Bertram Mitford - Aletta - A Tale of the Boer Invasion

“It’s coming now, Tanta, it’s coming now,” cried one young fellow, thrusting his way to the front. The old lady looked at him across the table.

“What is coming now?” she repeated shortly – a way she had with those of the speaker’s age and type.

“Why, the war, of course. We are going to drive the English out of the country. The Patriot says so.”

The old lady snorted.

“ You look like driving anybody out of the country, Theunis Venter, even the English. You’d be afraid to lie behind an antheap waiting to shoot rooi-baatjes for fear of spoiling that pretty waistcoat of yours” – looking him up and down contemptuously. “And his tight riding-breeches – oh! – oh! wouldn’t they split? And the rings! And yet you don’t look like an Englishman, Theunis, not even in your grand English clothes.”

A roar of applause and derision from that section of her hearers which had not enjoyed the advantage of a South African College education and a parent with advanced ideas and generous bank-balance greeted the old woman’s scoffing words.

“ Ja, Ja , Theunis, that is just what the Patriot said,” they chorussed. But the young fellow looked sulky – very much so. He was one of that type of young Boer who no longer thinks it the mark of a man and a patriot to sleep in his clothes and wear his hat in the house. Nor was he the only one of that type there present. Others took his side, and hurled corresponding gibes at the conservative party, and the uproar became simply deafening, all talking and bellowing at once.

But if it be imagined that this turn of affairs caused the slightest uneasiness or alarm to the fair sex as there represented, the notion can be dismissed forthwith. There was a twinkle of mirth in the old lady’s eyes which belied the sardonic droop of her mouth, and as for the girls they looked as placid and unconcerned as though some thirty odd infuriated males were not bawling the very house down within a couple of yards of them.

“There – there!” sang out Vrouw Grobbelaar when she had had enough of it. “Make not such a row, for dear Heaven’s sake! Theunis, you are not such a bad sort of boy after all, for all your trimmed moustache and English clothes. Hendrina, give him a soepje – that is to say, if he does not turn up his nose at the good liquor his father drank before him. I’m told that the English get drunk on stuff made from smoked wood, down in Cape Town. Only one, though – I won’t encourage young men to drink, but the night is cold, and he has a long way to ride. After all, it isn’t his fault they tried to make an Englishman of him.”

Boer brandy, when pure and well matured, is about the best liquor in the world, and this was the best of its kind; wherefore under its influence, aided by the smiles of the ministering Hendrina, the youth’s ruffled feathers were soon smoothed down, and three or four of his sympathisers claiming to join in the privilege, good-humour was restored and plenty of mirth and good-fellowship prevailed before they separated for their long ride home over the moonlit veldt; for Boers are by nature sociable folk among themselves, and the younger ones, at any rate, addicted to chaff and practical joking.

In the other room, where refreshment had been taken in for their physical weal, sat the more serious-minded.

“Jan,” said Andries Botma, turning to his host, “where is Stephanus De la Rey? Is he sick?”

“No!”

“Why is he not here to-night?”

Swaart Jan shrugged his shoulders and grinned, his two tusks protruding more than ever.

“How do I know, brother? Only we must not forget that his wife is half an Englishwoman.”

“Ah!” said the delegate, who appeared to be struck with the idea.

“Oom Stephanus would not come,” put in a young man reverentially. “That is all I know about it.”

The speaker had been one of the most fervid listeners to the “Patriot’s” discourse, and with much trepidation had lingered behind among his elders, preferring their conversation to the boisterous merriment in the other room.

“It is Stephanus’ nephew, Adrian De la Rey,” said Jan Grobbelaar.

“Ah! a good name. A good name,” declared the delegate. “Bear it worthily, nephew, when the time comes.” Then, turning to the predikant , “We must win over Stephanus De la Rey, Mynheer. We must win him over.”

“He is the only ‘good’ man here whom we have not won,” was the reply, given dubiously.

“ Ja, ja !” assented Swaart Jan, shaking his head softly. “ Ja, ja ! we must win over Stephanus De la Rey.”

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: