owned an uncle whom he deeply revered, and who bore a most extraordinary resemblance to “Mynheer Presidént.” Then, he deftly went on to inquire about His Honour’s earlier experiences in the oldVoortrekkerdays, expressing boundless admiration for those wonderful pioneers, and as he was really well up in their history, the old man, quite mollified, was soon descanting with unusual volubility on the subject of his early doings. Mean while coffee was brought in, and, as soon after as he could, astute Piet Plessis, seeing the conversation was taking a turn likely to excite His Honour, took the opportunity of terminating the visit.
“Look after him, Piet,” said the old man as he gave them his hand, and there was the nearest approach to a smile lurking about his mouth. “Look after him. He is an Englishman, but he is going to marry your cousin. See that he does not get into any mischief.”
“Say, Piet?” said Colvin when they were well out in the street again, “I believe I put my foot in it some.”
“Oh, rather!” answered the other, who could hardly speak for spluttering. “You’re not the only one, though, if the truth were known. You see it was all very well twenty years ago and all that to call him Oom Paul. But now the old man is rather sick of it. Only think, every dirty little Jew ‘winkler’ calling him ‘Oom.’ Besides, he’s a much bigger man now and likes to be treated with a certain amount of state.”
But not until he got safely home could Piet give full vent to his mirth, and then he literally laughed till he cried.
“You should have seen him, Anna,” he spluttered between his tears. “Oh, Aletta, you should have heard him. Telling theOu’ Baas, so sweetly too, that he reminded him of an uncle of his whom he deeply revered. Oh, oh, you should have been there! I simply didn’t dare look up. I should have disgraced myself for ever if I had.”
“Well, it had its effect,” protested Colvin, who was laughing over the recollection almost as hard as Piet. “It smoothed his feathers at once.”
“Really? No, really did it?” cried Aletta, who for her part had gone off into rippling peals.
“Rather, it did,” confirmed Piet. “Oh, oh, oh! ‘Is nie jou Oom nie. Ik is die Presidént!’ Oh, oh, oh! I shall choke directly.”
And he very nearly did.
Chapter Four.That other Kershaw.Since that strange chance meeting on the platform at Park Station, life seemed much brighter for May Wenlock.She had come up there in a fit of the dolefullest dumps, as she herself put it, and in fact those with whom she sojourned hardly recognised her for the blithe, light-hearted girl she had been the year before. They even tentatively rallied her, but she brusquely disclaimed any reason other than that she was utterly and entirely sick of the farm, that its eternal monotony got upon her nerves, and a very little more of it would have driven her crazy. Yet she might about as well have stayed where she was, for the erewhile great whirling gold town was now as a city of the dead. All who could do so had cleared out—tumbling over each other’s heels in their eagerness to get away—as we have seen.Of all the war-talk and excitement she was heartily sick. There was nothing to take her out of herself, no fun, no gaiety, no life; the streets, lines upon lines of abandoned houses and shuttered-up shops. It was as a city ravaged by pestilence from end to end.James Dixon, her relative’s husband, was a broker, and had been a contractor. He had been regarded of late with somewhat of a suspicious eye—by his own countrymen that is—and dark hints were not wanting to the effect that he stood in too well with the Government, as against British interests. In what particular way he did so was never formulated, but it was sufficient in those days to hint. Anyway he remained on, serene and untroubled, what time others had fled. This, of course, to the minds of the hinters, confirmed every suspicion.May had never been particularly fond of these people, although she had got on with them well enough. But then there had been plenty of outside life and diversion. Now that she was thrown upon them almost entirely, she wondered how she could ever have found Mary Dixon other than the tiresome woman she was—without an idea outside her brood, the four units composing which were always noisy and quarrelsome, never too clean, and generally and all-round ill behaved. She had come up to Johannesburg just before the crisis had reached a climax—and now, there she was and there she must stay.Of course there was that beneath herennuiand restlessness which she did not impart to her relatives. In her hours of solitude—and these were too many for one of her age and temperament and abundant attractions—there always arose in her mind a vivid recollection of what she had felt on hearing of Colvin Kershaw’s engagement. It was not so entirely unexpected, for her jealous misgivings had been gnawing into and corroding her mind for some time past. Yet, when it came, the shock had been hardly the less acute. He had treated her shamefully—she declared to herself—yes, wickedly, cruelly, abominably. Why had he made her care for him, only to—do as he had done? If only she could make him suffer for it—but—how could she? Wild, revengeful plans scorched through her brain—among them that of revealing everything to Aletta. Then the ugly Dutch girl could have the reversion of his kisses and soft words. But the only consideration that kept her from this was a conviction that such a course would not weigh with Aletta, would defeat its own object, and turn herself into a laughing stock. It certainly would if Aletta loved him as she herself had done—and how could Aletta do otherwise? thought poor May to herself with a sob, and a filling of the eyes like a rain shower breaking upon a stormy sunset. She hated him now, she told herself again and again. But—did she? That sob would often repeat itself to give the lie to the illusion.She had not seen him since hearing the—to her—baleful news; but this, to do him justice, was not his fault. He had come over to Spring Holt to bid them good-bye before leaving for the Transvaal, but she had not appeared—pleading a headache which was not all pretence—the fact being that she dared not trust herself. But of late an intense longing had been upon her to behold him once more, and when her glance had lighted upon him at the railway station among the crowd, she forgot everything in the joy of the moment. And—it was not he after all.Even then somehow her disappointment was less keen than she could have thought possible. Could it be that the other was so exactly his counterpart that at times, even subsequent to their first acquaintance, she could hardly believe it was not Colvin himself, for some motive of his own, playing a part?For their first acquaintance had grown and ripened. Kenneth Kershaw had lost no time in calling, in fact he had a slight acquaintance with Jim Dixon already, and as time went on his visits became more and more frequent till they were almost daily. Whereupon Jim Dixon began to rally his very attractive young kinswoman.This, at first, annoyed the latter. He was not a refined man, and his jests were on his own level. More than once he fired them off on the object of them personally, and Kenneth had looked much as Colvin would have looked under the circumstances. Then May had affected to take them in good part, with an eye to information. Who was this Mr Kershaw, she asked, and what was he doing up there? But Jim Dixon’s reply was vague. He had been there some two years, he believed, but he must have been longer in the country, because he could talk Dutch quite well. What was his business? Nobody knew. He was one of those customers who didn’t give themselves away. Like a good many more up there he had got along sort of “scratch”; but it was said he had made a tidyish bit in the boom, end of last year. But he was a tip-top swell, any one could see that. “Nothing like capturing one of these English swells, May,” concluded Jim, with a knowing wink. “Make hay while the sun shines.” And we dare not swear that the aspirate in that fragrant foodstuff for the equine race was over distinctly sounded.Kenneth, for his part, was genuinely attracted by the girl. Her relatives he at once set down in his own mind as unmitigated outsiders, but there was the making of something good about May herself. Times, too, were desperately dull. He hardly knew why he had elected to remain in the Transvaal, except on the principle of “sitting on the fence.” It was by no means certain that Oom Paul would not remain cock of the walk, in which eventuality he thought he saw the road to some valuable pickings. And now this girl had come into his way to brighten it. And she did brighten it.She was so natural, so transparent. He could turn her mind inside out any moment he chose. He had very quickly, and with hardly a question, discovered theraison d’êtreof her partiality for himself, the pleasure she had seemed to take in being with him. She had talked about Colvin, then, when designedly, he had led the conversation to some other subject, she had always brought it back to Colvin, in a lingering wistful way that told its own tale over and over again. But this, too, had ceased, and she gradually talked less and less of Colvin, and seemed to listen with increased interest to Colvin’s facsimile.“There’s where I score,” said Kenneth to himself, “and I am going to work the circumstance for all it is worth.”This working of the circumstance was to be a means to an end, and that end was that he meant to marry May Wenlock.Why did he? She was not quite of his class. He had seen her surroundings, as represented immediately, at any rate, and they had revolted him. Well, he could raise her above her surroundings, besides the very fact of her coming of the stock she did was not without its advantages. She would be all the more fitted to bear her part in the adventure he was planning: would have no superfine scruples or misgivings as to accepting the splendid—the really dazzling destiny he had mapped out for her—to share with him. She, in a measure, had supplied the key to the opening of that golden possibility of the future, had brought it within really tangible reach, therefore she should share it. And this possibility, this adventure, was worth staking all for—even life itself. It needed boldness, judgment, utter unscrupulousness, and he possessed all three. It was vast—it was magnificent.And then the beauty of the girl appealed powerfully to his physical nature. Those sea-blue velvety eyes, those waves of hair in rippling heavy gold, those full red lips, the smooth skin, a mixture of sun-kiss and the healthy flush of blood underneath, the firm rounded figure—that should all be his, he would think when alone with his own reflections in a perfect whirl of passion, after one of those long interviews or walks with May that had now become so frequent, and to himself so amazingly sweet. Yet towards her he was ever careful to veil any indication of feeling. Colvin himself could hardly have been more utterly indifferent so far as all outward manifestations were concerned.One day, however, he slipped. They had been out together and May had been more than ordinarily sweet and winning. It was dusk, and he was bidding her farewell within her temporary home. They had the house to themselves, moreover, save for the native boy in the kitchen. The others were out somewhere. It seemed to him that in the face looking up into his the lips were raised temptingly. His blood was in a whirl. In a moment she was in his embrace, and he kissed them full and passionately.He was hardly prepared for what followed. She wrenched herself from him with a sinuous strength for which he would scarcely have given her credit.