Wild Honey—Part II. (continued 4)

They breakfasted in the grey dawn, and while the boys skinned the trophy, Johnson, who besides being a bank manager, was a gossip and something of a wit, regaled the journalist with amusing biographies of the Umtali residents. Incidentally the Stannards came before the board, and Bettington learned, among other things, that the ex-army man had been running a farm out beyond the Police Camp, that the farm was a failure, and all his wife’s money had gone in it, likewise the money of his sister-in-law; that the latter was very pretty, and Randal and Hallam only two of a dozen men who were in love with her; but that she would have none of them, preferring to devote all her time to the business of minding the Stannard baby and keeping the peace in the Stannard household. In fact, there was very little about this unpropitious ménage that Bettington did not learn, and the more he heard the more he felicitated himself upon the fact that with the oxen and veld in the state they were it would take ten good days to reach Beira. Those ten days looked good to him. Next to shooting, and fighting, and writing, he held that life had nothing more piquant to offer than the society of a pretty, disillusioned married woman. It was not so much because he was a scoundrel that he preferred them married, as because he knew himself fonder of adventure and travel and a careless life than he could ever be of a wife. Wherefore he had long ago decided that marriage was not for him. It did not follow, according to his code, that flirtation was not for him; only that he must eschew the society of pretty girls and devote himself to the pretty women who were safely tied up. Certainly, even in this there was a risk of finding himself laid by the heels for life; but it was less of a risk than flirtation with girls entailed.

For the rest, he held with Gordon that—

No game was ever yet worth a rap. For a rational man to play; Into which no accident or mishap Could possibly find a way.

It was on the evening of the following day that he came upon the convoy of waggons outspanned a few miles beyond Christmas Pass—a romantic spot with a backing of velvet mountains, a foreground of rolling plain, and a three-quarter moon like a crushed pearl hanging over all. Evening fires were alight, there was clank of pan and pannikin, and pleasant savoury odours pervaded the air. Little groups of men lay upon the ground—many of them had tramped all day and were weary. Women were unpacking provision baskets and children pranced happily about the fires.

In all, about forty people were travelling together down to the coast with the idea of getting away for a time from a country which during the last year had suffered the double mischance of war and cattle pest. Some of the travellers were ruined farmers, others were miners whose machinery and property had been destroyed by the natives. There were men too, who, having been wounded in the fighting, were going down to Durban or the Cape to recruit. Several families were leaving the country altogether, disheartened by the disasters they had suffered. The war was over, but on account of the existing danger of small parties being attacked by still revengeful natives, the Government had placed this convoy of waggons, with drivers and boys at the disposal of such people as were anxious to get away. The regular mail service not yet having been resumed, Bettington, in a great hurry to reach Johannesburg, had been thankful, like many another, to avail himself of this opportunity to get down-country.

He picked his way through the camp, stopping only to inquire as to the whereabouts of his boy and McKinnon’s waggon; greeting an acquaintance or two; and refusing a pressing invitation to sup at the waggon of the “wounded bunch,” one of whom, an American surgeon on crutches with a bullet lodged in his hip bone, was a very good friend of his.

Bettington had not joined any mess coming down from Salisbury, for he was a fellow of moods and tenses, and constant companionship bored him. Times were when he liked his society high, and times were when he preferred it low, but always he chose to seek and cull it for himself, and for that which was thrust upon him he had no use. He rather estranged people by giving the impression that he believed the world made for the special benefit of Bettington, and nothing in it quite too good for Bettington; but this arrogance of character was more assumed than real; for he had discovered that it rid him of society he did not need, and insured him against intrusion when he wanted to work, or in those dark hours which came to him as to the most self-satisfied of us when he was face to face with the fact that Bettington was no very great chalks after all, and not within a thousand miles of the fine fellow he set out to be originally.

It cannot be pretended, however, that he was suffering from any such mood at this time. Quite the reverse. A man who has potted his lion overnight owns a little secret fountain of vainglory to drink at that will keep him from being thirsty for some time.

He was hungry, however, and hot, and slightly footsore, for he had handed over his borrowed horse to Randal’s messenger and thereafter tramped some miles of bad road with the thermometer at something over a hundred and ten.

As he approached his waggon, he became aware of a woman’s slight graceful figure sitting on a box not far off, with a little child playing at her knees. Her profile etched against the firelight, was one which, though he had only seen it once, he very well remembered. From the shadows came forth his servant, a meek-eyed Makalika scoundrel, anxious to see how his baas would take the information that a lady and her “bébé” were in part possession of his waggon.

