Part One.
The General, as he had been called since diamond-digging first broke out
on the banks of the Vaal River, inhabited a hut built of rough stones
and thatched with reeds near the river-bank at Red Shirt Rush.
He was the owner of some claims, and he had worked at Red Shirt since he
came up to the Vaal from the colony to try his luck as a diamond-digger;
and when other diggers went hither and thither to new places on the
river, or were attracted by the rich diggings which afterwards became
famous as the South African diamond mines, the old General worked on at
Red Shirt as if he were quite satisfied with the rewards that fortune
thought fit to bestow upon his labours there, and would laugh at the men
who were attracted elsewhere by glowing reports. He could hardly be
said to be contented with Red Shirt--certainly if he were he expressed
his content peculiarly, for he seldom talked of the place without an
uncomplimentary epithet; but he probably was imbued with the gambler's
belief in the doctrine of chances, and hoped his luck would change,
while he was too discontented with the results of every move he had made
in his life to care to make any more. He was generally supposed to be
the unluckiest man down the river, and his bad luck was a very favourite
subject for discussion and exaggeration at the canteens and places where
diggers congregated.
His former history, and the reasons which led him to take to
diamond-digging, were subjects which afforded scope for imaginations
which found life down the river, when finds were few and far between,
barren of topics of interest; and certainly his appearance and manners
seemed to show that he was much out of place in the community he found
himself in. He was an aristocratic, reserved man, from whom years of
rough life had not taken the unmistakable stamp of the military officer.
It was generally believed down the river that the General's relations at
home were very great people, and he was looked upon as a man with a
history. Luney White, the Vaal River poet, whose contribution to the
Diamond Field newspapers caused quite a furore down the river, many bets
being made, and much fighting and drinking being occasioned, by the
difficult question of what they were all about, and what he meant by
them at all, retailed, on the pretence of having heard it from an army
officer at Capetown, a story that the General had allowed the suspicion
of a terrible murder to rest upon him so as to shield the really guilty
person, a lady of exalted rank, and was, at present, a fugitive from
justice in consequence of his noble conduct. Luney's story rather took
for a day or two, until some one remembered having read just such a tale
in a book the poet had borrowed from him--a circumstance which threw
doubts, not only upon the veracity of the story, but on the originality
of their poet's genius, which, up to then, they had believed in. The
General's real name was hardly known, and he was never spoken of by it,
though it was to be seen on a tombstone in the Barkly Cemetery, which
was put up to the memory of Constance, wife of John Stanby, of Red Shirt
Rush, Vaal River. He was the father of a golden-haired little girl of
seventeen, who had grown up from a child on the banks of the Vaal. His
story had not really been a romantic or remarkable one. Like many
another man of good old family but no money he had gone into the army.
After serving for some dozen years he had got into the clutches of the
Jews by backing a bill for a brother officer. For some years he fought
against his debts, but in the end he was obliged to surrender his
commission to his enemies, and leave the service. Then, when his
affairs were sufficiently hopeless, he fell in love with and married a
girl who had not a penny, and, after having tried in vain to get
something to do in England, went out to the Cape and was attracted up to
Vaal River when diamonds were first found. Though he was under fifty,
he had become a grizzled, old-looking man, broken in spirits by
persistent misfortune; and yet he was a strange mixture, for at times he
was as sanguine as when he first put a pick into the soil of South
Africa.
Those who said that he never found exaggerated his ill-success, though
not perhaps his ill-luck; at long intervals a few ill-looking,
off-coloured little diamonds had turned up on his sorting-table, which,
if they were to be considered as a recompense for all his weary work,
were Fortune's insults added to her injuries; but nevertheless kept up
in him a curious sort of hope, which through all his bad luck he
retained, notwithstanding his bitter grumbling against South Africa in
particular, and all things in general. To himself constantly, and to
others when he met any one he cared to speak to, he would inveigh
bitterly against his luck. First of all he would wish that he had never
gone into the army; then he would curse the fate which had made him
choose the particular branch of the service he had gone into; then he
would curse the day he had left the service; and then he would collect
every malediction he had made use of and every other he knew, and fire
one withering sulphurous volley at fate, which had made him a digger on
the Vaal River. These explosions would seem to do him much good, for
after one of them he would generally seem much relieved, and as likely
as not in a few minutes would be talking about what he would do when he
found, as he felt sure he would find when he had got the top stuff off
his claim, or got into the lime layer which he would strike in another
ten feet, or started into the new ground he was going to work in a month
or two.