“Why did you do that?” she blazed forth, and he could see that her face grew white and quivering as she confronted him in the dusk. “Why did you? Heavens! are all men alike that they think a girl is only made to be their plaything? I hate them. Yes, I hate them all.”The fierce bitterness of her tone was so incisive, so genuine, that most men under the circumstances would have felt extremely foolish, and looked correspondingly abject. Into Kenneth Kershaw’s very heart her words seemed to cut like so many whip lashes. By a mighty effort he restrained himself from pleading provocation, feeling, any mitigation whatever; which would have been the worst line he could possibly have taken. Instead he adopted a kind of quietly resigned tone, with just a touch of the dignified; apologetic, yet without a trace of abjectness—which was the best.“May, dear, forgive me,” he said. “I was not thinking, I suppose. Have I offended you beyond recall? Well, I must pay the penalty; for of course you are going to tell me you never want to set eyes on me again.”He knew how to play his cards. Even then his words seemed to open a dreadful blank before her mind’s eye. Not to set eyes on him again? He seemed to mean it, too. That air of sad self-composure with which he had spoken them disarmed her, and her anger melted.“No, no, I don’t mean that,” she answered, slowly, in a dazed kind of manner. “But why did you do it? We were such friends before.”“And are we not to be again?” is the reply that would have arisen to most men’s lips. But this one knew when to let well alone.“Forget it, May,” he said. “Believe me, I never wanted to offend you. And don’t think hard things of me when I am away, will you? Good-bye.”“No, no. But you had better go now. Good-bye.”Her tone was flurried, with an admixture of distress. It was just the time not to answer. He went out, and as he walked away from the house, he felt not ill-satisfied with himself and his doings in spite of his very decided repulse. As touching this last some men might have felt rather small. Not so this one. A subtle, unerring instinct told him that he had come out with all the honours of war.“It is only the first step,” he said to himself. “You were frightened at first, my darling, but the time will come, and that sooner than you think, when you shall kiss me back again, and that with all the sweet ardour and passion wherewith I shall kiss you.”Then a very blank thought took hold upon his mind. What if all the sympathy he had created in her was reflex—if whatever feeling she had for him or would come to have was due solely to his complete likeness to that other? Why the mere sight of Colvin, a chance glimpse in some public place such as when they two had first met, might shatter his own carefully calculated chances. It was a horrid thought—that at any moment that unpalatable relative of his might appear and spoil everything.Not everything, at any rate. The greater scheme, apart from the incidental one of love, would always remain untouched. Colvin, he had already discovered, was in Pretoria. So far he was within the toils, or at any rate within appreciable distance of so being.“It will make the working out of it so much the easier,” he said to himself. “Great God alive! why should Colvin have all the good things of earth? And the ungrateful dog isn’t capable of appreciating them either. Well, well, thanks to this benevolent war, his luck is now on the turn, while mine— Oh, damn!”The last aloud. A big powerful native, armed with a heavy stick, swinging along the sidewalk at a run, utterly regardless of the bye-law which rendered him liable to the gaoler’s lash for being on the sidewalk at all, had cannoned right against him. Quick as thought, and yielding to the natural ire of the moment, Kenneth shot out his right fist, landing the native well on the ear with a force that sent him staggering. Recovering his balance, however, the fellow turned and attacked him savagely. At the same time, two others who seemed to spring out of nowhere—also armed with sticks—came at him from the other side, uttering a ferocious hiss through the closed teeth.Save for a walking-stick Kenneth was unarmed. In the existing state of affairs the road was utterly lonely, and the odds against him were three to one, three wiry desperate savages, armed with clubs, which they well understood how to use. Instinctively once more he let out, and landed another, this time between wind and water, doubling him up in the road, a squirming kicking shape. The remaining pair sprang back a step or two with knobsticks raised, ready to rush him both at once, when—suddenly both took to their heels.The cause of this welcome diversion took the form of a horseman. He was armed with rifle and revolver, and had a full bandolier of cartridges over his shoulder. As he stepped out to meet him, Kenneth could see he was young, and well-looking. His first words showed that he was a Dutchman.“Wie’s jij?” he asked, sharply, as his horse started, and backed from the approaching figure. Then peering down, and catching sight of the face, he cried, in would-be jovial tones:“Maagtig, Colvin. You, is it? Ah, ah, I know where you have just come from. Ah, ah! You areslim!”
Since that strange chance meeting on the platform at Park Station, life seemed much brighter for May Wenlock.
She had come up there in a fit of the dolefullest dumps, as she herself put it, and in fact those with whom she sojourned hardly recognised her for the blithe, light-hearted girl she had been the year before. They even tentatively rallied her, but she brusquely disclaimed any reason other than that she was utterly and entirely sick of the farm, that its eternal monotony got upon her nerves, and a very little more of it would have driven her crazy. Yet she might about as well have stayed where she was, for the erewhile great whirling gold town was now as a city of the dead. All who could do so had cleared out—tumbling over each other’s heels in their eagerness to get away—as we have seen.
Of all the war-talk and excitement she was heartily sick. There was nothing to take her out of herself, no fun, no gaiety, no life; the streets, lines upon lines of abandoned houses and shuttered-up shops. It was as a city ravaged by pestilence from end to end.
James Dixon, her relative’s husband, was a broker, and had been a contractor. He had been regarded of late with somewhat of a suspicious eye—by his own countrymen that is—and dark hints were not wanting to the effect that he stood in too well with the Government, as against British interests. In what particular way he did so was never formulated, but it was sufficient in those days to hint. Anyway he remained on, serene and untroubled, what time others had fled. This, of course, to the minds of the hinters, confirmed every suspicion.
May had never been particularly fond of these people, although she had got on with them well enough. But then there had been plenty of outside life and diversion. Now that she was thrown upon them almost entirely, she wondered how she could ever have found Mary Dixon other than the tiresome woman she was—without an idea outside her brood, the four units composing which were always noisy and quarrelsome, never too clean, and generally and all-round ill behaved. She had come up to Johannesburg just before the crisis had reached a climax—and now, there she was and there she must stay.
Of course there was that beneath herennuiand restlessness which she did not impart to her relatives. In her hours of solitude—and these were too many for one of her age and temperament and abundant attractions—there always arose in her mind a vivid recollection of what she had felt on hearing of Colvin Kershaw’s engagement. It was not so entirely unexpected, for her jealous misgivings had been gnawing into and corroding her mind for some time past. Yet, when it came, the shock had been hardly the less acute. He had treated her shamefully—she declared to herself—yes, wickedly, cruelly, abominably. Why had he made her care for him, only to—do as he had done? If only she could make him suffer for it—but—how could she? Wild, revengeful plans scorched through her brain—among them that of revealing everything to Aletta. Then the ugly Dutch girl could have the reversion of his kisses and soft words. But the only consideration that kept her from this was a conviction that such a course would not weigh with Aletta, would defeat its own object, and turn herself into a laughing stock. It certainly would if Aletta loved him as she herself had done—and how could Aletta do otherwise? thought poor May to herself with a sob, and a filling of the eyes like a rain shower breaking upon a stormy sunset. She hated him now, she told herself again and again. But—did she? That sob would often repeat itself to give the lie to the illusion.
She had not seen him since hearing the—to her—baleful news; but this, to do him justice, was not his fault. He had come over to Spring Holt to bid them good-bye before leaving for the Transvaal, but she had not appeared—pleading a headache which was not all pretence—the fact being that she dared not trust herself. But of late an intense longing had been upon her to behold him once more, and when her glance had lighted upon him at the railway station among the crowd, she forgot everything in the joy of the moment. And—it was not he after all.
Even then somehow her disappointment was less keen than she could have thought possible. Could it be that the other was so exactly his counterpart that at times, even subsequent to their first acquaintance, she could hardly believe it was not Colvin himself, for some motive of his own, playing a part?
For their first acquaintance had grown and ripened. Kenneth Kershaw had lost no time in calling, in fact he had a slight acquaintance with Jim Dixon already, and as time went on his visits became more and more frequent till they were almost daily. Whereupon Jim Dixon began to rally his very attractive young kinswoman.
This, at first, annoyed the latter. He was not a refined man, and his jests were on his own level. More than once he fired them off on the object of them personally, and Kenneth had looked much as Colvin would have looked under the circumstances. Then May had affected to take them in good part, with an eye to information. Who was this Mr Kershaw, she asked, and what was he doing up there? But Jim Dixon’s reply was vague. He had been there some two years, he believed, but he must have been longer in the country, because he could talk Dutch quite well. What was his business? Nobody knew. He was one of those customers who didn’t give themselves away. Like a good many more up there he had got along sort of “scratch”; but it was said he had made a tidyish bit in the boom, end of last year. But he was a tip-top swell, any one could see that. “Nothing like capturing one of these English swells, May,” concluded Jim, with a knowing wink. “Make hay while the sun shines.” And we dare not swear that the aspirate in that fragrant foodstuff for the equine race was over distinctly sounded.
