HOW THE SISTERS CAME TO MOOIFONTEIN
“Captain Niel,” said Bessie Croft—for she was named Bessie—when they
had painfully limped one hundred yards or so, “will you think me rude
if I ask you a question?”
“Not at all.”
“What has induced you to come and bury yourself in this place?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Because I don’t think that you will like it. I don’t think,” she added
slowly, “that it is a fit place for an English gentleman and an army
officer like you. You will find the Boer ways horrid, and then there
will only be my old uncle and us two for you to associate with.”
John Niel laughed. “English gentlemen are not so particular nowadays, I
can assure you, Miss Croft, especially when they have to earn a living.
Take my case, for instance, for I may as well tell you exactly how I
stand. I have been in the army fourteen years, and I am now
thirty-four. Well, I have been able to live there because I had an old
aunt who allowed me 120 pounds a year. Six months ago she died, leaving
me the little property she possessed, for most of her income came from
an annuity. After paying expenses, duty, &c., it amounts to 1,115
pounds. Now, the interest on this is about fifty pounds a year, and I
can’t live in the army on that. Just after my aunt’s death I came to
Durban with my regiment from Mauritius, and now they are ordered home.
Well, I liked the country, and I knew that I could not afford to live
in England, so I got a year’s leave of absence, and made up my mind to
have a look round to see if I could not take to farming. Then a
gentleman in Durban told me of your uncle, and said that he wanted to
dispose of a third interest in his place for a thousand pounds, as he
was getting too old to manage it himself. So I entered into
correspondence with him, and agreed to come up for a few months to see
how I liked it; and accordingly here I am, just in time to save you
from being knocked to bits by an ostrich.”
“Yes, indeed,” she answered, laughing; “you’ve had a warm welcome at
any rate. Well, I hope you _will_ like it.”
Just as he finished his story they reached the top of the rise over
which the ostrich had pursued Bessie Croft, and saw a Kafir coming
towards them, leading the pony with one hand and Captain Niel’s horse
with the other. About twenty yards behind the horses a lady was
walking.
“Ah,” said Bessie, “they’ve caught the horses, and here is Jess come to
see what is the matter.”
By this time the lady in question was quite close, so that John was
able to gather a first impression of her. She was small and rather
thin, with quantities of curling brown hair; not by any means a lovely
woman, as her sister undoubtedly was, but possessing two very
remarkable characteristics—a complexion of extraordinary and uniform
pallor, and a pair of the most beautiful dark eyes he had ever looked
on. Altogether, though her size was almost insignificant, she was a
striking-looking person, with a face few men would easily forget.
Before he had time to observe any more the two parties had met.
“What on earth is the matter, Bessie?” Jess said, with a quick glance
at her sister’s companion, and speaking in a low full voice, with just
a slight South African accent, that is taking enough in a pretty woman.
Thereon Bessie broke out with a history of their adventure, appealing
to Captain Niel for confirmation at intervals.
Meanwhile Jess Croft stood quite still and silent, and it struck John
that her face was the most singularly impassive one he had ever seen.
It never changed, even when her sister told her how the ostrich rolled
on her and nearly killed her, or how they finally subdued the foe.
“Dear me,” he thought to herself, “what a very strange woman! She can’t
have much heart.” But just as he thought it the girl looked up, and
then he saw where the expression lay. It was in those remarkable eyes.
Immovable as was her face, the dark eyes were alight with life and a
suppressed excitement that made them shine gloriously. The contrast
between the shining eyes and the impassive face beneath them struck him
as so extraordinary as to be almost uncanny. As a matter of fact, it
was doubtless both unusual and remarkable.
“You have had a wonderful escape, but I am sorry for the bird,” she
said at last.
“Why?” asked John.
“Because we were great friends. I was the only person who could manage
him.”
“Yes,” put in Bessie, “the savage brute would follow her about like a
dog. It was just the oddest thing I ever saw. But come on; we must be
getting home, it’s growing dark. Mouti”—which, being interpreted, means
Medicine—she added, addressing the Kafir in Zulu—“help Captain Niel on
to his horse. Be careful that the saddle does not twist round; the
girths may be loose.”