There were two diggers at Red Shirt with whom the General was on
intimate terms--Charlie Langdale and Jim Heap. The former was a
light-hearted, cheery youngster of about twenty-two, in many respects a
typical river-digger. He was restless and unable to take kindly to any
work which entailed obedience; had a rare gift for getting into any
mischief that was going on, while he possessed very little reverence for
his seniors and those who thought themselves his betters; on the other
hand, he was superior to many colonial youths in that he did not lie as
a rule, nor boast overmuch, and could speak a few sentences without
swearing hideously. The first time the General had seen him he was
holding his own against a big Irish digger who was trying to bully him
out of a claim he was working; and the nonchalant way in which he
laughed at the Irishman's threats, and put the right value on them,
impressed the General so much in his favour that he at once struck up an
intimacy, and the two became great allies.
The other, Jim Heap, was an old Australian digger who had settled at Red
Shirt, where he had become a fixture; for besides having some claims, he
had become the proprietor of a store, which his wife looked after for
him.
He was a favourite confidant of the General, who would explain to him
his theories about diamonds, and show him why he felt certain he would
soon find and be able to leave the country--theories which Jim Heap
would listen to gravely enough, though he did not believe in them one
bit; but, as he would say to Charlie, what was the good of putting a
damper on the old man's hopes? His life was bad enough as it was, but
would be unbearable if he did not go on hoping that he would soon make
his pile, and be able to take his little girl home to England.
Sometimes, however, he would offer him advice, which the old General--
who, though he considered diamond-digging a hateful occupation into
which he had been forced by a malignant fate, believed himself to be as
good an authority as any one on the subject--would greatly resent.
Charlie Langdale also would sometimes venture on the same subject, and
one morning, as he sat after dinner smoking under the trees near the
General's house, he had greatly aroused his old friend's anger by
criticising his way of working.
"What! say my drive is dangerous!" the General had burst out, after he
had listened to Charlie for some time, "and I shan't get anything in
that ground I am driving into! I should like to know what you mean by
talking to me about it. Why, if I don't know something about river
digging, I'd like to know who does. I have been digging since they
first found diamonds in this cursed country, and have stuck to the river
all the time, and never left it for the New Rush when all the others
did. A lot I have got for it so far. Well, it's a long lane that has
got no turning; and there is Connie, perhaps she wouldn't be as well as
she is if we had left the river and gone to Kimberley," he added.
"By Jove, yes, you're right, it's healthier here than at Kimberley, and
she couldn't look better than she does, could she?" Charlie answered,
with a flush of admiration coming across his bright young face, as he
looked round and saw a golden-haired, blue-eyed girl, whose bright
beauty was unharmed by the pitiless South African sun and climate, which
often enough makes sad havoc of a woman's looks.
The sight of Connie, however, made Charlie go back to his subject,
regardless of the General's wrath. "I don't like the look of that
drive, don't like those boulders that are above you; why don't you leave
it alone and go into fresh ground? I think it dangerous, so does Jim
Heap; he told Connie that you ought not to work in it; and she is
wretched about it every time you go to the claim."
"It seems to me that every one thinks they can interfere with me--you
and Connie, and then Jim Heap, who thinks no one understands anything
about digging but himself;" and the General drew in his breath to
prepare for a burst of eloquence anent Jim Heap, when his daughter came
up, and, feeling that he couldn't do justice to the subject in her
presence, he went into the house choking with indignation.
"I wish some one could persuade him to give up that work. But it's no
use, he thinks he is a greater authority about digging than any one
else," Connie said, guessing from her father's suppressed indignation
that Charlie had been broaching the question of the dangerous state of
his claim.
"Yes, I wish he would go into fresh ground. I never believed in those
claims of his, they're too near the river."
"You will never get him to do that. You know that years ago he saw a
big diamond found in the claim next to where he is, which looked, he
said, as if it were chipped off a much bigger one, and he is as sure in
his own mind as he is of anything that the other bit is somewhere about
near where he is working."
"Well, I dare say the claim is safe enough, and I hope he will come
across the big 'un, which is going to make his fortune," said Charlie,
who was always ready to look at the bright side of things. "It was only
the other day he was saying that it was about time he found, as you were
growing too old to be living at Red Shirt."
"Poor old dear, he is always troubling himself about me, and says I am
growing up a perfect savage, without any accomplishments and very little
education, and shall have terribly hard work to make up for lost time
when I get home. Well, I'll back myself to cook, set a line for fish,
nurse any one who's down with fever, and sort for diamonds, against any
one on the river; these are accomplishments enough for Red Shirt, and
that's where I shall be all my life, so far as I can see. He was
talking the other day about sending me home, and staying out here
himself; but that's absurd, isn't it?"
Charlie did not answer. The idea of Red Shirt Rush without Connie was
miserable enough, for all his good sense told him that the General was
right. Connie ought not to be growing up in a digger's camp, with
little education that was not of a very practical character.
