"It's perfect lovely! Better than they 'ave in the penny books."
"Where Coralline and the Marquis are playin' the spooney game, and 'im
with a Lady Reginer up 'is dirty sleeve. An' there's another thing I want
you to let 'er know." His eyes were on hers, his breath fanned her hot
cheeks. "There isn't another woman on the earth but her for me. Dessay
there may be others; wot I say is--I don't see 'em!" He waved his hand,
dismissing the ardent creatures.
A pang transpierced the conscience hiding under the cheap flowery blouse.
Emigration Jane hesitated, biting the dog's-eared finger-ends of a cotton
glove. Should she tell this ardent, chivalrous lover that the Convent roof
no longer sheltered the magnificent fair hair-plait and the mischievous
blue eyes of his adored? That Miss Greta Du Taine had left for
Johannesburg with the latest batch of departing pupils! If she told, W.
Keyse would vanish out of her life, it might be for ever; or, if by chance
encountered on the street, pass by with a casual greeting and a touch of
the cheap Panama. Emigration Jane was no heroine, only a daughter of Eve.
Arithmetic and what was termed the "tonic sofa" had been more sternly
inculcated than the moral virtues at the Board School in Kentish Town. And
she was not long in making up her mind that she would not tell him--not
just yet, anyway.
What was he saying, in the Cockney that cut like a knife through the thick
gutturals of the Taal? "I shall walk past the Convent to-morrer in kit and
'cetras, on the charnce of 'Er seein' me. Two sharp. And, look 'ere, Miss,
you've done me a good turn. And--no larks!--if ever I can do you
another--trust me. Stryte--I mean it! You ask chaps 'oo know me if Billy
Keyse ever went back on a pal?"
She swayed her hips, and disclaimed all obligation. But, garn! he was
gittin' at 'er, she knew!
"I ain't; I mean it! You should 'ave 'arf me 'eredittary estates--if I 'ad
any. As I 'aven't, say wot you'll drink? Do, Miss, to oblige yours truly,
W. Keyse, Esquire."
W. Keyse plunged a royal, reckless hand into the pocket of his tweed
riding-breeches, bought against the time when he should bestride something
nobler than a bicycle, and produced a half-sovereign. He owed it to his
landlady and the rest, the coin that he threw down so magnificently on the
shiny counter, but you do not treat your good angel every day....
Emigration Jane bridled, and swayed her hips still more. His largeness was
intoxicating. One had dreamed of meeting such young men.
"Port or sherry? Or a glass of cham, with a lump o' ice in for a cooler?
They keep the stuff on draught 'ere, and not bad by 'arf for South Africa.
'Ere, you, Mister! Two chams for self and the young lydy, an' look
slippy!"
The brimming glasses of sparkling, creaming fluid, juice of vines that
never grew in the historic soil of France, were passed over the bar. A
miniature berg clinked in each, the coldness of its contact with the
glowing lip forcing slight rapturous shrieks from Emigration Jane.
"We'll drink 'Er 'ealth!" W. Keyse raised his goblet. "And Friends at 'Ome
in our Isle across the Sea!"
He drank, pleased with the sentiment, and set down the empty glass.
The Dutch bar-keeper leaned across the counter, and tapped him on the arm
with a thick, stubby forefinger.
"Mister Engelschman, I think you shall best go out of here."
"Me? Go out? 'Oo are you gettin' at, Myn'eer Van Dunck?" swaggered W.
Keyse. And he slipped one thin, freckled hand ostentatiously under his
coat of shoddy summer tweed. A very cheap revolver lurked in the
hip-pocket of which Billy was so proud. In his third-floor back
bed-sitting-room in Judd Street, London, W.C., he had promised himself a
moment when that hip-pocket should be referred to, just in that way. It
was a cheap bit of theatrical swagger, but the saloon was full, not of
harmless theatrical pretences, but bitter racial antagonisms, seething
animosities, fanged and venomed hatreds, only waiting the prearranged
signal to strike and slay.
Emigration Jane tugged at the hero's sleeve, as he felt for an almost
invisible moustache, scanning the piled-up, serried faces with pert, pale,
hardy eyes.
"'E ain't coddin'. See 'ow black they're lookin'."
"I see 'em, plyne enough. Waxworks only fit for the Chamber of 'Orrors,
ain't 'em?"
"It's a young woman wot arsks you to go, not a bloke! Please! For my syke,
if you won't for your own!"
Billy Keyse, with a flourish, offered the thin, boyish arm in the tweed
sleeve.
"Righto! Will you allow me, Miss?"
She faltered:
"I--I can't, deer. I--I'm wiv my young man."
"Looks after you a proper lot, I don't think. Which is 'im? Where's 'e 'id
'isself? There's only one other English-lookin' feller 'ere, an' 'e's
drunk, lyin' over the table there in the corner. That ain't 'im, is it?"
"Nah, that isn't 'im. That big Dutchy, lookin' this way, showin' 'is teeth
as 'e smiles. That's my young man."
She indicated the Slabberts, heavily observant of the couple with the
muddy eyes under the tow-coloured thatch.
"'Strewth!" W. Keyse whistled depreciatively between his teeth, and
elevated his scanty eyebrows. "That tow-'eaded, bung-nosed, 'ulking, big
Dopper. An' you a daughter of the Empire!"
Oh! the thrice-retorted scorn in the sharp-edged Cockney voice! The
scorching contempt in the pale, ugly little eyes of W. Keyse! She wilted
to her tallest feather, and the tears came crowding, stinging the back of
her throat, compelling a miserable sniff. Yet Emigration Jane was not
destitute of spirit.
"I ... I took 'im to please meself ... not you, nor the Hempire neither."
"Reckon you was precious 'ard up for a chap. Good-afternoon, Miss."
