Aletta: A Tale of the Boer Invasion

Sidelights

Down by the river bed a girl was standing. The river bed was dry. So, too, was the wide, flat expanse of veldt stretching before and around her, and the slopes of two low cliff-crowned mountains which at some distance off relieved the dead level of the arid plain were brown where they should have been green. The only green spot visible upon the whole landscape was formed by an extensive cultivated patch lying around a farmhouse half a mile away, and this was the result of irrigation, not of the opening of the windows of heaven. But, although the sun shone down from a cloudless sky in the full glory of his midday splendour, his rays were without power, for there was a keen icy edge upon the air, stirred by a light breeze that was suggestive of exhilaration combined with warm clothing, and imparted a very entrancing touch of additional colour to the cheeks of the girl standing there.

She is a pretty girl, the large pupils of whose blue eyes lend to those attractive orbs a velvety softness which is in strange contradiction to the firm cut of the chin and the full though decided lips. She is of medium height, and her well-rounded figure is arrayed in a blouse and skirt, about as neat and serviceable a form of feminine attire as exists – on the veldt or elsewhere; but her hair, wavy and golden, is, save for a rebellious lock or two over the forehead, concealed within an ample white kapje, or sunbonnet – so becoming a framework to a pretty face.

Standing there among the dry mimosa bushes which fringe the river bank, her eyes wander meditatively forth over the brown and treeless plains beyond. Here and there, black dots moving near or far represent the staple wealth of that section of country, in the shape of male ostriches in full plumage, and now and again the stillness is broken by a triple booming, as that most truculent of bipeds lifts up his voice; but these are everyday sights and sounds and of them the girl takes not the smallest notice, nor yet of the antics of one great savage bird, who, with all his jetty plumage bristling in wrath, towers up to a formidable height as he presses against the wires of the dividing fence in his futile efforts to reach her and kick her into smithereens.

Suddenly her eyes dilate and she gives a slight start – even losing a little of her colour. For this yon black demon stalking up and down in impotent menace but a few yards off is in no wise responsible. The fence will take care of him. Can such an effect be produced by the sight of that tourniquet of dust, far away over the plain, yet whirling nearer and nearer? Perchance, for no mere erratic “dust-devil” is yonder cloud. It is raised by the hoofs of a horse.

Yet no assignation is this. Not for the purpose of meeting anybody is this girl here to-day. For all that her breast heaves somewhat, and her forsaking colour returns with a little more added as she glances round nervously towards the farmhouse, and finds herself wishing she had on headgear less conspicuous than the snowy whiteness of a kapje.

On comes the dust-cloud, powdering up from the road at each hoof-stroke as the horseman advances at a canter. He, whoever it may be, is yet a great way off, and a speculation, in which hope is about equal to disappointment and disgust combined, escapes those pretty lips:

“Only some Dutchman, I suppose.”

But a very few minutes of further watching suffices to bring back the light to her face, and an eager, expectant look, which she strives to repress, shines from her eyes. For the rider is very near now, and instinctively she moves a little further down the river bank in such wise that the dip in the ground where the drift lies conceals her effectually, white kapje and all, from view of the homestead.

The horseman, who is now descending into the drift, perceives her and turns his steed, so as to join her among the thorns.

“Why, May, this is good of you,” he says, as he joins her. Seen dismounted he is a tall, well-set-up man of about five-and-thirty, with clean-cut features and a dark moustache. His brown eyes are clear and searching, and there is a certain quickness about his speech and movements which is totally disassociated with any suggestion of flurry.

“What is ‘good of’ me? You don’t suppose I came down here on purpose to meet you, I hope?” is the characteristic rejoinder, uttered with a certain tinge of defiance.

“Why not? It would have been very nice of you – very sweet of you, in fact, and I should have appreciated it. Don’t you run away with the idea that the faculty of appreciation is exclusively vested in the softer sex.”

They were still holding each other’s hands – holding them a good deal longer than the usages of social greeting exacted.

“Well, I’m glad I came, anyhow,” she answered, in a softer tone, relaxing her grasp of his with ever so perceptible a final pressure. “The slowness of this place gets upon my nerves.”

