Aletta: A Tale of the Boer Invasion

They watched his retreating form.

“I think the mystery is for ever clear now, sweetheart,” said Colvin.

But Aletta could not speak. She could only press his arm in silence. All the agony she had suffered came back to her, as in a wave.

“I know what you are thinking, my darling one,” he went on softly. “But I don’t wonder you were taken in by the likeness. It is quite the most remarkable thing I ever saw.”

“Yet, I doubted you. You!”

“Love, think no more of that. Have you not really and truly drawn me out of the very jaws of death this morning? Ah! but our sky is indeed clear – dazzlingly clear now.”

“Tell me about this half-brother of yours, Colvin,” said Aletta presently. “Had you no idea he was in this country?”

“None whatever. For years we had lost sight of each other. The fact is, Aletta, I may as well tell you – though I wouldn’t anybody else – but the chap was rather a bad bargain – on two occasions, indeed, only escaped by the skin of his teeth from coming to mortal grief. I would even bet something he’ll come down on me to help him now, and if it’ll do him any good I will. But he may have improved by now. Some of us do with time, you know.”

It turned out even as Colvin had said. When Kenneth rejoined him for a little talk apart – after his interview with the Commandant – he spoke of his own affairs. He had been very much of a rolling stone, he explained, and now he wanted to settle down. He was going to turn over a new leaf entirely. Would Colvin help him a little?

The latter laughed drily.

“Whom are you going to settle down with, Kenneth?” he asked.

“The sweetest, prettiest, dearest little girl in the world.” (“That of course,” murmured the listener). “You know her, Colvin. It was thanks to my likeness to you that I did.”

“Name?”

“May Wenlock.”

“So? Do you know, Kenneth, this infernal likeness has put me to very serious inconvenience, and came within an ace of costing me my life? I suppose it was you who let out Frank Wenlock.”

“Of course it was. But don’t give it away.”

“No – no. But how did you manage to get here at all to do it without being spotted?”

“Oh, Adrian De la Rey fixed up all that. Of course I had no notion you were anywhere around.”

“I see,” said Colvin, on whom the whole ingenuity of the plot now flashed. All these witnesses against him were not perjured, then. They had been genuinely deceived. The other, watching him, had no intention of giving away his own share, direct or indirect, in the transaction, or his partnership with Adrian in that other matter. In the course of his somewhat eventful and very wandering life Kenneth Kershaw had never found overmuch scruple a paying commodity.

“Well, Kenneth, I’ll do what I can for you,” went on Colvin, “but I’m afraid it won’t be much. And the feet is I’m just taking on an ‘unlimited liability’ myself.”

“Yes, so I concluded just now, from appearances. Well, Colvin, I congratulate you heartily.”

They talked a little about money matters, and then Kenneth broke out:

“Hang it, Colvin; you are a good chap after all. I had always somehow figured you as a priggish and cautious and miserly sort, which was the secret of your luck; but I don’t believe there’s a man jack on earth who would have been as splendid and as generous under the circumstances.”

Colvin’s face softened. “Oh, it’s all right, old man. Don’t get making a speech,” he said. “I wish I could do more, but, as you see, I can’t.”

“See! Rather. And now, look here. I believe I am the bearer of some pretty good news. I didn’t tell you at first, because I wanted to see what sort of chap you were. Not, mind you,” he added, somewhat vehemently, “that I have any interested motive now, not a bit of it. Well – read that – and that.”

Fumbling in his pocket-book, he got out some slips of paper. They were press cuttings from English newspapers, and bore dates of about six weeks previously:

“By the death of Sir Charles Kershaw, Bart, of Slatterton Regis, Dorset, and Terracombe, Devon, which took place suddenly the day before yesterday, the title and both properties, together with considerable sums in personalty, devolve upon his next-of-kin, Mr Colvin Kershaw, at present believed to be in the Transvaal.”

In substance the notices were alike, albeit somewhat different in wording. Colvin reflected for a moment. Then he said:

“I suppose there’s no mistake. It’s rather sooner than I expected, Kenneth, but of course I did expect it sooner or later. I am glad enough for its emoluments, but personally I don’t care about the title. I fancy I shall grow awfully sick of hearing every cad call me by my Christian name. I say, though, Kenneth, we shall be able now to make a bigger thing of that scheme of ours, eh?”

