Aletta: A Tale of the Boer Invasion

Colvin promised to keep this fact in mind when forming his opinion, and in due course they arrived at the unpretentious-looking bungalow which was the private residence of one of the most famed personalities of modern times. As they went up between the stone lions which guarded, as it were, the entrance, they passed a German officer coming down the steps, a straight martial figure, with upward-pointing moustaches à la Kaiser Wilhelm, and wearing the uniform of the Staats Artillerie. He exchanged a salute with Piet, and the latter halted and took him aside for a minute’s conversation.

“That’s all right, Colvin,” he said, rejoining him, while with a parting salute the German strode on. “He has just come out. Says the old man is in a pretty good-humour.”

The President was seated in a substantial armchair as they were shown in. He was likewise smoking a substantial pipe. This looked homely. As Piet introduced Colvin, His Honour did not rise, but merely extended a massive hand, uttering a single monosyllabic word of greeting.

“Daag!”

“Daag, Oom,” responded Colvin, as he shook the Presidential dexter, right heartily. His Honour, however, subsided into silence, during which Piet Plessis entertained him with a running comment on the lighter aspect of day-to-day events, ignoring the situation of the hour.

“Who is the Englishman?” said the old man at last, designating Colvin with a wave of his pipe-stem.

Piet explained that he was engaged to be married to a near kinswoman of his who was staying with him. The Presidential features displayed some faint show of interest.

“Your kinswoman!” he said. “Whose daughter is she?”

“Stephanus De la Reys, Mynheer. He lives in the Cape Colony.”

“De la Rey! Ja, that is a good name, De la Rey,” replied the President, nodding approvingly. “But – an Englishman!” Then, turning to Colvin, he said, still speaking in Dutch.

“Can you talk our language?”

“Ja, Oom,” came the hearty response. During the conversational nothings fired off so volubly by Piet Plessis, he had been studying this wonderful old man before him, and in the strong massive face could read the extraordinary and iron will-power which had made its owner the prominent figure in history that he was. Something of Aletta’s thoughts came into his mind, and he too was wondering whether, had this born leader of men thrown in his gigantic influence on the British side, he would not have met with greater appreciation, nay would not his very defects be held to be rugged virtues? Being thus immersed, he failed to observe a grim tightening of the mouth, as he uttered that hearty and, as he thought, deferential reply.

“Have you been here before?” repeated his catechiser.

“Ja, Oom,” replied Colvin. And then there was no mistaking the change which came over His Honour’s countenance. He flushed, and a heavy frown darkened his brows, as removing his pipe from his mouth, he rolled out in deep, chest notes, like the bark of an angry mastiff.

“Is nie jou Oom nie. Ik is die Presidént!”

(“I am not your uncle. I am the President.”)

The tone went up on an ascending scale, ending loud and staccato. Colvin, for a moment dumfoundered, hastened to apologise, then with the utmost suavity of assurance proceeded to explain that he himself owned an uncle whom he deeply revered, and who bore a most extraordinary resemblance to “Mynheer Presidént.” Then, he deftly went on to inquire about His Honour’s earlier experiences in the old Voortrekker days, expressing boundless admiration for those wonderful pioneers, and as he was really well up in their history, the old man, quite mollified, was soon descanting with unusual volubility on the subject of his early doings. Mean while coffee was brought in, and, as soon after as he could, astute Piet Plessis, seeing the conversation was taking a turn likely to excite His Honour, took the opportunity of terminating the visit.

“Look after him, Piet,” said the old man as he gave them his hand, and there was the nearest approach to a smile lurking about his mouth. “Look after him. He is an Englishman, but he is going to marry your cousin. See that he does not get into any mischief.”

“Say, Piet?” said Colvin when they were well out in the street again, “I believe I put my foot in it some.”

“Oh, rather!” answered the other, who could hardly speak for spluttering. “You’re not the only one, though, if the truth were known. You see it was all very well twenty years ago and all that to call him Oom Paul. But now the old man is rather sick of it. Only think, every dirty little Jew ‘winkler’ calling him ‘Oom.’ Besides, he’s a much bigger man now and likes to be treated with a certain amount of state.”

But not until he got safely home could Piet give full vent to his mirth, and then he literally laughed till he cried.

“You should have seen him, Anna,” he spluttered between his tears. “Oh, Aletta, you should have heard him. Telling the Ou’ Baas, so sweetly too, that he reminded him of an uncle of his whom he deeply revered. Oh, oh, you should have been there! I simply didn’t dare look up. I should have disgraced myself for ever if I had.”