Kenneth, for his part, was genuinely attracted by the girl. Her relatives he at once set down in his own mind as unmitigated outsiders, but there was the making of something good about May herself. Times, too, were desperately dull. He hardly knew why he had elected to remain in the Transvaal, except on the principle of “sitting on the fence.” It was by no means certain that Oom Paul would not remain cock of the walk, in which eventuality he thought he saw the road to some valuable pickings. And now this girl had come into his way to brighten it. And she did brighten it.
She was so natural, so transparent. He could turn her mind inside out any moment he chose. He had very quickly, and with hardly a question, discovered theraison d’êtreof her partiality for himself, the pleasure she had seemed to take in being with him. She had talked about Colvin, then, when designedly, he had led the conversation to some other subject, she had always brought it back to Colvin, in a lingering wistful way that told its own tale over and over again. But this, too, had ceased, and she gradually talked less and less of Colvin, and seemed to listen with increased interest to Colvin’s facsimile.
“There’s where I score,” said Kenneth to himself, “and I am going to work the circumstance for all it is worth.”
This working of the circumstance was to be a means to an end, and that end was that he meant to marry May Wenlock.
Why did he? She was not quite of his class. He had seen her surroundings, as represented immediately, at any rate, and they had revolted him. Well, he could raise her above her surroundings, besides the very fact of her coming of the stock she did was not without its advantages. She would be all the more fitted to bear her part in the adventure he was planning: would have no superfine scruples or misgivings as to accepting the splendid—the really dazzling destiny he had mapped out for her—to share with him. She, in a measure, had supplied the key to the opening of that golden possibility of the future, had brought it within really tangible reach, therefore she should share it. And this possibility, this adventure, was worth staking all for—even life itself. It needed boldness, judgment, utter unscrupulousness, and he possessed all three. It was vast—it was magnificent.
And then the beauty of the girl appealed powerfully to his physical nature. Those sea-blue velvety eyes, those waves of hair in rippling heavy gold, those full red lips, the smooth skin, a mixture of sun-kiss and the healthy flush of blood underneath, the firm rounded figure—that should all be his, he would think when alone with his own reflections in a perfect whirl of passion, after one of those long interviews or walks with May that had now become so frequent, and to himself so amazingly sweet. Yet towards her he was ever careful to veil any indication of feeling. Colvin himself could hardly have been more utterly indifferent so far as all outward manifestations were concerned.
One day, however, he slipped. They had been out together and May had been more than ordinarily sweet and winning. It was dusk, and he was bidding her farewell within her temporary home. They had the house to themselves, moreover, save for the native boy in the kitchen. The others were out somewhere. It seemed to him that in the face looking up into his the lips were raised temptingly. His blood was in a whirl. In a moment she was in his embrace, and he kissed them full and passionately.
He was hardly prepared for what followed. She wrenched herself from him with a sinuous strength for which he would scarcely have given her credit.
“Why did you do that?” she blazed forth, and he could see that her face grew white and quivering as she confronted him in the dusk. “Why did you? Heavens! are all men alike that they think a girl is only made to be their plaything? I hate them. Yes, I hate them all.”
The fierce bitterness of her tone was so incisive, so genuine, that most men under the circumstances would have felt extremely foolish, and looked correspondingly abject. Into Kenneth Kershaw’s very heart her words seemed to cut like so many whip lashes. By a mighty effort he restrained himself from pleading provocation, feeling, any mitigation whatever; which would have been the worst line he could possibly have taken. Instead he adopted a kind of quietly resigned tone, with just a touch of the dignified; apologetic, yet without a trace of abjectness—which was the best.
“May, dear, forgive me,” he said. “I was not thinking, I suppose. Have I offended you beyond recall? Well, I must pay the penalty; for of course you are going to tell me you never want to set eyes on me again.”
He knew how to play his cards. Even then his words seemed to open a dreadful blank before her mind’s eye. Not to set eyes on him again? He seemed to mean it, too. That air of sad self-composure with which he had spoken them disarmed her, and her anger melted.
“No, no, I don’t mean that,” she answered, slowly, in a dazed kind of manner. “But why did you do it? We were such friends before.”
“And are we not to be again?” is the reply that would have arisen to most men’s lips. But this one knew when to let well alone.
“Forget it, May,” he said. “Believe me, I never wanted to offend you. And don’t think hard things of me when I am away, will you? Good-bye.”
“No, no. But you had better go now. Good-bye.”
Her tone was flurried, with an admixture of distress. It was just the time not to answer. He went out, and as he walked away from the house, he felt not ill-satisfied with himself and his doings in spite of his very decided repulse. As touching this last some men might have felt rather small. Not so this one. A subtle, unerring instinct told him that he had come out with all the honours of war.
“It is only the first step,” he said to himself. “You were frightened at first, my darling, but the time will come, and that sooner than you think, when you shall kiss me back again, and that with all the sweet ardour and passion wherewith I shall kiss you.”
Then a very blank thought took hold upon his mind. What if all the sympathy he had created in her was reflex—if whatever feeling she had for him or would come to have was due solely to his complete likeness to that other? Why the mere sight of Colvin, a chance glimpse in some public place such as when they two had first met, might shatter his own carefully calculated chances. It was a horrid thought—that at any moment that unpalatable relative of his might appear and spoil everything.
Not everything, at any rate. The greater scheme, apart from the incidental one of love, would always remain untouched. Colvin, he had already discovered, was in Pretoria. So far he was within the toils, or at any rate within appreciable distance of so being.
“It will make the working out of it so much the easier,” he said to himself. “Great God alive! why should Colvin have all the good things of earth? And the ungrateful dog isn’t capable of appreciating them either. Well, well, thanks to this benevolent war, his luck is now on the turn, while mine— Oh, damn!”
The last aloud. A big powerful native, armed with a heavy stick, swinging along the sidewalk at a run, utterly regardless of the bye-law which rendered him liable to the gaoler’s lash for being on the sidewalk at all, had cannoned right against him. Quick as thought, and yielding to the natural ire of the moment, Kenneth shot out his right fist, landing the native well on the ear with a force that sent him staggering. Recovering his balance, however, the fellow turned and attacked him savagely. At the same time, two others who seemed to spring out of nowhere—also armed with sticks—came at him from the other side, uttering a ferocious hiss through the closed teeth.
Save for a walking-stick Kenneth was unarmed. In the existing state of affairs the road was utterly lonely, and the odds against him were three to one, three wiry desperate savages, armed with clubs, which they well understood how to use. Instinctively once more he let out, and landed another, this time between wind and water, doubling him up in the road, a squirming kicking shape. The remaining pair sprang back a step or two with knobsticks raised, ready to rush him both at once, when—suddenly both took to their heels.
The cause of this welcome diversion took the form of a horseman. He was armed with rifle and revolver, and had a full bandolier of cartridges over his shoulder. As he stepped out to meet him, Kenneth could see he was young, and well-looking. His first words showed that he was a Dutchman.
“Wie’s jij?” he asked, sharply, as his horse started, and backed from the approaching figure. Then peering down, and catching sight of the face, he cried, in would-be jovial tones:
“Maagtig, Colvin. You, is it? Ah, ah, I know where you have just come from. Ah, ah! You areslim!”
