Aletta: A Tale of the Boer Invasion

“Adrian!” she hailed again – “Wait. I want to tell you about Aletta. Really. You know, I heard from her yesterday.”

The effect was magical, also comical. The affronted “patriot” stopped short. There was no irresolution now about his change of front.

“Come, then,” he said.

With a comical look at the other two, Andrina tripped off, and that she had satisfactorily carried out her stated intention was manifest by the animated way in which they appeared to be conversing.

“That drew him,” chuckled Condaas. “You know, Mr Kershaw, he was awfully mashed on Aletta the last time she came home.”

“Condaas, what sort of expressions are you using?” said her mother reprovingly. “I don’t know where you learnt them, or what Mr Kershaw will think.”

“Why we learnt them from him, of course, Ma,” replied the girl. “You don’t suppose we picked up that kind of thing from the very solemn old maid you got for us as English governess.”

“Not from me. Maybe it was from Frank Wenlock,” said Colvin, who was speculating how the object of their present merriment could pass by the charms of Andrina, who was undeniably a pretty girl, in favour of her elder sister. The latter he had never seen. She had been absent in Cape Town, at school or with relatives, ever since his own arrival in that part of the country, but there were photographic portraits of her, decking the wall of the sitting-room and the family album. These, to his impartial eye, conveyed the impression of rather a heavy-looking girl, at the awkward stage, with bunched-up shoulders and no pretensions whatever to good looks. To be sure, he had heard a great deal on the subject of the absent one, her attainments and attractiveness, but such he unhesitatingly attributed to family bias.

Struck with a sudden idea, he moved into the sitting-room, and casually, as it were, drew up in front of a framed portrait which stood upon the piano.

“That is the latest of Aletta,” said Condaas, who had followed him in. “She sent it up to us only a post or two ago; since you were here.”

“So?”

He bent down and examined it intently. It represented a girl of about nineteen or twenty. The idea of awkwardness conveyed by the other portraits was no longer there, but in looks he failed to detect any improvement Aletta De la Rey was plain, assuredly plain, he decided.

“Oh, goeije! here come a lot of people,” exclaimed Condaas. “The ‘Patriot,’ I suppose.”

A rumbling sound was audible, drawing nearer and nearer. Both made for the window. A cavalcade of Boers was approaching the house, and in the midst, as though escorted by it, moved the white tent of a Cape cart.

Chapter Four.

The Conversion of Stephanus De La Rey

A striking contrast no less than a striking personality was offered by the two leading figures in this group as Stephanus De la Rey advanced to welcome his noted visitor. Both were fine types of their nationality and class – the one calm-faced, reposeful, with the air of a thoroughly contented and prosperous man; the other bright-eyed, restless, alert, with the nervous rapidity of movement of one existing in a state of chronic tension. The greeting between the two was cordial enough, and there was much handshaking, as the others, to the number of a round dozen, dropped in by twos and threes.

“Why, who is this?” exclaimed the delegate, a shade of distrust coming into his face as he shook hands with Colvin Kershaw – for among Boers the ceremony of introduction is but seldom performed. “An Englishman, I believe?”

“That is so, Mynheer Botma. And one who is very proud to make the acquaintance of so famous and gifted a man as yourself,” replied Colvin, who spoke the taal very fairly well.

The delegate shot a keen glance at the speaker, then he became quite cordial. He hated the English, but it suddenly occurred to him that this particular Englishman had a look of one who might be turned to some account. Accordingly he engaged him in conversation, during which Colvin adroitly contrived to insinuate that his sympathies were all with the Transvaal cause, and that for the person of Oom Paul in particular he entertained feelings of the profoundest admiration.

“That is good,” said Jan Grobbelaar, showing his tusks approvingly. “We were having much talk about this only last evening, brother,” Turning to the delegate: “Colvin is a neighbour of mine. He is not like other English.”

Whether the object of this comment was gratified thereby or not, he made no sign; but one result of the voucher thus made was that the assembled Boers, to most of whom he was well known, conversed with far less restraint – both then and during the course of the evening. And the burden of their conversation was confined well-nigh entirely to the very strained relations then existing between the Transvaal and the suzerain Power, and what was going to be done upon the final and certain rupture thereof.

Not much was said during the evening meal, and that little was mainly confined to local and farming matters and the prospects or the reverse of a speedy rain. The Boer guests fell to with a will, and did ample justice to the springbuck stew and other delicacies of the veldt as there set forth in abundance; for Mrs De la Rey had anticipated just such an inroad as had taken place. Moreover, she was a model housewife, and possessed of wonderful Dutch recipes of old-time Cape and Batavian origin, and within her domain here were none of the insipid and over-sweetened dishes which prevailed in the ordinary and rougher class of Boer household. After supper – when pipes were in full blast, in such wise, indeed, that it was hardly possible to see across the room – it was not long before the subject engrossing all minds came to the fore.