“Well, it had its effect,” protested Colvin, who was laughing over the recollection almost as hard as Piet. “It smoothed his feathers at once.”

“Really? No, really did it?” cried Aletta, who for her part had gone off into rippling peals.

“Rather, it did,” confirmed Piet. “Oh, oh, oh! ‘Is nie jou Oom nie. Ik is die Presidént!’ Oh, oh, oh! I shall choke directly.”

And he very nearly did.

Chapter Four.

That other Kershaw

Since that strange chance meeting on the platform at Park Station, life seemed much brighter for May Wenlock.

She had come up there in a fit of the dolefullest dumps, as she herself put it, and in fact those with whom she sojourned hardly recognised her for the blithe, light-hearted girl she had been the year before. They even tentatively rallied her, but she brusquely disclaimed any reason other than that she was utterly and entirely sick of the farm, that its eternal monotony got upon her nerves, and a very little more of it would have driven her crazy. Yet she might about as well have stayed where she was, for the erewhile great whirling gold town was now as a city of the dead. All who could do so had cleared out – tumbling over each other’s heels in their eagerness to get away – as we have seen.

Of all the war-talk and excitement she was heartily sick. There was nothing to take her out of herself, no fun, no gaiety, no life; the streets, lines upon lines of abandoned houses and shuttered-up shops. It was as a city ravaged by pestilence from end to end.

James Dixon, her relative’s husband, was a broker, and had been a contractor. He had been regarded of late with somewhat of a suspicious eye – by his own countrymen that is – and dark hints were not wanting to the effect that he stood in too well with the Government, as against British interests. In what particular way he did so was never formulated, but it was sufficient in those days to hint. Anyway he remained on, serene and untroubled, what time others had fled. This, of course, to the minds of the hinters, confirmed every suspicion.

May had never been particularly fond of these people, although she had got on with them well enough. But then there had been plenty of outside life and diversion. Now that she was thrown upon them almost entirely, she wondered how she could ever have found Mary Dixon other than the tiresome woman she was – without an idea outside her brood, the four units composing which were always noisy and quarrelsome, never too clean, and generally and all-round ill behaved. She had come up to Johannesburg just before the crisis had reached a climax – and now, there she was and there she must stay.

Of course there was that beneath her ennui and restlessness which she did not impart to her relatives. In her hours of solitude – and these were too many for one of her age and temperament and abundant attractions – there always arose in her mind a vivid recollection of what she had felt on hearing of Colvin Kershaw’s engagement. It was not so entirely unexpected, for her jealous misgivings had been gnawing into and corroding her mind for some time past. Yet, when it came, the shock had been hardly the less acute. He had treated her shamefully – she declared to herself – yes, wickedly, cruelly, abominably. Why had he made her care for him, only to – do as he had done? If only she could make him suffer for it – but – how could she? Wild, revengeful plans scorched through her brain – among them that of revealing everything to Aletta. Then the ugly Dutch girl could have the reversion of his kisses and soft words. But the only consideration that kept her from this was a conviction that such a course would not weigh with Aletta, would defeat its own object, and turn herself into a laughing stock. It certainly would if Aletta loved him as she herself had done – and how could Aletta do otherwise? thought poor May to herself with a sob, and a filling of the eyes like a rain shower breaking upon a stormy sunset. She hated him now, she told herself again and again. But – did she? That sob would often repeat itself to give the lie to the illusion.

She had not seen him since hearing the – to her – baleful news; but this, to do him justice, was not his fault. He had come over to Spring Holt to bid them good-bye before leaving for the Transvaal, but she had not appeared – pleading a headache which was not all pretence – the fact being that she dared not trust herself. But of late an intense longing had been upon her to behold him once more, and when her glance had lighted upon him at the railway station among the crowd, she forgot everything in the joy of the moment. And – it was not he after all.

Even then somehow her disappointment was less keen than she could have thought possible. Could it be that the other was so exactly his counterpart that at times, even subsequent to their first acquaintance, she could hardly believe it was not Colvin himself, for some motive of his own, playing a part?

For their first acquaintance had grown and ripened. Kenneth Kershaw had lost no time in calling, in fact he had a slight acquaintance with Jim Dixon already, and as time went on his visits became more and more frequent till they were almost daily. Whereupon Jim Dixon began to rally his very attractive young kinswoman.

