OVER IT
On leaving the house Bessie and John took their way down the long
avenue of blue gums. This avenue was old Silas Croft’s particular
pride, since although it had only been planted for about twenty years,
the trees, which in the divine climate and virgin soil of the Transvaal
grow at the most extraordinary rate, were for the most part very lofty,
and as thick in the stem as English oaks of a hundred and fifty years’
standing. The avenue was not over wide, and the trees were planted
quite close one to another, with the result that their brown,
pillar-like stems shot up for many feet without a branch, whilst high
overhead the boughs crossed and intermingled in such a way as to form a
leafy tunnel, through which the landscape beyond appeared as though
through a telescope.
Down this charming avenue John and Bessie walked, and on reaching its
limit they turned to the right and followed a little footpath winding
in and out of the rocks that built up the plateau on the hillside
whereon the house stood. Presently this led them through the orchard;
then came a bare strip of veldt, a very dangerous spot in a
thunderstorm, but a great safeguard to the stead and trees round it,
for the ironstone cropped up here, and from the house one might often
see flash after flash striking down on to it, and even running and
zigzagging about its surface. To the left of this ironstone were some
cultivated lands, and in front of them the plantation, in which John
was anxious to inspect the recently planted wattles.
They walked up to the copse without saying a word. It was surrounded by
a ditch and a low sod wall, whereon Bessie seated herself, remarking
that she would wait there till he had looked at the trees, as she was
afraid of the puff-adders, whereof a large and thriving family were
known to live in this plantation.
John assented, observing that the puff-adders were brutes, and that he
must have some pigs turned in to destroy them, which the pigs effect by
munching them up, apparently without unpleasant consequences to
themselves. Then he departed on his errand, wending his way gingerly
through the feathery black wattles. It did not take long, and he saw no
puff-adders. When he had finished looking at the young trees, he
returned, still walking delicately like Agag. On reaching the border of
the plantation, he paused to look at Bessie, who was some twenty paces
from him, perched sideways on the low sod wall, and framed, as it were,
in the full rich light of the setting sun. Her hat was off, for the sun
had lost its burning force, and the hand that held it hung idly by her,
while her eyes were fixed on the horizon flaming with all the varied
glories of an African sunset. He gazed at her sweet face and lissom
form, and some lines that he had read years before floated into his
mind—
The little curls about her head
Were all her crown of gold,
Her delicate arms drooped downwards
In slender mould,
As white-veined leaves of lilies
Curve and fold.
She moved to measures of music,
As a swan sails the stream—
He had got thus far when she turned and saw him, and he abandoned
poetry in the presence of one who might well have inspired it.
“What are you looking at?” she said with a smile; “the sunset?”
“No; I was looking at you.”
“Then you might have been better employed with the sky,” she answered,
turning her head quickly. “Look at it! Did you ever see such a sunset?
We sometimes get them like that at this time of year when the
thunderstorms are about.”
She was right; it was glorious. The heavy clouds which a couple of
hours before had been rolling like celestial hearses across the azure
deeps were now aflame with glory. Some of them glowed like huge castles
wrapped in fire, others with the dull red heat of burning coal. The
eastern heaven was one sheet of burnished gold that slowly grew to red,
and higher yet to orange and the faintest rose. To the left departing
sunbeams rested lovingly on grey Quathlamba’s crests, even firing the
eternal snows that lay upon his highest peak, and writing once more
upon their whiteness the record of another day fulfilled. Lower down
the sky floated little clouds, flame-flakes fallen from the burning
mass above, and on the earth beneath lay great depths of shadow barred
with the brightness of the dying light.
John stood and gazed at it, and its living, glowing beauty seemed to
fire his imagination, as it fired earth and heaven, in such sort that
the torch of love lit upon his heart like the sunbeams on the mountain
tops. Then from the celestial beauty of the skies he turned to look at
the earthly beauty of the woman who sat there before him, and found
that also fair. Whether it was the contemplation of the glories of
Nature—for there is always a suspicion of melancholy in beautiful
things—or whatever it was, her face had a touch of sadness on it that
he had never seen before, and which certainly added to its charm as a
shadow adds to the charm of the light.
“What are you thinking of, Bessie?” he asked.
