Bertram Mitford - A Veldt Official - A Novel of Circumstance

“Do they make you comfortable there?”

“H’m! Comfort, like most things in this world, is relative. Some people might discover a high degree of comfort in being stabled in a three-bedded room with a travelling showman, the proud proprietor of a snore which is a cross between a prolonged railway whistle and the discharge of a Gatling; and farther, who is given to anointing a profuse endowment of ruddy locks with cosmetics, nauseous in odour and of sticky consistency, and is not careful to distinguish between his own hair brash and that of his neighbours. Some people, I repeat, might find this state of things fairly comfortable. I can only say that my philosophy does not attain to such heights.”

“Rather not,” says Suffield. “Jones is a decent fellow in his way, but he’s no more fit to run an hotel than I am to repair a church organ. How do you find his table, Musgrave?”

“I find it simply deplorable. A medley of ancient bones, painted yellow, and aqueous rice, may be called curry, but it constitutes too great an inroad upon one’s stock of faith to accept it as such. Again, that delectable dish, termed at The Barkly ‘head and feet,’ seems to me to consist of the refuse portions of a goat slain the week before last, and when it appears through one door I have to battle with a powerful yearning to disappear through the other. No – I am not more particular than most people, nor do I bear any ill-will towards Jones, but really the catering in a posada , on the southern slope of the Pyrenees is sumptuous in comparison with his.”

“Yes, it’s beastly bad,” assents Suffield. “Every one growls, but then there’s no competition. The other shop’s no better. Why don’t you get some quarters of your own, Musgrave – even if you do go on feeding at Jones’? You’d be far more comfortable.”

“I have that in contemplation. Is there a moon to-night, by the way, Suffield? I don’t want to ride into any sluits or to get ‘turned round’ in the veldt.”

“Moon! You’ve no use for any moon to-night. You’ve got to wait till to-morrow for that ride back. You’ll be in ample time for court at ten, or earlier if you like. It’s only eight miles.”

A chorus of protest arising on all hands, Roden allows himself to be persuaded, and they promptly adjourn to pipes, and re-try the case of Gonjana, and agree that that bold robber obtained no more than his full deserts. Then the eventful post-cart journey is brought up, and Grace Suffield says —

“I should never have believed you were only a newly arrived Englishman, Mr Musgrave. Why, you seemed to know your way about on that awful night better than the other man who was with us, and he has never been outside the Colony.”

“A ‘raw’ Englishman is the approved way of putting it, I believe,” is the unconcerned reply. “Well, Mrs Suffield, you will hardly find such a thing now. Most of us have done some knocking about the world – I among others.”

That is all. No explanation, no experiences volunteered. The natural curiosity of two at least among his hearers is doomed to disappointment. He does not even say in what part of the said world he has done the knocking about.

Two hours later Mrs Suffield goes to Mona’s room for a final gossip.

“Well, dear. You were wondering what he was like! Now, what is he like?” she says.

“Tiresome! Unutterably tiresome!”

“Tiresome!” wonderingly. “Not a bore?”

“Oh no, not that. Only I can’t make him out. But – I will. Oh yes, I will.”

The speaker has her face half hidden in her splendid hair which she is brushing and otherwise arranging, and consequently does not see a queer look flit swiftly across the face of her friend.

“I told you he wasn’t young, and was said to be very reserved,” pursues the latter.

“Oh yes. A middle-aged fogey, you said.”

Before she goes to sleep that night Mona Ridsdale lets her thoughts dwell to a very great extent upon the stranger guest; and for his part, the latter, but a few yards off, allows his thoughts to run very considerably upon her.

That he does so evolves a kind of feeling of self-pity pity not far removed from contempt, yet can he not help it. Beautiful, according to the accepted canons of beauty, she is not, he decides. But of far greater potency than the most faultlessly chiselled features, the classic profile, the ivory-and-roses complexion, which she does not possess, is a certain warm, irresistible power of attractiveness which she does possess, and that to a dangerous degree – the strong under-current of vitality pulsating beneath the dark-complexioned skin, the faultless grace of movement, the straight glance from beneath those clearly marked brows, the vast potentialities of passion that lurk within the swiftly playing eyes. None of this escaped him – all was summed up in the moment he stood face to face with her. In that moment he has read a faulty character, full of puzzling inconsistencies; one which attracts while it repels, yet attracts more than it repels, and it interests him. Nevertheless, the steel armoury of defence, forged by a life’s strange experience, is around him. His mental attitude is that of one who is thoroughly “on guard.”

In due course of time – that is to say, from two to three weeks – Gonjana’s sentence was confirmed by the Eastern Districts Court – such confirmation being required before a judgment involving lashes could be carried out.

“It’s hard lines on the poor devils, Musgrave,” observed Mr Van Stolz, as he received the confirmation. “Instead of getting their warming at once, and have done with it, they’re kept in gaol for about three weeks, expecting it every day. It may be a necessary precaution with some magistrates, but I have never had a conviction quashed or a judgment upset. I don’t say it to brag, but it’s a fact. But – it’s nearly twelve o’clock now. We’ll go down and see it done.”

The gaol at Doppersdorp was an oblong brick building containing ten cells. These formed three sides of a central courtyard, the fourth constituting the gaoler’s quarters and the kitchen where the prisoners’ rations were prepared. A line of men in broad-arrow stamped suits, all natives, guarded by two armed constables, was filing in from the veldt. This was the hard-labour gang, returning to the most congenial task in the whole twenty-four hours, the consumption of dinner, to wit; to-day combined with a scarcely less attractive one, to those figuring in it only as spectators – punishment parade.

The convicts, after the regulation search, were drawn up in a line in the prison yard. A long ladder standing against the wall did duty as the triangles. There was another to suffer besides Gonjana, a yellow-skinned Hottentot named Bruintjes, and for a similar offence. Half beside himself with fear, this fellow stood, shivering and moaning, with quaking, disjointed appeals for mercy. The Kaffir, on the other hand, might have been one of the spectators, for all the sign he gave to the contrary; though now and again his tongue would go up to the roof of his month in a disdainful “click,” as he watched the contortions of his fellow-sufferer.

“Which shall I take first, sir?” said the gaoler.

“Oh, the Hottentot,” answered Mr Van Stolz. “The poor devil will be dead if he has to wait for the other chap. He isn’t quite so cheeky now as he was in Court. Seems to be taken out of him. Ready, doctor?”

The district surgeon, whose presence on such occasions was required by law, replied in the affirmative, and the Hottentot, stripped to the waist, was triced to the ladder. With the first “swish” of the lash, which the gaoler, an old soldier, understood the use of, he set up a screech like a cat in a steel trap; and this he kept up throughout. At the end he was untied, whimpering and howling, and his back sponged.