Chapter Five.Something of a Plot.Kenneth Kershaw narrowly scanned the face of this very opportune new arrival, and decided that he didn’t know him from Adam. The other looked at him no less fixedly, and it was clear that he did not know him from Colvin.Colvin, again? What the deuce was the game now? But he decided to play up to therôle. He might get at something.“So you know where I have just come from, eh,ou’ maat?” he said. “Now where is that?”“Ah! ah! Miss Wenlock is a pretty girl, isn’t she?” rejoined the other meaningly. “Ja, Colvin, you are aslim kerel. Prettier girl than Aletta, isn’t she?”Aletta? That must be the Boer girl Colvin was supposed to be entangled with, decided Kenneth quickly. But what was her other name, and who the devil was this good-looking young Dutchman who talked English so well? Aletta’s brother possibly. He just replied “H’m,” which might have meant anything, and waited for the other to continue.“What will Aletta say when she knows?” went on the Boer, and his bantering tone, through which the smouldering glow of malice underlying it could not entirely be kept from showing, gave Kenneth his cue.“Say? Oh, but she need not know,” he answered with just a touch of well-simulated alarm.“Ha! ha! ha!” laughed the other. “Need not know? I think, friend Colvin, I have got you on toast, as you English say, for I shall take very good care she does know. The fact is I have been watching you for some time—from the time you met Miss Wenlock at Park Station right up till now, and I fancy Aletta won’t have very much more to say to you when she hears about it all.”“Oh, but look here,” went on Kenneth, still affecting alarm. “You’re not going to give the show away, old sportsman. Dash it all, it isn’t cricket!”“Not, eh? You just wait and see,” jeered the other. “Aha, you seem a bit scared out of your high and mighty English ‘side’ now. You chose to come between me and Aletta. We grew up together, and I always looked upon her as mine! She would have been but for you. Curse you! I could shoot you now as you stand there,” growled the Dutchman, fingering the breech of his rifle. “But I won’t, because I want to see Aletta turn away from you in scorn, as she will, directly. That will be a far greater punishment for you—a far better revenge for me.”“By Jove!” said Kenneth to himself. “There’s sultry weather sticking out for Colvin, anyhow.” This young Boer was evidently a discomfited rival—his own words let that be understood. Then, with lightning swiftness, two aspects of the situation flashed through his scheming brain. He could let the delusion which the other was under as to his identity continue, in which case Colvin would probably appeal to May herself to disprove his alleged visits. But then the two would be brought together again, and that was just what he did not want. Or he could frankly offer his aid to this Dutchman, who would certainly jump at any method, however unscrupulous, by which to discomfit his rival. Colvin would assuredly try reprisals, and in that case the probabilities were he would be shot by the Boers, which was just what he did want. It would end matters comfortably for all concerned. So he decided upon the latter plan.“See here, my friend,” he said, coolly. “All this time you have been holding on hard to the wrong end of the stick. My name is not Colvin.”“Not—not Colvin Kershaw?” ejaculated the Boer, open-mouthed.“No. Devil a bit is it!”“Now you are lying. There is only one Colvin Kershaw. There cannot be two!”“Quite right. But I am not that one. There may be other Kershaws, though. Eh! Try again.”“Are you his brother?” said the Boer, suspiciously.“Well, I am—er—a relative of his. Nor are you the only person who has taken me for him. The fact is, we are as like as two peas. I don’t wonder you have been obligingly giving me all your plans. No, don’t be afraid. I have no wish to upset them. On the contrary, I am going to offer you my help towards carrying them out.”It was time to make some such declaration. The Boer’s hand had been stealing towards his revolver holster, and his face was fell with a deadly meaning. It was almost dark, and the road lonely and deserted. Dead men tell no tales, and a dead Englishman found there in the morning would cause no concern whatever to the authorities.“What help can you give me, and why should you wish to?” he said dubiously, his ingrained suspicion forbidding him to trust the other overmuch.“It can bring about the very thing that would have happened had I been the real Colvin. For my motive—well, that is my business. I may or may not tell it you later, but somehow I think not.”“Do you hate him, then?” said the Dutchman, still suspiciously.“Not in the least. I am perfectly indifferent to him. But he stands in my way, and must get out of it. That is all.”“He must get out of my way, too,” said the other, with a dark scowl.“Quite so. And if I help you to get him out of your way, you will help me to get him out of mine?”“Can I trust you?”“Well, you’ve got to,” answered Kenneth cheerfully, for he saw that the other was nibbling around the bait. “Don’t be afraid, though. You won’t regret it; and now, excuse me, but I’ll be hanged if I know exactly who you are.”“My name is Adrian De la Rey,” replied the other. “And yours?”“Kenneth Kershaw. And now we know each other, there’s no need to stand talking out here where we may be overheard, so come along to my diggings, and we’ll find something to drink, and have the show to ourselves for weaving a plan of campaign. Say though, it was a fortunate thing you happened up when you did. Those niggers were one too many for me.”Kenneth’s quarters were not very much further on, and were situated in the abode of a Polish Jew who had retired to the back premises. At sound of the voices and horse hoofs, this worthy put out his head, then at sight of the armed and mounted burgher, scurried back like a frightened rabbit into its burrow.“It’s all right, Svinsky,” called out Kenneth. “Roll up, man. Nobody’s going to eat you or commandeer you.”Thus reassured, the child of Israel came forth, bowing and cringing.“Goot evening, sairs. Let dot I shall take de Police chentleman’s ’orse. I haf a shtable und still some forage.”“Right,” said Kenneth. “After that, Svinsky, we want the house to ourselves. See that we are not interrupted.”“Ja, Mishter Kershaw. Dot shall be done.”Having thus disposed of his Hebraic landlord, Kenneth led the way inside and lit up. Then he got out the materials for a rough-and-ready cold supper, and some excellent “square-face,” with the apology that it was only “war-fare,” the point of which joke was lost on the Dutchman. The latter, however, after a couple of glasses began to grow more genial and less suspicious.“Maagtig!” he burst forth, eyeing his host. “I never thought one world could contain two people so exactly alike. Here in the light, the likeness is even more wonderful.”“Take a good look at me, De la Rey, and make sure. Now, is there nothing, no mark or anything, that distinguishes me from my—er—relative?”“Ja, now I do see something. You have a scar, a very slight one—still I see it—just in front of the parting of your hair. Colvin has not got that. But the colouring, the voice—everything.Maagtig! it is wonderful.”Over the meal they began to arrange their plans. Then they lit their pipes and talked on, far into the night, arranging details.“You know the young lady, Adrian, and I don’t,” said Kenneth at last. “If she believes your statement, we needn’t go any further. If she doesn’t, or doesn’t want to, we must give her the most convincing evidence of all—ocular evidence. There will be no going behind that, I fancy.”“Ja, that is a fine idea of yours, Kenneth”—under the influence of ‘square-face’ and a mutual plot these two had become quite fraternal. “A really fine idea. Aletta will never doubt the evidence of her own eye sight.”Just then, however, Aletta had something to think about on her own account, and a few days after the concocting of this delectable plot saw her seated in the back garden of Piet Plessis’ house, engaged in a serious discussion with herfiancé. For the latter had made up his mind to proceed to the seat of war, and had just been announcing the fact.Those long weeks spent at Pretoria had been very happy, very sweet. But the sheer restfulness of them had become a trifle enervating. News had kept coming in: news of the stirring events along the border. The flame had spread, and was still spreading. Kimberley was invested, so too was Mafeking, and Vryburg had fallen. Ladysmith was cut off from the outside world, and the burghers of the Republics had successfully carried their arms well into the Cape Colony. He could not sit still, through it all. He must, at any rate, see something of what was going on, and to that end had obtained special permission to join Cronje’s force as a non-combatant spectator.Not easily had this been obtained though. It had taken all Piet Plessis’ influence, backed up by that of Andries Botma, with whom Colvin had renewed acquaintance during his stay in the Transvaal. Further, he had to give the most solemn undertaking not to use his position in any way whatever for the benefit of his own countrymen.“Don’t you remember that first evening we met, Aletta?” he was saying. “You promised yourself to make a convert of me? Well, now I am interested in your side, I want to see how it fights.”“No, no, dearest I can’t spare you,” she replied, stroking the brown hand which lay in one of her long white ones, with the other. “Oh, and—what if I were to lose you?”“Leave me alone to take care of that. Life is too well worth having just now,” he rejoined. “And, as a non-combatant, the risk will be infinitesimal.”They were alone together. Piet and his wife were both out, and even if anybody called, here in this bosky garden retreat they would remain undisturbed.Would they, though? Even then both started, and looked up, as the tread of heavy footsteps coming down the garden path arrested their attention.“Oh, there you are, Aletta,” said a man’s voice. “The boy said he thought you were out here. How are you, Colvin?”“Why, it is Adrian!” she cried, colouring somewhat as she remembered under what circumstances he had last seen her alone. She was surprised and delighted, too, to notice that he spoke with all his old cordiality of tone, and was shaking hands with Colvin quite as he used to do at Ratels Hoek. He had got over it, then? That was sensible and manly of him, and, the interruption notwithstanding, she showed herself quite pleased at his visit.He sat down and chatted away freely enough, telling them about himself and his moves, also the latest news from the Wildschutsberg and Ratels Hoek; how all the Boers in that neighbourhood had risen, and under the leadership of Swaart Jan Grobbelaar had marched into Schalkburg and having made a prisoner of Mr Jelf had seized the Court-house over which now waved the Free State flag, and had set up a Free State man as Landdrost. Oom Stephanus? Well no, he had not joined openly, but his sympathies were all with them. He preferred to sit quietly at home attending to his farm.Her “patriotism” notwithstanding, Aletta could not but secretly rejoice at this intelligence: If things should go wrong for their side, her father at any rate would be safe. Then Adrian remarked carelessly:“By the way, Colvin, is Miss Wenlock staying at Johannesburg long?”“Didn’t even know she was there at all, Adrian.”“Didn’t even know! Why, man, you were having quite a long talk with her at Park Station the other day. Take care you don’t make Aletta jealous,” he added, with a genial laugh.“That’s very odd, considering I haven’t set eyes on her since I left the Wildschutsberg,” answered Colvin.“I must have a double somewhere, for another Johnnie declared he saw me in Johannesburg too. You remember, Aletta? That man Da Costa? But is May Wenlock staying in Johannesburg?”“Well, rather”—with a whimsical expression of countenance. “Now, look here, Colvin. I suppose you were not walking down Commissioner Street with her one day last week? She saw me, and bowed, but you didn’t see me. Well, you were better employed. But don’t make Aletta jealous.”The tone was so good-humouredly chaffing that it was impossible to take offence. Yet Colvin did not like it. As a matter of fact, he had been over at Johannesburg at the time just named. But he only replied:“I’ve never been in Commissioner Street, or in any other street in Johannesburg with May Wenlock in my life, Adrian, nor did I know she was even there. You must have seen double, man.”“Oh yes, I suppose I must,” answered Adrian in the same bantering tone, which, however, he contrived to make convey that he supposed nothing of the sort. And then they talked of other matters.The thing was perfectly clear. Colvin had simply scouted the other’s statement as impossible. Yet why should Aletta somehow feel a vague misgiving, as though the air had turned chill and the sun were not shining quite so brightly? Dr Da Costa’s remark, too, came back to her. Perish the thought! It was unworthy of her, and an affront to Colvin. Yet somehow the tiny verjuice drop had been instilled. And as Adrian talked on, apparently in high good-humour, she thought that after all his visit had not been quite a success.Did Adrian himself think so? We wonder.