“You’ve spoilt it now,” he laughed, looking her in the eyes. “For penalty you deserve what I’m about to tell you. I haven’t time to off-saddle. I’m going straight on.”

She started. The bright face clouded over. The new arrival, who had never removed his eyes from it, needed all his self-command to refrain from an uncontrollable burst of merriment.

“If you pass our door to-day or any other day without off-saddling I’ll never speak to you again,” she declared.

“Why should I not when you indignantly vow you would not come this little way to meet me?” he rejoined, still with a faint smile playing round the corners of his mouth.

“You know I would,” she flashed forth impulsively. “Don’t be horrid, Colvin! I didn’t, exactly come to meet you, but I did walk down here on the – offchance that – that you might be coming. There. Why is it that you always make me say everything right out – things I don’t in the least want to say? Nobody else could. Yet you do.”

For answer Colvin Kershaw deliberately placed one arm around the speaker, and, lifting her face with his other hand, kissed her on the lips. He did not hurry over the process either, nor did she seem anxious that he should. Yet these two were not lovers in the recognised and affianced sense of the term.

“How pretty you look in that white kapje!” he said, as he released her. “It suits you so well. If it hadn’t been for the glint of the white catching my eye I believe I should have passed you without seeing. And of course you would have let me?”

“Of course I should. But we had better go back to the house now, because if Frank or mother saw you ride down to the drift, they will be wondering how it is you are so long in getting to the other side. Come!”

They strolled up the stony river bank together, he leading his horse. But a sort of constraint fell upon the girl as they drew near the house. She had noticed her mother looking at her strangely of late when the talk had turned upon the man now at her side. He, for his part, felt no constraint at all. In point of fact, he never did.

No dogs heralded their approach with loud-mouthed clamour. No self-respecting dog given to erratic movement, and poking his nose into every corner where he should not, could live a day on a well-organised ostrich farm by reason of the poisoned morsels – carefully planted out of the way of the birds themselves – wherewith the run is strewn; for the benefit of cats and jackals, and leopards. One ancient and wheezy cur, however, incapable of any lengthier peregrination than a hundred yards, greeted their approach with sepulchral barks, and behind it came the owner, with his coat half on half off.

“Hallo, Colvin!” he sang out. “Why, you’re quite a stranger these days. Haven’t been here for weeks. Plotting treason with your friends the Dutchmen, I believe?”

“That’s it, Frank. We’re going to hold your place up for arms and ammunition first thing. Then they’re going to make me State Secretary of the new Cape Colony Republic on condition I do the shooting of you with my own hand. So now you’re warned.”

The point of these amenities lay in the fact that Colvin Kershaw was not without pronounced Dutch sympathies at a time of strong political tension. Whereas Frank Wenlock, though on good enough terms with his Dutch neighbours individually, was one of those not uncommon types who labour under a firm conviction that the Powers above built this planet Earth primarily for the benefit of – and eventually to be solely and absolutely ruled from north to south, and from east to west by – England, and England only.

Personally considered Frank Wenlock was a presentable young fellow enough. Externally of medium height, strong and energetic, his face, lighted up by a pair of blue eyes not unlike those of his sister, though not handsome, was open and pleasing. In character, though somewhat quick-tempered, he was the soul of good-nature, but withal no part of a fool. He and Colvin Kershaw had been fellow-pioneers together in Rhodesia, and had fought side by side throughout the grim struggle of the Matabele rebellion.

“Now, Mr Kershaw, can’t you and Frank get together for a moment without fighting about the Boers?” interrupted a brisk, not unpleasing, and yet not altogether refined voice. “But where did you pick up May?”

Colvin turned to greet its owner; a well-preserved, middle-aged woman, not so many years his senior, good-looking too, after a fine, fresh, healthy type.

“Oh, we haven’t begun upon them yet, Mrs Wenlock,” he replied, ignoring the last query. “We’ll worry that out after dinner.”

“You’re not going on to-night?”

“Yes, I must I want to get to Stephanus De la Rey’s. There’s a joker there I want to meet.”