Thus adjured, John, with the help of the Zulu, clambered into his
saddle, an example that the lady quickly followed, and they set off
once more through the gathering darkness. Presently he became aware
that they were passing up a drive bordered by tall blue gums, and next
minute the barking of a large dog, which he afterwards knew by the name
of Stomp, and the sudden appearance of lighted windows told him that
they had reached the house. At the door—or rather, opposite to it, for
there was a verandah in front—they halted and got off their horses. As
they dismounted there came a shout of welcome from the house, and
presently in the doorway, showing out clearly against the light,
appeared a striking and, in its way, a most pleasant figure. He—for it
was a man—was very tall, or, rather, he had been very tall. Now he was
much bent with age and rheumatism. His long white hair hung low upon
his neck, and fell back from a prominent brow. The top of the head was
quite bald, like the tonsure of a priest, and shone and glistened in
the lamplight, and round this oasis the thin white locks fell down. The
face was shrivelled like the surface of a well-kept apple, and, like an
apple, rosy red. The features were aquiline and strongly marked; the
eyebrows still black and very bushy, and beneath them shone a pair of
grey eyes, keen and bright as those of a hawk. But for all its
sharpness, there was nothing unpleasant or fierce about the face; on
the contrary, it was pervaded by a remarkable air of good-nature and
pleasant shrewdness. For the rest, the man was dressed in rough tweed
clothes, tall riding-boots, and held a broad-brimmed Boer hunting hat
in his hand. Such, as John Niel first saw him, was the outer person of
old Silas Croft, one of the most remarkable men in the Transvaal.
“Is that you, Captain Niel?” roared out the stentorian voice. “The
natives said you were coming. A welcome to you! I am glad to see
you—very glad. Why, what is the matter with you?” he went on as the
Zulu Mouti ran to help him off his horse.
“Matter, Mr. Croft?” answered John; “why, the matter is that your
favourite ostrich has nearly killed me and your niece here, and that I
have killed your favourite ostrich.”
Then followed explanations from Bessie, during which he was helped off
his horse and into the house.
“It serves me right,” said the old man. “To think of it now, just to
think of it! Well, Bessie, my love, thank God that you escaped—ay, and
you too, Captain Niel. Here, you boys, take the Scotch cart and a
couple of oxen and go and fetch the brute home. We may as well have the
feathers off him, at any rate, before the _aasvogels_ (vultures) tear
him to bits.”
After he had washed himself and tended his injuries with arnica and
water, John managed to limp into the principal sitting-room, where
supper was waiting. It was a very pleasant room, furnished in European
style, and carpeted with mats made of springbuck skins. In the corner
stood a piano, and by it a bookcase, filled with the works of standard
authors, the property, as John rightly guessed, of Bessie’s sister
Jess.
Supper went off pleasantly enough, and after it was over the two girls
sang and played whilst the men smoked. And here a fresh surprise
awaited him, for after Bessie, who apparently had now almost recovered
from her mauling, had played a piece or two creditably enough, Jess,
who so far had been nearly silent, sat down at the piano. She did not
do this willingly, indeed, for it was not until her patriarchal uncle
had insisted in his ringing, cheery voice that she should let Captain
Niel hear how she could sing that she consented. But at last she did
consent, and then, after letting her fingers stray somewhat aimlessly
along the chords, she suddenly broke out into such song as John Niel
had never heard before. Her voice, beautiful as it was, was not what is
known as a cultivated voice, and it was a German song, therefore he did
not understand it, but there was no need of words to translate its
burden. Passion, despairing yet hoping through despair, echoed in its
every line, and love, unending love, hovered over the glorious
notes—nay, possessed them like a spirit, and made them his. Up! up!
rang her wild sweet voice, thrilling his nerves till they answered to
the music as an Aeolian harp answers to the winds. On went the song
with a divine sweep, like the sweep of rushing pinions; higher, yet
higher it soared, lifting up the listener’s heart far above the world
on the trembling wings of sound—ay, even higher, till the music hung at
heaven’s gate, and falling thence, swiftly as an eagle falls, quivered,
and was dead.
John sighed, and so strongly was he moved, sank back in his chair,
feeling almost faint with the revulsion of feeling that ensued when the
notes had died away. He looked up, and saw Bessie watching him with an
air of curiosity and amusement. Jess was still leaning against the
piano, and gently touching the notes, over which her head was bent low,
showing the coils of curling hair that were twisted round it like a
coronet.
“Well, Captain Niel,” said the old man, waving his pipe in her
direction, “and what do you say to my singing-bird’s music, eh? Isn’t
it enough to draw the heart out of a man, eh, and turn his marrow to
water, eh?”
“I never heard anything quite like it,” he answered simply, “and I have
heard most singers. It is beautiful. Certainly, I never expected to
hear such singing in the Transvaal.”
Jess turned quickly, and he observed that, though her eyes were alight
with excitement, her face was as impassive as ever.
“There is no need for you to laugh at me, Captain Niel,” she said
quickly, and then, with an abrupt “Good-night,” she left the room.
The old man smiled, jerked the stem of his pipe over his shoulder after
her, and winked in a way that, no doubt, meant unutterable things, but
which did not convey much to his astonished guest, who sat still and
said nothing. Then Bessie rose and bade him good-night in her pleasant
voice, and with housewifely care inquired as to whether his room was to
his taste, and how many blankets he liked upon his bed, telling him
that if he found the odour of the moonflowers which grew near the
verandah too strong, he had better shut the right-hand window and open
that on the other side of the room. Then at length, with a piquant
little nod of her golden head, she went off, looking, John thought as
he watched her retreating figure, about as healthy, graceful, and
generally satisfactory a young woman as a man could wish to see.