"Why don't you say that I couldn't be improved, Charlie? You're not
half polite. I suspect you're comparing me with some of those fine
ladies you have met at Kimberley. Come, I bet I know about as much out
of books as they do, for I have read all the old man has, and they are a
good mixed lot. Besides, if I want educating ever so much, how could I
go home and leave him by himself? He is wretched enough as it is, and I
couldn't bear to leave him--besides, I don't want to say good-bye to all
my old friends."
Charlie's heart gave rather a jump--he wondered whether he were one of
the friends she would most mind saying good-bye to. He didn't believe
much in the General's sanguine expectations being realised, and thought
that Connie was likely to stand in need some day of a stronger protector
than her father; and her words gave him a feeling of hope, and he
determined that he would speak out. Just then, however, the General's
voice was heard calling for Connie, and the interruption disconcerted
Charlie, who turned off a sentence he was beginning and determined to
put it off for another day. His heart failed him, and he thought that
the old General would not like it, and that Connie might take it amiss;
so knocking the ashes out of his pipe he said good-bye to Connie, and
walked up the bank to where he was working, although he longed to stay
and talk to her, and there was not the slightest reason why he should
not have done so. On his way to his claim he passed the ground where
the General was working. It was a claim which had been partly worked in
the old days, before the New Rush, as the Kimberley mine was then
called, was found, and had been deserted before it had been worked out.
After its former owners had abandoned it and had gone to try their luck
at the new diggings, the General had worked it down to the bed rock,
some thirty feet deep, and was driving into the side of the claim
towards the ground where he had seen the diamond found. Charlie stood
for a moment or two watching him at work.
The drive certainly did not look very safe; the old man was working near
a mass of rock which jutted out over him. The ground into which he was
driving was the only part of the adjoining claim that had not been
worked out, its former owners having thrown their stones and rubbish
there, and so had been unable to get at it easily when they had worked
out the rest of the claim. The weight on the natural surface of the
ground made the place where the General was driving into look all the
more awkward.
"I say, that's rather a nasty-looking boulder you are working under,
isn't it? It would flatten out any one in the drive pretty well if it
were to slip," Charlie shouted out to the General, who had crawled out
of his drive for a minute.
"Slip! Bosh! Suppose the moon were to slip. Nothing but dynamite
would move that boulder! Perhaps you would like to teach me how to work
the claim," the elder digger growled out in response; and then he
crawled into the tunnel, and Charlie went on, knowing that it was
useless to remonstrate any more, and hoping that it would be all right.
"Well, youngster, you've come back to work at last; you're a pretty sort
of partner! Been down at the General's? You're always loafing down
there--it makes me laugh to see how that little bit of a girl fools
you," a big dissipated-looking man, who was lying on the ground smoking
a pipe, said as Charlie came up to the claim.
This was his partner, Bill Jeffson, and as he heard his voice Charlie
thought to himself that one of the first steps he would take towards
turning over a new leaf would be to break with Mr Bill, so he answered
him rather shortly, and told him that he had better mind his own
business.
"That's it, quarrel with an old chum, I suppose. I ain't good enough
for you now you've got to know the old General. I don't know what's
come over you: you can't take a joke, you never go on the spree, and you
put on no end of frills just because you know that poverty-stricken old
dead-beat and his daughter," Jeffson growled out as he got up, stretched
himself, and lounged into the claim, while Charlie settled down at the
sorting-table.
Several hours had passed without anything happening to vary the dull
monotony of the work, when Charlie suddenly sprang up with an
exclamation of surprise.
"Hullo! what's up? Have you found one?" Jeffson called out.
"Found one! no. I heard some one cry out; there it is again. It's from
the General's claim," said Charlie, as he started to run, leaving his
partner, who was never over much interested in other people's affairs,
to lounge after him.
After Charlie had gone a little way, he met Connie, who, with a white
startled face, was running towards him, crying loudly for help.
"Go back and get picks and a crowbar. You have one. It's father; he
has had an accident; the ground has come down. I will go and bring some
other men," she gasped out; and then she ran past him towards the claims
where Jim Heap and some other diggers were working.
The first glance Charlie got of the claim to which he ran, after he had
shouted to his partner to bring the Kaffirs with their tools, told him
what had happened.
Jim Heap's prophecy turned out to be true! The drive had fallen, and it
was blocked up by a mass of boulders and earth. Of the poor old General
nothing could be seen; but it was not hard to guess where he was, and
Charlie began to dig madly with his hands into the fallen earth and
throw some of the loose stones on one side, a cold sweat running down
his face as he realised the terrible fate that had come to his old
friend. He had not been at his work long before better help arrived.
Jeffson with the Kaffirs set to work with their shovels; and Jim Heap,
who at once took in the situation, and, giving the others directions,
set to work at the fallen ground, looking up as he did so at Connie,
who, having followed him back, stood watching them.
"Don't take on, my dear. I have seen men come out all right from worse
places than this, and be none the worse for it," he said to her; but his
tone was not quite as hopeful as his words.
She did not answer him, but watched them, speechless and tearless, with
an awful look of misery on her white set face. She had not long to wait
in suspense. After the work had gone on for some time, she heard a
murmur from the men, which told her there was little ground for hope.
The boulder under which he had been working had shifted, and her father
was lying with the life crushed out of him underneath it. They tried to
get her away before they moved the boulder and dragged out the lifeless
body, but she would not go, and stood watching them, and followed the
men who carried it back into the house without saying a word or even
shedding a tear.
"Poor girl! it's a terrible bad business for her. I'll send my missis
to her; she will sit up with her and try and comfort her--not that any
one can do her much good, poor little lass," the old digger said, with
something like a tear running down his weather-beaten old face. And
then he went to his tent to send his wife, a Devonshire-born woman,
whose kindly nature had not been hardened by years of rough life on
Australian and South African diggings, to share poor Connie's sad watch.
On the following day the poor old General was buried at Barkly, and
there was not much work done at Red Shirt Rush, for most of the diggers
followed their old comrade, whom they liked and respected for all his
crotchety temper and reserved manner, to his last resting-place. For
years there had not been so many men from the river camps in that sleepy
little township. It was remarked that the great majority of them left
Barkly quite sober, and that there were not more than three fights and
no general disturbance. This exemplary conduct was caused partly by a
sense of the sadness of the poor old General's death, and more by the
memory of poor little Connie's piteous face as she stood by the side of
the grave. When the funeral was over, Connie, who, in the first shock
of her sorrow, had thought nothing about herself, began to realise how
friendless and homeless she was.
Jim Heap had borrowed a cart and a pair of horses, and driven her and
his wife over to Barkly, and on the way back he somehow guessed what she
was thinking about.
"Maybe, Miss Connie, there are some of your relations at home you ought
to write to about this; but until you hear you must stay with us, if you
don't mind living with plain people in a rough place that ain't fit for
a lady like you. While we've a roof over our heads, you need not
trouble about finding a home. You know, miss, how proud we should be to
have you with us; the missis and me have talked that over already."
"How kind you are to me! I don't want to leave Red Shirt Rush; all my
friends are there, and every one seems so kind to me; but I shall be a
burden to you. I must try and get my own living somehow," poor Connie
answered.
"Burden to us? Don't talk of that; why, you talk as if you haven't got
anything of your own; why, there's those claims which are worth a good
bit of money maybe, and there is a heap of stuff the General got out of
it which hasn't been sorted yet."
Connie remembered how now and then in her father's lifetime Jim Heap had
expressed a very different opinion about the value of the ground which
had cost her so much, but she did not say any more.
Another person who thought about Connie's future was Charlie Langdale.
There is no need to say how he would have planned it, and the day after
the poor old General was buried--it was a Sunday morning--he was
strolling along the river-bank thinking over his plans for the future.
He would give up the river, he thought, and go to Kimberley and try and
get a sub-managership or something of the sort from one of the companies
which would give him a fixed income. Regular work and wages up to that
time had had very little attraction to him. He liked working on his own
account down the river with no one to order him about, and the gambling
uncertainty of river-digging was just suited to his happy-go-lucky
disposition; but he thought that he would not mind how irksome the work
he got to do was, so long as it would give him a prospect of marrying
Connie. If she would only give him just a glimpse of a hope he would
ask for no more, till he had shown what sort of stuff he was made of, he
declared to himself as he tried to weigh his chance, and went from the
depths of despair to hopefulness and back, as he tried to recall the
occasions on which he might possibly have shown her how much he cared
for her. He had walked along the bank thinking over this question until
he had come to the old General's claims, and, looking at the trees by
the little house, he thought of the last time he had stood under them
talking to her, and had almost made up his mind to tell her. Well, he
would have to wait a bit now. Poor girl, it would not do to talk to her
till she had got over the first of her sorrow. Then he walked into the
claim, and stood near where the accident had happened, and as he thought
he scratched with a stick he had in his hand amongst the loose gravel
which the party working to rescue the General had thrown out. By chance
he looked down at his feet, and found himself hitting with his stick at
something that looked very different from the other pebbles. He was too
intent on his thoughts to pay much heed to it, though in an absent way
he was looking at it. Suddenly he gave a start, and picked it up; it
was a big white diamond!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Part Two.
