"IF--."
"Well, child, and what do you think of `our only Englishman'?" said Mrs
De la Rey, as they were putting away the "early coffee" things the
following morning.
"I like him, mother," replied Aletta. "I oughtn't to because I have
heard so much about him. That is sure to start one with a prejudice
against anybody. Still, I think I shall. Oh, wasn't Tant' Plessis
killing about `the only Englishman' and `the only English girl'? By the
way, was there anything in it?"
"Don't ask me. _I_ don't know," laughed her mother. "Only he seemed a
little too anxious to deny it. One can never tell. May Wenlock is a
very pretty girl."
"Is she? I never saw her. I remember Frank Wenlock--a good sort of
boy, but something of a lout. Now, this one is ever so different."
"_Oh, mijn Vaterland_!" grunted a voice from the armchair. "There they
are, jabbering English again--a tongue only fit for baboons."
Mother and daughter looked round quickly, exchanged a meaning smile, and
went on with their subject. They were accustomed to the old woman's
growls, and took no more notice of them than if she had been a
discontented child.
"Let's drive over and see the Wenlocks one day, mother," said Aletta.
"I am curious to see the only English girl here. Besides, I shall be
able to see in a moment whether there is really any fire beneath Tant'
Plessis' smoke. Yes--that will be great fun."
"What sort of ideas have you brought back with you from Cape Town,
child?" cried Mrs De la Rey, apparently shocked though really intensely
amused.
"That's all right, old mother. I have become `advanced'--in fact, down
there everybody took me for an English girl. And I have learnt to ride
a bicycle. No, really, I wish I had one here. Only imagine Tanta's
face if I went skimming along the road there down to the gate and back
on two wheels. Heavens, I believe it would kill her. She'd get a fit,"
And again that silvery peal rang out long and clear.
"Aletta! Don't make such a noise, child. Why, you have quite startled
Mr Kershaw--look, away down there at the bottom of the garden. He is
looking up this way, quite startled."
"Is he? Where? Oh, I see," following her mother's glance through the
window. "I think I'll go and talk to him. He is going to be fun, I
believe. You know, I like the English--those of the better sort--
although I am a thorough patriot. This one is of the better sort--you
can tell directly you see him, and you can hear it directly he opens his
mouth. Oh _yes_, I've seen lots of them. Yes, I shall go and talk to
him."
Away she went, singing to herself. Her mother could see her through the
window, stopping here and there to pick a flower or train up a drooping
bough. Colvin did not seem aware of her approach. His head was bent
down, and he seemed to be filling a pipe.
"Gertruida!"
Mrs De la Rey turned with a start.
"What is it, Tanta?"
"Where has the girl gone?"
"Who? Aletta?"
"Who? Aletta? What other girl has just gone out, I would like to
know?" snapped Tant' Plessis, bringing down her stick hard upon the
floor. "Where has she gone?"
"Gone? Only to look at the garden after the rain," answered poor Mrs
De la Rey, somewhat guiltily.
"Now you are lying, Gertruida," rapped out the old woman. "Ah, if I
could only give you the _strop_ again as I used to do when you were a
child!" shaking her stick viciously. "You, a mother of a grown-up
family, to lie like that. Really you are a case to bring before Mynheer
and the Kerkraad [Church Council]. You know perfectly well that that
girl has gone out to flirt with the Englishman."
"She has not, Tant' Plessis. You have no right to say such things,"
retorted Mrs De la Rey, stung to momentary wrath. "It is you who are
saying what is not true about my child."
"_Stil, stil_! So that is the result of all the _strop_ I used to give
you, Gertruida--to call your elders liars! You think I know no English.
I do, although I would sooner die than speak the accursed tongue. I
heard Aletta say she was going out to flirt with the Englishman."
"She didn't say `flirt,' Tanta. She said `talk.'"
"Well, well! What is the difference, I would like to know? To go out
like that--to go up to a man and talk with him all alone in a garden!
So that is the result of sending her to learn English ways. English
ways, indeed! No wonder the English were made, like the heathen of old,
to fall before the rifles of the Patriots. They were. I have heard
Mynheer say so, and if he doesn't know, who does?"
"I don't care what Mynheer says--or thinks, Tanta. I shall bring up my
children in my own way," flashed out Mrs De la Rey, losing patience.
"In the devil's own way you mean, Gertruida," said the other, waxing
very portentous and solemn. "Look at my own children--five girls and
seven boys. My girls got plenty of _strop_"--("Surely they did!"
interpolated the listener to herself)--"and now that they are married
they give theirs plenty too. For what says the Prophet Solomon in the
Holy Book: `Spare the _strop_ and you spoil the girl.' The Prophet did
say that, for I have heard Mynheer read it out in church." The speaker
herself could scarcely read. "Look at my girls. _They_ learnt no
English ways."