“So, Colvin. You smoke Transvaal tobacco, then?” said one young Boer with a wink at his neighbours, and affecting surprise.

“Rather, Marthinus. Why not?”

“Why, because you’re an Englishman, to be sure.”

“Ha-ha. But then, Marthinus, I happen to be an Englishman who smokes what he likes. And I like Transvaal tobacco. Shall I tell you what else I like? I like dop. So just send along that decanter that’s at the other side of Barend Van Zyl’s elbow, will you?”

There was a great laugh at this, and Barend Van Zyl aforesaid made believe to withhold the decanter on the ground that its contents might impair the speaker’s patriotism. It led to a lot of chaff with regard to the political situation, some of which, albeit good-humoured, was keen enough to have thrown some Englishmen, Frank Wenlock, for instance, into a real fighting rage. This one, however, was made of different stuff. It didn’t ruffle him in the least. Moreover, he knew that they were merely “taking the measure of his foot.”

“And they say that we can’t shoot any more, we young ones,” said another Boer. “I saw it in a Cape English newspaper which Piet Lombard had sent him. They say that we are all going off in our shooting, and are good for nothing; that we cannot bring down game like out fathers could.”

“Maagtig! but they are liars, those English newspaper men,” assented somebody else. “Nee wat. I would like to get the miserable ink-squirter who wrote that, and make him run at five hundred yards from my Martini. We would soon show him whether we young ones are so sleg.”

“Hallo, Marthinus, that’s a little too loud,” cut in Colvin Kershaw with a laugh. “Why, man, how about that old springbuck ram I saw you miss twice running that shoot we had at Tafelfontein at the end of last season there, oerkant, by the vlei? He wasn’t a step over four hundred yards. Come now, what would you do with your runaway man at five hundred?”

“That’s true,” assented Marthinus a little crestfallen. Then brightening up: “But then the English newspaper man would be running too hard. Ja, kerelen. Now, an English newspaper man would run!”

“Do you know how I was taught to shoot, Colvin?” asked a wiry, middle-aged Boer with a long light beard, pushing his tobacco bag made of dressed buckskin across to the Englishman. “When I was eight years old my father used to put a loaded rifle into my hand. It was a muzzle-loader – we had no Martinis or Mausers in those days. Maagtig– no. He didn’t give me a second charge for reloading either. He would start me out into the veldt at daybreak, and if I returned without having shot a buck I got no breakfast. Then he would start me off again, and if I returned a second time without having shot a buck I was allowed some dinner, but first of all I got plenty of ‘strop.’ Then I was turned out again, and if I failed again I got still more ‘strop,’ and went to bed without any supper. But it was not more than two or three times that happened. Nee, kerelen! Well, that is the way to teach a youngster to shoot.”

“That’s all very well, Izaak,” replied Colvin; “but it might be the way to teach some youngsters not to shoot. The fact of knowing they hadn’t another chance might get upon their nerves and make them miss.”

But the other, whose name was Izaak van Aardt, and who was known amongst his neighbours as second to none for a sure and deadly game shot, only shook his head, unconvinced.

“But,” struck in the young Dutchman who had started the chaff about the Transvaal tobacco, “it is only English youngsters who have nerves. Boer youngsters have no nerves.” And he winked at the others as at first.

“Haven’t they?” responded Colvin Kershaw, with a tranquil smile. “No, especially when you tell them some yarn about the spoek that comes out of the waggon-house at night and yells.”

They laughed somewhat foolishly at this, the point being that Boer children, filled up as they are with all sorts of Hottentot stories, weird and grotesque, are no more intrepid under the circumstances named than would be other children.

The above conversation, however, was significant of two things. One was the high-pitched tension to which racial feeling had attained among the northern border Dutch. It bristled with sly digs, and open ones too, at the English. They could no more keep such out of their conversation than could Mr Dick keep King Charles’s head out of his classic memorial. The second was the exceedingly friendly terms upon which this one Englishman, alone in their midst, stood towards them. Had it been otherwise, while they would have refrained from intentionally saying anything that might have been offensive to their fellow-guest, and one held in so much esteem by the people under whose roof they found themselves, they would have sat taciturn and constrained, confining the conversation for the most part to heavy monosyllables. And as emphasising these two points it is worthy of record.