Kenneth Kershaw narrowly scanned the face of this very opportune new arrival, and decided that he didn’t know him from Adam. The other looked at him no less fixedly, and it was clear that he did not know him from Colvin.
Colvin, again? What the deuce was the game now? But he decided to play up to therôle. He might get at something.
“So you know where I have just come from, eh,ou’ maat?” he said. “Now where is that?”
“Ah! ah! Miss Wenlock is a pretty girl, isn’t she?” rejoined the other meaningly. “Ja, Colvin, you are aslim kerel. Prettier girl than Aletta, isn’t she?”
Aletta? That must be the Boer girl Colvin was supposed to be entangled with, decided Kenneth quickly. But what was her other name, and who the devil was this good-looking young Dutchman who talked English so well? Aletta’s brother possibly. He just replied “H’m,” which might have meant anything, and waited for the other to continue.
“What will Aletta say when she knows?” went on the Boer, and his bantering tone, through which the smouldering glow of malice underlying it could not entirely be kept from showing, gave Kenneth his cue.
“Say? Oh, but she need not know,” he answered with just a touch of well-simulated alarm.
“Ha! ha! ha!” laughed the other. “Need not know? I think, friend Colvin, I have got you on toast, as you English say, for I shall take very good care she does know. The fact is I have been watching you for some time—from the time you met Miss Wenlock at Park Station right up till now, and I fancy Aletta won’t have very much more to say to you when she hears about it all.”
“Oh, but look here,” went on Kenneth, still affecting alarm. “You’re not going to give the show away, old sportsman. Dash it all, it isn’t cricket!”
“Not, eh? You just wait and see,” jeered the other. “Aha, you seem a bit scared out of your high and mighty English ‘side’ now. You chose to come between me and Aletta. We grew up together, and I always looked upon her as mine! She would have been but for you. Curse you! I could shoot you now as you stand there,” growled the Dutchman, fingering the breech of his rifle. “But I won’t, because I want to see Aletta turn away from you in scorn, as she will, directly. That will be a far greater punishment for you—a far better revenge for me.”
“By Jove!” said Kenneth to himself. “There’s sultry weather sticking out for Colvin, anyhow.” This young Boer was evidently a discomfited rival—his own words let that be understood. Then, with lightning swiftness, two aspects of the situation flashed through his scheming brain. He could let the delusion which the other was under as to his identity continue, in which case Colvin would probably appeal to May herself to disprove his alleged visits. But then the two would be brought together again, and that was just what he did not want. Or he could frankly offer his aid to this Dutchman, who would certainly jump at any method, however unscrupulous, by which to discomfit his rival. Colvin would assuredly try reprisals, and in that case the probabilities were he would be shot by the Boers, which was just what he did want. It would end matters comfortably for all concerned. So he decided upon the latter plan.
“See here, my friend,” he said, coolly. “All this time you have been holding on hard to the wrong end of the stick. My name is not Colvin.”
“Not—not Colvin Kershaw?” ejaculated the Boer, open-mouthed.
“No. Devil a bit is it!”
“Now you are lying. There is only one Colvin Kershaw. There cannot be two!”
“Quite right. But I am not that one. There may be other Kershaws, though. Eh! Try again.”
“Are you his brother?” said the Boer, suspiciously.
“Well, I am—er—a relative of his. Nor are you the only person who has taken me for him. The fact is, we are as like as two peas. I don’t wonder you have been obligingly giving me all your plans. No, don’t be afraid. I have no wish to upset them. On the contrary, I am going to offer you my help towards carrying them out.”
It was time to make some such declaration. The Boer’s hand had been stealing towards his revolver holster, and his face was fell with a deadly meaning. It was almost dark, and the road lonely and deserted. Dead men tell no tales, and a dead Englishman found there in the morning would cause no concern whatever to the authorities.
“What help can you give me, and why should you wish to?” he said dubiously, his ingrained suspicion forbidding him to trust the other overmuch.
“It can bring about the very thing that would have happened had I been the real Colvin. For my motive—well, that is my business. I may or may not tell it you later, but somehow I think not.”
“Do you hate him, then?” said the Dutchman, still suspiciously.
“Not in the least. I am perfectly indifferent to him. But he stands in my way, and must get out of it. That is all.”
“He must get out of my way, too,” said the other, with a dark scowl.
“Quite so. And if I help you to get him out of your way, you will help me to get him out of mine?”
“Can I trust you?”
“Well, you’ve got to,” answered Kenneth cheerfully, for he saw that the other was nibbling around the bait. “Don’t be afraid, though. You won’t regret it; and now, excuse me, but I’ll be hanged if I know exactly who you are.”
“My name is Adrian De la Rey,” replied the other. “And yours?”
“Kenneth Kershaw. And now we know each other, there’s no need to stand talking out here where we may be overheard, so come along to my diggings, and we’ll find something to drink, and have the show to ourselves for weaving a plan of campaign. Say though, it was a fortunate thing you happened up when you did. Those niggers were one too many for me.”
Kenneth’s quarters were not very much further on, and were situated in the abode of a Polish Jew who had retired to the back premises. At sound of the voices and horse hoofs, this worthy put out his head, then at sight of the armed and mounted burgher, scurried back like a frightened rabbit into its burrow.
“It’s all right, Svinsky,” called out Kenneth. “Roll up, man. Nobody’s going to eat you or commandeer you.”
Thus reassured, the child of Israel came forth, bowing and cringing.
“Goot evening, sairs. Let dot I shall take de Police chentleman’s ’orse. I haf a shtable und still some forage.”
“Right,” said Kenneth. “After that, Svinsky, we want the house to ourselves. See that we are not interrupted.”
“Ja, Mishter Kershaw. Dot shall be done.”
Having thus disposed of his Hebraic landlord, Kenneth led the way inside and lit up. Then he got out the materials for a rough-and-ready cold supper, and some excellent “square-face,” with the apology that it was only “war-fare,” the point of which joke was lost on the Dutchman. The latter, however, after a couple of glasses began to grow more genial and less suspicious.
“Maagtig!” he burst forth, eyeing his host. “I never thought one world could contain two people so exactly alike. Here in the light, the likeness is even more wonderful.”
“Take a good look at me, De la Rey, and make sure. Now, is there nothing, no mark or anything, that distinguishes me from my—er—relative?”
“Ja, now I do see something. You have a scar, a very slight one—still I see it—just in front of the parting of your hair. Colvin has not got that. But the colouring, the voice—everything.Maagtig! it is wonderful.”
Over the meal they began to arrange their plans. Then they lit their pipes and talked on, far into the night, arranging details.
“You know the young lady, Adrian, and I don’t,” said Kenneth at last. “If she believes your statement, we needn’t go any further. If she doesn’t, or doesn’t want to, we must give her the most convincing evidence of all—ocular evidence. There will be no going behind that, I fancy.”
“Ja, that is a fine idea of yours, Kenneth”—under the influence of ‘square-face’ and a mutual plot these two had become quite fraternal. “A really fine idea. Aletta will never doubt the evidence of her own eye sight.”
Just then, however, Aletta had something to think about on her own account, and a few days after the concocting of this delectable plot saw her seated in the back garden of Piet Plessis’ house, engaged in a serious discussion with herfiancé. For the latter had made up his mind to proceed to the seat of war, and had just been announcing the fact.
Those long weeks spent at Pretoria had been very happy, very sweet. But the sheer restfulness of them had become a trifle enervating. News had kept coming in: news of the stirring events along the border. The flame had spread, and was still spreading. Kimberley was invested, so too was Mafeking, and Vryburg had fallen. Ladysmith was cut off from the outside world, and the burghers of the Republics had successfully carried their arms well into the Cape Colony. He could not sit still, through it all. He must, at any rate, see something of what was going on, and to that end had obtained special permission to join Cronje’s force as a non-combatant spectator.
Not easily had this been obtained though. It had taken all Piet Plessis’ influence, backed up by that of Andries Botma, with whom Colvin had renewed acquaintance during his stay in the Transvaal. Further, he had to give the most solemn undertaking not to use his position in any way whatever for the benefit of his own countrymen.
“Don’t you remember that first evening we met, Aletta?” he was saying. “You promised yourself to make a convert of me? Well, now I am interested in your side, I want to see how it fights.”
“No, no, dearest I can’t spare you,” she replied, stroking the brown hand which lay in one of her long white ones, with the other. “Oh, and—what if I were to lose you?”
“Leave me alone to take care of that. Life is too well worth having just now,” he rejoined. “And, as a non-combatant, the risk will be infinitesimal.”
They were alone together. Piet and his wife were both out, and even if anybody called, here in this bosky garden retreat they would remain undisturbed.
Would they, though? Even then both started, and looked up, as the tread of heavy footsteps coming down the garden path arrested their attention.
“Oh, there you are, Aletta,” said a man’s voice. “The boy said he thought you were out here. How are you, Colvin?”
“Why, it is Adrian!” she cried, colouring somewhat as she remembered under what circumstances he had last seen her alone. She was surprised and delighted, too, to notice that he spoke with all his old cordiality of tone, and was shaking hands with Colvin quite as he used to do at Ratels Hoek. He had got over it, then? That was sensible and manly of him, and, the interruption notwithstanding, she showed herself quite pleased at his visit.
