"WITHIN THE VEINS OF TIME."
"Then you won't give up going to this wretched war?"
"Well, no. You see I've got it all arranged now. I can't throw up the
plan. Besides, I want to see how they work a war of this kind. My mind
is made up."
No one knew better than Mona that when the speaker said his mind was
made up, why, then it _was_ made up. Still she continued to plead.
"Ah, don't go! Besides, it is a paltry affair, and hardly worth a man's
while to touch. It is quite sickening to hear these Doppersdorp
`heroes' brag. They go away nearly three hundred strong, and come back
again with three men slightly scratched, and talk big about `terrible
hand-to-hand conflicts lasting all day,' `assegais flying as thick as
hail,' and so forth. Dear, don't go; I have a presentiment something
will happen."
Roden laughed.
"How does that pan out for a lovely bit of feminine consistency?" he
said. "After labouring to show that the whole thing is child's play,
and the merest walk over, you adjure me not to go, on the ground that I
shall come to grief if I do."
"And that day on the cliff; was my warning right or wrong then?"
His face softened at the recollection. For a moment they stood gazing
into each other's eyes.
"You saved a strange sort of life, Mona."
Instead of replying, she moved to the window and declared, in a
commonplace way, that there was a big dust-cloud whirling up the road;
for the place they were in was a certain staring and fly-blown
apartment, which did duty for "drawing-room," at the Barkly Hotel, and
now steps were approaching the door. The latter opened, admitting the
head and half the person of Sonnenberg.
"Beg pardon. Thought Suffield was here." Then meaningly and with an
impudent grin, "Sorry to interrupt. `Two's company,'" and the door
closed behind him.
"See now," went on Roden, "it isn't a case of going to the front. I'm
only going to ride over to the Camp for three or four days. It's a good
opportunity. Darrell wants to go too, so we are going together."
"Only two of you?"
"Oh, we may pick up others on the way."
"And what about getting back?"
"Must chance that."
Mona looked as if about to renew her pleading, but just then Suffield's
voice, and the voices of others were heard coming up the stairs; for it
was just before the one o'clock dinner at the Barkly. So she whispered
hurriedly:
"Dear, you will ride out with us this afternoon?"
"H'm! there are a lot of things to be put straight, and I start the
first thing in the morning. I don't like to shirk. What'll the Chief
say?"
"Mr Van Stolz? I'll ask him myself."
"No, no," he said, laughing at her eagerness, and locking his fingers in
hers, for her hands had crept into his after the interruption on the
part of the objectionable Jew. "I'll work it somehow. But, dear, you
must make Suffield wait, for I can't in conscience shut up shop this
side of four, at the earliest."
This side of four! Why, she thought about seven was going to be the
hoar named. Make Suffield wait! Why, Charlie should wait till midnight
if she chose. And the voice, the tone! When Roden spoke thus he could
make her do whatever he liked. Was he beginning really to care a little
for her at last? Her heart beat tumultuously as she went down the
stairs, laughing and talking commonplace with her companion. Could he
ever love her as she loved him? Was it not all a one-sided affair and
therefore despicable? Ah! but--she told herself--there was a
possibility; and this it was which underlaid the strange wellspring of
new-born happiness which had sprung up in Mona's heart, completely
transforming her. Now and then a corner of the curtain which hid his
inner nature was lifted--lifted just enough to convince her that the
capabilities which lay behind were those which it was in her power to
call into play, and that the day might come when her love should be
returned tenfold.
After all, thought is swift, and can cover a great deal while the
thinker is descending one flight of rather rickety and not very
well-swept stairs.
Nothing was said during dinner about Roden's impending trip, for an
absence from duty of upwards of two days was irregular, to say the least
of it, on any other terms than a formal application to headquarters,
which, at that distance from the Colonial Office, would necessitate a
couple of weeks' correspondence and a due expenditure of red tape. When
Roden returned to the office he found Mr Van Stolz already there,
letting off steam in a few harmless "cuss words," for the post had just
arrived, bringing with it from headquarters an unusually large batch of
circulars, desiring information of no conceivable utility; also some
returns.
"Musgrave, old chap, look at all this damn nonsense," said the jolly
little R.M., with a mischievous laugh, shoving away the obnoxious papers
and lighting his pipe. "What, the devil! do they think we've got
nothing better to do--and with all these troops of burghers pushing
through to the front, and knocking us up in the middle of the night to
find rations for them? These stoopid returns 'll take at least a week
of turning out dead-and-buried records to make up."
