Chapter One.
The coach to the Diamond Fields was just starting from the Beaufort West
railway-station, and the passengers who were destined to travel over
hundreds of miles of burnt-up veldt together, to be jolted over
water-courses, choked in dust-storms, and suffer the many discomforts
and annoyances of South African travel in each other's society, were
eyeing one another distrustfully.
The feeling uppermost in the minds of several of them was that they were
very likely to become not a little tired of one another before they
reached the iron town of Kimberley.
With one or two exceptions they were old residents on the Diamond
Fields, returning after a trip home to Europe or to the Colony, and
therefore they knew each other very well, at least by sight. Their
acquaintanceship as a rule made them look forward with all the more
distaste to the idea of spending some days in the same coach.
There were ten passengers, and Kate Gray, a soft, refined-looking
English girl who was travelling by herself, and whose black dress
suggested that she was equally alone in her journey through life, shrunk
into the corner of the coach with a half shudder, and thought that her
fellow-passengers were a singularly unprepossessing lot. She had tried
to make light in anticipation of the annoyances in store for her; but
now they were forced upon her, and she felt uncomfortable and out of
heart. She had lived for two years in South Africa, and though she had
had great sorrow, none of those rougher experiences of colonial life had
come in her way which it now seemed likely enough that she was destined
soon to meet with. She was the daughter of a retired army officer, who,
believing much in his business capacity and power to make money, had put
his all when he left the army into an ostrich farm in the Cape Colony,
and had taken his daughter out with him. Their life had been a pleasant
one enough for some time. The farm was a pretty place. They were not
very far off Capetown, and they had pleasant neighbours within reach.
Unfortunately the farm was not suited to ostriches. The wretched birds
refused to thrive and increase. They showed a wayward ingenuity in
hunting poisonous plants and shrubs, on which they succeeded in
committing suicide. Colonel Gray, when his birds died, borrowed money
and bought more; then they died, and he bought sheep, which did the
same. Then he died himself--more of sheep and ostriches than anything
else; and after his death it was found out that he had lived long enough
to ruin himself, and to leave his daughter without a penny. She at
first thought of going home, but the long list of girls placed as she
was, who advertised their willingness to teach, or act as companion only
for a home, made her think that she was fortunate to be out of England.
Then she heard of some Cape Dutch people up country near the Diamond
Fields who wanted an English governess, and she took the place. She was
plucky and capable, as well-bred English women are as a rule, and she
had determined to think little about the discomfort of the journey, but
as she noticed one of her fellow-passengers, a peculiarly aggressive
specimen of the Diamond Field Jew, trying to stare her out of
countenance, with an impudent leer of admiration in his coarse face, she
realised that her position was an unpleasant one. This gentleman was a
rather well-known character at Kimberley--a certain Mr Joe Aarons, who
had bought many stolen diamonds during his sojourn on the Fields, and
was represented to be very rich and prosperous. Unfortunately for his
fellow-travellers, Mr Aarons, in the circle in which he moved, was
considered a neat humourist, and already he had made one or two remarks
which gave his audience a foretaste of the comfort he would likely be to
them. Two meaner Jews, men of the Aaron type, but less distinguished
characters, appeared to be highly delighted at Joe's wit; and so was the
only other representative of the fair sex, a lady known on the Diamond
Fields, where she kept a canteen, as Mother Hemp--the prefix being added
to her name rather in a spirit of sarcasm than affection. Probably this
good lady had realised that it was quite useless to expect the arts of
her toilet to withstand the strain of a coach-journey of almost a week,
so she had not even taken the trouble to start fair, and already the
coating of paint and powder was cracking and curling away from her
yellow old cheeks, which looked curiously shrunk. Also, to be more
comfortable on the journey, she had packed away her false teeth. The
rest of the company, however, looked upon Mr Aarons with anything but
favour. A big, important-looking man, Mr Bowker, the great Kimberley
claim-owner, who was just returning from the Cape House of Assembly,
felt somewhat disgusted at the idea of having to travel up to the Fields
in the company of Mr Aarons. He had perhaps had in his time a little
more to do with that person than he would like every one to know, and he
was afraid that he might become too familiar on the journey. Then there
was a young gentleman who was going to practise in the High Court of
Kimberley, and who having had the advantage of three years of home
education, was horribly disgusted with the land of his birth to which he
had returned, and lost no opportunity of railing at all things connected
with Africa. A colonial attorney, on his return from a trip home as he
called it--though in England he was strangely abroad--made up the
aristocratic element. The two other passengers were river-diggers,
partners, and in a way great friends, though men of somewhat different
character, and curiously unlike experience. One of them, Jim Brawnston
by name, was as good a specimen as one might wish to meet with of the
South African born Anglo-Saxon--a brawny giant, of about twenty-eight,
with a bushy beard, a pleasant honest look in his light blue eyes, and a
laugh like a lion's roar. In his time he had followed most of the
callings which are open to a Cape colonist who has a disposition to rove
about rather than to settle down anywhere. He had been a digger when
the Diamond Fields first broke out, then had gone a trading trip up
country, then had taken a turn at transport riding, and had for a time
returned to his old business and become a digger on the banks of the
Vaal.
Kate thought, as she caught a glance of the face of the other, a man
some half dozen years older than his companion, that he was the most
interesting of her fellow-travellers. Though his get-up was rough
enough--he wore a flannel shirt, a pair of Bedford cord trousers, and an
old shooting coat, which, though an expert would recognise it as having
been the work of a good maker, was curiously faded and worn--Kate felt
certain that he was an English gentleman. And there was an expression
in his tanned face and sad-looking eyes--eyes which seemed to tell that
he had had in his time a good deal of trouble--which made her feel that
his presence in the coach would make the journey less distasteful to
her. He was listening with an expression of grave amusement to the two
limbs of the law as they swaggered about England, what they had done
when they were at home, where they had been, and whom they had known.
His expression altered to one of anger and disgust when he caught some
of Aarons' conversation, and noticed how horrified and frightened Kate
looked. "Surely she can't be travelling with that old hag," he thought
to himself, as he looked at Mrs Hemp.
"And are you going up to the Fields, my dear?" said that lady to Kate,
with a sham smile on her evil old face. "We two ladies and all these
gentlemen; well, we must look after each other, and keep them in their
right place."
"I am in my right place sitting next to you, ain't I, miss?" said
Aarons, with a look of insolent admiration, which made her feel
extremely uncomfortable.
Jim Brawnston had always found that his partner George Darrell avoided
woman's society, and seemed to have a deep-rooted dislike to the sex,
but to his surprise on this occasion he interfered.
"I think you had better change places with me, you will be more
comfortable," he said to Kate, with a look at Aarons which expressed a
good deal. The latter seemed to be considerably surprised.
"Sit where you are, my dear," he said; "you're in very good company
where you are, and I'll look after you." However, the young lady
changed places without paying any attention to him, and as they settled
themselves down, there was a crack of the whip and a yell from the
driver, and the horses started off at a gallop.
Darrell took his seat next to Aarons, and after he had settled himself
down, he turned round to his neighbour.
"You hound, if you open your lips to speak to that lady I will throw you
out of the coach," he whispered to him.
The Jew replied, with a choice collection of bad language, that he would
talk to whom he pleased.