She looked up, and he saw that her lips were quivering a little. “Well,
do you know,” she said, “oddly enough, I was thinking of my mother. I
can only just recall her, a woman with a thin, sweet face. I remember
one evening she was sitting in front of a house while the sun was
setting as it is now, and I was playing by her, when suddenly she
called me to her and kissed me, then pointed to the red clouds that
were gathered in the sky, and said, ‘I wonder if you will ever think of
me, dear, when I have passed through those golden gates?’ I did not
understand what she meant, but somehow I have remembered the words, and
though she died so long ago, I do often think of her;” and two large
tears rolled down her face as she spoke.
Few men can bear to see a sweet and pretty woman in tears, and this
little incident was too much for John, whose caution and doubts all
went to the winds together.
“Bessie,” he said, “don’t cry, dear; please, don’t! I can’t bear to see
you cry.”
She looked up as though to remonstrate at his words, then she looked
down again.
“Listen, Bessie,” he went on awkwardly enough, “I have something to say
to you. I want to ask you if—if, in short, you will marry me. Wait a
bit, don’t say anything yet; you know me pretty well by now. I am no
chicken, dear, and I have knocked about the world a good deal, and had
one or two love affairs like other people. But, Bessie, I never met
such a sweet woman, or, if you will let me say it, such a lovely woman
as you are, and if you will have me, dear, I think that I shall be the
luckiest man in South Africa;” and he stopped, not knowing exactly what
else to say, and feeling that the time had not come for action, if
indeed it was to come at all.
When first she understood the drift of his talk Bessie had flushed up
to the eyes, then the blood sank back to her breast, and left her as
pale as a lily. She loved the man, and they were happy words to her,
and she was satisfied with them, though perhaps some women might have
thought that they left a good deal to be desired. But Bessie was not of
an exacting nature.
At last she spoke.
“Are you sure,” she asked, “that you mean all this? You know sometimes
people say things of a sudden, upon an impulse, and afterwards they
wish they never had been said. Then it would be rather awkward
supposing I were to say ‘yes,’ would it not?”
“Of course I am sure,” he said indignantly.
“You see,” went on Bessie, poking at the sod wall with the stick she
held in her hand, “perhaps in this place you might be putting an
exaggerated value on me. You think I am pretty because you see nobody
but Kafir and Boer women, and it would be the same with everything. I’m
not fit to marry such a man as you,” she went on, with a sudden burst
of distress; “I have never seen anything or anybody. I am nothing but
an ignorant, half-educated farmer girl, with nothing to recommend me,
and no fortune except my looks. You are different to me; you are a man
of the world, and if ever you went back to England I should be a drag
on you, and you would be ashamed of me and my colonial ways. If it had
been Jess now, it would have been different, for she has more brains in
her little finger than I have in my whole body.”
Somehow this mention of Jess jarred upon John’s nerves, and chilled him
like a breath of cold wind on a hot day. He wanted to put Jess out of
his mind just now.
“My dear Bessie,” he broke in, “why do you suppose such things? I can
assure you that, if you appeared in a London drawing-room, you would
put most of the women into the shade. Not that there is much chance of
my frequenting London drawing-rooms again,” he added.
“Oh, yes! I may be good-looking; I don’t say that I am not; but can’t
you understand, I do not want you to marry me just because I am a
pretty woman, as the Kafirs marry their wives? If you marry me at all I
want you to marry me because you care for _me_, the real _me_, not my
eyes and my hair. Oh, I don’t know what to answer you! I don’t indeed!”
and she began to cry softly.
“Bessie, dear Bessie!” said John, who was pretty well beside himself by
this time, “just tell me honestly—do you care about me? I am not worth
much, I know, but if you do all this goes for nothing,” and he took her
hand and drew her towards him, so that she half slipped, half rose from
the sod wall and stood face to face with him, for she was a tall woman,
and they were very nearly of a height.
Twice she raised her beautiful eyes to his to answer and twice her
courage failed her; then at last the truth broke from her almost with a
cry:
“Oh, John, I love you with all my heart!”
And now it will be well to drop a veil over the rest of these
proceedings, for there are some things that should be sacred, even from
the pen of the historian, and the first transport of the love of a good
woman is one of them.
Suffice it to say that they sat there side by side on the sod wall, and
were happy as people ought to be under such circumstances, till the
glory departed from the western sky and the world grew cold and pale,
till the night came down and hid the mountains, and only the stars and
they were left to look out across the dusky distances of the wilderness
of plain.
Meanwhile a very different scene was being enacted up at the house half
a mile away.