He sat down and chatted away freely enough, telling them about himself and his moves, also the latest news from the Wildschutsberg and Ratels Hoek; how all the Boers in that neighbourhood had risen, and under the leadership of Swaart Jan Grobbelaar had marched into Schalkburg and having made a prisoner of Mr Jelf had seized the Court-house over which now waved the Free State flag, and had set up a Free State man as Landdrost. Oom Stephanus? Well no, he had not joined openly, but his sympathies were all with them. He preferred to sit quietly at home attending to his farm.
Her “patriotism” notwithstanding, Aletta could not but secretly rejoice at this intelligence: If things should go wrong for their side, her father at any rate would be safe. Then Adrian remarked carelessly:
“By the way, Colvin, is Miss Wenlock staying at Johannesburg long?”
“Didn’t even know she was there at all, Adrian.”
“Didn’t even know! Why, man, you were having quite a long talk with her at Park Station the other day. Take care you don’t make Aletta jealous,” he added, with a genial laugh.
“That’s very odd, considering I haven’t set eyes on her since I left the Wildschutsberg,” answered Colvin.
“I must have a double somewhere, for another Johnnie declared he saw me in Johannesburg too. You remember, Aletta? That man Da Costa? But is May Wenlock staying in Johannesburg?”
“Well, rather”—with a whimsical expression of countenance. “Now, look here, Colvin. I suppose you were not walking down Commissioner Street with her one day last week? She saw me, and bowed, but you didn’t see me. Well, you were better employed. But don’t make Aletta jealous.”
The tone was so good-humouredly chaffing that it was impossible to take offence. Yet Colvin did not like it. As a matter of fact, he had been over at Johannesburg at the time just named. But he only replied:
“I’ve never been in Commissioner Street, or in any other street in Johannesburg with May Wenlock in my life, Adrian, nor did I know she was even there. You must have seen double, man.”
“Oh yes, I suppose I must,” answered Adrian in the same bantering tone, which, however, he contrived to make convey that he supposed nothing of the sort. And then they talked of other matters.
The thing was perfectly clear. Colvin had simply scouted the other’s statement as impossible. Yet why should Aletta somehow feel a vague misgiving, as though the air had turned chill and the sun were not shining quite so brightly? Dr Da Costa’s remark, too, came back to her. Perish the thought! It was unworthy of her, and an affront to Colvin. Yet somehow the tiny verjuice drop had been instilled. And as Adrian talked on, apparently in high good-humour, she thought that after all his visit had not been quite a success.
Did Adrian himself think so? We wonder.
Chapter Six.In the Roar of the Battle.It was beginning to get rather exciting. The big gun, just below, had roared forth its message, and the spectators on the kopje had their field-glasses glued to their eyes, as they watched the progress of the great projectile. Splash! there it was. A cloud of dust flew up from the red-brown veldt, away in the distance, but harmlessly. Then, hard by where it had fallen, a British gun barked, and, immediately, a huge mass of the earth’s surface, bitten into, leaped in mid-air on the further side of the river, falling back in great chunks—clods and stones—and gyrations of dust. Further along the line, another gun spoke, then another and another, as though passing the word along the vast length, until the farthest voices, miles away, sounded quite faintly. Then ever and again would arise the crackling roll of rifle-fire.The sun was now well up over the eastern horizon, sweeping his joyous morning rays in golden warmth over this warring drama of blood and of wounds and of death. Cleaving the great expanse of red-brown veldt the river bed, bush-fringed, with high muddy banks, yawned; and away further down, the clustering buildings of the little township, and the straight thread of the railway line tailing away on either side. Beyond the said banks, lines of trenches, where lay the Boer riflemen, grim and earnest, awaiting their turn, which would soon come.Again the big gun below loosed off, with a tremendous reverberation. Those on the kopje, watching the missile, descried a certain amount of confusion where it struck, a scurrying or scattering behind its redoubt. Heads went up eagerly from behind the Boer earthworks to watch the result, but little or no remark escaped the lips of the stolid burghers. Then the English battery barked in return, and the vast thud of the lyddite shell striking one end of the earthwork, blowing up the same great cloud of dust and fragments, reached the spectators with something like the tremor of an earthquake. At the same time the latter could see that, where it had fallen, several forms were lying, while others bending over them were trying to draw them out of the dust anddébris.Colvin Kershaw’s hand shook slightly as he lowered his glasses, and his face wore the look of one who has gazed upon a peculiarly horrifying sight. And well might it, for the projectile had done its work with fell and awful completeness, and the powerful lens afforded him a view of every detail, of writhings and agony and terrible mutilation.“Guess you’re not used to it, Kershaw,” said a voice at his side. “Made me look sick, too, first time I saw it. You ever see a fight before?”The speaker was an American war-correspondent “doing” the battle from within the Boer lines.“Yes, I served in Matabeleland,” answered Colvin. “But with niggers it’s different. Then, you see, we hated the brutes so because they’d butchered a lot of women and children at the outbreak of the rebellion. Even with them, though, you didn’t see such a wholesale bust-up as that. Faugh!”“Well, there’s worse to come yet. Here, you take a draw at this”—tendering him a large field flask. Colvin accepted, and the nip of excellent Boer brandy just steadied his nerves, which had been momentarily shaken.“You try a little, Commandant,” went on the owner of the flask.But Commandant Andries Botma declined. He seldom touched stimulants, he said, and now, if he did so at the beginning of a fight, would it not be said that he required a dose of what the English call “Dutch courage”—with a whimsical look at Colvin, at whom he was poking sly fun?The quondam emissary to the Colonial Boers, among whom we first made his acquaintance, was no mere frothy stump orator. The name by which he was deferentially known among these—“The Patriot”—he had subsequently done everything to justify. He was not the man to preach others into peril he dare not face himself, and when his crusade had culminated in an appeal to arms, he had always been among the foremost where hard knocks were given or received. Now he was in command of an important wing of General Cronje’s force.A mighty engine of destruction or defence this—its lines extending for miles and miles—waiting there grim, dogged, resolute, to give battle to the richest, most resourceful, and determined Power in the world. A terrible force to reckon with; its impelling factor, a calm fanaticism born of an unswerving conviction of the justice of the cause and the sure and certain alliance of Heaven.In the simplicity of his veldt attire, with little or nothing to mark him out from those whom he commanded, Andries Botma looked even more a born leader of men than when last we saw him, swaying his countrymen with all the force of his fiery oratory. His strong rugged face, eager, yet impassive, was bent upon the scene of battle, as though not to lose a detail, not to miss a chance. He was surrounded by a little knot of middle-aged and elderly Boers, most of them holding subordinate commands under himself.“Whirr!” The screech of a shrapnel sailing over the foremost lines. It falls into the river, throwing up the mud with a tremendous splash. Another and another. This last, better aimed, strikes among the rear lines—result as before: agony, wounds, death. At the same time another hits the kopje not many yards below, exploding in all directions with appalling effect.The splinters fly from an ironstone boulder not two yards distant, but Andries Botma does not move a muscle. One Boer in the group utters a mild ejaculation, and then is seen to be winding a bit of oiled rag, kept for gun-sponging purposes, around his middle finger. Through this rude bandage the blood slowly oozes, but nobody seems to think the circumstance worthy of remark. Colvin is conscious of a creeping sensation in the region of the spine, as the jagged iron explodes around him with vicious metallic hiss. And the voices of the long-range duel undergo no diminution, the deep-mouthed boom of the heavy guns, and the sharp, snapping bark of the smaller ones.Things, however, are not destined to continue that way. As the hours wear on the advance of the attacking force is made out. From this part of the field the latter can be seen in skirmishing order, drawing nearer and nearer; those khaki-clad dots on the great brown expanse affording but an insignificant mark. And then there begins the sound of rifle-shooting, literally as “the crackling of thorns under a pot.” Down and along the lines it sweeps, in waves of sharp staccato sounds, and the spludges of dust, before and behind those khaki lines of advancing skirmishers, but mostly before, are like the dropping of water on red-hot iron. Now, too, it is near enough to mark the effect of those deadly volleys. That inexorable advance continues, but as it does it leaves behind lines of dead and dying and grievously wounded. Not all on one side, though, is the red slaughter. Here among the patriot trenches men are falling, and falling fast. Shell after shell, too, drops into the little township, and the crash of shattered brickwork, and the shrill clangour of battered-in corrugated iron, mingles with the gradating roar of projectiles, as they leave each grim nozzle sentinelling miles and miles of that sullen river front.Those on the kopje are now well within the line of fire. More than frequently a shrill vicious “whigge” as the Lee-Metford bullets clip the air, or shatter to a flattened lead mushroom against a stone, causes an involuntary duck. The American is taking plentiful notes in shorthand. Colvin, who is without this resource, also devoid of the natural excitement of the combatant of firing at the enemy as well as being fired at by him, takes longer to get used to the hum of bullets and the bursting of shrapnel than would otherwise have been the case, for he is totally unarmed, a precaution taken against the eventuality of capture by his own countrymen. And the effect of this precaution is strange. He feels out of it. Needless to say he has no desire to draw trigger on his said countrymen, yet the consciousness that he is being shot at—no matter whom by—without the power of replying, is strange and novel. But his nerves at last become attuned to the hum of missiles, and he watches the whole arena of the battle with a vivid and increasing interest.Higher and higher mounts the sun, more blistering and scorching his rays, giving forth from the ironstone of the kopje as though reflected from an oven. A