"Who are you, with your damned side? I dare say you 'aven't got a
couple of pound in the pocket of your ragged coat; who the--" Joe said,
and then pulled up and stopped--there was something in the other's
expression he didn't like. Darrell had no more to say to him, but
leaned back in his seat and smoked his pipe.
He wondered whether or no he had not made a fool of himself in
interfering. Well, it would have annoyed him all the journey to have
seen her sitting near that greasy-looking brute of a Jew, he thought to
himself; she seemed a good deal happier sitting next to Jim Brawnston,
and talking to him brightly enough. The woman didn't live who would not
be perfectly reassured by that kindly giant's honest face.
It was a pretty face enough, Darrell thought; it reminded him of days
long past before he left all he cared for behind, and became the
hopeless wanderer he was now. "She looks as if she has had a good deal
of trouble; what can she be going up to the Diamond Fields by herself
for? If she had people there they ought to look after her better than
that," he thought. As he looked at her, another face rose up before his
memory, which had once intoxicated him by its beauty till he threw his
life away for it--the face of the woman in England who called herself by
his name, and had a right to do so. He had seen no refined woman for
years, and there was something in Kate's face which brought old memories
back. Yes, he had made a mess of it and spoilt his life--that was the
burthen of his thoughts as the coach made its way across the sandy
veldt, and the sun got up and scorched them, and the dust-clouds
gathered together and choked them, and the stones on the road threw them
up and down till all their bones ached.
"Well, I do declare he ain't much company; seems mighty proud, and I
dare say he ain't got a penny to spend. I knows his sort, and don't
like 'em," said Mrs Hemp to Mr Aarons, after she had addressed several
remarks to Darrell and got no answer.
Joe Aarons scowled at Darrell and made no reply. When his interests
were not at stake he seldom felt very keenly about anything, but he did
long to pay the other out for the treatment he had received from him,
and for supposing that he, Mr Aarons, the well-known Kimberley
diamond-buyer, who was worth his fifty thousand pounds, insulted a girl
who was travelling up by herself and couldn't be of much account, by
talking to her. He felt mad with anger as he looked at him. How he
would like to pound in that face which had borne a look of such
unaffected contempt for him, and hear that cold insolent voice cry out
for mercy! Darrell paid little attention to him, and sat gloomily wrapt
in his own thoughts.
Mrs Hemp addressed various remarks to him which he did not listen to.
The English girl in the front seat talked to Jim Brawnston.
"Queer tastes that girl must have," Aarons thought to himself; "talks to
that digger chap who's as rough as they make 'em, and looks at me when I
say a word to her as if I were dirt," and he looked at the diamond rings
on his coarse dirty hands, and wondered at that to him unknown specimen
of humanity, the English gentlewoman.
Some hours after sunset the coach drew up at one of those squalid
roadside canteens which in South Africa are dignified by the name of
hotels. The days one spends in South African travel are bad enough, but
the nights at the worst of all bad inns are far more wretched. A
blanket in the open air under the marvellous star-lit Southern sky is
something to look back to with pleasure, though the chill half hour
before daybreak is not so very pleasant at the time. But those hotel
bedrooms are things to shudder at, not to see; they open up to one's
mind new possibilities of dirtiness. Then there is the evil-smelling
dining-room, where the table has a historic cloth supposed once to have
been white, which bears the grease and stains of long-forgotten meals,
which generally consist of lumps of mutton and hard poached eggs served
on the same plate. If the master of the house is a Dutchman, he will
most likely be full of dull, brutish insolence; if he is an Englishman,
he probably will be drunk. The waitress will be a filthy Hottentot
woman; while as one eats in the inner rooms one will hear noisy natives
getting drunk off Cape smoke just outside.
It was at such a place as this that the coach stopped for the night, and
discharged its passengers for a few hours' enjoyment of the
accommodation it afforded.
A meal had been served, and those passengers who were able to secure
beds had retired for the night. Darrell was smoking and reading by the
dim light of a flickering oil lamp in the living-room. Jim Brawnston
was stretched upon the floor in a sleep from which he would not easily
wake. The Jews were listlessly fingering a dirty pack of cards; nobody
had cared to play with them, and they had not thought it worth while to
play with one another; while the landlord, who was not very sober, was
laughing hoarsely at some not over pleasant stories they were telling.
"Do you know there is a lady in the next room?" said Darrell, who had
thrown his book down and walked up to where they sat.
"Lady? Do you mean Mother Hemp, or the other girl?" said Aarons, and
his brutal nature found vent in a sentence of Houndsditch sarcasm. His
words were coarse enough to have aroused a milder temper than Darrell's,
whose face turned pale with anger as he heard them. Aarons' sentence
was not quite completed, for before he finished it Darrell's long left
arm had swung out from his shoulder, and his fist had come down with a
crash on to the Jew's jaw. The others saw that if they joined in they
would be four to one, so they made a rush at Darrell, the landlord
swearing that he'd be damned if he'd see a gent who'd behaved like a
gent in his place, ordering drinks and paying for them, hit like that.
He looked at Jim Brawnston's sleeping form, and reassured by the sound
of a deep snore, he joined in the fight, aiming a blow at Darrell's head
with a bottle. The latter was not quite as cool as a man ought to be
who is fighting four men at once. Instead of keeping on the defensive,
he only thought of inflicting as much punishment as possible upon
Aarons, and pressed on to strike him again as he staggered back from the
first blow. This gave the landlord a chance of getting at him from
behind, and he succeeded in pinning his arms, and preventing him from
hitting out. A savage gleam came into the Jew's eyes; he saw that his
enemy was in his power as he forced back Darrell's face with his left
hand so as to get a good blow at it with his right.
"Now, my broken-down swell, you're going to learn not to give your
betters any of your damned cheek," he was saying with a tone of triumph
in his voice. The whole group had been too busy to notice a bedroom
door which led into the living-room open, and a figure dressed in white
glide up to where Brawnston lay sleeping. Kate, as she tried in vain to
get some sleep, had heard the row from the beginning. It was not a
pleasant scene for a young lady to take part in, but she had heard
enough to tell her that the man who had been foolish enough to begin the
fight on her account was likely to suffer more than he deserved. She
had not understood Aarons' brutal remark, and would have been better
pleased if Darrell had not answered it so forcibly, but she knew the
blow she had heard through the door had been given on her account. As
she opened the door she saw Brawnston's sleeping figure close to it;
near him on a table there was a jug of water; she dashed it over his
face as the quickest way of waking him. The experiment had succeeded
admirably. He had woke up with a start, saw the fight which was going
on, and in a second was in it. It did not take him long to knock two of
the Jews out of time, while the landlord, seeing how things were going,
took up the position of a non-combatant.
"Leave him to me," Darrell cried out as he tried to close with Aarons.
There was a look in his partner's white face which made Brawnston know
that he meant mischief. A few seconds' struggling and then Darrell's
long, lithe fingers were round the Jew's throat, and as he tightened
them there was an ominous twitch round the corners of his mouth.
"Stop it, man, or you'll kill me," the Jew gasped out as he felt himself
choking. If he had been a good judge of expression, and had been in a
position to take stock of Darrell, he would not have been much reassured
at the effect his suggestion had. Brawnston didn't interfere; he was
contemplating in a dreamy way the two other men whom he had knocked
down. It looked as if a crisis had come in Joe Aarons' history, but
just then a cool hand clasped Darrell's wrist, and on looking round he
for the first time saw that there was a woman present at the not very
pretty scene that was taking place.