Not more than ten minutes after John and his lady-love had departed on
that fateful walk to look at the young trees, Frank Muller’s stalwart
form, mounted on his great black horse, was to be seen leisurely
advancing towards the blue-gum avenue. Jantje was lurking about between
the stems of the trees in the peculiar fashion that is characteristic
of the Hottentot, and which doubtless is bred into him after tens of
centuries of tracking animals and hiding from enemies. There he was,
slipping from trunk to trunk, and gazing round him as though he
expected each instant to discover the assegai of an ambushed foe or to
hear the footfall of some savage beast of prey. Absolutely there was no
reason why he should behave in this fashion; he was simply indulging
his natural instincts where he thought nobody would observe him. Life
at Mooifontein was altogether too tame and civilised for Jantje’s
taste, and he needed periodical recreations of this sort. Like a
civilised child he longed for wild beasts and enemies, and if there
were none at hand he found a reflected satisfaction in making a
pretence of their presence.
Presently, however, whilst they were yet a long way off, his quick ear
caught the sound of the horse’s footfalls, and he straightened himself
and listened. Not satisfied with the results, he laid himself down, put
his ear to the earth, and gave a guttural sound of satisfaction.
“Baas Frank’s black horse,” Jantje muttered to himself. “The black
horse has a cracked heel, and one foot hits the ground more softly than
the others. What is Baas Frank coming here for? After Missie I think.
He would be mad if he knew that Missie went down to the plantation with
Baas Niel just now. People go into plantations to kiss each other”
(Jantje was not far out there), “and it would make Baas Frank mad if he
knew that. He would strike me if I told him, or I would tell him.”
The horse’s hoofs were drawing near by now, so Jantje slipped as easily
and naturally as a snake into a thick tuft of rank grass which grew
between the blue gums, and waited. Nobody would have guessed that this
tuft of grass hid a human being; not even a Boer would have guessed it,
unless he had happened to walk right on to the spy, and then it would
have been a chance but that the Hottentot managed to avoid being
trodden on and escaped detection. Again there was no reason why he
should hide himself in this fashion, except that it pleased him to do
so.
Presently the big horse approached, and the snakelike Hottentot raised
his head ever so little and peered out with his beady black eyes
through the straw-like grass stems. They fell on Muller’s cold face. It
was evident that he was in a reflective mood—in an angrily reflective
mood. So absorbed was he that he nearly let his horse, which was also
absorbed by the near prospect of a comfortable stall, put his foot in a
big hole that a wandering antbear had amused himself on the previous
night by digging exactly in the centre of the road.
“What is Baas Frank thinking of, I wonder?” said Jantje to himself as
horse and man passed within four feet of him. Then rising, he crossed
the road, and slipping round by a back way like a fox from a covert,
was standing at the stable-door with a vacant and utterly unobservant
expression of face some seconds before the black horse and its rider
had reached the house.
“I will give them one more chance, just one more,” thought the handsome
Boer, or rather half-breed—for it will be remembered that his mother
was English—“and if they won’t take it, then let their fate be upon
their own heads. To-morrow I go to the _bymakaar_ at Paarde Kraal to
take counsel with Paul Krüger and Pretorius, and the other ‘fathers of
the land,’ as they call themselves. If I throw in my weight against
rebellion there will be no rebellion; if I urge it there will be, and
if _Oom_ Silas will not give me Bessie, and Bessie will not marry me, I
will urge it even if it plunge the whole country in war from the Cape
to Waterberg. Patriotism! Independence! Taxes!—that is what they will
cry till they begin to believe it themselves. Bah! those are not the
things that I would go to war for; but ambition and revenge, ah! that
is another matter. I would kill them all if they stood in my way, all
except Bessie. If war breaks out, who will hold up a hand to help the
‘_verdomde Engelsmann_’? They would all be afraid. And it is not my
fault. Can I help if it I love that woman? Can I help it if my blood
dries up with longing for her, and if I lie awake hour by hour of
nights, ay, and weep—I, Frank Muller, who saw the murdered bodies of my
father and my mother and shed no tear—because she hates me and will not
look favourably upon me?
“Oh, woman! woman! They talk of ambition and of avarice and of
self-preservation as the keys of character and action, but what force
is there to move us like a woman? A little thing, a weak fragile
thing—a toy from which the rain will wash the paint and of which the
rust will stop the working, and yet a thing that can shake the world
and pour out blood like water, and bring down sorrow like the rain. So!
