"Here comes a fellow who looks as if he didn't want to use his horse
again for a day or two." And Brian shaded his eyes to watch a moving
speck rapidly approaching, but still at a considerable distance.
The hour was just before sunrise, a couple of mornings after our visit
to Kuliso, and the two of us were standing on the stoep drinking our
early cup of coffee.
"Why, it's Revell," he went on, as a look through the field-glasses
revealed the identity of the horseman, now lost to sight, now
reappearing round a bend of the hillside. "You can see the flaming halo
around his face, even from here. By jingo! I hope there's nothing
wrong. He's going at a hard gallop. Look, dad," he called through the
window. "Come out. Here's Revell coming up the kloof at such a pace
you'd think the joker whose name rhymes with his was after him."
"Perhaps he's bringing us some news," was the answer. "Well, well! We
ought to be ready for anything."
The dogs charged forward with open-mouthed clamour to greet the
advancing hoof-strokes, and in a few minutes the horseman dashed up to
the stoep.
"News!" he shouted. "News for you!"
"Bad, I suppose?" said Septimus Matterson.
"No. Good. First-rate."
Even while dismounting he had been fumbling in his pocket, and now held
out a long blue envelope. I believed I could see the recipient's
fingers slightly tremble as he tore open this, but his voice was firm
enough as he read out its contents, which set forward in terse official
phraseology that _in re_ The Queen _versus_ George Matterson, the
Solicitor-General, having examined the evidence, did not consider the
facts such as to warrant a criminal prosecution, and that the said
George Matterson had been released accordingly, and handed over to the
care of his sister. The writer then had the honour to be the
recipient's obedient servant, John Shattuck, Resident Magistrate.
"Hip--hip--hooray!" whooped Revell, flourishing his hat in the air, a
proceeding which caused his steed, which was standing, veldt-fashion,
with merely the end of the bridle resting on the ground, to throw up its
head and trot away down the kloof again, snorting vehemently, and the
dogs to assail him with frantic energy of purpose which nearly bore
disastrous fruit.
"You are a good chap to bring us the news, Revell," said Brian.
"_Magtig_, _kerel_! but you've ridden your horse to death!"
"Well, it was good enough, wasn't it? Bliss Matterson was keen on
letting you know at once, but couldn't get hold of any one coming out
this way, so I volunteered. I said I'd be the first to bring the news,
and I have," concluded this prince of good fellows quite delightedly.
"Now come inside and have some scoff," said Brian. "I'll send and have
your gee looked after. You must have ridden all night."
"So I did. What of it? You'd do as much for Miss Beryl, wouldn't you?
Man, but the nipper was jolly glad to get out of the _tronk_, I can tell
you. Shattuck had no business ever to have put him in. He bust out
howling when Miss Beryl went to fetch him."
"Who did? Shattuck?" I said.
"Eh? Oh, shut up, Holt. Don't you try to come the Trask," was the
chuckling retort. "By the way, Mr Matterson--what a blundering ass I
am--here's a _brievje_ from Miss Beryl. Oh, and I brought out your post
while I was about it."
Beryl's note was merely a repetition of the official intimation, and was
coupled with a request that some one should come in to Fort Lamport as
soon as possible to fetch them out. She judged it better to come home
at once.
No one thought of taking notice at that moment of anything so trivial as
the mere weekly post. The two or three letters for myself I put in my
pocket, hardly glancing at the addresses. Business, of course, but not
of urgent importance. On a day like this it could keep.
It was decided that Brian should start with the Cape cart soon after
breakfast. He would be at Fort Lamport early in the afternoon, and
could even come out nearly half way to-night, and if they did that, and
slept at a friend's farm, why, they would all be back by this time
to-morrow.
To these arrangements I listened as in a trance. Beryl would be with us
again. This time to-morrow! Why, it was hardly credible. It seemed a
year since we had been without her. Not even until this time to-morrow
would _I_ wait, however, for already I was busy formulating a little
scheme of my own for riding out at some perfectly ungodly hour of the
early morning to meet them. Ah, now everything was coming right. It
was like a story, by Jove it was; and now this time I would not let the
grass grow under my feet. Why should I, indeed? Everything had gone
well. Kuliso and his clan were satisfied with their compensation.
George was liberated. The only thing to do was to try and forget the
whole unfortunate affair all round. And, I hoped--very strongly hoped--
I would soon be in a position to help one of them at any rate duly to
forget it.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
What an ultra-celestial gleam there was in the newly-risen sun, which
had now just soared free of the further hills, deepening the cloudless
blue into a richer depth! What a ring of joyousness in the varying bird
notes, tossed from spray to spray and from tree to tree, over the wide
free expanse! Even the distant voices of the farm Kafirs, and the bleat
of the flocks, seemed to my wrought-up brain to take on a very
gladsomeness of tone. By that time to-morrow Beryl would be home again,
and even before then I should have seen her, sweet, fresh and radiant in
the rose-glow of the early morning.