"Stay, leave him alone, you'll kill him!" she said, rescuing Darrell
from himself and his savageness as she had rescued him just before from
his enemies. He will never be likely to forget the little figure with
her glorious brown hair sweeping over her shoulders, and the
half-frightened, half-disgusted look on her face. He felt rather more
ashamed of himself than he had been for some time, so he let go his grip
on Aarons' throat, who fell back a limp mass upon the ground.
"I am sorry that you should have been disturbed by this sort of thing;
extremely sorry," he said to her as she disappeared through the door
again.
"What a brute she must think me, as bad as that cur," he said half to
himself, half to Brawnston, glancing at Aarons. "By Jove!" he added,
"he looks rather queer."
"He's all right; it will be a rope that will break his neck," said
Brawnston, as the man on the ground began to move. The other two men
began to pull themselves together, and after a good deal of bad language
from the defeated party, the incident came to an end, and every one
turned off to sleep; Darrell thinking to himself that his endeavour to
prevent the lady passenger's sleep from being disturbed had been
singularly unsuccessful.
The next morning when the coach started, several black eyes and damaged
faces bore witness to the disturbance of the night before. Aarons was
badly marked, and seemed by no means to have recovered the rough
handling he had received; for he was much less cheerful than he had
been, and his conversation for some time was confined to a few muttered
vows of vengeance against Darrell. Jim Brawnston, too, had the
satisfaction of being able to admire the colour he had put on to the
faces of Aarons' two friends. The treatment seemed to have been very
beneficial in taking the insolence and noise out of the patients who had
been subjected to it, and in consequence the journey became much
pleasanter; and after all it was not so bad as it had promised to be.
Brawnston had plenty of stories to tell of South African adventure.
After Darrell expressed his remorse at having been to a certain extent
the cause of the unseemly broil of the night before, and had been
forgiven by Kate, as he was soon enough, a sympathy that became stronger
every day grew up between them.
It was on the fourth day of their journey that the coach had outspanned
at a farm-house by the roadside, and Kate and Darrell were sitting under
some trees in the garden of the farm-house, by the edge of a cool shaded
pool of water. There is a certain charm about those South African farms
which most travellers in the country must have experienced. One seems
to have never before enjoyed seeing trees and the soft green of
vegetation until one has travelled for miles in the desert. The few
bright flowers and the patch of waving maize are more grateful than in a
country of fields and trees the most carefully tended garden could be.
One of the team of mules which had been inspanned at the last station
had turned sick, and the guard of the coach, careless of the
remonstrance of the other passengers, who were in a hurry to get to
their journey's end, had prolonged their outspan for some hours to give
the sick beast time to get round. Neither Darrell nor Kate were
indignant at the delay or were in a hurry to start. They had only known
each other for a few days, but already they felt as if they were old
friends. Those long days of travelling across the stretches of desert
veldt can be pleasant enough. There is something in the atmosphere and
surroundings of the country that makes one forget the past, and feel
careless of the future; it has the same effect upon one's mind as the
sea has. One gets the feeling of rest and distance, and begins to fancy
that one has little to do with oneself, as one was once in other lands
that seem so far away. There is nothing to be met with that reminds one
of the rest of the world. The strings of laden waggons slowly wending
their way over the veldt to the distant Diamond Fields, give an idea of
carelessness about time, and worry, and the world in general. The
sleepy looking farm-houses, where there is none of the thriving bustle
of other lands--and everything suggests progression only at ox-waggon
pace--help to carry out the idea.
In those days Darrell had learnt almost all that there was to learn
about this companion's history, but had in return told her very little
about himself, though she had gathered from what he said that he had
seen a good deal of life, had lived most of his life in good society,
was a gentleman, but for some reason or other, so she fancied, the
memory of his past life was painful to him, though she was sure that his
story had not been discreditable. As they sat in the shade looking at
the group of passengers collected round the sick mule, and listening
lazily to the voice of the member of the Legislative Assembly, who was
denouncing the guard for not inspanning at once, the same thought was in
both their minds--their journey would soon be at an end, and very likely
they would never see each other again; for the farm she was going to was
sixty miles from Kimberley, while he was going to the Vaal River
diggings. One thought had been for some time in his mind. Why should
his whole life be wrecked because of that act of folly in his youth?
Did not the thousands of miles that separated him from England break the
shameful tie he loathed? Who need ever know that George Darrell,
digger, of Red Shirt Rush, Vaal River, was the same man as Darrell of
the Lancers, who like a fool made his good old name shameful by giving
it to the woman he had married. He cursed his folly as he remembered
himself little more than a boy marrying a woman years older than
himself, who, wild as he was then, was as much his inferior morally as
she was socially. It was the life he had been leading which had left
him weak enough to become drunk with that woman's coarse beauty, he told
himself, as he cursed the folly of that one sin, for which fate never
forgives a man, which he had committed. She did not want anything more
from him. He had settled all he had on her before he left England for
ever; she had got all she married him for, and would not bother him any
more. Why should he not forget all about her and his old life?
"Yes," he said, partly answering something she had said and partly
continuing his own thoughts, "there is something in this country that
gets rid of old memories, hopes, and ambitions. Four or five
generations of it have turned the descendants of knightly French
Huguenots into the dull brutish Dutch Boers one meets here, who have not
two ideas in their heads beyond eating and sleeping, and are far less
civilised than the Kaffirs. Yes, it's a good country to forget in."
"I hope not," she answered; "I don't want to forget my past; I have
plenty of happy memories." As she spoke a sad look came into her eyes.
"You have a past you can look back on with pleasure; I can only curse my
folly when I look back," he said bitterly.
For a second or two he was silent, struggling with himself. Why should
he suppose that she would take any interest in hearing the shameful
secret of his life?--but something told him that he had better tell it.
Then without leading up to it, he told her the story of his marriage,
and about the woman in England who was his wife.
Very clumsily he told it, but he felt all the better when he had got it
out. At first when she heard his story she realised how much she had
begun to care for this man whom she had known only a few days; then she
felt angry with herself for feeling so much interested in his history,
and determined that he should never know that she had not listened to it
with perfect indifference.
"What a fool I was to think that she would care; I might have saved
myself the trouble of telling her my private affairs," Darrell said to
himself, when, having listened to him with ostentatious unconcern, she
made some excuse to leave him and go to the coach.
When he came up some ten minutes after he found that she had left the
party. The people to whose farm she was going had been to Kimberley,
and on their way back they had come round to meet the coach. She was to
go with them, and had got into their waggon. The horses were inspanned
to the coach; he had only time to say good-bye when they started off.
Would they ever meet again, he thought, as he looked back over the flat
at the waggon, until it became a white speck on the horizon.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chapter Two.