I stand by the boulder. A touch and it will go crashing down the
mountain-side so that the world hears it. Shall I send it? It is all
one to me. Let Bessie and _Oom_ Silas judge. I would slaughter every
Englishman in the Transvaal to gain Bessie—ay! and every Boer too, and
throw all the natives in;” and he laughed aloud, and struck the great
black horse, making it plunge and caper gallantly.
“And then,” he went on, giving his ambition wing, “when I have won
Bessie, and we have kicked all these Englishmen out of the land, in a
very few years I shall rule this country, and what next? Why, then I
will stir up the Dutch feeling in Natal and in the old Colony, and we
will push the Englishmen back into the sea, make a clean sweep of the
natives, only keeping enough for servants, and have a united South
Africa, like that poor silly man Burgers used to prate of, but did not
know how to bring about. A united Dutch South Africa, and Frank Muller
to rule it! Well, such things have been, and may be again. Give me
forty years of life and strength, and we shall see——”
Just then he reached the verandah of the house, and, dismissing his
secret ambitions from his mind, Frank Muller dismounted and entered. In
the sitting-room he found Silas Croft reading a newspaper.
“Good-day, _Oom_ Silas,” he said, extending his hand.
“Good-day, _Meinheer_ Frank Muller,” replied the old man very coldly,
for John had told him of the incident at the shooting-party which so
nearly ended fatally, and though he made no remark he had formed his
own conclusions.
“What are you reading about in the _Volkstem_, _Oom_ Silas—about the
Bezuidenhout affair?”
“No; what was that?”
“It was that the _volk_ are rising against you English, that is all.
The sheriff seized Bezuidenhout’s waggon in execution of taxes, and put
it up to sale at Potchefstroom. But the _volk_ kicked the auctioneer
off the waggon and hunted him round the town; and now Governor Lanyon
is sending Raaf down with power to swear in special constables and
enforce the law at Potchefstroom. He might as well try to stop a river
by throwing stones. Let me see, the big meeting at Paarde Kraal was to
have been on the fifteenth of December, now it is to be on the eighth,
and then we shall know if it will be peace or war.”
“Peace or war?” answered the old man testily. “That has been the cry
for years. How many big meetings have there been since Shepstone
annexed the country? Six, I think. And what has come of it all? Just
nothing but talk. And what can come of it? Suppose the Boers did fight,
what would the end of it be? They would be beaten, and a lot of people
would be killed, and that would be the end of it. You don’t suppose
that England would give in to a handful of Boers, do you? What did
General Wolseley say the other day at the dinner in Potchefstroom? Why,
that the country would never be given up, because no Government,
Conservative, Liberal, or Radical, would dare to do it. And now this
new Gladstone Government has telegraphed the same thing, so what is the
use of all the talk and childishness? Tell me that, Frank Muller.”
Muller laughed as he answered, “You are all very simple people, you
English. Don’t you know that a government is like a woman who cries
‘No, no, no,’ and kisses you all the time? If there is noise enough
your British Government will eat its words and give Wolseley, and
Shepstone, and Bartle Frere, and Lanyon, and all of them the lie. This
is a bigger business than you think for, _Oom_ Silas. Of course all
these meetings and talk are got up. The people are angry because of the
English way of dealing with the natives, and because they have to pay
taxes; and they think, now that you British have paid their debts and
smashed up Sikukuni and Cetewayo, that they would like to have the land
back. They were glad enough for you to take it at first; now it is
another matter. But still that is not much. If they were left to
themselves nothing would come of it except talk, for many of them are
very glad that the land should be English. But the men who pull the
strings are down in the Cape. They want to drive every Englishman out
of South Africa. When Shepstone annexed the Transvaal he turned the
scale against the Dutch element and broke up the plans they have been
laying for years to make a big anti-English republic of the whole
country. If the Transvaal remains British there is an end of their
hopes, for only the Free State is left, and it is hemmed in. That is
why they are so angry, and that is why their tools are stirring up the
people. They mean to make them fight now, and I think that they will
succeed. If the Boers win the day, they will declare themselves; if
not, you will hear nothing of them, and the Boers will bear the brunt
of it. They are very cunning people the Cape ‘patriots,’ but they look
well after themselves.”
Silas Croft looked troubled, but made no answer, and Frank Muller rose
and stared out of the window.