“Is that the Transvaal emissary?” said Frank, looking up quickly from his plate, for they had sat down to dinner.

“I suppose that’s what you’d call him. But, do you know, all this rather interests me. I like to hear all there is to be said on both sides.”

“Why they’ll hold a meeting and simply spout treason all night,” rejoined Frank vehemently. “Good Lord, if I were Milner, I’d have that fellow arrested and shot as a spy.”

“My dear chap, you can’t shoot ‘spies’ when we are not at war with anybody, and Botma, I suppose, has about as much right to hold a meeting among his countrymen here as a British labour delegate has to organise a strike. These are among the advantages of a free country, don’t you know?”

“Did you come straight here from your place to-day?” said Mrs Wenlock, by way of covering the angry growl with which her son had received the other’s words.

“No. I slept at Swaart Jan Grobbelaar’s.”

“That’s the old buck who brought away a lot of British skulls from Majuba,” burst in Frank. “They say he sticks one up at a couple of hundred yards every Majuba Day, and practises at it until there isn’t a bit left big enough for a bullet to hit.”

“He must have brought away about a waggonload of them, then, considering that Majuba happened eighteen years ago,” said Colvin. “But I don’t know that it isn’t all a yarn. People will say anything about each other just now.”

“I hear there’s a lot of war-talk among the Dutch in the Wildschutsbergen now, Mr Kershaw,” said Mrs Wenlock. “You must hear it, because you’re right in among them all.”

“Oh, they talk a good bit about war, but then what do we do? When I was down at the Port Elizabeth show all the English were busy taking the Transvaal. It was the same thing along Fish River and Koonap. If two or three fellows got together on any given farm they were bound to spend the evening taking the Transvaal. In fact, no Boer could give a shoot on his place without his English neighbours swearing he was rifle-practising for the great upheaval. We talk nothing but the war, but if the Dutchmen do it becomes menace, sedition, and all the rest of it right away.”

Those were the days subsequent to the failure of the Bloemfontein Conference, and racial feeling was near attaining its highest pitch. Frank Wenlock, as we have said, got on with his Dutch neighbours more than passably, which was as well, considering that his English ones were but few and at long distances apart. But even upon him the curse of a far-off dissension had fallen. Colvin Kershaw, on the other hand, was a man of the world, with a well-balanced mind, and somewhat unconventional withal. He took a judicial view of the situation, and, while recognising that it had two sides, and that there was a great deal to be said for both, he distinctly declined to allow any political considerations to make any difference to the relationship in which he stood towards his Boer neighbours and their families, with several of whom he was on very good terms indeed.

A wild effort was made to abandon the burning subject, and for awhile, as they sat upon the stoep smoking their pipes – the conversation ran upon stock and local interests, and the prospects of rain to carry them through the winter. But it soon came round again, as, indeed, in those days it was bound to do, and the hotter and hotter grew Frank Wenlock on the subject, the cooler and cooler remained his opponent. May, for her part, sat and listened. She mostly shared her brother’s prejudices on that particular subject; but here was one whose opinion on most subjects she held in the highest regard. Clearly, then, there was something to be said on the other side.

“Why need you go on to-night, Mr Kershaw?” struck in Mrs Wenlock. “Your room is always ready, you know, and it’s quite a long while since you were here.”

“It won’t be so long again, Mrs Wenlock. But I must be at Stephanus De la Rey’s to-night, because, over and above the delegate, I made an appointment with Piet Lombard over a stock deal.”

“Not to mention other attractions,” cut in May, with a mischievous look in her blue eyes. “Which is the favoured one – Andrina or Condaas?”

“How can one presume upon a choice between two such dreams of loveliness? Both, of course,” was the mirthful rejoinder. But there was no real merriment in the mind of the girl. She had hoped he would stay, had mapped out a potential afternoon’s stroll – it might be, by great good luck, the two of them alone together. And things were so slow, and times so dull, there where they saw no one month in month out, save an occasional Boer passer-by, or a travelling smaus, or feather-buyer, usually of a tolerably low type of Jew – and therefore, socially, no acquisition. Yes, after all, that was it. Times were so dull.