A year had passed since Kate said good-bye to George Darrell. Her life
seemed to her to be divided into three volumes--her early life, the
journey up to the Diamond Fields, and her present life at Jagger's
Drift. The last volume seemed likely to be dull enough. Day after day
passed without any strange face coming or any incident happening. The
family consisted of Mr Van Beers, a good-natured old Dutchman, who
slept a good deal, and had very little to say for himself when he was
awake; his wife, who had never time to attend to anything but the
children, of whom there were about a dozen, the eldest a boy of
fourteen, the youngest an infant in arms. Taking it altogether, Kate's
life was a fairly happy one, for though it was dull, there was very
little to trouble her, and it was free from many of the little vexations
which would be her lot at home. One drawback of it was, that she had
too much time for thinking, and her thoughts curiously often went back
to the incidents of the journey up, and she often in her mind's eye saw
the face of George Darrell as it looked when he blurted out the secret
of his life. From that day she had never heard of him; little news ever
came to Jagger's Drift, and none would be likely to come of such an
obscure person as George Darrell, digger, of Red Shirt Rush, Vaal River.
That digging she had heard was up the river some sixty miles off. Many
a time she had looked up stream and wondered how he was faring, and
whether he still ever thought of her. The Homestead at Jagger's Drift
was a large, one-storied house, with a garden running down to the river.
On the other side the house fronted a long flat, stretching far away to
a range of low hills in the distance. A dozen or so of wood waggons
would pass every day on their way to the Diamond Fields, but there was
little other traffic. Across the river was Gordon, a place which some
speculative people fondly believe is destined to be an important centre
in the future. It had for reasons known to the authorities at Capetown,
and to no one else, been chosen as the seat of the magistracy for a
large district, and there was a magistrate's house, a jail, and some
police tents; while a court-house was being built. There were also two
canteens, in one or the other of which in turn the spare population
collected and listened to the proprietor of the establishment as he
cursed his rival.
The new Government buildings were to be on a grand scale, quite up to
what Gordon was destined to become in the future, according to the
estimate of the most sanguine believers in it. "They mock us with their
damned buildings," was the opinion often expressed by Jack Johnstone,
the Civil Commissioner's clerk, as he looked at the new erections with a
malevolent eye, for he had applied persistently and in vain for an
increase of his salary, and he looked upon all other expenditure of
Government money as a personal insult.
"Blessed if they haven't brought a lot of white convicts over here to
muddle away at that cursed place," he said to McFlucker the
canteen-keeper one afternoon, as, with a pipe in his mouth, he stood
outside the latter's store, and looked towards the hated erection, where
some Kaffirs and white men were working listlessly as convicts do work.
"That's not a lag's face, I'd have bet; if I had seen it anywhere else
I'd have sworn that fellow was a gentleman and an honest man; he looks
it, though he has got a broad arrow stamped on his shirt," he said, as
he noticed one convict, a tall man, who looked very unlike his
companions. "But I dare say he is the biggest scoundrel of the lot," he
added.
Just then Kate Gray, who had come across the river with some of the
young Van Beers, walked past the building. Johnstone, as he watched her
with a good deal of admiration, noticed that she was also looking in the
direction of the tall convict who had attracted his attention. To his
surprise he felt almost certain that he saw their eyes meet with a
glance of recognition. She seemed to start and almost pause for a
second. The convict pushed his hat over his eyes, and stooped over his
work as if he did not wish to be recognised.
"By Jove, I'd have bet those two know each other, or have seen each
other before, but it must be only a fancy though--it isn't likely,"
Johnstone thought to himself, as he took off his hat and shook hands
with Miss Gray. After they had talked for some time about the few
subjects for conversation that their life at Gordon afforded--the health
of McFlucker the storekeeper's wife, the date of the return of the
magistrate at Gordon, who was away on leave, and the fact that the river
was rising--Miss Gray turned the conversation to the subject that had
interested them both.
"Who are those men working at the court-house,--the white men I mean?"
she asked, as Johnstone thought, with considerable interest.
"They are gentlemen who are working for her gracious Majesty without
pay, and receiving their board and lodging gratis."
"You mean they are convicts. What sort of offences do you suppose they
have committed, and where do they come from?"
"They have come from Kimberley, and they may have committed any offence,
but it's long odds that they have bought diamonds--that's their special
weakness on the fields."
"Bought diamonds!--why I should have thought that was just what
diamond-diggers wanted people to do."
"Bought diamonds that the Kaffirs have stolen from their masters'
claims, I mean; those men, however, have probably made a mistake, and
been caught by the police. When the police see that the wily illicit
diamond-buyer is well on the feed they throw one of their flies, and
send him a Kaffir with a diamond to sell. If the fish rises to the fly
and buys, they strike, find the diamond, and haul the I.D.B. up before
the court, when he gets five years. It's a pretty sport is trapping
I.D.B.'s, and these are most likely some of the many fish who have been
caught."
"What a wretched mean business it seems to be, but I'm sure he could not
have been trapped."
"Hallo, so you talk about him as `he,' do you?" thought Johnstone. "You
mean the tall convict; I was looking at him just now, and wondering what
his history was. Well, if he has a long sentence, if I were he, I'd
make a bolt for it. The convict-guards are always more or less asleep,
and I'd chance their shooting straight. I suppose it would not be much
good though, one could never get away across the veldt without a horse."
"If he had a horse do you think he would get off? Where could he get
to?"
"Sixty miles north he'd be out of the reach of the police, in
Stellaland, where there is a lot of rough work going on, and any one who
had plenty of pluck would find men who would welcome him as a comrade,
and care very little whether he had a broad arrow stamped on his shirt
or not."
"Ah, well, perhaps he is used to being a convict, and does not care to
escape," Kate said, for she felt that perhaps she was unwise in showing
so much interest in the convict's fate.
"Perhaps he is; don't know that it matters whether one is a convict or
not, if one has to live in this country. Certainly, being in their
infernal civil service is next door to it," Johnstone answered, as he
walked to the river-side with them. As he returned after seeing them
cross, he wondered where Kate could have seen the convict before. That
they had met he somehow felt certain. He was right; Kate had recognised
George Darrell, her fellow-traveller in the coach, in the convict. He
had had a run of bad luck since they had parted. First of all his old
partner, Jim Brawnston, had been obliged to leave him, as one of his
brothers had died, and he had been wanted on his father's farm in Natal.
Then for a long time he had found no diamonds.
After a bit, however, his luck seemed to have changed, and diamonds
began to turn up on his sorting-table. The queer thing about those
diamonds was, that they were unlike river stones, and much more of the
appearance of the stones found in the mines. The diamond-buyers to whom
he sold seemed, he thought, to look at them and him rather queerly when
he brought them out to sell. He did not, however, trouble himself much
about this. While he was working at his claim, not over rejoiced at the
slight turn of luck he was experiencing, as he had hardly any ambition
to make money, one day a conversation took place in the office of the
head of the police in Kimberley, which would have opened his eyes if he
had heard it. There had been a good deal of what is called illicit
buying down the river for some time. Persons who had bought stolen
diamonds, and wished to dispose of the diamonds advantageously, had
taken to get men who pretended to be river-diggers, to profess to have
found them in their claims, and sell them advantageously. Stolen
diamonds are rather awkward property to dispose of, as dealers have to
keep registers by which diamonds can be traced back to the diggers who
first found them; so it was an advantage to give a diamond that had been
stolen a fictitious history.
The head of the police had determined to put a stop to this practice,
and had sent a man down the river to see what was going on. The
information he had received had surprised him a good deal, and at first
he hardly believed it. "What, Darrell of Red Shirt Rush in this? Why,
I should have thought he was straight," he was saying to one of the
detectives, who had come in to see him with another man.