“By Jove, you are a good chap, Colvin,” burst forth the other, understanding his meaning. But he did not let candour carry him far enough to own to the daring scheme he had formed for personating Colvin in the event of the fortune of war going against the latter, as it had so nearly and fatally done. Like scruple, candour was not always a paying commodity.

Colvin, for his part, was thinking with heartfelt gratitude and love, what a bright future he had to lay before Aletta. Kenneth, for his, was thinking, with a glow of satisfaction, that he was going to be very happy with May Wenlock, under vastly improved circumstances, and that such a state of things was, after all, much more satisfactory than life on a far larger scale, but hampered with the recollection of a great deed of villainy, and the daily chances of detection as a fraud and impostor liable to the tender mercies of the criminal law.

Chapter Seventeen.

Conclusion

Midnight.

The wind, singing in fitful puffs athwart the coarse grass belts which spring from the stony side of ridge or kopje, alone breaks the dead eerie silence, for the ordinary voices of the night, the cry of bird and beast, are stilled. Wild animate Nature has no place here now. The iron roar of the strife of man, the bellowing, crackling death message from man to man, spouting from steel throats, has driven away all such.

Silent enough now are the bleak, stony hillsides, albeit the day through they have been speaking, and their voice has been winged with death. Silent enough, too, are the men crouching here in long rows, cool, patient, alert; for on the success or failure of their strategy depends triumph or disaster and death. Silent as they are, every faculty is awake, ears open for the smallest sound, eyes strained through the far gloom where lies the British camp.

Hour upon hour has gone by like this, but most of these are men who live the life of the veldt, whose trained eyesight is well-nigh cat-like on such a night as this. They have measured the ground, too, and so disposed matters that they know within a yard and to a minute exactly where and when to open fire upon the advancing British whom their trustworthy emissaries shall guide into sure and wholesale destruction.

Adrian De la Rey, lying there in the darkness, is waiting and longing, as no other, for the deadly work to begin. How he will pour lead into these hated English, how every life taken shall be as the life of his hated English rival! No quarter shall any receive from his hand when the slaughter begins. In the darkness and wild confusion none will see, and if they do, what matter? He will shoot down these cursed rooineks like springbuck, he tells himself, even though they should bellow for mercy.

He has heard of the well-nigh miraculous escape of that rival, and the inopportune appearance of his own accomplice; has heard of it, not witnessed it, because he had sought to be despatched on outpost duty in the early hours of that morning which was to have brought his rival’s death. Well, he would console himself with the thought that at any rate he had won Aletta. She had given him her promise, and he knew her well enough to be sure she would keep it. But what of his side of the bargain unfulfilled? He had thought of that. He would persuade her that the firing was to be a sham, and that the firing party were using blank cartridge. He could easily induce Roux and Delport to swear to this. Yet, it was inconvenient that Aletta had mustered up the courage to act as she had done. He ought not to have overlooked such a contingency. Still, she could not go back upon her promise.

Then, in the darkness, those words return to him – words spoken by his victim on the very threshold of the tomb. “Within three days will death find you.” Words and tone alike appealed to the superstitious side of his nature then, and the effect remains now. Perhaps, however, the fact of his intended victim having escaped death might have robbed the forecast of its prophetic nature.

A barely audible whisper from his next door neighbour, and then but one thought alone can find place in Adrian’s mind. The moment has come. Gripping his Mauser in fierce, eager delight, he brings it forward on to the rest which he has already arranged for it. Pitch dark as it is, he knows to a yard where the first bullet will strike. At the same time, ever so faint a spark away in the blackness catches his glance and the glance of many another. It might be the friction of metal – momentary and accidental – upon a stone lying on the slope, or it might be a signal.

Soon a stealthy sound reaches each listening ear – the sound of footsteps drawing near in the darkness.

Nearer – nearer – and then – The whole ridge bursts into a line of flame and a deafening crackle as of a mighty hailstorm upon myriad iron roofs. Yet, great in volume as it is, not so great as to drown the wild, ringing British cheer as the khaki-clad figures, dimly visible in the unceasing flash of musketry, come surging up the slope, leaping, stumbling, falling, dropping down suddenly, only to spring up again and press on, the dreaded bayonet fixed, for the world-renowned charge before which nothing can stand. But the grim dwellers in these wild wastes are not to be turned so easily. A kopje hard by, silent hitherto, is now ringed with flame, and, caught in this terrible crossfire, the intrepid assailants are literally mown down, and for a few moments the slaughter is terrific.