strange mirage, watery, crystallised, hangs over the brown expanse of veldt, going off into limpid blue on the far horizon, where the distant flat-topped hills seem to be suspended in mid-air. Whether it is that this lake-like liquid tranquillity emphasises the torrid heat or not, those on the kopje feel what the burning of thirst means. They have water-bottles from which they refresh, but sparingly. Those in the trenches feel it too, but their attention is on the dire, stern business of the day. No time have they to dwell upon mere corporeal cravings.Whigge! Crash! Shell after shell is breaking within their lines. Men writhe, shattered, screaming, where the hideous dismemberment of the human frame is beyond all human endurance, however willing the spirit, the dogged, stern, manly, patriotic spirit—proof against mere ordinary pain—agony even. One of the group round Andries Botma sinks to the earth as a Nordenfelt missile, crashing and splintering among the stones which form his cover, buries a great fragment of jagged iron deep in his thigh. All run to him, foremost among them the Commandant, reckless of the perfect hailstorm of bullets which already, although at long-range, is beginning to spray the kopje, while some signal wildly to the ambulance waggons away and below in the rear. But Field-cornet Theunis Van Wyk has got his death-blow, and his wife and children—he has three sons fighting below in the trenches—and grandchildren will see him at home smoking the pipe of peace no more. The flow of blood is already rendering him faint, and with a hasty jerked-out message delivered to his old friend and Commandant to carry to them, and a quavering attempt at singing a Dutch hymn upon his lips, he passes out like a brave man, without complaint or rancour, as many and many a one has done and will do before this day of striving and of carnage is over.And as the advancing host draws nearer, now in quick intrepid rushes over open ground where the leaden hail sweeps in its remorseless shower, now prone and in skirmishing formation, the roar of battle waxes louder and louder. On both sides the crackling din of volleys is well-nigh incessant—as the rifles speak from trench or temporary cover, with dire effect. But there is very little smoke, although the plain on either side is simply spurting puffs of dust where each bullet finds its mark—save where such mark is not mother earth. In the background the ambulances hover, their heroic attendants darting in now and again, and rescuing the maimed victims under the leaden shower itself. And above the ceaseless crackle of small arms, the heavier boom of artillery rolls out more continuous, more unbroken than ever.Colvin has got over his first shrinking of nerves. He hears the humming of missiles overhead and around with something of equanimity, he sees the splash of lead against rock—or the dust-cloud leaping out of the ground as the bursting iron of shell tears up the surface. Two more of those upon the kopje fall, one stone dead, the other dying. It may be his turn next. And then, as even the excitement of the day-long battle begins to wane and go flat, his thoughts refer to that last parting with Aletta. What a parting that had been—as though he had been going to his death, to his execution! He realises the burden of it now, as he looks on the sad havoc of human life below and around him—the swift sudden fate leaping out of nowhere—the mangled, the mutilated, moaning for the boon of death—of being put out of their sufferings; the lifeless—a moment ago rejoicing in their youth and strength with all their years before them. Ah yes—and this is war—glorious war!— and at this very moment there are tens of thousands in the vigour of their youth and strength now panting and longing for the opportunity to become such as these.“Oh, Kershaw. Guess the British’ll bust our centre right now. They’re coming right through the river.”It was the voice of the American. Chewing a cigar in the corner of his mouth, he was calmly and unconcernedly taking his notes, while keenly watching each new development of the day. Colvin, following his glance, could make out a crowd of forms in the river bed some distance down. Then the rattle of rifle-fire became one long deafening roll, as all the energies of the Republican forces, anywhere within reasonable range, became concentrated on this new attempt. But the result he could not determine. The whole thing had more than begun to bewilder him. His ears were deafened by the unintermittent roll and crackle, his eyes dim and dizzy with watching, or trying to watch, the movements of both lines of striving combatants. He heard Andries Botma give orders, and then saw a great mass of mounted Boers, stealthily keeping cover as far as possible, dash forth and pour volley after volley into the waggons and trek-animals of the opposing force; hanging on the outskirts of the latter, with the result of throwing it for the while into hideous confusion. He saw frightful sights of dying men, mangled and shell-ripped; but by then his susceptibilities were blunted, the whole world seemed changed into a hell. The voice of his American friend again aroused him.“Mind me, Kershaw. Next time you come to view this sample of scrimmage, you get something to do. You got nothing to report for, and of course you can’t shoot at other English, so it’s bound to get on your nerves.”“There’s something in what you say, Acton,” replied Colvin. “There’s a sort of passive helpless feeling about it all to me. I seem to realise what the ambulance people’s work is like; but even they have work. Now I have nothing but to sit and look on.”“Pity,” said the other. “But we haven’t got the best ground. Too much near the end of the line. Well, it’s no great matter. I’ll make it all read beautiful,” glancing with pride down his columns of notes. “You have a cigar?”“Thanks,” lighting up the weed. “But— what’s on now?”They were, as the American had said, near the end of the line. Now they could see, confusedly, and in the distance, that the British were in and through the river, forcing the centre of the opposing line. And the wild cheers of the soldiers reached them through the incessant din and roar of fire. At the same time those in the trenches on the further side of the river had abandoned their position and retired across.The sun was sinking now. It was hard to realise that a whole day had been passed in the turmoil of this unending rattle and noise. Yet to Colvin the effect was almost as though he had spent his whole life in it. His mind represented but a confused notion of what he had witnessed, of what he had been through; and when at nightfall the word was silently passed to retire, to evacuate the position, and take up another, some miles in the rear, where everything was more favourable to meet and again withstand a sorely tried but valorous and persistent foe, he seemed to regard it as no more of an out-of-the-way circumstance than the order to inspan a waggon or two. Yet he had spent that day witnessing one of the fiercest and most stubbornly contested battles in which his country’s arms had been engaged within the current century.
It was beginning to get rather exciting. The big gun, just below, had roared forth its message, and the spectators on the kopje had their field-glasses glued to their eyes, as they watched the progress of the great projectile. Splash! there it was. A cloud of dust flew up from the red-brown veldt, away in the distance, but harmlessly. Then, hard by where it had fallen, a British gun barked, and, immediately, a huge mass of the earth’s surface, bitten into, leaped in mid-air on the further side of the river, falling back in great chunks—clods and stones—and gyrations of dust. Further along the line, another gun spoke, then another and another, as though passing the word along the vast length, until the farthest voices, miles away, sounded quite faintly. Then ever and again would arise the crackling roll of rifle-fire.
The sun was now well up over the eastern horizon, sweeping his joyous morning rays in golden warmth over this warring drama of blood and of wounds and of death. Cleaving the great expanse of red-brown veldt the river bed, bush-fringed, with high muddy banks, yawned; and away further down, the clustering buildings of the little township, and the straight thread of the railway line tailing away on either side. Beyond the said banks, lines of trenches, where lay the Boer riflemen, grim and earnest, awaiting their turn, which would soon come.
Again the big gun below loosed off, with a tremendous reverberation. Those on the kopje, watching the missile, descried a certain amount of confusion where it struck, a scurrying or scattering behind its redoubt. Heads went up eagerly from behind the Boer earthworks to watch the result, but little or no remark escaped the lips of the stolid burghers. Then the English battery barked in return, and the vast thud of the lyddite shell striking one end of the earthwork, blowing up the same great cloud of dust and fragments, reached the spectators with something like the tremor of an earthquake. At the same time the latter could see that, where it had fallen, several forms were lying, while others bending over them were trying to draw them out of the dust anddébris.
Colvin Kershaw’s hand shook slightly as he lowered his glasses, and his face wore the look of one who has gazed upon a peculiarly horrifying sight. And well might it, for the projectile had done its work with fell and awful completeness, and the powerful lens afforded him a view of every detail, of writhings and agony and terrible mutilation.
“Guess you’re not used to it, Kershaw,” said a voice at his side. “Made me look sick, too, first time I saw it. You ever see a fight before?”
The speaker was an American war-correspondent “doing” the battle from within the Boer lines.
“Yes, I served in Matabeleland,” answered Colvin. “But with niggers it’s different. Then, you see, we hated the brutes so because they’d butchered a lot of women and children at the outbreak of the rebellion. Even with them, though, you didn’t see such a wholesale bust-up as that. Faugh!”
“Well, there’s worse to come yet. Here, you take a draw at this”—tendering him a large field flask. Colvin accepted, and the nip of excellent Boer brandy just steadied his nerves, which had been momentarily shaken.
“You try a little, Commandant,” went on the owner of the flask.
But Commandant Andries Botma declined. He seldom touched stimulants, he said, and now, if he did so at the beginning of a fight, would it not be said that he required a dose of what the English call “Dutch courage”—with a whimsical look at Colvin, at whom he was poking sly fun?
The quondam emissary to the Colonial Boers, among whom we first made his acquaintance, was no mere frothy stump orator. The name by which he was deferentially known among these—“The Patriot”—he had subsequently done everything to justify. He was not the man to preach others into peril he dare not face himself, and when his crusade had culminated in an appeal to arms, he had always been among the foremost where hard knocks were given or received. Now he was in command of an important wing of General Cronje’s force.