The diamond was just such a stone as the poor old General used to
describe when he talked of the one he expected to come across--such a
stone as he argued that the one he saw in the next claim years before
had been chipped. The old man's theory was rubbish, Charlie had always
believed, but there, sure enough, was a diamond that bore it out. It
must have been dislodged from the ground that had fallen, and when he
met his death the General was very near the prize he had somehow always
expected to find. Charlie examined the diamond carefully; he had never
seen so large a stone of the same quality before. He could not estimate
its value, but it was worth a good many thousands, he believed, for it
would probably be one of the finest stones in the world.
"Hullo! what have you got there? Show me. Put it in your pocket and
hurry away from this place; remember we're partners, old man; come, look
slippy, we don't want any one to see us mouching about here," Charlie
heard a voice say in his ear, and looking round, he saw his partner,
Bill Jeffson, who was staring with big eyes at the diamond, and in his
amazement at seeing it had dropped a bottle of `Cape smoke' on the
ground without even using one word of bad language.
"What do you mean? What's our partnership got to do with this diamond?
it's not found in our claim."
"That's it, you darned fool! It's got to be found in our claim; that's
the only place you can find a diamond in legally if one wants to stick
to it."
"Stick to it. Why, this belongs to the General, and I am going to give
it up to Jim Heap."
"Stop, you ain't going to give that diamond up to Jim Heap! You're mad!
Stop! Man alive, how can the diamond belong to any one except the
first man who finds it? These claims are abandoned."
Charlie paid no heed to the other, who was trembling with excitement and
greed, but pushed past him and walked in the direction of Jim Heap's
house.
Bill Jeffson stood for some seconds watching him, thinking what he could
say or do to get some share in the diamond he had seen; then he ran
after him, and caught hold of him by the arm.
"Look here, Charlie--now don't get riled with an old chum. Look here,
now let me put it to you--ain't you making a mistake? Why don't you
stick to the diamond? You say it belongs to the old General's girl.
Well, you're sweet on her, and want to marry her, so it won't hurt her
if you do stick to it; she'll get her share, and it will be all one to
her; while if you give it up see where are you--why, you lose the
diamond and her too. You don't suppose that she would marry you if she
had a fortune of her own, and that diamond means a fortune, mind you.
She is a lady by birth, mind, and has relations in England who are as
fine people as any in the land, so I've heard; and though they won't put
themselves out about her now--she would only be a trouble to 'em--it
would be a different story if she were a bit of an heiress. Why, every
one would cry shame, and say you were standing in the girl's light and
preventing her taking her proper place. Now, look here, you say you
found that diamond in our claim--you and I can settle about my share--
and then you will have something to go on when you ask the girl to marry
you. Now think it over, and don't act in a hurry;" and Mr Jeffson
looked inquiringly into his partner's face to see if his persuasion was
taking any effect upon him.
Mr Bill Jeffson, when he looked back to the incident, as he often did,
with feelings of the most bitter disgust at his bad luck and Charlie's
weakness of conduct, always consoled himself with the reflection that he
showed the greatest diplomacy in the way he put it, and felt sure that
Charlie was struck by the force of his argument. However, his ingenuity
was wasted, for Charlie turned round and told him to clear off or it
would be the worse for him, and, without saying a word more, went on
towards Jim Heap's.
It was true enough, Charlie thought to himself as Bill Jeffson's words
came back to him, that diamond, if it was worth as much as he thought it
must be, would make a good deal of difference to Connie. It was one
thing for him to ask her to marry him when she was without means or
friends, but it would be different now she had plenty of money and the
means of going home and living the life that was suitable for one of her
birth. The old General, if he had lived and had found the diamond,
would have principally valued his good luck because it would have given
him the means of sending Connie home; and he would have been right to
have done so. Red Shirt Rush was not a fit place for her, and its
inhabitants, who lived dull sordid lives, and whose only ambition was to
be successful in their grubbing for diamonds, were not fit society for
her. Yet Charlie felt doubtful whether he was fit for any better life
than he was leading, and if he persuaded her to marry him he would keep
her down to something like it.
Should he leave it to her to decide? Was not he somewhat premature in
settling whether or no it would be for her good to marry him when he had
no reason to believe that she would accept him?
But Jeffson's words came back to his mind. People would say that it was
a shame if he persuaded a girl--she was only a girl--into such a
disadvantageous marriage; it would be taking advantage of her want of
knowledge of the world. And as he saw that, as a matter of honour, he
ought not to ask her to marry him, he began to feel more confident of
his chances with her, and he felt it all the harder to give them up.
He had hardly come to any decision when he arrived at Jim Heap's house.