In imagination Mrs De la Rey did so look, and beheld five women who
were exact counterparts of their proud parent, albeit younger
presentments, and each owning a large brood as heavy as herself. But
she had had enough of this lecture, and began to cast about for a
pretext to depart.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Aletta the while was tripping down the garden path, pausing, as we have
said, as though to tend the flowers had been her sole object in coming
out, and as she walked she sang:
"Spreek, Bronkersspruit,
Met eerbied uit;
Noem Potchefstrom by naam.
Pretoria en Langsnek pas,
Ingogo en Majuba vas,
Waar ons Verlosser met ons was,
Vermeld die al te saam.
Vermeld die al te saam."
Colvin Kershaw pricked up his ears, but did not raise his head. For
that which she was singing was a snatch of the Transvaal "Volkslied,"
the Republican National Anthem. She was singing it _at_ him, of course.
This was really getting funny. She was quite close to him now.
"Ons vrye vlag
Geef nou onstag,
Die vierkleur waal in eer,
En wapper oer die Republiek;
Geen mag, geen lis, geen politiek
Van Kaffer, Brit, of Jingo-kliek,
Haal ooit die vlag weer neer.
Haal ooit die vlag weer neer!"
[Note 2.]
"Good morning, Mr Kershaw. You are up early. Englishmen are not fond
of early rising as a rule."
"Good morning, Miss De la Rey. You seem in a vastly patriotic mood this
morning. Can a poor Englishman by any chance do anything that comes
within measurable distance of being right?"
Aletta laughed, but not quite in the same whole-hearted way she usually
did. There was something in the look of this man, standing there, easy,
good-humoured, smiling, which seemed to strike her. She had been
favourably impressed with him the evening before, when he had not shown
externally to the best advantage, and, whatever cheap ethicists may
propound to the contrary, externals and impressions go very much hand in
hand. Now he was clad in his own clothes, not in scratch garments many
sizes too wide for him. As she had just been telling her mother, she
had seen at a glance that he was thoroughbred; now he looked more so
than ever.
"Oh yes, he can--sometimes," she said. "You know, I like the English of
a certain sort, though I detest those of another."
"Well, why do you bear down upon me singing an aggressive war-song--at
me? _At_ me, of course."
"Was I?"
"You know you were. You were rubbing in Bronker's Spruit, and Ingogo,
and Majuba, and all that."
"It's rather chilly after the rain," she said, looking around with a
shiver. "But it is going to be a lovely day."
Her irrelevant prediction was true enough. Not a cloud remained in the
sky, which was deepening more and more to its vivid daylight blue, as
the sun, just rising over a great ironstone krantz which crested the
range beyond the river, flooded the wide valley, dissipating the faint
mist engendered by the night's moisture, and causing the raindrops still
lingering on the Karroo bushes and scattered mimosa to scintillate like
the purest diamonds. Birds twittered among the willows by the dam, and
in the quince hedges, and away over the wide veldt, the cock koorhaans
answered each other in their shrill, barking crow, as though rejoicing
in the glowing splendour of the newly-born day.
"Yes, I think it is," he answered. "But, to come back to what we were
saying. I don't think that `Volkslied' is much of a song, you know.
For instance, `Van Kaffer, Brit, of Jingo-kliek' is a pretty good sample
of doggerel. Then, again, the whole thing is a little too pietistic for
ordinary use. The tune is a fine one, but the words--well, they are a
trifle poor."
"Are they? Oh yes--and what about `God Save the Queen'? Isn't that
just as pietistic? And `Confound their politics, frustrate their
knavish tricks'--how is that for doggerel, eh?" And, firing up with her
subject, Aletta's face became quite animated, and the colour rushed over
it in such wise as to render it very attractive--at least, so thought
the onlooker, and secretly rejoiced in the situation, enjoying it
hugely.
"H'm, well, perhaps. But, doesn't it strike you, Miss De la Rey, that
you are wasting your cartridges by blazing them into me? Why, I am more
than half of your way of thinking already. Ask your father if I am
not."
The girl's face changed entirely, taking on a wondrously pleased
expression. The defiant one had utterly vanished. Colvin began
fumbling for a match wherewith to relight his pipe, which had gone out.
In reality he was thinking what there was about this girl which appealed
to him so strongly. She was not even pretty. Yet, standing there, tall
and graceful and fresh, in the early morning; a very soul of mind
looking out of her eyes with the enthusiasm born of a cherished subject,
she was more--she was marvellously attractive. The strange, lingering
feeling which her presence had left upon him the night before was
intensified here in the prosaic morning hour. What was it?
"There are patriots, however," he went on, "who are not always shining
angels of light. Listen now, and I'll tell you what happened to me
yesterday in that connection. Would you like to hear?"
"Of course I would."