Adrian De la Rey, lying in his shelter, is pouring in his shots – cool, well-directed and telling. The expression of hate and blood-lust upon his set features is well-nigh devilish; yet his mind preserves a murderous coolness, as he watches every chance, and never fails to take it. But he is in the very forefront of the fray, and in the wild confusion a knot of desperate British, not hearing, or disregarding, the “retire,” have charged with irresistible dash headlong on to his position. Their wild slogan is in his ears, and in the ears of those beside him. The points of the deadly bayonets gleam in the sheeting flashes, and then – and then – with the hard sickening pang which wrenches his very life away – he discharges his Mauser full in the face of the tall soldier, who topples heavily back with a hole through his brain – and Briton and Boer lie feet to feet – facing each other as they fell.

Morning light – a truce – white flags here and there – the Red Cross symbol everywhere. The hillsides strewn with dead and dying and wounded, and up yonder, in their strongly entrenched laager in the background, Commandant Schoeman and the grim Republican leaders are viewing their many prisoners, impassive, laconic, and manifesting neither surprise nor elation over the efficiency of the trap so carefully laid for the discomfiture of a respected and brave enemy.

Below, on the ridge, Adrian De la Rey is lying – lying where he fell, the bayonet which had let out his life in a great gaping gash resting across his body as it had fallen from the dying grip of the soldier – his dead, rigid face staring upward to the sky.

Ratels Hoek again, peaceful and prosperous – the blue smoke curling up from its chimneys, the flocks and herds scattered over their grazing grounds in the broad valley, black ostriches, with snowy wing-plumes, stalking truculently along the wire fences in the “camps” – Ratels Hoek peaceful and prosperous, as though no stern fratricidal war were going on not so very many miles away.

Down by the river bank two persons are wandering in easy restful happiness, and these two we should recognise, for they have borne their part throughout the time of trial and of storm, which for them, at any rate, has come to an end – has found its climax in the dawn of a lifelong joy and peace.

Around, the sunlight bathes, in a misty shimmer, the roll of veldt, and the slope of mountain and iron-faced cliff. The air, clear and fragrant and balmy, is redolent of the very breath of a new life, and the sky, arching above in unbroken and cloudless blue, is even as their own clear and dazzling horizon. They are talking of many things, these two – of the dark days of doubt and trial, and peril – all of which have but served to refine and cement their great and mutual love – of the wedding which took place but a few days ago in Schalkburg, on such a scale never before witnessed in that somnolent dorp. “One would have thought it Nachtmaal time” had been the comment of more than one of the guests, so extensive was the gathering assembled to do honour to that most substantial and respected burgher, Stephanus De la Rey; and indeed the gathering had been as homogeneous as extensive – for every conceivable relative of the bride, whether on the paternal or maternal side, and every casual acquaintance or even stranger, had flocked into Schalkburg to witness it. The church, tightly packed as it was, would not hold them all, nor yet would Ratels Hoek, whither all who could, subsequently repaired to spend the next two days and nights in uninterrupted festivity.

Of all this they were talking now, these two – and of the hundred and one droll and ludicrous incidents which had so appealed to the humorous side of both of them – the outspoken comments of the blunt old farmers and their vrouws as to Stephanus De la Rey marrying his eldest girl to an Englishman, under the palliative circumstances, however, that perhaps a rich Englishman was a better match than an impoverished Boer, after all; of the hopeless efforts to convince many of them that Colvin was not the Governor, merely because he had the right to prefix his name with “Sir”; of old Tant’ Plessis and her conviction that the great Calvinus was a greater man than even she had thought, since he had been able to leave his grandson so much money; of Kenneth Kershaw, who while making a most efficient “best man,” had given rise to endless chaff to the effect that he ought to be branded and ear-marked, lest at the last moment Mynheer should marry him to Aletta by mistake; of Frank Wenlock, who waxed so exuberant amid all the festivities, that he came near starting a little war of his own right in the midst of the convivialities; of Mynheer Albertyn himself, who while congratulating the pair, and fingering gratefully by far the biggest fee he had ever seen in the whole of his professional career, had remarked drily, and not altogether jocosely, that he vastly preferred starting a man on fresh terms in this life to seeing him off into another; of the exceeding attractiveness in their array of bridesmaids of Andrina and Condaas, and a bevy of girl relatives pressed into the service for the occasion; of the absence of May Wenlock, and the future before her and Kenneth.