“Take a glass of grog, Captain Niel,” said the old man, pushing the
square bottle towards him, “you’ll need it after the mauling that brute
gave you. By the way, I haven’t thanked you for saving my Bessie! But I
do thank you, yes, that I do. I must tell you that Bessie is my
favourite niece. Never was there such a girl—never. Moves like a
springbuck, and what an eye and form! Work too—she’ll do as much work
as three. There’s no nonsense about Bessie, none at all. She’s not a
fine lady, for all her fine looks.”
“The two sisters seem very different,” said John.
“Ay, you’re right there,” answered the old man. “You’d never think that
the same blood ran in their veins, would you? There’s three years
between them, that’s one thing. Bessie’s the youngest, you see—she’s
just twenty, and Jess is twenty-three. Lord, to think that it is
twenty-three years since that girl was born! And theirs is a queer
story too.”
“Indeed?” said his listener interrogatively.
“Ay,” Silas went on absently, knocking out his pipe, and refilling it
from a big brown jar of coarse-cut Boer tobacco, “I’ll tell it to you
if you like: you are going to live in the house, and you may as well
know it. I am sure, Captain Niel, that it will go no further. You see I
was born in England, yes, and well-born too. I come from
Cambridgeshire—from the fat fen-land down round Ely. My father was a
clergyman. Well, he wasn’t rich, and when I was twenty he gave me his
blessing, thirty sovereigns in my pocket, and my passage to the Cape;
and I shook his hand, God bless him, and off I came, and here in the
old colony and this country I have been for fifty years, for I was
seventy yesterday. Well, I’ll tell you more about that another time,
it’s of the girls I’m speaking now. After I left home—some years
after—my dear old father married again, a youngish woman with some
money, but rather beneath him in life, and by her he had one son, and
then died. Well, it was but little I heard of my half-brother, except
that he had turned out very badly, married, and taken to drink, till
one night some twelve years ago, when a strange thing happened. I was
sitting here in this very room, ay, in this very chair—for this part of
the house was up then, though the wings weren’t built—smoking my pipe,
and listening to the lashing of the rain, for it was a very foul night,
when suddenly an old pointer dog I had, named Ben, began to bark.
“‘Lie down, Ben, it’s only the Kafirs,’ said I.
“Just then I thought I heard a faint sort of rapping at the door, and
Ben barked again, so I got up and opened it, and in came two little
girls wrapped in old shawls or some such gear. Well, I shut the door,
looking first to see if there were any more outside, and then I turned
and stared at the two little things with my mouth open. There they
stood, hand in hand, the water dripping from both of them; the elder
might have been eleven, and the second about eight years old. They
didn’t say anything, but the elder turned and took the shawl and hat
off the younger—that was Bessie—and there was her sweet little face and
her golden hair, and damp enough both of them were, and she put her
thumb in her mouth, and stood and looked at me till I began to think
that I was dreaming.
“‘Please, sir,’ said the taller at last, ‘is this Mr. Croft’s house—Mr.
Croft—South African Republic?’
“‘Yes, little Miss, this is his house, and this is the South African
Republic, and I am he. And now who might you be, my dears?’ I answered.
“‘If you please, sir, we are your nieces, and we have come to you from
England.’
“‘What!’ I holloaed, startled out of my wits, as well I might be.
“‘Oh, sir,’ says the poor little thing, clasping her thin wet hands,
‘please don’t send us away. Bessie is so wet, and cold and hungry too,
she isn’t fit to go any farther.’
“And she set to work to cry, whereon the little one cried also, from
fright and cold and sympathy.
“Well, of course, I took them both to the fire, and set them on my
knees, and called for Hebe, the old Hottentot woman who did my cooking,
and between us we undressed them, and wrapped them up in some old
clothes, and fed them with soup and wine, so that in half an hour they
were quite happy and not a bit frightened.
“‘And now, young ladies,’ I said, ‘come and give me a kiss, both of
you, and tell me how you came here.’
“This is the tale they told me—completed, of course, from what I learnt
afterwards—and an odd one it is. It seems that my half-brother married
a Norfolk lady—a sweet young thing—and treated her like a dog. He was a
drunken rascal, was my half-brother, and he beat his poor wife and
shamefully neglected her, and even ill-used the two little girls, till
at last the poor woman, weak as she was from suffering and ill health,
could bear it no longer, and formed the wild idea of escaping to this
country and of throwing herself upon my protection. That shows how
desperate she must have been. She scraped together and borrowed some
money, enough to pay for three second-class passages to Natal and a few
pounds over, and one day, when her brute of a husband was away on the
drink and gamble, she slipped on board a sailing ship in the London
Docks, and before he knew anything about it they were well out to sea.