"Then I won't go down to the Camp to-morrow, sir," said Roden, thinking
how he would quietly chaff Mona as being in league with the people at
headquarters to knock his trip on the head.
"No, no, Musgrave. It isn't so important as all that. I'll get them
together, somehow, and Somers can give a hand. Besides, we needn't
hurry. It doesn't do, either, to break one's neck being over zealous.
You don't get any the more appreciation for it, or promotion either; at
least, that's what I've learnt after my twenty odd years in the Service,
though of course it wouldn't do to say that to every sort of a youngster
who happened to be one's clerk. And, I say, Musgrave, old fellow, that
pony of yours has had quite his share of work of late, after Stoffel Van
Wyk's rhyboks. Why not take my horse to go down there on? He's a young
horse, but a good one, and he'll stand fire like an armchair, as you
know, though he does shy like a fool now and again at a _schuilpaat_
[Dutch. The small land tortoise common all over South Africa.] the size
of a snail."
"It's awfully good of you, Mr Van Stolz, but--"
"Tut, tut! What's a horse for, if not to be ridden? Any fellow knows
he can always have mine when I'm not using him, and I'm not often."
"Rather--why, you keep the whole township going in riding material."
"Ha! ha! I believe I do!" was the jolly reply. "Why, no less than
three fellows wanted to borrow Bles to-day, but I thought it might be as
well if you took him to go and have a shot at the Kaffirs, instead of
your own, Musgrave, so I let him have a rest to-day."
"Well, as a matter of fact, I shall be very glad to accept the offer,"
said Roden. "My pony is perhaps a little in want of a rest. Upon my
word, though, Mr Van Stolz, there may be more good-natured people in
the world than yourself, but with some experience of that orb I don't
believe there are."
"Pooh, pooh!" laughed the genial little man, not ill-pleased with such a
spontaneous outburst on the part of his self-contained, cynical, and
generally somewhat unpopular assistant. "Why, man, you'd do such a
trifle as that for me, wouldn't you?"
"Rather. But I'll be hanged if I would for the whole of Doppersdorp."
"Ha! ha! But poor old Doppersdorp isn't such a bad place. There are a
lot of people in it who are damn sweeps; but I can always pull with
everybody--even damn sweeps. When I'm on the Bench it's another thing.
I don't care for anybody then. But when you've got to be in a place,
Musgrave, you may as well make the best of it."
"And that I flatter myself I do. What with yourselves, Mr Van Stolz,
and the Suffields, and one or or two more, I am not particularly
discontented with the place."
"Ha! ha! And one or two more!" laughed the magistrate mischievously.
"What did the wife say when you first came up here, Musgrave? And
wasn't she right? Own up, now. When is it to come off?"
From anybody else this sort of chaff would have more than annoyed
Roden--indeed, hardly anybody else would have ventured upon it with him.
Coming from whom it did, he merely laughed, and said that, if for no
other reason, he did not see how anything real or imaginary could "come
off," in the light of the munificent rate of pay wherewith a paternal
Government saw fit to remunerate the labours of the junior members of
its judicial service. Then he turned the conversation into other
channels, and thus, alternately subsiding into silence as the nature of
their work required, and smoking a pipe or two and narrating an anecdote
as something suggested one to either, this happily assorted brace of
officials got through the first half of an afternoon, until the tread of
a pair of heavy boots on the boarded floor of the Court-room without was
heard drawing near.
"Some confounded Boer, I suppose, who'll extend a clammy paw, and put
his hat on the ground and spit five times, preparatory to beginning some
outrageous lie," growled Roden, thinking it was about time to take
himself off.
"May I come in?" sang out a voice.
"Hallo! It's Suffield. Come in, Suffield!" cried the magistrate,
jumping up.
"Busy, I see!" said Suffield, having shaken hands, and looking rather
awkward, for what with Mona worrying his life out for the last half
hour, and what with the confounded cheek, as he reckoned it, of
suggesting that Musgrave should knock off work and come along, he felt
himself in that figurative but highly graphic predicament known as
between the devil and the deep sea. But the eyes of the most
good-natured man in the world read and interpreted his look.
"Going to take him away with you, Suffield?" he said.
"Well--um--ah--"
"Off you go, Musgrave; I expect Miss Ridsdale will comb your hair for
you for keeping her waiting, and it's nearly five. And I say,
Suffield," he called out after them when they were leaving; "don't let
him try to tumble over any more cliffs, eh! So long!" and chuckling
heartily, the genial official turned back to light a fresh pipe and do
another hoar of his own work, and that of his assistant too.
