Down by the river bed a girl was standing. The river bed was dry. So,
too, was the wide, flat expanse of veldt stretching before and around
her, and the slopes of two low cliff-crowned mountains which at some
distance off relieved the dead level of the arid plain were brown where
they should have been green. The only green spot visible upon the whole
landscape was formed by an extensive cultivated patch lying around a
farmhouse half a mile away, and this was the result of irrigation, not
of the opening of the windows of heaven. But, although the sun shone
down from a cloudless sky in the full glory of his midday splendour, his
rays were without power, for there was a keen icy edge upon the air,
stirred by a light breeze that was suggestive of exhilaration combined
with warm clothing, and imparted a very entrancing touch of additional
colour to the cheeks of the girl standing there.
She is a pretty girl, the large pupils of whose blue eyes lend to those
attractive orbs a velvety softness which is in strange contradiction to
the firm cut of the chin and the full though decided lips. She is of
medium height, and her well-rounded figure is arrayed in a blouse and
skirt, about as neat and serviceable a form of feminine attire as
exists--on the veldt or elsewhere; but her hair, wavy and golden, is,
save for a rebellious lock or two over the forehead, concealed within an
ample white _kapje_, or sunbonnet--so becoming a framework to a pretty
face.
Standing there among the dry mimosa bushes which fringe the river bank,
her eyes wander meditatively forth over the brown and treeless plains
beyond. Here and there, black dots moving near or far represent the
staple wealth of that section of country, in the shape of male ostriches
in full plumage, and now and again the stillness is broken by a triple
booming, as that most truculent of bipeds lifts up his voice; but these
are everyday sights and sounds and of them the girl takes not the
smallest notice, nor yet of the antics of one great savage bird, who,
with all his jetty plumage bristling in wrath, towers up to a formidable
height as he presses against the wires of the dividing fence in his
futile efforts to reach her and kick her into smithereens.
Suddenly her eyes dilate and she gives a slight start--even losing a
little of her colour. For this yon black demon stalking up and down in
impotent menace but a few yards off is in no wise responsible. The
fence will take care of him. Can such an effect be produced by the
sight of that tourniquet of dust, far away over the plain, yet whirling
nearer and nearer? Perchance, for no mere erratic "dust-devil" is
yonder cloud. It is raised by the hoofs of a horse.
Yet no assignation is this. Not for the purpose of meeting anybody is
this girl here to-day. For all that her breast heaves somewhat, and her
forsaking colour returns with a little more added as she glances round
nervously towards the farmhouse, and finds herself wishing she had on
headgear less conspicuous than the snowy whiteness of a _kapje_.
On comes the dust-cloud, powdering up from the road at each hoof-stroke
as the horseman advances at a canter. He, whoever it may be, is yet a
great way off, and a speculation, in which hope is about equal to
disappointment and disgust combined, escapes those pretty lips:
"Only some Dutchman, I suppose."
But a very few minutes of further watching suffices to bring back the
light to her face, and an eager, expectant look, which she strives to
repress, shines from her eyes. For the rider is very near now, and
instinctively she moves a little further down the river bank in such
wise that the dip in the ground where the drift lies conceals her
effectually, white _kapje_ and all, from view of the homestead.
The horseman, who is now descending into the drift, perceives her and
turns his steed, so as to join her among the thorns.
"Why, May, this is good of you," he says, as he joins her. Seen
dismounted he is a tall, well-set-up man of about five-and-thirty, with
clean-cut features and a dark moustache. His brown eyes are clear and
searching, and there is a certain quickness about his speech and
movements which is totally disassociated with any suggestion of flurry.
"What is `good of' me? You don't suppose I came down here on purpose to
meet you, I hope?" is the characteristic rejoinder, uttered with a
certain tinge of defiance.
"Why not? It would have been very nice of you--very sweet of you, in
fact, and I should have appreciated it. Don't you run away with the
idea that the faculty of appreciation is exclusively vested in the
softer sex."
They were still holding each other's hands--holding them a good deal
longer than the usages of social greeting exacted.
"Well, I'm glad I came, anyhow," she answered, in a softer tone,
relaxing her grasp of his with ever so perceptible a final pressure.
"The slowness of this place gets upon my nerves."
"You've spoilt it now," he laughed, looking her in the eyes. "For
penalty you deserve what I'm about to tell you. I haven't time to
off-saddle. I'm going straight on."
She started. The bright face clouded over. The new arrival, who had
never removed his eyes from it, needed all his self-command to refrain
from an uncontrollable burst of merriment.
"If you pass our door to-day or any other day without off-saddling I'll
never speak to you again," she declared.
"Why should I not when you indignantly vow you would not come this
little way to meet me?" he rejoined, still with a faint smile playing
round the corners of his mouth.