Jim Heap was standing at the door, and he came out to meet him, and
began to tell him about Connie, who was knocked up by the grief and
shock of the last few days, and was in bed in a feverish state. Charlie
listened to him, and then told the story of his find, and showed Jim
Heap the diamond.
"Bless me! if this start don't beat anything I have ever seen, and I
have been digging since gold was first found in Australia, and seen one
or two queer freaks of fortune! Fancy, now, the old General was just
getting on to the bit of luck he was always talking about, when he was
killed! Seems something like fate in it all, don't it? Well, I suppose
you are right; this diamond belongs to Connie right enough. I was
telling her she was a bit of an heiress, as she had got that ground--not
that I thought it was worth anything, but I wanted to cheer her up, and
make her think that she wasn't under any obligation that she couldn't
pay for in coming to me; but it turns out that she is an heiress after
all."
"I suppose she will go home now, as that's what her father would have
liked?" said Charlie.
"Go home? I never thought of that; but now you say so it's pretty clear
to me that would be right. She has some relations at home, and now she
has money they will be civil enough to her; and that stone means money.
Nobody knows what a big stone like that is worth--it's 250 carats, I'd
like to bet; and now things are a bit brisker, I guess some of these big
dealers would give as much as twenty thousand pounds for it, and make
fifty per cent, out of their money."
"Twenty thousand pounds? Yes, you bet it's worth all that," said
Charlie; and as he looked at the diamond he thought how it was fated to
blast all his hopes. Jim Heap, he saw, was at once of the opinion that
it was best for her to go home, and every one else would think so too.
She was lost to him unless he did an unfair thing.
"Poor girl! it won't take her grief away," said Jim; "and maybe she
won't like leaving us all 'cause she has never known any better place;
but, after a bit, she will know what a good turn you have done her in
finding this big 'un for her. It's lucky that one or two men I know on
this digging didn't find it instead of you, my boy, or Connie would have
been none the richer for it. Will you come in and give it her yourself?
She is asleep now, but I will tell my missis to wake her up; it's
something worth being woke up for."
"No, don't wake her up--let her sleep, and you tell her about it when
she is better. Maybe it will only excite her now; you had better keep
it," Charlie answered, and he walked back to his tent to sit by himself,
and think over his future and Connie's, and how the wonderful find he
had made that afternoon would alter it.
By the next day the news of the find was all over the camp, and spread
up and down the river, and to Kimberley, where it excited much interest
amongst buyers and dealers, who discussed the news of the find, and
discounted it and speculated as to how much such a diamond would be
worth, and who could afford to buy. Connie was one of the last to hear
the news, for, as the day went on, she got worse, and the next morning
Charlie met the Barkly doctor coming from Jim Heap's with rather a bad
report to give of her. She had an attack of fever. There was a good
deal of it about down the river that year, and her trouble and the shock
she had sustained had made it worse, and it would be some time before
she could be told of her good luck.
"It seems hard that her father shouldn't have lived to see his luck
turned, poor old fellow!" the doctor said to Charlie; "but his daughter
will be able to go home now and be educated; that's what he always
talked about. I remember his saying that he felt troubled to think that
she was growing up out here, and he had hoped to have made something out
of his claims before."
"Yes, she will be able to go home, of course; that's what she ought to
do," Charlie answered, with something of regret in his voice; "but the
place will seem strange without her."
"Yes, the old General and pretty little Connie were quite features in
the place, weren't they? They introduced an element you don't often see
in a digging; but they were both out of place, if you come to think of
it; and it's a good thing that, thanks to you, she can get out of it.
It would have been a pity if she had married some river-digger, and
lived all her life away from civilisation and out of society. It's bad
enough for a man, but it's worse for a woman."
Charlie was inclined to think the doctor a conceited ass, who gave
himself airs because he was a professional man, and had come out from
home, and thought the country where he made his living not good enough
for him. Still, he had said what every one else was saying, that Connie
ought to go home. There was no doubt about it; he ought to give up all
his hopes of winning her. That big diamond had made all the difference;
she belonged properly to a different world from the one in which he
would have to live his life, and it would be mean and treacherous to the
memory of his old friend, her father, if he hindered her from going back
to it. He cursed the chance, which had thrown all his plans out of
gear, and wished that his partner, Bill Jeffson, had found that diamond,
or fate had not placed it in the General's claim in order to mock him.
He wondered whether Connie really did care for him; how sweet the idea
of working for her and protecting her had been! Now she did not want
his work or protection, and the best thing he could do would be to clear
off. The idea of going away took hold of him; it seemed to him that
flight was the bravest course he could take. There was some fairly good
news from the Transvaal gold-fields just then, and he thought he would
go up there.
That morning, as he was working at his claim, his partner, who had been
across the river, turned up in a state of irritation which he appeared
to think praiseworthy and just.