But it was her last effort, poor dear soul, and the excitement of it
finished her. Before they had been ten days at sea, she sank and died,
and the two little children were left alone. What they must have
suffered, or rather what poor Jess must have suffered, for she was old
enough to feel, God only knows, but I can tell you this, she has never
got over the shock to this hour. It has left its mark on her, sir.
Still, let people say what they will, there is a Power who looks after
the helpless, and that Power took those poor, homeless, wandering
children under its wing. The captain of the vessel befriended them, and
when at last they reached Durban some of the passengers made a
subscription, and paid an old Boer, who was coming up this way with his
wife to the Transvaal, to take them under his charge. The Boer and his
_vrouw_ treated the children fairly well, but they did not do one thing
more than they bargained for. At the turn from the Wakkerstroom road,
that you came along to-day, they put the girls down, for they had no
luggage with them, and told them that if they went along there they
would come to _Meinheer_ Croft’s house. That was in the middle of the
afternoon, and they were till eight o’clock getting here, poor little
dears, for the track was fainter then than it is now, and they wandered
off into the veldt, and would have perished there in the wet and cold
had they not chanced to see the lights of the house. That was how my
nieces came here, Captain Niel, and here they have been ever since,
except for a couple of years when I sent them to the Cape for
schooling, and a lonely man I was when they were away.”
“And how about the father?” asked John Niel, deeply interested. “Did
you ever hear any more of him?”
“Hear of him, the villain!” almost shouted the old man, jumping up in
wrath. “Ay, d—n him, I heard of him. What do you think? The two chicks
had been with me some eighteen months, long enough for me to learn to
love them with all my heart, when one fine morning, as I was seeing
about the new kraal wall, I saw a fellow come riding up on an old
raw-boned grey horse. Up he comes to me, and as he came I looked at
him, and said to myself, ‘You are a drunkard you are, and a rogue, it’s
written on your face, and, what’s more, I know your face.’ You see I
did not guess that it was a son of my own father that I was looking at.
How should I?
“‘Is your name Croft?’ he said.
“‘Ay,’ I answered.
“‘So is mine,’ he went on with a sort of drunken leer. ‘I’m your
brother.’
“‘Are you?’ I said, beginning to get my back up, for I guessed what his
game was, ‘and what may you be after? I tell you at once, and to your
face, that if you are my brother you are a blackguard, and I don’t want
to know you or have anything to do with you; and if you are not, I beg
your pardon for coupling you with such a scoundrel.’
“‘Oh, that’s your tune, is it?’ he said with a sneer. ‘Well, now, my
dear brother Silas, I want my children. They have got a little
half-brother at home—for I have married again, Silas—who is anxious to
have them to play with, so if you will be so good as to hand them over,
I’ll take them away at once.’
“‘You’ll take them away, will you?’ said I, all of a tremble with rage
and fear.
“‘Yes, Silas, I will. They are mine by law, and I am not going to breed
children for you to have the comfort of their society. I’ve taken
advice, Silas, and that’s sound law,’ and he leered at me again.
“I stood and looked at that man, and thought of how he had treated
those poor children and their young mother, and my blood boiled, and I
grew mad. Without another word I jumped over the half-finished wall,
and caught him by the leg (for I was a strong man ten years ago) and
jerked him off the horse. As he came down he dropped the _sjambock_
from his hand, and I laid hold of it and then and there gave him the
soundest hiding a man ever had. Lord, how he did holloa! When I was
tired I let him get up.
“‘Now,’ I said, ‘be off with you, and if you come back here I’ll bid
the Kafirs hunt you to Natal with their sticks. This is the South
African Republic, and we don’t care overmuch about law here.’ Which we
didn’t in those days.
“‘All right, Silas,’ he said, ‘all right, you shall pay for this. I’ll
have those children, and, for your sake, I’ll make their lives a
hell—you mark my words—South African Republic or no South African
Republic. I’ve got the law on my side.’
“Off he rode, cursing and swearing, and I flung his _sjambock_ after
him. This was the first and last time that I saw my brother.”
“What became of him?” asked John Niel.
“I’ll tell you, just to show you again that there is a Power which
keeps such men in its eye. He rode back to Newcastle that night, and
went about the canteen there abusing me, and getting drunker and
drunker, till at last the canteen keeper sent for his boys to turn him
out. Well, the boys were rough, as Kafirs are apt to be with a drunken
white man, and he struggled and fought, and in the middle of it the
blood began to run from his mouth, and he dropped down dead of a broken
blood-vessel, and there was an end of him. That is the story of the two
girls, Captain Niel, and now I am off to bed. To-morrow I’ll show you
round the farm, and we will have a talk about business. Good-night to
you, Captain Niel. Good-night!”