"You know I would," she flashed forth impulsively. "Don't be horrid,
Colvin! I didn't, exactly come to meet you, but I did walk down here on
the--offchance that--that you might be coming. There. Why is it that
you always make me say everything right out--things I don't in the least
want to say? Nobody else could. Yet you do."
For answer Colvin Kershaw deliberately placed one arm around the
speaker, and, lifting her face with his other hand, kissed her on the
lips. He did not hurry over the process either, nor did she seem
anxious that he should. Yet these two were not lovers in the recognised
and affianced sense of the term.
"How pretty you look in that white _kapje_!" he said, as he released
her. "It suits you so well. If it hadn't been for the glint of the
white catching my eye I believe I should have passed you without seeing.
And of course you would have let me?"
"Of course I should. But we had better go back to the house now,
because if Frank or mother saw you ride down to the drift, they will be
wondering how it is you are so long in getting to the other side.
Come!"
They strolled up the stony river bank together, he leading his horse.
But a sort of constraint fell upon the girl as they drew near the house.
She had noticed her mother looking at her strangely of late when the
talk had turned upon the man now at her side. He, for his part, felt no
constraint at all. In point of fact, he never did.
No dogs heralded their approach with loud-mouthed clamour. No
self-respecting dog given to erratic movement, and poking his nose into
every corner where he should not, could live a day on a well-organised
ostrich farm by reason of the poisoned morsels--carefully planted out of
the way of the birds themselves--wherewith the run is strewn; for the
benefit of cats and jackals, and leopards. One ancient and wheezy cur,
however, incapable of any lengthier peregrination than a hundred yards,
greeted their approach with sepulchral barks, and behind it came the
owner, with his coat half on half off.
"Hallo, Colvin!" he sang out. "Why, you're quite a stranger these days.
Haven't been here for weeks. Plotting treason with your friends the
Dutchmen, I believe?"
"That's it, Frank. We're going to hold your place up for arms and
ammunition first thing. Then they're going to make me State Secretary
of the new Cape Colony Republic on condition I do the shooting of you
with my own hand. So now you're warned."
The point of these amenities lay in the fact that Colvin Kershaw was not
without pronounced Dutch sympathies at a time of strong political
tension. Whereas Frank Wenlock, though on good enough terms with his
Dutch neighbours individually, was one of those not uncommon types who
labour under a firm conviction that the Powers above built this planet
Earth primarily for the benefit of--and eventually to be solely and
absolutely ruled from north to south, and from east to west by--England,
and England only.
Personally considered Frank Wenlock was a presentable young fellow
enough. Externally of medium height, strong and energetic, his face,
lighted up by a pair of blue eyes not unlike those of his sister, though
not handsome, was open and pleasing. In character, though somewhat
quick-tempered, he was the soul of good-nature, but withal no part of a
fool. He and Colvin Kershaw had been fellow-pioneers together in
Rhodesia, and had fought side by side throughout the grim struggle of
the Matabele rebellion.
"Now, Mr Kershaw, can't you and Frank get together for a moment without
fighting about the Boers?" interrupted a brisk, not unpleasing, and yet
not altogether refined voice. "But where did you pick up May?"
Colvin turned to greet its owner; a well-preserved, middle-aged woman,
not so many years his senior, good-looking too, after a fine, fresh,
healthy type.
"Oh, we haven't begun upon them yet, Mrs Wenlock," he replied, ignoring
the last query. "We'll worry that out after dinner."
"You're not going on to-night?"
"Yes, I must I want to get to Stephanus De la Rey's. There's a joker
there I want to meet."
"Is that the Transvaal emissary?" said Frank, looking up quickly from
his plate, for they had sat down to dinner.
"I suppose that's what you'd call him. But, do you know, all this
rather interests me. I like to hear all there is to be said on both
sides."
"Why they'll hold a meeting and simply spout treason all night,"
rejoined Frank vehemently. "Good Lord, if I were Milner, I'd have that
fellow arrested and shot as a spy."
"My dear chap, you can't shoot `spies' when we are not at war with
anybody, and Botma, I suppose, has about as much right to hold a meeting
among his countrymen here as a British labour delegate has to organise a
strike. These are among the advantages of a free country, don't you
know?"
"Did you come straight here from your place to-day?" said Mrs Wenlock,
by way of covering the angry growl with which her son had received the
other's words.
"No. I slept at Swaart Jan Grobbelaar's."
"That's the old buck who brought away a lot of British skulls from
Majuba," burst in Frank. "They say he sticks one up at a couple of
hundred yards every Majuba Day, and practises at it until there isn't a
bit left big enough for a bullet to hit."