"It ain't the first time, sir, you've thought that about a party we have
found to be pretty deeply in the trade; now this man here sold Darrell
as many as half-a-dozen diamonds which we can swear to, and which we can
prove he has sold again; is not that so, Seers?" the detective said,
turning to the ill-looking, undersized man who had come in with him.
"Yes, sir, he has bought 'em off me; he has been buying for this last
twelve months to my knowledge, and working off illicit stuff from his
claims," the man answered, his eyes as he spoke wandering about
furtively, looking anywhere except into the face of the person he spoke
to.
"Well, I suppose there is no doubt about it. It's high time some one
was made an example of down the river; you and Sergeant Black had better
go down and trap Darrell, with this man Seers," the head of the police
said after he had talked for some time. "Look here," he added, calling
the detective on one side, "that fellow is an infernal scoundrel, and
are you sure he is not humbugging us?"
"Well, sir, white traps mostly are infernal scoundrels, but what he says
is right enough about Darrell. What object should he have in telling us
what was wrong?--besides, I don't think he would try and fool me," the
detective said with a grin, which expressed considerable satisfaction
with his own astuteness.
Two evenings after this conversation, the man Seers came into Darrell's
tent, pretending that a mate of his was ill, and he wanted to be given
some brandy. Darrell knew the man by sight, having seen him lately
hanging about the diggings, and had not been much prepossessed by his
appearance. He was civil enough to him, however, telling him he had got
no brandy, and listening to his description of his mate's illness.
The man talked away for a few minutes, and then went to the opening of
the tent, gave a shout, and then in a second, to Darrell's astonishment,
two men, one of whom he knew by sight as a Kimberley detective, made
their appearance. In a twinkling they had handcuffed him, searched him
and the tent, and found a diamond in a pannikin near his bed. Darrell's
protestations of his innocence went for very little, and in the course
of another twenty-four hours he found himself a prisoner in Kimberley
jail, awaiting a trial for buying a diamond illicitly.
On his trial it was proved that Seers had been searched before he went
into the tent, and had no money upon him; when he came out he had ten
sovereigns in his possession. The detectives were able to swear to the
diamond found in Darrell's possession as the one they had given Seers
before he went into the tent. The case seemed to be exactly like the
ordinary cases of trapping that come before the courts at Kimberley
almost every week. The judge who tried it expressed his opinion that it
was one about which he had not the slightest doubt as to the prisoner's
guilt, and sentenced him to hard labour for five years.
The crime of buying stolen diamonds is considered on the Fields one of
the most heinous of offences, those who are convicted of it being seldom
allowed to escape without a severe punishment.
After Darrell had done some of his sentence in the Kimberley jail, he
had been sent with some other convicts to work at Gordon, so that was
how it came to pass that Kate recognised her travelling companion in the
tall convict.
When she got back to the Homestead she found that a young Van Beers, a
son of the old farmer, had arrived from Kimberley. Jappie Van Beers was
not a very pleasant type of the young Boer, but by no means an uncommon
one. He was a noisy braggart, who might be heard wherever he went,
shouting out in his broken English about himself and his belongings, and
bragging about his shooting and riding, his horses, dogs, and guns. He
sometimes would express violent anti-English sentiments, but for all
that he imitated the people he professed to hate, and it was not at all
difficult to see that he was half ashamed of being a Dutchman. He owned
some very good claims in the Kimberley mines, and had made a good deal
of money on the Fields. When he was at the Homestead he gave himself
great airs, for he did not think it necessary for him to show much
deference to the old people, since he was so much richer than they were,
while their homely Dutch ways of life afforded him opportunities for the
expression of considerable contempt. What made him more odious to Kate
was, that he had taken it into his head to pay her an amount of
attention that was very embarrassing to her. The truth was, that Jappie
Van Beers had fallen head over ears in love with the pretty governess at
his father's house. He had contrasted her very favourably with the
heavy, shapeless-looking Dutch young women whom his cousins and brothers
chose for their wives, and had determined that she should be Mrs
Jappie. On the occasion of his last visit to the Homestead she had
snubbed him most unmercifully, and she hoped that in future he would
keep at a distance. There was something in his manner as he shook hands
with her that told her he had got over any discomfiture he might have
been made to suffer before.
"Ah, Miss Gray, you're looking very well and pretty, though you seem to
be just as proud as ever. Well, I have a little bit of news for you. I
have met an old friend of yours on the Fields; a friend of mine who
knows you. He came up in the coach with you; he told me all about your
goings on when you came up in the coach," he said to her after they had
shaken hands. Kate looked extremely uncomfortable; the last subject she
wanted to talk about was that journey and its incidents. Jappie Van
Beers appeared to derive a considerable amount of satisfaction from her
embarrassment.
"Yes, Miss, my friend Aarons told me about you," he continued; a
malicious grin coming across his stupid heavy face.
"Is that person a friend of yours?" Kate asked; her expression showing
that she did not think any the better of Jappie for his choice of
friend. The other looked a little put out. The truth was, that when he
was in Kimberley he associated with a good many of the worst characters
in the place, not because he was one of them, but because it suited
their purpose to flatter him, and allow him to be as insolent and
boorish as he pleased.
"Well, I know him to speak to, and he told me about you, and he gave me
a message for you. `Tell her,' he said, `that she is likely to see her
old sweetheart again, if she looks amongst the men working on the roads
at Gordon.' Then he told me how you went on when you travelled with
this Darrell, the thief whom they trapped at Red Shirt Rush. Aarons
gave me a paper and said that perhaps you would like to read about the
trial, and see what he had done." Jappie was surprised to see how
little attention she paid to his chaff; but she took the paper from him
very eagerly and turned over the pages until she came to the report of
the trial. The report was short. Kate felt sure that Darrell was the
innocent victim of a conspiracy, and the idea came at once into her mind
that somehow that conspiracy had been carried out by the man who took
care that she should learn how successful it had been.
"Yes, this seems to be the same man I came up with in the coach, but I
don't know why your friend should take so much trouble to let me know
about it," she said, making an effort to speak as if she had read the
report with little interest.
Jappie, feeling that his chaff had fallen rather flat, became silent,
and contented himself with staring stupidly at her.
She read and re-read the report. Five years of that degrading slavery--
five years working with Kaffirs and white men who were more degraded
than Kaffirs!--it seemed to her that he never would be able to survive
his term of punishment.
"Well, Miss Gray, you're angry with me because I just chaffed you," said
Jappie, flicking his whip against his boots and looking half ashamed of
himself; "I will tell you something that will make you forgive me. I
have brought my little white horse, which you may ride. I know you like
riding; and you can ride down to the river in the mornings with me and
see the lines pulled up as you used to. I brought the little white
horse because I knew you liked to ride him, and I will take out Kedult;
he is the best horse in the Colony. I won a race with him the other day
at Cradock, and beat all the imported horses."