All this ran through my mind, and kept me silent; but there was no need
to talk, for Revell was a host in himself in that line, and now he was
launching forth by the hour, mostly as to the affair which had just met
with so fortunate a conclusion, unflattering comments upon the laws of
the Colony in general, and their administrator, Shattuck, in particular.
Then, after an early breakfast, Brian inspanned, and with a few parting
injunctions from his father, drove off.
Revell, naturally enough, was in no hurry to move on, and in my then
mood his ceaseless, if harmless, chatter annoyed me. There was nothing
particular to be done about the homestead, so I saddled up a horse for a
ride round the veldt. I might get a shot at something, but that was a
secondary consideration. I wanted to be alone and think.
Very rose-tinted was the reverie in which I was wrapped, as my steed
paced on, over swelling rise or through bushed valley bottom. I went
back over all the time I had spent in this happy home. I thought of her
whose presence had brightened it, and called to mind all manner of
little circumstances which now stood out in anything but a discouraging
light. Why, even to-morrow might decide everything, given the
opportunity, and that I would endeavour to make. And somehow or other I
felt strangely buoyant as to the result.
For all the use I made of it I might as well have left my gun at home,
yet it was for no lack of chances. A pair of vaal koorhaans rose almost
beneath the horse's feet--rare chance indeed at these wary and beautiful
birds, themselves all too scarce in our locality--yet I merely watched
them as they winged their way out of shot, uttering their querulous
note. Further on, a duiker ram, slinking along not thirty yards
distant, a shot I could not have missed, yet I let him go. Later again
a large troop of guinea-fowl running for a prickly pear _klompje_,
where, had I followed them up, I should have been sure of at least a
brace. They too were left unmolested. The wild game of the veldt
seemed to be under a kind of "truce of God." As far as I was concerned,
I felt disinclined to take life that day.
I had reached the spot where I had shot my first bush-buck ram, somewhat
lower down in the Zwaart Kloof from the scene of the subsequent tragedy,
and here it occurred to me that I would dismount and smoke a quiet pipe;
in pursuance of which idea, feeling in my pocket for my pouch, my hand
came in contact with the letters I had put there that morning, still
unopened and totally forgotten. They were from England, but probably of
no importance--possibly some further and tedious delay as to the
transfer of my capital, but there was no such violent hurry about that.
The first mystified me, but very uncomfortably so. I believe my hand
shook as I tore open the second, and then--and then--I could feel myself
growing white and cold--everything was going round. A blow on the head
could hardly have stunned me more. For, before I got half through the
contents of that horrible communication, I realised the hideous fact. I
was a ruined man. The solicitors to whom had been entrusted the
transfer of my capital had defaulted for a huge amount, an amount beside
which my little all was a mere sixpence, and every farthing of the said
"little all" was in their hands. Beyond a few pounds in the bank at
Fort Lamport, and the value of the few head of stock I had running on
the place, I was penniless.
I stared at the hateful characters of the communication and shrank from
reading it again. Yet I did so, and by its light the first I had opened
stood explained. It was too explicit. The whole had vanished--vanished
utterly. Not even a halfpenny in the pound would any composition
afford.
What of the golden dream in which, but a moment ago it seemed, I had
been enwrapped? What of the happy, healthful, independent life I had
been mapping out? And, of course, what of Beryl?
All--all had vanished. No more thought of independence for me. As a
man without means I must be at the beck and call of others, content that
way merely to earn a livelihood. No more thought of love. That was a
luxury as far beyond me now as a country seat or a town house. The
rose-hued dream must disappear, dispelled by an irruption of dank and
gloomy fog. I was practically a beggar.
Beryl was coming home to-morrow, but to me that meant nothing now. Yet
how could I go through the anguish of dwelling beneath the same roof
with her day after day, month after month, knowing that she was lost to
me, for, of course, now I could never tell her. And then, as if to
render the mockery more diabolically complete, a sort of consciousness
came over me that had I spoken sooner she would have refused now to give
me back my troth. She was of the stuff who would stand by a man through
ill as well as through good. Well, it was too late now. The
opportunity had gone--gone for ever.
Had this blow overtaken me earlier, or even now had I never known Beryl
Matterson, it would have been bad enough. Now it had fallen with
tenfold force--with a force that crushed. A wild eerie temptation came
over me, as my glance rested upon the gun which stood against a boulder.
This kloof had so recently witnessed one tragedy, why not another?
There was nothing left in life, and in my then frame of mind I could
imagine nothing worse in the hereafter than the veritable agony I was
now undergoing. Indeed, so sharp was the temptation that I have a
recollection of resolutely throwing all my cartridges over the krantz.
Further, I remember walking with a sort of dazed stagger as I made my
way over to where my horse had strayed some twenty yards, and was
placidly cropping the grass, the bridle trailing on the ground.
Well, the situation had to be faced. I must pull myself together and
make the best of it--which sounds an excellent, hard-headed, common
sense, even cheery, way of looking at things, as a theory. At any rate,
I kept repeating it over and over again to myself during that homeward
ride and afterwards. But, alternating with it, in jangling refrain, was
gloomy, hopeless, desperate fact--Ruined! Penniless! Beggared!