"He must have brought away about a waggonload of them, then, considering
that Majuba happened eighteen years ago," said Colvin. "But I don't
know that it isn't all a yarn. People will say anything about each
other just now."
"I hear there's a lot of war-talk among the Dutch in the
Wildschutsbergen now, Mr Kershaw," said Mrs Wenlock. "You must hear
it, because you're right in among them all."
"Oh, they talk a good bit about war, but then what do we do? When I was
down at the Port Elizabeth show all the English were busy taking the
Transvaal. It was the same thing along Fish River and Koonap. If two
or three fellows got together on any given farm they were bound to spend
the evening taking the Transvaal. In fact, no Boer could give a shoot
on his place without his English neighbours swearing he was
rifle-practising for the great upheaval. We talk nothing but the war,
but if the Dutchmen do it becomes menace, sedition, and all the rest of
it right away."
Those were the days subsequent to the failure of the Bloemfontein
Conference, and racial feeling was near attaining its highest pitch.
Frank Wenlock, as we have said, got on with his Dutch neighbours more
than passably, which was as well, considering that his English ones were
but few and at long distances apart. But even upon him the curse of a
far-off dissension had fallen. Colvin Kershaw, on the other hand, was a
man of the world, with a well-balanced mind, and somewhat unconventional
withal. He took a judicial view of the situation, and, while
recognising that it had two sides, and that there was a great deal to be
said for both, he distinctly declined to allow any political
considerations to make any difference to the relationship in which he
stood towards his Boer neighbours and their families, with several of
whom he was on very good terms indeed.
A wild effort was made to abandon the burning subject, and for awhile,
as they sat upon the stoep smoking their pipes--the conversation ran
upon stock and local interests, and the prospects of rain to carry them
through the winter. But it soon came round again, as, indeed, in those
days it was bound to do, and the hotter and hotter grew Frank Wenlock on
the subject, the cooler and cooler remained his opponent. May, for her
part, sat and listened. She mostly shared her brother's prejudices on
that particular subject; but here was one whose opinion on most subjects
she held in the highest regard. Clearly, then, there was something to
be said on the other side.
"Why need you go on to-night, Mr Kershaw?" struck in Mrs Wenlock.
"Your room is always ready, you know, and it's quite a long while since
you were here."
"It won't be so long again, Mrs Wenlock. But I must be at Stephanus De
la Rey's to-night, because, over and above the delegate, I made an
appointment with Piet Lombard over a stock deal."
"Not to mention other attractions," cut in May, with a mischievous look
in her blue eyes. "Which is the favoured one--Andrina or Condaas?"
"How can one presume upon a choice between two such dreams of
loveliness? Both, of course," was the mirthful rejoinder. But there
was no real merriment in the mind of the girl. She had hoped he would
stay, had mapped out a potential afternoon's stroll--it might be, by
great good luck, the two of them alone together. And things were so
slow, and times so dull, there where they saw no one month in month out,
save an occasional Boer passer-by, or a travelling _smaus_, or
feather-buyer, usually of a tolerably low type of Jew--and therefore,
socially, no acquisition. Yes, after all, that was it. Times were so
dull.
"Don't be so long finding your way over again," was the chorus of
God-speed which followed the departing guest as his steed ambled away.
He, for his part, seemed to find a good deal to think about as he held
on over the wide brown plains, dismounting absently to let himself
through a gate every few minutes, for the whole veldt was a network of
wire fencing. Ostriches, grazing, lifted their long necks, some in
half-frightened, some in half-truculent curiosity, to gaze at him, then
dropped them again to resume their picking at the dried sprigs of Karroo
bush.
His acquaintance with the Wenlocks dated from just a year back: with the
family that is, for he and Frank had, as we have said, campaigned
together in Rhodesia. On returning to the Colony at the close of the
rebellion he had come to visit his former comrade-in-arms at the
latter's own home, and had spent three months there while looking about
for a place of his own. He had soon found one to his liking, and now
owned a 5,000-morgen farm in the Wildschutsberg range, where report said
he got through more game-shooting than farming. If so, it didn't seem
to matter greatly, for Colvin Kershaw was one of those phenomena
occasionally encountered--an habitually lucky man. What he undertook in
a small and careless way was wont to turn out better results than ten
times the carefully prepared labour and forethought exercised by other
people. Furthermore he was uncommunicative as to his own affairs, and
whatever was known about him among his neighbours amounted to just
nothing at all.
"Come again soon," had been May's parting words, and the blue eyes
uplifted to his during that last handclasp had been wondrously soft and
appealing.
Was it upon this his thoughts were dwelling so intently as he rode along
mile after mile? Perhaps. Yet he had often bidden her farewell before.