Now the talkers began to break up, some, however, remaining rooted to their chairs, talking out the situation with increasing vehemence. Others went out to see after their horses, while others again had convened music in the other room. The Boer, as a rule, is fond of music, even if it takes no more aspiring form than the homely strains of a concertina; and whereas both the De la Rey girls could play, and one could sing, fairly, well, their audience listened with a whole-hearted appreciation not always to be found under like circumstances in the drawing-rooms of the fashionable and of the would-be artistic. Colvin Kershaw likewise was in great request, for he had a smattering of ear knowledge which enabled him to rattle off snatches from most of the comic operas of the day, and these were hugely in favour with his somewhat primitive hearers. He could, too, on occasions, as when performing for the benefit of some old-fashioned and highly orthodox old “Tanta” who deemed all secular music an invention of Satan for the snaring of souls, turn such and similar lively strains, by an alteration of time and expression, into the most solemn and soul-stirring of psalm tunes; to the convulsive, because concealed, delight of Andrina and Condaas and others in the know, and to the ecstatic edification of the antiques aforesaid, who would go away thinking that if only “Mynheer” would induce the performer to play on the harmonium in church on Sunday, what a long way they would travel in order to be present.

But the lighter side of life is never far removed from the momentous, and this was represented in another part of the house, whose owner was closeted in long and earnest conversation with “the Patriot.”

“You are the man we want, Brother De la Rey,” the latter was saying in his quick, emphatic voice, having spent an hour setting forth his mission in all its fulness, and that with the convincing earnestness of a man who thoroughly believes in it. “Just consider. The whole of this district is with us, and not merely the whole of this district but the whole of the Northern border. Others, too, as far as the seaboard on one side and the Cape on the other. You cannot stand aloof. You cannot be the only one to refuse to side with your countrymen, those of your own blood, in their struggle for freedom and power.”

“We had better not talk too much about freedom,” was the reply, with a grave head-shake, “I should like to know, Brother Botma, under what Government we could enjoy greater freedom than that under which we are now living.”

“‘Under which?’ Yes, that is just it. ‘Under which.’ But we ought not to be living ‘under’ any Government but our own. Our independence – that is the star to which our eyes turn. That you yourself dwell happy and in comfort here, Stephanus De la Rey, is but an unworthy way of looking at it. Are the ties of blood-brotherhood nothing? Are the ties of nationality nothing? Is our independence nothing? Selfish considerations must be thrown away now. Why, even you have two sons with us. They will fight in our ranks. Will you, then, fight in those of the enemy?”

“I do not desire any fighting. I deplore this trouble. If the Kafirs were to rise, for instance, I do not think you would find me backward. Ask those who know me if I am not speaking true. But this is a struggle between white men, and in a land, too, where they ought to be brothers.”

“Brothers? We and the English can never be brothers. Listen, Stephanus,” laying an impressive hand upon the other’s arm. “It is a struggle for life and death between us and them. To this end they have been working. To this end have they been throwing all their adventurers into our land. Yes; how many from this country, this very British colony you are so proud to belong to, have come to us without a penny – unable even so much as to make a living under the British flag – have come to us on the very verge of bankruptcy, and actually through it – to make not merely a living, but in many cases large fortunes? And these are the people with a grievance! These are the people who fatten on our land, and then want to seize it because it is richer than theirs. That is why they desire the franchise, that they may oust the burghers who fought for their independence; whose fathers shed their blood like water in withstanding the heathen savage, who went forth determined never again to submit to the English yoke.”

“That is true,” rejoined the other. “Yet it seems to me that it is because of them that the country has become rich. Had they not come there, what then? Who would have worked the gold and the mines?”

“We could have done without the gold and the mines,” was the fiery response. “We did not desire them. We were better as we were. And look, brother. Did these Uitlanders come into our land to benefit our land? If so, why do they not stay there when they have enriched themselves out of it? Do they? Not so. They return to spend the wealth they have made out of us among the Babylon sinks of vice, the large cities of Europe. They came into the land to enrich themselves, certainly not to enrich our land. But now that it is rich they want to seize it.”

The listener made no immediate reply. He sat in troubled meditation, his brow clouded. The speaker, watched him the while with a kind of hungering anxiety. This was the man he desired to win over, a man of weight and standing, whose influence thrown into the scale would bring hundreds to the Afrikander cause and confirm hundreds more who might be wavering. He went on:

“Everything is ready now. The President will never yield to their demands, and even if he would the burghers will never allow it. If we gave them the five years’ franchise they would then ask for two, then for none at all. And where would we be? Where would we be, I ask you, remembering the shameful attempt upon us three years ago? Mark now, brother. We are about to put forth our strength. We know our strength, they do not. They know not that we are ten times stronger than they think. They boast that by the end of the year the English flag will wave over Pretoria. Will it? We shall see.