Ambling along the dusty waggon road which led up to the grassy _nek_
about a mile from the township, preparatory to striking off into the
open veldt beyond, the trio were in good spirits enough.
"Well, and why haven't you blown me up for keeping you waiting?" said
Roden.
"Do I ever blow you up? Besides, you couldn't help it," answered Mona.
"Ah, `To err is human' says the classic bard. He might have added, `to
blow a man up for what he can't help is feminine.'"
"Don't be cynical now, and sarcastic. And it's our last day."
"Why, hang it, the chap isn't going to be away for a year," cut in
Suffield, who was at that moment struggling with a villainously
manufactured lucifer match, which gave him rather the feeling of smoking
sulphur instead of tobacco. And then there was a clatter of hoofs
behind, and they were joined by a couple of Boers of the ordinary type,
sunburned and not too clean of visage--one clad in "store-clothes" the
other in corduroy, and both wearing extremely greasy and battered slouch
hats. These, ranging their wiry, knock-kneed nags alongside, went
through the usual ceremony of handshaking all round, and thereafter the
swapping of pipe-fills with the male element in the party.
Boers, in their queer and at times uncouth way, are, when among those
they know, the most sociable of mortals, and never dream that their room
may be preferable to their company; wherefore this accession to the
party was heartily welcomed by Mona, for now these two could ride on
ahead with Charlie and talk sheep and ostriches, and narrate the bold
deeds they had done while serving in Kreli's country, in
Field-Commandant Deventer's troop, which had just returned covered with
laurels--and dust--from that war-ridden region. But alas! while one
carried out this programme to the letter, his fellow, the
"store-clothes" one, persisted in jogging alongside of Roden discoursing
volubly, of which discourse Roden understood about three words in
twenty.
"_Ja, det is reegt, Johannes_," ["Yes. That is right."] the latter
would assent in reply to some statement but poorly understood. "Darn
the fellow, can't he realise that two's company, three's a bore--in this
instance a Boer! Nay what, Johannes. _Ik kan nie Hollands praat. Jy
verstaand_, [I can't talk Dutch. You understand?]. Better jog on and
talk to Suffield, see? He can talk it like a Dutch uncle; I can't."
"_Det is jammer_?" ["That's a pity."] said the Boer, solemnly shaking
his head. Then after a moment's hesitation he spurred up his nag and
jogged on to join the other two.
The open veldt now lay outstretched before them, and Suffield and the
two Dutchmen were cantering on some distance ahead. Rearing up on their
left rose the great green slopes and soaring cliff walls of the mountain
range, and, away on the open side, the rolling, grassy plains,
stretching for miles, but always bounded nearer or farther by mountains
rising abruptly, and culminating in cliff wall, or jagged, naked crags.
Here and there in the distance, a white dot upon the green, lay a Boer
homestead, and a scattered patch of moving objects where grazed a flock
of sheep or goats. The slanting rays of the afternoon sun, now not far
from his western dip behind yon cluster of ironstone peaks, shed upon
this bright, wavy, open landscape that marvellous effect of clear and
golden radiance which renders the close of a cloudless day upon the High
Veldt something like a dream of enchanted worlds.
They were rather silent, these two. The thrilling, vivid happiness of
the one, was dashed by a certain amount of apprehensive dread on behalf
of the other, who was going quite unnecessarily to expose himself to
danger, possibly great, possibly small, but at any rate unnecessary. On
the part of that other, well, what had he to do with anything so
delusive as the fleeting and temporary thing called happiness, he whose
life was all behind him? Yet he was very--contented; that is how he put
it; and he owned to himself that he was daily growing more and more--
contented.
"I can't make out what has come over us," he said, as though talking to
himself, but in his voice there was that which made Mona's heart leap,
for she knew she was fast attaining that which she most desired in life.
Then they talked--talked of ordinary things, such as all the world
might have listened to; but the tone--ah! there was no disguising that.
Thus they cantered along in the sweet, pure air, over the springy plain,
against the background of great mountain range, and soon the walls of
the homestead drew in sight, and Mrs Suffield came out to greet them,
and the dogs broke into fearful clamour only equalled by that of the
children, and the two Boers dismounted with alacrity to go in, sure of a
good glass of grog or two beneath Suffield's hospitable roof, ere they
should resume their homeward way.