He touched the cheap Panama, and swung theatrically round on his heel.
Between him and the saloon-door there was a solid barricade of heavy
Dutch bodies, in moleskin, tan-cord, and greasy homespun, topped by
lowering Dutch faces. Brawny right hands that could have choked the reedy
crow out of the little bantam gamecock, clenched in the baggy pockets of
old shooting-jackets. Others gripped leaded sjamboks, and others crept to
hip-pockets, where German army revolvers were. The bar-keeper and the
Slabberts exchanged a meaning wink.
"Gents, I'll trouble you. By your leave?..."
Nobody moved. And suddenly W. Keyse became conscious that these were
enemies, and that he was alone. A little hooliganism, a few street-fights,
one scuffle with the police, some rows in music-halls constituted all his
experience. In the midst of these men, burly, brutal, strong, used to shed
blood of beast and human, his cheap swagger failed him with his stock of
breath. He was no longer the hero in an East End melodrama; his heroic
mood had gone, and there was a feel of tragedy in the air. The Boers
waited sluggishly for the next move. It would come when there should be a
step forward on the part of the little Englishman. Then a clumsy foot in a
cow-leather boot or heavy wooden-pegged veldschoen would be thrust out,
and the boy would be tripped up and go down, and the crowd would
deliberately kick and trample the life out of him, and no one would be
able to say how or by whom the thing had been done. And, reading in the
hard eyes set in the stolid yellow and drab faces that he was "up against
it," and no mistake, W. Keyse felt singularly small and lonely.
Then something happened.
The drunken Englishman who had been lying in a hoggish stupor over the
little iron table in the corner of the saloon hiccoughed, and lifted a
crimson, puffy face, with bleary eyes in it that were startlingly blue. He
drew back the great arms that had been hanging over the edge of his
impromptu pillow, and heaved up his massive stooping shoulders, and got
slowly upon his feet. Then, lurching in his walk, but not stumbling, he
moved across the little space of saw-dusted, hard-beaten earth that
divided him from W. Keyse, and drew up beside that insignificant minority.
The action was not purposeless or unimpressive. The alcoholic wastrel had
suddenly become protagonist in the common little drama that was veering
towards tragedy. Beside the man, Billy Keyse dwindled to a stunted boy, a
steam-pinnace bobbing under the quarter of an armoured battle-ship, its
huge mailed bulk pregnant with possibilities of destruction, its barbettes
full of unseen, watchful eyes, and hands powerful to manipulate the levers
of Titanic death-machines.
Let it be understood that the intervener did not present the aspect of a
hero. He had been drunk, and would be again, unless some miraculous
quickening of the alcohol-drugged brain-centres should rouse and revivify
the dormant will. His square face, with the heavy smudge of bushy black
eyebrows over the fierce blue eyes, and the short, blunt, hooked nose, and
grim-lipped yet tender mouth, from the corner of which an extinct and
forgotten cigar-butt absurdly jutted, bore, like his great gaunt frame,
the ravaging traces of the consuming drink-lust. His well-cut,
loosely-fitting grey morning-coat and trousers were soiled and slovenly;
his blue linen shirt was collarless and unbuttoned at the neck. His grey
felt smasher hat was crammed on awry. But there was a thick lanyard round
the muscular neck, ending in a leather revolver-pouch that was attached to
his stout belt of webbing. A boy with a fifteen-and-sixpenny toy revolver
you can laugh at and squelch; but, Alamachtig! a big man with a Webley and
Scott was another thing. And the frowy barrier of thick, coarsely-clad,
bulky bodies and scowling, yellow-tan faces, began to melt away.
When a clear lane showed to the saloon door, the Dop Doctor took it,
walking with a lurch in his long stride, but with the square head held
upright on his great gaunt shoulders. W. Keyse, Esquire, moved in the
shadow of him, taking two steps to one of his. The swing doors opened,
thudded to behind them....
"Outside.... Time, too!"
The wide, thin-lipped Cockney mouth grinned a little consciously as W.
Keyse jerked his thumb towards the still vibrating doors of the saloon.
"Reg'ler 'ornets' nest o' Dutchies. And I was up agynst it, an' no
mistyke, when you rallied up. An', Mister, you're a Fair Old Brick, an' if
you've no objection to shykin' 'ands ...?"
But the big man did not seem to see the little Cockney's offered hand. He
nodded, looking with the bloodshot and extremely blue eyes that were set
under his heavy straight black brows, not at W. Keyse, but over the boy's
head, and with a surly noise in his throat that stopped short of being
speech, swung heavily round and went down the dusty street, that was
grilling in the full blaze of the afternoon heat, lurching a little in his
walk.
Then, suddenly, running figures of men came round the corner. Voices
shouted, and houses and shops and saloons emptied themselves of their
human contents. The news flew from kerb to kerb, and jumped from windows
to windows, out of which women, European and coloured, thrust eager,
questioning heads.
The Cape Town train that had started at midday had returned to
Gueldersdorp, having been held up by a force of armed and mounted Boers
twenty miles down the line. And a London newspaper correspondent had
handed in a cable at the post-office, and the operator's instrument, after
a futile click or so, had failed to work any more.
The telegraphic wire was cut. Hostilities had commenced in earnest, and
Gueldersdorp, severed from the South by this opening act of war, must find
her salvation thenceforwards in the cool brains and steady nerves of the
handful of defenders behind her sand-bags, when the hour of need should
come.
History has it written in her imperishable record, that is not only
printed upon paper, and graven upon brass, and cut in marble, but stamped
into the minds and hearts of millions of men and women of the British
race, how, when that hour came, the hero-spirit in their countrymen rose
up to meet it. And for such undying memories as these, and not for the
mere word of suzerainty, it is worth while to have paid as Britain has
paid, in gold, and blood, and tears.