This, at first, annoyed the latter. He was not a refined man, and his jests were on his own level. More than once he fired them off on the object of them personally, and Kenneth had looked much as Colvin would have looked under the circumstances. Then May had affected to take them in good part, with an eye to information. Who was this Mr Kershaw, she asked, and what was he doing up there? But Jim Dixon’s reply was vague. He had been there some two years, he believed, but he must have been longer in the country, because he could talk Dutch quite well. What was his business? Nobody knew. He was one of those customers who didn’t give themselves away. Like a good many more up there he had got along sort of “scratch”; but it was said he had made a tidyish bit in the boom, end of last year. But he was a tip-top swell, any one could see that. “Nothing like capturing one of these English swells, May,” concluded Jim, with a knowing wink. “Make hay while the sun shines.” And we dare not swear that the aspirate in that fragrant foodstuff for the equine race was over distinctly sounded.

Kenneth, for his part, was genuinely attracted by the girl. Her relatives he at once set down in his own mind as unmitigated outsiders, but there was the making of something good about May herself. Times, too, were desperately dull. He hardly knew why he had elected to remain in the Transvaal, except on the principle of “sitting on the fence.” It was by no means certain that Oom Paul would not remain cock of the walk, in which eventuality he thought he saw the road to some valuable pickings. And now this girl had come into his way to brighten it. And she did brighten it.

She was so natural, so transparent. He could turn her mind inside out any moment he chose. He had very quickly, and with hardly a question, discovered the raison d’être of her partiality for himself, the pleasure she had seemed to take in being with him. She had talked about Colvin, then, when designedly, he had led the conversation to some other subject, she had always brought it back to Colvin, in a lingering wistful way that told its own tale over and over again. But this, too, had ceased, and she gradually talked less and less of Colvin, and seemed to listen with increased interest to Colvin’s facsimile.

“There’s where I score,” said Kenneth to himself, “and I am going to work the circumstance for all it is worth.”

This working of the circumstance was to be a means to an end, and that end was that he meant to marry May Wenlock.

Why did he? She was not quite of his class. He had seen her surroundings, as represented immediately, at any rate, and they had revolted him. Well, he could raise her above her surroundings, besides the very fact of her coming of the stock she did was not without its advantages. She would be all the more fitted to bear her part in the adventure he was planning: would have no superfine scruples or misgivings as to accepting the splendid – the really dazzling destiny he had mapped out for her – to share with him. She, in a measure, had supplied the key to the opening of that golden possibility of the future, had brought it within really tangible reach, therefore she should share it. And this possibility, this adventure, was worth staking all for – even life itself. It needed boldness, judgment, utter unscrupulousness, and he possessed all three. It was vast – it was magnificent.

And then the beauty of the girl appealed powerfully to his physical nature. Those sea-blue velvety eyes, those waves of hair in rippling heavy gold, those full red lips, the smooth skin, a mixture of sun-kiss and the healthy flush of blood underneath, the firm rounded figure – that should all be his, he would think when alone with his own reflections in a perfect whirl of passion, after one of those long interviews or walks with May that had now become so frequent, and to himself so amazingly sweet. Yet towards her he was ever careful to veil any indication of feeling. Colvin himself could hardly have been more utterly indifferent so far as all outward manifestations were concerned.

One day, however, he slipped. They had been out together and May had been more than ordinarily sweet and winning. It was dusk, and he was bidding her farewell within her temporary home. They had the house to themselves, moreover, save for the native boy in the kitchen. The others were out somewhere. It seemed to him that in the face looking up into his the lips were raised temptingly. His blood was in a whirl. In a moment she was in his embrace, and he kissed them full and passionately.

He was hardly prepared for what followed. She wrenched herself from him with a sinuous strength for which he would scarcely have given her credit.

“Why did you do that?” she blazed forth, and he could see that her face grew white and quivering as she confronted him in the dusk. “Why did you? Heavens! are all men alike that they think a girl is only made to be their plaything? I hate them. Yes, I hate them all.”

The fierce bitterness of her tone was so incisive, so genuine, that most men under the circumstances would have felt extremely foolish, and looked correspondingly abject. Into Kenneth Kershaw’s very heart her words seemed to cut like so many whip lashes. By a mighty effort he restrained himself from pleading provocation, feeling, any mitigation whatever; which would have been the worst line he could possibly have taken. Instead he adopted a kind of quietly resigned tone, with just a touch of the dignified; apologetic, yet without a trace of abjectness – which was the best.

“May, dear, forgive me,” he said. “I was not thinking, I suppose. Have I offended you beyond recall? Well, I must pay the penalty; for of course you are going to tell me you never want to set eyes on me again.”

He knew how to play his cards. Even then his words seemed to open a dreadful blank before her mind’s eye. Not to set eyes on him again? He seemed to mean it, too. That air of sad self-composure with which he had spoken them disarmed her, and her anger melted.