"You're a clever chap you are!" he snarled out, after he had looked with
disgust for some time at Charlie working in the claim; "but you're too
clever by half; they are all talking about you at the canteen over the
river, and a precious fool they think you, though they say you acted
very straight. When I told 'em that your game was to marry the girl,
and get the diamond back that way, Higgins, the law agent, said that it
wasn't likely, and that he believed the law would prevent it, 'cause she
was a minor, and would be made a ward of the Court, and that it would be
a shame if she were to marry the likes of you, and that of course she
would go home; and every one agreed with him except Luney White. Why,
Higgins, he said that he doubted whether you would get a farthing for
having found the diamond, as the High Court, which will have to
administer the estate, won't have any power to grant it. There won't be
as much as a drink stood over that diamond--think of that now--the best
stone ever found down the river; and not so much as a glass of square
face or Cape smoke stood over it. Oh, it makes me sick!"
Charlie told him that if he ever said anything about his wanting to stop
Connie going home he would give him the worst thrashing he ever had in
his life, for it was a lie. Of course she ought to go away from Red
Shirt, and he knew it, and he seemed so much in earnest that Bill
Jeffson thought it prudent to lurch away, comforting himself with the
reflection that his words had left a sting, and that Charlie would be
punished for his foolishness about the diamond.
Ah, it was the same story all round; every one said she ought to go
home; he must either stay there and see the last of Connie without
telling her how much he loved her, or go away somewhere, and of the two
alternatives the latter seemed to be the easier. He waited till he
heard that Connie was better, and then early one morning he turned his
back on Red Shirt, and set off to walk across the veldt to Kimberley.
Jim Heap, when he had heard of his intention to start off at once, could
not understand it.
"There's nothing sticking out up there for a man without capital, and
there is nothing to hurry off there for; I should have thought that
you'd have waited till Miss Connie was well enough to see you; I don't
think she will take it over well you're going off like this without
saying good-bye; she'd like to say that, let alone saying thank you for
finding it for her."
"There's no reason for her to thank me, it didn't give me any trouble to
pick it up; and as for saying good-bye, you must say that for me. Tell
her that I hope she will go home, as the old General always wished her,
and that she'll be happy. I'd better clear off these Fields at once."
"You haven't been doing anything wrong--not been on the cross in any
way? That Bill Jeffson hasn't been letting you in or getting you to go
in for anything shady?" Jim Heap asked, for from experience a sudden
necessity to leave a place was associated in his mind with a desire to
get away from the jurisdiction of criminal courts.
"No, don't think that of me; I haven't been doing anything that's mean
or dishonest, but I ain't sure I sha'n't if I stay here," Charlie said,
and, shaking Jim Heap's horny hand, he left him in a state of
considerable bewilderment.
Jim Heap was right about Connie taking his sudden departure rather
badly. When she was told the two pieces of news, she seemed far more
surprised and hurt at Charlie's having left without saying good-bye to
her than she was rejoiced to learn that she was the owner of one of the
largest diamonds in the world, and seemed to think that the good luck
had come too late now that her father was dead and could not rejoice
over it. She did not say much about Charlie, but Jim Heap and his wife
both thought that she was a good deal hurt about it. After she had
first expressed her surprise at his having gone she rarely mentioned his
name. She wanted some share of the price of the diamond, which sold for
20,000 pounds, to be given to him for finding it, but as she was a minor
that was impossible. To the plan of her going home she made no
objections, for though she looked forward to a change of life without
much pleasure, she knew it was what her father would have wished; and
one day, some weeks after the diamond was found, a crowd of diggers gave
her a last cheer as Jim Heap drove her across the veldt to Barkly, where
she was to meet the wife of the clergyman there, who was going home and
had arranged to take her under her protection, and duly introduce her to
her father's relations; and nothing was left of the General and Connie
except the house in which they used to live and the claims where the big
diamond was found; though their memory will live and their story will be
told so long as diamonds are dug for on the banks of the Vaal River.
After some months, Charlie came back from the gold-fields on foot, for
he had found, as Jim Heap prophesied, that there was nothing much
sticking out for him up there. He came back with empty pockets and
worn-out boots, but he did not seem sickened of the chances of digging,
or had not the energy to try anything else, for he turned to his old
occupation again. Fortune thought fit to do him a good turn, as it did
to many others down the river that year. The Vaal that winter became
unusually shallow, and the diggers who went to work in its bed, as they
do when they can get at it, found very well. When the river came down
again, Charlie had found a nice lot of diamonds which he sold for eight
hundred pounds, and, rather to the surprise of every one who knew him,
he announced his intention of going for a run home. Maybe he would
never have another chance, he said, and he would like to know a little
bit more of the world than South Africa. The truth was that he felt a
longing to know something about the world in which Connie would live;
not that he supposed there was any chance of his seeing her--he did not
want to see her, he told himself. So he took his passage home, and in a
few weeks found himself in London.