A morning ride with Jappie did not hold out a very pleasant prospect,
but as he spoke there flashed vividly upon Kate's memory a sight that
she had noticed day after day the year before, when she used to go out
in the morning with the children to see the lines pulled up. It was the
sight of a party of convicts and convict-guards on the other side of the
river; the former working, filling water-barrels, the latter listlessly
watching them. This recollection made her determined to go out for
those rides, however unpleasant they might be, and instead of refusing
Jappie's offer, she accepted it with an enthusiasm that flattered and
delighted him. The next afternoon Darrell was at his task at the
court-house, with two or three ill-looking white men and a gang of
Kaffirs, who appeared not to take their punishment much to heart.
Watching them were two white convict-guards armed with carbines, who
lounged about listlessly, finding their duty very tedious, and some Zulu
police armed with rifles and a collection of assagais, who looked as if
they would deal out death and destruction, if not to the fugitive,
certainly to some of the bystanders, should there be any attempt at an
escape.
Every now and then Darrell looked across the flat towards the river,
where he had seen Kate go the day before. She had recognised him, he
knew. What did she think of his disgraceful position?--but what should
she think? She had only known him for a few days, and in that time she
had learned more to his disadvantage than otherwise, he thought to
himself. For once the long weary afternoon's work had some interest;--
should he see her again, he kept wondering? At last he saw her coming
from the river-bank. He watched her, though he tried to look down so
that their eyes should not meet. As she passed she took a hurried
glance at the convict-guard, who were paying little attention to the
prisoners. The white men were thinking of the hard luck that gave to
them such a dreary dead-and-alive lot in life. The Zulus as they
clutched their weapons were back again in their imagination at some
scene of savage bloodshed, and were happy. Then she for a second
managed to catch his eye, and as she did so she threw a crumpled-up
piece of paper to him. He snatched it up, and half hiding behind part
of the building he unfolded it, and read the few words written on it.
"You have a friend; look out for a signal to escape when you are at the
river to-morrow. I know you are innocent." As he read this he felt a
new man. He had even in his miserable position felt depressed to think
that he had not a friend in the world. But here was some one who
believed in him. Then he remembered that she would be likely to get
into some trouble if she were mixed up in any plot to secure his
freedom. But he had no means of warning her; he could only wait and
wonder what the letter meant.
At seven o'clock next morning, Darrell was marched as usual to the
river-bank to carry water up to the magistrate's house and the public
works. Drearily and hopelessly he laboured at the wretched work of
filling the water-carts. What did that note mean, he kept asking
himself? How could that English girl in a strange country help him?
Perhaps she was acting for others, he thought, and the only part she
took was to give him notice. If so she might not run any great risk of
getting into trouble. But this theory had to be put on one side. Who
was there in the country, or for the matter of that in the world who
would take the trouble to help him? He looked at the distant range of
hills far away across the river; if he could only get there he would be
free and safe, for not only was it native territory, but it was in a
disturbed state, and there were bands of men collected together there,
one or two of whom he happened to know who would welcome him as a
comrade very heartily. The men worked at their tasks slowly enough; the
convict-guards thought that they might just as well hang about the
river-bank looking after convicts, as be anywhere else engaged in the
same dreary work, so they did not hurry them. After he had worked for
some minutes, Darrell saw two figures on horseback across the river; he
recognised one of them as Kate, the other was a young Dutchman he had
seen ride towards the farm a day or two before. He looked at their
horses, and he coveted the one the Dutchman was on. It was a good horse
anywhere, and looked as if it were just suited for the country. If he
were on it and had a fair start, he would save the Colony the cost of
his board and lodging, and show his enemies a clean pair of heels. Of
course he remembered the letter, but he felt sure the young Boer would
never be induced to help him. After they had ridden along the river to
a place about a hundred yards down stream from where he stood, he saw
the man dismount and leave his horse to be held by his companion.
Darrell began to feel a thrill of excitement as he watched him go down
to a boat, get into it, and drop some way down stream. He watched how
the stream of the river ran, and he guessed how it would carry any one
who jumped in from where he was, across to the point where Kate was with
the horses. The Dutchman had almost crossed the river, and was pulling
up a fish on a line he had rowed up to. Darrell took in the situation,
and his heart beat, and he felt a longing for liberty as he first looked
at the good horse on which he could secure it, and then at the
convict-guard near him who was yawning sleepily, as he sat with his
carbine in his hand. Just then he saw Kate hold her handkerchief above
her head and wave it. It was the signal, and he knew how good a chance
he would have if he obeyed it. There was no time for delay, and in a
second he had taken a header from the bank and was swimming for life and
liberty. For a minute or so there was some wild shooting, as the guard
aroused by the splash took a hurried shot at him, and the Zulus let off
their guns recklessly.
The sound of the shots startled Jappie, who had been intent on pulling
up his fish. For a second he stared stolidly, and then as the convict
came to the other side, hitting just upon the spot where the horses
were, he saw what his object was.
"Allah Macter, but he is going to take my horse. Hi! Miss Gray, gallop
the horse away; keep away from him, he's going to take the horse." The
guards on the other side had ceased firing, as they were afraid of
hitting Kate and the horses. Kate did not make any attempt to get away
from the convict; in fact Jappie felt certain that she was doing her
best to help the fugitive. Jappie yelled and gesticulated, but it was
no use. To his disgust he saw the convict come up the river-bank, jump
into the saddle, and give a shout of triumph, and then go off across the
veldt. Above all things, Jappie valued and swaggered about his horse.
He had won one or two races with him already, and hoped to win more, and
he was never tired of boasting and bragging about what he hoped to do
with him.
"O the skellum!--O the scoundrel!--there is not a horse in the province
that can catch him, and there is no one ready to follow him," he shouted
out to no one in particular as he splashed clumsily across the river
against the stream. For once he thought of Kedult's pace and staying
powers without much satisfaction. When he had got to the other side he
stood shouting and yelling to the convict-guards, and watching Darrell
growing smaller in the distance. It was something of a relief to him
when he saw two troopers of the border police cross the drift. They had
saddled up when they heard the alarm of the escape, and were starting in
pursuit. Jappie ran after them, and shouted out some directions to
which they paid very little heed.
"Ah, they will never catch him on Kedult; he will ride the horse to
death first," he despondently said as he watched the troopers ride
across the flat. Kate began to realise that she had probably got
herself into a good deal of trouble, for the part she had taken in the
escape was pretty evident. She did not know what offences she might not
have committed, still she felt that she would gladly do it again, and
chance whatever punishment she might have to suffer, rather than have to
see Darrell suffering his degrading punishment. Certainly he would be a
fugitive and an outlaw, but that would not be so bad for him, and he
would have a better chance of proving his innocence than if he were a
prisoner; so she hoped.
"Well, Miss Gray, so you have played me a nice little trick, letting
that skellum steal my horse. That was your doing. You think yourself
very slim to be able to fool me into leaving you with my horse, so that
you could let your sweetheart have it to get away on; but you have made
a mistake--I am going to go to the magistrate, and he shall know what
you have done. You will find yourself in prison very soon for stealing
my horse and helping a prisoner to escape," said the young Boer to Kate,
when he met her at the door of the farm-house as she rode back. He was
half crying about the loss of his horse, and desperately angry; and yet,
as he looked into the pretty English girl's face, a very different idea
to that of revenge suggested itself to him. There was something he
cared for even more than his horse.
"Look here, miss, you have lost me the best horse in the country, but I
forgive you, because you're such a pretty girl. No Dutch girl would do
what you have done; they would be ashamed to; but I like girls who have
plenty of pluck. Be my sweetheart instead of that skellum's, whom you
will never see again, and I will say no more about what I saw. Look, I
am rich; I have some of the best claims in the mine, and have ten good
farms. I think there is no girl in the Colony who would not marry me,
and I offer to make you my wife--a poor little English girl, whom I
could send to prison if I thought right. Come, I have lost my horse and
won a frow, for you must marry me or go to prison--which will you do?"
To emphasise his declaration he threw one of his clumsy arms round her
neck and tried to kiss her. Her answer came in a way that surprised
him. She dodged away from his grasp, and as he came forward again she
slashed him twice across his face with her whip, and then ran away into
the house, leaving him standing in the yard listening to the laugh of a
Kaffir servant who had witnessed the scene.
"All the worse for you, missy," he cried, almost blubbering from the
pain and from his anger. "You shall suffer for this, and for stealing
my horse." Then catching sight of the Kaffir's grinning face he
relieved his feelings by cutting that unfortunate son of Ham across the
back with his ox-hide whip till he yelled with pain. Somewhat calmed by
this he walked down to the boat and went over to Gordon, determined to
let the law of the land revenge his wrongs.
It turned out that his threat was not an idle one. Already the
inhabitants of Gordon were discussing the part she had taken in the
escape of the convict. One of the guards noticed her give the signal,
and his evidence was confirmed by Jappie.
Johnstone, who had been acting as magistrate, cursed his fate which
obliged him to commit Kate to take her trial at Kimberley. But the
affair was a serious one, and became more serious when the next day the
border police came back without having found their man.
"It's a beastly duty to have to discharge, particularly for such a
pitiful screw as one gets from this cursed Colonial Government. But I
had to do it on the evidence," he said to her when the inquiry was
ended, and she was duly committed to take her trial, and circumstances
allowed him to resume his non-official way of looking at things. "You
need not be nervous, however; jury won't bring themselves to convict
you," he added, to reassure her.
The case created immense excitement at Kimberley. From the first public
feeling was with the prisoner. Jappie was considered to show great
vindictiveness, and the story of his having been an unsuccessful suitor
to the prisoner somehow got abroad. He had got his horse back too, it
having been sent to him from Stellaland, and this, in the opinion of the
public, made the animus he showed all the more vindictive. When the day
of the trial came on, and the prisoner was seen in the dock, public
opinion expressed itself most unanimously in her favour.
The Crown prosecutor's arguments were very cogent, and the judge's
summing up dead against the prisoner; but the jury gave their verdict
without ever turning round in the box. It was _not guilty_.
"There ain't such a crowd of pretty girls in this camp that we can
afford to shut 'em up in prison," was the opinion expressed by the
foreman as he partook of champagne at the expense of a sympathiser with
beauty in distress.
In the mean time George Darrell found himself secure in Stellaland.
After riding all day he had pulled up with his horse dead beat, at a
house which had once been used as a store some miles on the other side
of the river which marked the border of Griqualand West. The house was
inhabited by some white men, who constituted themselves into a body
which somewhat resembled the free companies some centuries back--
nominally fighting for the Kaffir chief, but really pretty much for
their own hand.
"Hullo, who the devil is this?" exclaimed one of these warriors, who was
sitting on the bench outside the house as Darrell came up.
"Hullo, he has got 'em on--he has got 'em all on," said another of the
company--a gentleman who in the course of his varied career had been a
singer in a London East End music-hall, and now sang the songs of
Houndsditch in a strange land--as he saw the fashion of Darrell's garb.
"Look here, it won't do; it will bring the peelers on us."
"He's a good fellow; I know him--worth a dozen of you," said a
black-haired, handsome, devil-may-care-looking young fellow, known as
Black Jamie, who acted as the leader of the company. "It's Darrell, who
used to be working down the river. I heard he was `run in' some time
ago,"--and getting up, he came forward and shook the new arrival
heartily by the hand.
It was lucky for Jappie that Black Jamie had a high opinion of Darrell;
for it was on that account he was induced to give in to the other's wish
that the horse should be sent back by a Kaffir to his owner--a
proceeding which was thoroughly repugnant to the feelings of himself and
the honourable company he commanded. He let Darrell have his way,
however, and then sent him on with some Kaffirs to their huts, where the
police, even if they crossed the border, would not care to follow him.
A day or two afterwards, when danger of pursuit was over, Darrell was
enlisted as one of Black Jamie's troop in the service of Mankoran, the
chief of the Bechuanas.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chapter Three.
"So it seems that the Cape Colony was very nearly saving us the trouble
of looking after poor Tom Gray's girl," said the Rector of Morden,
Warwickshire, to his wife, who sat opposite to him at the
breakfast-table, as he put down the newspaper he had in his hand. The
Warners of Morden Rectory were distant cousins of Kate, and the Rector
had been her father's greatest friend at college. When they had heard
of his death they had written out offering Kate a home, for they were
kindly people, and as they only had two boys of their own, they thought
she would not be in the way.
"Poor girl, it was very foolish of her to make herself so notorious;
however, I like the way she writes. I should not say there was anything
sly about her," answered Mrs Warner.
Kate Gray had, in answer to their invitation, written to them, telling
of the trouble she had got into, and confessing that though the jury had
acquitted her, she really had helped the convict, whom she believed to
be innocent, to escape.
"It is sensible of her to send the newspaper report of the trial. After
all it's just the sort of thing her father would have done at her age,"
answered the Rector; and his thoughts went back to his old friend, with
whom he had got into many scrapes in their old Christ-Church days.
Mrs Warner was inclined to take rather a more serious view of the
affair, but for all that she agreed with her husband that it would be
best to have their cousin home to stay with them; and so she was advised
to come home as soon as she could, and forget all about her adventure at
the Cape, in the pretty Warwickshire village. She was glad enough to
accept their offer, for though she had become a heroine at the Cape, she
found that heroines were rather at a discount as governesses, and that
it was difficult to see what she could do with herself there. So two
years from the day of her trial found Kate quite at home at the Rectory,
and happy enough in her new life.
"The Watsons are going to bring a friend with them to tennis, I forget
his name," said Mr Warner to his wife one day at luncheon. "He seems
rather a pleasant sort of man. I met him at Coventry the other day; he
comes from the Diamond Fields, where he made some money. I wonder
whether you ever met him out there, Kate?"
Kate looked troubled. It occurred to her that more people were likely
to know a young lady who had stood in the dock in a criminal court than
she knew; and in consequence she did not feel over comfortable at the
idea of meeting any one who came from the Diamond Fields.
The others understood her embarrassment, though they tried to persuade
her that there was no reason for her fears. "People who have known one
another at the ends of the earth would never tell tales. I should say
that rule would be kept for mutual convenience," said Mr Warner, who,
like many an untravelled Englishman, believed that the goings on of
those living in distant lands were, as a rule, such as they would wish
to keep dark at home. However, Kate showed so much apprehension of a
meeting with a man who might remember the trial, that they did not
dissuade her from keeping away and avoiding it. So it happened that in
the afternoon she was sitting in a school-room by herself, waiting
securely there until the visitors had gone away again. She had heard
them arrive, and heard a voice in the hall which she knew must belong to
the Watsons' friend from the Cape, and it had seemed somehow to be
familiar to her ear. She sat with a book before her, reading very
little, and thinking a good deal of the events of two years before,
which now seemed so far off--of the long journey across the veldt, of
the scene at Jagger's Drift, and then of her trial at Kimberley. What
had become of the man for whom for some motive she could hardly fathom
she had risked so much? Likely enough he was buried under the South
African sand, or perhaps he was taken again, and was working out his
sentence. Again his figure came back to her mind, dressed as he was
when she last saw him, in coarse canvas shirt and trousers decorated
with numerous broad arrows and other Government marks.