Then he told her--told her everything, from the discovery of the
concealed arms to the suspicious non appearance of the man he had gone
to see; of Hans Vermaak's mysterious warning, and the subsequent ample
justification thereof--the narrow escape he and his servant had had for
their lives when fired upon murderously in the darkness by ambushed
assailants--up to the time of his arriving at Ratels Hoek, when she had
first seen him. Told her the whole story--her--this girl whom twelve
hours ago he had never seen--this girl only just out of her teens. Told
her, when as yet he had not told her father, a strong man of mature age,
and one of his most intimate friends. Why did he do it? He hardly knew
himself, unless it were that something in her personality appealed to
him as marking her out not merely from the rest of her sex, but from the
general ruck.
She listened attentively, absorbedly; her eyes fixed upon his face.
"Yes, that was bad," she said. "But then, you know, Mr Kershaw, as you
English say--there are black sheep in every flock, and the people back
there in the Wildschutsberg are a low class of Boer, very little removed
from _bijwoners_ [squatter labourers]. But"--as if she had said too
much and was trying to cover it--"do you not think they may have been
only wanting to frighten you; to play a joke on you?"
"It was a joke that cost me an uncommonly good mare," he answered. "The
poor brute was plugged through and rolled into the river. I dare say
she is half-way down to the sea by this time--as I and Gert would have
been but for, I suppose, Providence."
She was looking grave enough now, and for a few moments made no reply.
"What are you going to do about it?" she asked.
"Nothing."
He fancied a look of relief came into her face. She must be intensely
imbued with the cause of her countrymen, with racial partisanship, he
decided.
"Nothing? But if you think they tried to murder you?"
"Oh, I don't think much of that. I'm not going to bother any more about
it. Why should I?"
"But you English are always such a--well, vindictive race. It is one of
your favourite boasts that you never let anybody get the better of you--
that you are always even with them--I think that is the phrase," she
said, and there was a strange look upon her face which rather puzzled
him.
"Are we? Well, here's an exception then. Life is too short to bother
oneself about trifles merely for the sake of `being even with' somebody.
Likely one of these days Gideon Roux will be the first to be sorry he
shot at me. He needn't have done it. The cave affair and the rifles
didn't concern me. I shouldn't have given it away. But he won't come
down with the value of the mare, because I believe the poor devil is
none too flush at any time. So what does it matter?"
That strange look upon Aletta's face deepened. He did not quite know
how to read it.
"Have you told father about this?" she said.
"Not yet. I had meant to. I don't think I shall at all now. It
doesn't seem worth while."
"Then why did you tell me?"
"I don't know."
Again they stood looking at each other in silence, as though reading
each other. He was thinking of how he had seen her last night--bright,
sparkling, girlish--full of humour and merriment; yet even then he had
judged her temperament to have another side. Now his judgment was borne
out. She could show herself serious, grave, judicious--in short, full
of character when a matter of moment was under discussion. She for her
part was thinking that of all the men she had met, and she had met
many--for Stephanus De la Rey was connected with some of the best old
Dutch families at the Cape, and in the society of the capital, Dutch or
English, Aletta had not merely had the _entree_, but had been in
request--she had never come into contact with one who was quite like
this. He was right outside her ordinary experience.
A sound of approaching hoof-strokes aroused them--on Aletta's part with
something of a start. A bridle path threaded the garden here, affording
a considerable short cut up from the river drift, and the horseman now
advancing along this had come out through the quince hedge almost upon
them. In him they recognised Adrian De la Rey.
"_Daag_, Aletta. I have only just heard you were home again," he said
in Dutch, as he sprang from his horse and shook hands with her. But
Colvin did not fail to notice that the young Boer's greeting of himself
was markedly cold, not to say grim.
"So ho!" said he to himself. "That is the way the cat jumps? I see."
Then aloud, "What sort of rifle have you there, Adrian?" For the latter
was clad and armed as though for the chase, and had a bandolier full of
cartridges slung round him.
"One of the new kind," was the crisp reply. "A Mauser. _Ja_, you can
kill a man at thousands of yards with this."
"So you could, if you could only see him," was the perfectly
good-humoured reply.
"I shall see him plainly enough, at whatever distance. _Ja_, at
whatever distance," repeated the young Boer with meaning; and, looking
as black as thunder, he turned his back upon the other in rather a
pointed manner, and began to converse with his cousin.
"Yet," said Colvin to himself, "yet we have always been the best of
friends. But that would prove a very awkward customer if--Yes," he
repeated, always to himself. "If--"
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note 1.
"Speak, Bronkersspruit,
With pride speak out;
Call Potchefstrom by name.
Pretoria and Langnek's Pass,
Ingogo and Majuba,
Where our Deliverer was with us,
Proclaim them all together."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note 2.
"Our freedom's flag Give now its praise, `Four colours' hold in renown;
It waves above the Republic. No force, intrigue, no politics Of Kafir,
Briton, Jingo clique, Shall e'er that flag again haul down."