Bertram Mitford - Aletta - A Tale of the Boer Invasion

“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.”