Just then she heard her aunt's voice from the garden, shouting out to
some one in the hall.
"Second door to the right, as you go in, you will find the rackets; no,
left I mean." Whoever was being spoken to did not hear the last words,
for instead of going into the room where the rackets were kept, he
opened the door of the room she was sitting in. It seemed to her as if
her thoughts had taken bodily shape, for there stood the man she was
thinking about. He seemed to her to be dressed as he had been when she
had seen him last, for his flannel and soft hat had much the effect of
his convict garb.
"At last I have found you, and I have been trying to find out where you
were for the last year," he said.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"I thought you were still looking for the rackets, and came to show you
where they were kept. I need not introduce my cousin to you, as you
seem to have made each other's acquaintance," said Mrs Warner, as she
came into the room some ten minutes afterwards.
"Yes; we were old friends in South Africa," answered Darrell.
"I hope you will persuade her to come and play tennis. Do you know you
were the cause of her staying away? She was afraid of meeting you
because of that foolish business of hers about a convict's escape, which
I suppose you must know all about," said Mrs Warner.
"Yes; I know a good deal about it, for I happen to be the convict.
Don't be alarmed, though--I am quite a respectable person now, for
thanks to Miss Gray, I have proved my innocence and got a pardon."
Mrs Warner looked somewhat dubiously at her guest. The hero of Kate's
adventure was the last person she had ever expected to entertain in her
house. Ex-convicts, even when they have not escaped, but have duly
served their sentences, are not thought desirable acquaintances; on the
other hand, her guest was perfectly well accredited and she liked his
looks. Altogether she was inclined to think Kate less foolish than she
used to do; and she did not attempt to prevent her from being persuaded
to join the rest of the party in the garden.
Darrell did not play tennis that afternoon. Sitting on a low
garden-chair he told Kate his history since the moment she had seen him
lose himself in the distance as he rode for his liberty. His life in
Stellaland had been full enough of adventure, but nothing had happened
that had any particular effect on his history, until one day when he was
sitting with some of his companions at the house he had first seen them
at. He was feeling rather sick of his life, although he liked the
excitement and adventure of it, and he was willing enough to fight for
Mankoran, who was being left in the lurch by the English, to whom he had
always been loyal, and attacked without any cause by Boer freebooters
who wanted his land. He was getting rather tired of the lawlessness of
his companions, who cared more for what they could make than for the
justice of their cause, and were not too particular about whom they took
plunder from, so long as they could get hold of it.
As he sat smoking his pipe, and wondering what would be the end of his
life, a man drove up to the door in a cart, and giving the reins to a
Kaffir who was with him, got out and walked into the store.
Darrell recognised the man at once. He was the man Seers who had
trapped him. At last he had a chance of finding out something about the
plot of which he had been made a victim.
Seers walked into the house, and then started back in no little terror,
for he found himself in a nest of hornets. There were two other men
besides Darrell whom he had helped to get into trouble when he was
acting for the police. They were both inside, and as soon as he saw
them Seers ran back and jumped into his cart before Darrell could stop
him. The man Seers had recognised was an American, who they called
Colerado Joe--one of the most reckless ruffians of their band. As he
caught sight of his enemy he made a rush for him, but was too late.
Then he ran back to the house for his carbine, and followed by the other
man, who was also armed, began to fire at the cart. Three shots were
fired, and one of the horses fell down dead. Colerado Joe with a yell
ran up to the cart, which had come to a stop.
Things looked like going pretty hard with Mr Seers. He had been hit
pretty badly, but his condition did not commend him to the pity of his
enemies.
"Guess we'll hang him at once, before the others turn up. It's more our
affair than theirs; eh, Pat?" the American said to his friend.
The other took pretty much the same view, and they were both somewhat
entertained by the ghastly terror of Seers. Just then Darrell came up.
When Seers saw another of his victims appear on the scene he felt his
position hopeless.
Darrell, however, was by no means inclined to allow the mouth of the man
who had given false evidence to be closed for ever. He stuck to the
point that Seers' life should be spared, and after the matter had nearly
ended in a fight, he was allowed to have his way.
"Well, that carrion ain't worth fighting about. If you want him you can
have him, but he won't be much use to you long," the American said, as
he turned away, followed by his mate.
Darrell picked up the wounded man, took him to the house and looked
after him.
The wound, however, which he had received, turned out to be a fatal one,
and when Seers became satisfied that he was not going to recover, he
made a clean breast of it.
"You have a nasty bitter enemy in Kimberley, I don't know whether you
know it--that fellow Joe Aarons. He has a down on you, has Joe. He
knew my game--that I was working for the detectives--and he came and
offered me a hundred if I'd trap you. I had been sent down the river to
look after what was going on down there, and it didn't seem a very hard
job, so I went in for it. You found a little just about the time you
were run in. Well, that was--thanks to me. I put those diamonds
amongst the gravel you were washing. They were police stuff, and the
police knew you sold 'em. When it actually came to trapping you, it
wer'n't so easy. But, lord, those police, when you have done a bit in
their way, get to believe in you wonderful. I worked it; bless you, I
hid the coin that I swore you give me near the tent, and after I had
slipped the diamond down, I got out the money and then I hollored out
for the police. The clearest case he had ever seen, the blessed beak
said. Well, it were clear like the three-card-trick is clear. It
wer'n't fair, and I am sorry for it, only that Joe Aarons shouldn't have
come down with his hundred. I always had a weakness for a lump sum. It
was the only time I ever went wrong while I was working for them. But
bless yer, as soon as I began to do a bit of buying again on my own
account, they are down on me, and I, like a fool, cleared for this
country. I'd have done better to have stopped in Kimberley and done my
sentence. I see that as soon as I come across that devil Colerado," the
man said in a husky, quavering voice.
Darrell managed to get a border magistrate to come up and take the
deposition before Seers died. With this evidence he easily got his
sentence quashed. After that he had gone back to the river, where he
did fairly well, and putting what he made at the river into some claims
in one of the mines, just before a sudden rise in their value, he
managed to make a fairly good thing of it.
"I have to thank you for everything. I should still be wearing
convict's clothes if it had not been for you. I have felt ashamed of
myself when I have thought how I rode off and left you to get out of the
trouble you might have got into how you could. I never could hear what
happened to you after the trial. I have been longing to thank you," he
said, when he had come to the end of his story.
"My trouble was not very great," she said; and she began to think that
it would have been better if she had never met him again. She
remembered their last conversation.
"I have wanted to tell you something. You remember when we last talked
to one another on the road up to the Fields. That story I told you of
is all over; the person I told you about then is dead."
Their minds both went back to that conversation on the veldt, and they
took up their story as it had been left off then. Before it was time
for Darrell to say good-bye, they had settled how it was to end.
Story 2.