A mighty engine of destruction or defence this—its lines extending for miles and miles—waiting there grim, dogged, resolute, to give battle to the richest, most resourceful, and determined Power in the world. A terrible force to reckon with; its impelling factor, a calm fanaticism born of an unswerving conviction of the justice of the cause and the sure and certain alliance of Heaven.
In the simplicity of his veldt attire, with little or nothing to mark him out from those whom he commanded, Andries Botma looked even more a born leader of men than when last we saw him, swaying his countrymen with all the force of his fiery oratory. His strong rugged face, eager, yet impassive, was bent upon the scene of battle, as though not to lose a detail, not to miss a chance. He was surrounded by a little knot of middle-aged and elderly Boers, most of them holding subordinate commands under himself.
“Whirr!” The screech of a shrapnel sailing over the foremost lines. It falls into the river, throwing up the mud with a tremendous splash. Another and another. This last, better aimed, strikes among the rear lines—result as before: agony, wounds, death. At the same time another hits the kopje not many yards below, exploding in all directions with appalling effect.
The splinters fly from an ironstone boulder not two yards distant, but Andries Botma does not move a muscle. One Boer in the group utters a mild ejaculation, and then is seen to be winding a bit of oiled rag, kept for gun-sponging purposes, around his middle finger. Through this rude bandage the blood slowly oozes, but nobody seems to think the circumstance worthy of remark. Colvin is conscious of a creeping sensation in the region of the spine, as the jagged iron explodes around him with vicious metallic hiss. And the voices of the long-range duel undergo no diminution, the deep-mouthed boom of the heavy guns, and the sharp, snapping bark of the smaller ones.
Things, however, are not destined to continue that way. As the hours wear on the advance of the attacking force is made out. From this part of the field the latter can be seen in skirmishing order, drawing nearer and nearer; those khaki-clad dots on the great brown expanse affording but an insignificant mark. And then there begins the sound of rifle-shooting, literally as “the crackling of thorns under a pot.” Down and along the lines it sweeps, in waves of sharp staccato sounds, and the spludges of dust, before and behind those khaki lines of advancing skirmishers, but mostly before, are like the dropping of water on red-hot iron. Now, too, it is near enough to mark the effect of those deadly volleys. That inexorable advance continues, but as it does it leaves behind lines of dead and dying and grievously wounded. Not all on one side, though, is the red slaughter. Here among the patriot trenches men are falling, and falling fast. Shell after shell, too, drops into the little township, and the crash of shattered brickwork, and the shrill clangour of battered-in corrugated iron, mingles with the gradating roar of projectiles, as they leave each grim nozzle sentinelling miles and miles of that sullen river front.
Those on the kopje are now well within the line of fire. More than frequently a shrill vicious “whigge” as the Lee-Metford bullets clip the air, or shatter to a flattened lead mushroom against a stone, causes an involuntary duck. The American is taking plentiful notes in shorthand. Colvin, who is without this resource, also devoid of the natural excitement of the combatant of firing at the enemy as well as being fired at by him, takes longer to get used to the hum of bullets and the bursting of shrapnel than would otherwise have been the case, for he is totally unarmed, a precaution taken against the eventuality of capture by his own countrymen. And the effect of this precaution is strange. He feels out of it. Needless to say he has no desire to draw trigger on his said countrymen, yet the consciousness that he is being shot at—no matter whom by—without the power of replying, is strange and novel. But his nerves at last become attuned to the hum of missiles, and he watches the whole arena of the battle with a vivid and increasing interest.
Higher and higher mounts the sun, more blistering and scorching his rays, giving forth from the ironstone of the kopje as though reflected from an oven. A strange mirage, watery, crystallised, hangs over the brown expanse of veldt, going off into limpid blue on the far horizon, where the distant flat-topped hills seem to be suspended in mid-air. Whether it is that this lake-like liquid tranquillity emphasises the torrid heat or not, those on the kopje feel what the burning of thirst means. They have water-bottles from which they refresh, but sparingly. Those in the trenches feel it too, but their attention is on the dire, stern business of the day. No time have they to dwell upon mere corporeal cravings.
Whigge! Crash! Shell after shell is breaking within their lines. Men writhe, shattered, screaming, where the hideous dismemberment of the human frame is beyond all human endurance, however willing the spirit, the dogged, stern, manly, patriotic spirit—proof against mere ordinary pain—agony even. One of the group round Andries Botma sinks to the earth as a Nordenfelt missile, crashing and splintering among the stones which form his cover, buries a great fragment of jagged iron deep in his thigh. All run to him, foremost among them the Commandant, reckless of the perfect hailstorm of bullets which already, although at long-range, is beginning to spray the kopje, while some signal wildly to the ambulance waggons away and below in the rear. But Field-cornet Theunis Van Wyk has got his death-blow, and his wife and children—he has three sons fighting below in the trenches—and grandchildren will see him at home smoking the pipe of peace no more. The flow of blood is already rendering him faint, and with a hasty jerked-out message delivered to his old friend and Commandant to carry to them, and a quavering attempt at singing a Dutch hymn upon his lips, he passes out like a brave man, without complaint or rancour, as many and many a one has done and will do before this day of striving and of carnage is over.
And as the advancing host draws nearer, now in quick intrepid rushes over open ground where the leaden hail sweeps in its remorseless shower, now prone and in skirmishing formation, the roar of battle waxes louder and louder. On both sides the crackling din of volleys is well-nigh incessant—as the rifles speak from trench or temporary cover, with dire effect. But there is very little smoke, although the plain on either side is simply spurting puffs of dust where each bullet finds its mark—save where such mark is not mother earth. In the background the ambulances hover, their heroic attendants darting in now and again, and rescuing the maimed victims under the leaden shower itself. And above the ceaseless crackle of small arms, the heavier boom of artillery rolls out more continuous, more unbroken than ever.
Colvin has got over his first shrinking of nerves. He hears the humming of missiles overhead and around with something of equanimity, he sees the splash of lead against rock—or the dust-cloud leaping out of the ground as the bursting iron of shell tears up the surface. Two more of those upon the kopje fall, one stone dead, the other dying. It may be his turn next. And then, as even the excitement of the day-long battle begins to wane and go flat, his thoughts refer to that last parting with Aletta. What a parting that had been—as though he had been going to his death, to his execution! He realises the burden of it now, as he looks on the sad havoc of human life below and around him—the swift sudden fate leaping out of nowhere—the mangled, the mutilated, moaning for the boon of death—of being put out of their sufferings; the lifeless—a moment ago rejoicing in their youth and strength with all their years before them. Ah yes—and this is war—glorious war!— and at this very moment there are tens of thousands in the vigour of their youth and strength now panting and longing for the opportunity to become such as these.
“Oh, Kershaw. Guess the British’ll bust our centre right now. They’re coming right through the river.”
It was the voice of the American. Chewing a cigar in the corner of his mouth, he was calmly and unconcernedly taking his notes, while keenly watching each new development of the day. Colvin, following his glance, could make out a crowd of forms in the river bed some distance down. Then the rattle of rifle-fire became one long deafening roll, as all the energies of the Republican forces, anywhere within reasonable range, became concentrated on this new attempt. But the result he could not determine. The whole thing had more than begun to bewilder him. His ears were deafened by the unintermittent roll and crackle, his eyes dim and dizzy with watching, or trying to watch, the movements of both lines of striving combatants. He heard Andries Botma give orders, and then saw a great mass of mounted Boers, stealthily keeping cover as far as possible, dash forth and pour volley after volley into the waggons and trek-animals of the opposing force; hanging on the outskirts of the latter, with the result of throwing it for the while into hideous confusion. He saw frightful sights of dying men, mangled and shell-ripped; but by then his susceptibilities were blunted, the whole world seemed changed into a hell. The voice of his American friend again aroused him.
“Mind me, Kershaw. Next time you come to view this sample of scrimmage, you get something to do. You got nothing to report for, and of course you can’t shoot at other English, so it’s bound to get on your nerves.”
“There’s something in what you say, Acton,” replied Colvin. “There’s a sort of passive helpless feeling about it all to me. I seem to realise what the ambulance people’s work is like; but even they have work. Now I have nothing but to sit and look on.”
“Pity,” said the other. “But we haven’t got the best ground. Too much near the end of the line. Well, it’s no great matter. I’ll make it all read beautiful,” glancing with pride down his columns of notes. “You have a cigar?”
“Thanks,” lighting up the weed. “But— what’s on now?”
They were, as the American had said, near the end of the line. Now they could see, confusedly, and in the distance, that the British were in and through the river, forcing the centre of the opposing line. And the wild cheers of the soldiers reached them through the incessant din and roar of fire. At the same time those in the trenches on the further side of the river had abandoned their position and retired across.
The sun was sinking now. It was hard to realise that a whole day had been passed in the turmoil of this unending rattle and noise. Yet to Colvin the effect was almost as though he had spent his whole life in it. His mind represented but a confused notion of what he had witnessed, of what he had been through; and when at nightfall the word was silently passed to retire, to evacuate the position, and take up another, some miles in the rear, where everything was more favourable to meet and again withstand a sorely tried but valorous and persistent foe, he seemed to regard it as no more of an out-of-the-way circumstance than the order to inspan a waggon or two. Yet he had spent that day witnessing one of the fiercest and most stubbornly contested battles in which his country’s arms had been engaged within the current century.