After a few weeks of the round of theatres, race meetings, and
sight-seeing, which colonists generally go in for, he began to feel half
tired and bored with it all. The feeling of being alone in a crowd
chilled him, as it does those who have always lived in a small
community, and he began to feel something that was very like
home-sickness. He was delighted when he came across any one he had
known on the Diamond Fields, even finding himself pleased to talk to men
whom at the mine he had rather disliked and avoided. He was in this
state of mind when he met one Brown, a man whom out there he had always
looked upon as an ass. Mr Brown was equally lonely and in want of a
companion; he was about to set out on a Continental trip; and though he
doubted whether Charlie was not a little too colonial to be a desirable
travelling companion, still he thought that it would be better to get
him to go with him than travel by himself, so they agreed to travel
together, and started for the regulation Rhine and Switzerland trip.
Mr Brown's misgivings as to Charlie were confirmed by his conduct. He
hadn't got the mind for travel, and took nothing in. He was all very
well on the Diamond Fields, but he ought to have stopped there, was the
opinion expressed to himself of Charlie after they had travelled
together for two days. On the Rhine steamer his disgust reached a
climax. Charlie showed his hopeless ignorance by saying that the Rhine
reminded him of the Vaal River, and he seemed to take more interest in
that grovelling fancy than in anything he saw. He refused to listen to
Mr Brown's stories from Murray about the castles and islands he was
passing by, nor did he seem to care to have the special beauties of the
scenery pointed out to him--for Mr Brown had a nice taste for Nature--
but he sat silent and stupid. To tell the truth, his thoughts were far
away amongst old familiar scenes. He seemed to see the hut by the
river, to hear the swish of the diggers' cradles and Kaffirs jabbering
at their work, and Connie's silvery laugh as she ran along the bank to
her father's claim. That scene had come back to his mind twenty times a
day since he had left Africa.
"Did you see that pretty girl who got in at Boppart? You don't see that
sort of woman in Africa. There she is, sitting opposite, next to that
white-haired old buffer. Oh, what a fellow you are! you won't take an
interest in anything," Mr Brown was saying when Charlie woke up from
his day-dream, and looking across the deck he saw Connie sitting
opposite. She was at the same time wonderfully altered, and yet her old
self. The battered old straw hat and the old bright-coloured frock
bought at the Barkly store in celebration of one of the General's meagre
finds, which Charlie remembered so well, were replaced by soft
deftly-made garments, and she had grown even more beautiful than she
promised to be; but Charlie knew her at once, and as he saw her she
looked round, and a joyous look of recognition came into her face. In a
second he was shaking hands and was being introduced (as Mr Langdale,
who was a great friend of ours in South Africa, and who found my diamond
for me) to a white-haired gentleman and an elderly, somewhat
grim-looking lady, who eyed him rather dubiously, as if they were
inclined to doubt whether acquaintances made on the Diamond Fields were
very desirable ones; but neither Connie nor Charlie troubled themselves
much about them.
"What made you go to the gold-fields without waiting to say good-bye to
me?" Connie said to him when they were able to talk without being
overheard.
Charlie looked rather uncomfortable, and began to tell some story of a
party who were going to start and would not wait, when Connie
interrupted him.
"If I thought you had had no better reason than that I should forgive
you; as it is, I don't think I shall unless you tell me something I want
to know. You remember the day of the accident;" and a tear came into
her eyes as the terrible memory of her father's death came back to her.
"Well, you remember on that day we were talking together under the
trees, you and I: you were just going to tell me something when I was
called away. Can you remember now what it was you were going to say?"
Of course he could remember, and once for all the heroic resolutions he
had made and tried to act upon utterly broke down.
"I suppose I must tell my cousins about this," Connie said, after they
had talked for some time, as she glanced in the direction of the
gentleman and lady she was travelling with, who were regarding them with
looks of surprise and disapproval. "They are my guardians, and perhaps
they mayn't like it; but they know I always have my own way, and I think
you might have known that too."
She was right, they didn't like it; but she in the end had her own way,
and some twelve months after their meeting a digger of Red Shirt, who
was reading a tattered English newspaper at the canteen, came across an
advertisement of the marriage of Charles, son of the late Charles
Langdale, of the Griqualand West Civil Service, to Constance, daughter
of the late John Stanley (late Captain --th Light Infantry), which after
much debate was interpreted to mean that Charlie had married the old
General's daughter after all.
Story 8.