“That’s all right, Bat,” said Bettington trying to keep an inflection of nobility out of his voice. “Camp my things out under that tree over there, and get me a towel. Which way is the river?” (No outspan is ever very far away from a river.)

“Just over there, my baas.”

“Have my supper ready when I come back. I suppose you got some fresh meat and bread in the town?”

“No, my baas,” was the modest reply.

“What? The dickens take you—”

“I didn’t know when my baas would be back, my baas.”

“Oh! Hel—p! Get out some bully beef then, you—you idiot!” Bettington gulped down worse things, wondering gloomily how he was going to suppress the expression of his real opinion of Bat during the rest of the journey, for the boy was a most particular fool and the bane of his life.

Moreover, on returning from his dip with the appetite of a wolf gnawing his vitals, he found that though his blankets had been perfunctorily unrolled under the specified tree, of supper there was no sign. His box of provisions had not been got off the waggon, and there was not so much as a tin of bully in sight!

“Bat!—you—you bat!” he roared in a terrible voice. But Bat was non est. Wise for once, he had melted away into the night.

“Of all the miserable!” Bettington was obliged to put his pipe into his mouth and bite on that. Bitterly he thought of that invitation to supper recently refused and by now probably a dead letter.

“My Inkosisan wants to speak to the baas,” a voice so gentle and modest that it might have been Bat’s own, spoke at his elbow. It was in fact another of the afflicted Makalika race who stood waving an apologetic hand in the direction of the lady by the waggon. As Bettington moved towards her, she rose from her box and addressed him in a charming but distressed voice.

“I can’t tell you how awfully sorry I am, but it appears that I have got your box of provisions.”

“Don’t mention it,” said Bettington, mechanically polite.

“Mine has evidently been put on to some other waggon by mistake, and I was actually just about to eat your things for my supper.” She motioned to where on another packing-case set out with white enamel plates some slices of bully beef had been arranged with a tomato salad.

She looked young and slight in the firelight, and her hair was bronzier than ever. Bettington put on his most velvety manners.

“And I hope you still will. I’m delighted that the things have been of any use, though I’m afraid the box contains only the most ordinary kind of junk.”

“Not at all—it is full of good things. I had my lunch and breakfast out of it to-day—it never occurred to me for a moment until I heard your boy questioning mine about your box—then I casually glanced at the lid—and to my horror, the name Bettington!”

“I am sorry my name should so unpleasantly inspire you,” he deplored.

“Oh, of course—I didn’t mean—I—”

“The only possible amends I can make is to go at once and look for your box while you finish your supper.”

“Oh, but I couldn’t—I am so ashamed. First, it appears, I deprive you of your tent—and now of your food.”

“I assure you I have never used the tent in my life. I always prefer to sleep out in the open. As for the food, it makes no odds at all, please believe me.”

“But your boy ran away when he could not find your box. You will have no supper!—You must share mine,” she proffered shyly. He gave a surreptitious glance at the wafery slices of beef and tomatoes, then answered with alacrity:

“Not at all, not at all. I wasn’t going to have any supper anyway. I’m—I’m not hungry.”

He had in fact decided that this was no time to put on exhibition the wolf that raged within him. And his manners being persuasive as well as pretty, he eventually convinced the lady of his sincerity, and she sat down to finish her supper alone while he departed with the air of a man with a mission—which was exactly what he was.

Straight as a homing pigeon he headed for the waggon of the wounded warriors. Most of them had already turned in, but the American surgeon, resting near the remains of a good meal, hailed him blithely:

“Hullo, Bet!”

“For the love of Michael Angelo give me a drink, and a wedge of bread and bully,” said the hapless Bet. “And send your animal of a Makalika to search every waggon until he finds Mrs Stannard’s box of provisions. When found, deliver to me.”

Later, his inner man replenished, he returned to McKinnon’s waggon with the air of a conqueror and the recovered box of provisions.

“Well! we’ve got it, Mrs Stannard!”

She looked up at him with such surprise that he wondered at first whether she had never expected to see it again. Then the truth occurred to him.

“I beg your pardon. But I was in Randal and Hallam’s the day you came in to do your shopping. You wouldn’t of course have noticed me,” (the expectant pause he made here was almost imperceptible), “but I was impertinent enough to inquire your name.”

“And you recognised me again?”

“There are some faces one never forgets,” he said quietly, but effectively. Looking up into his eyes, she saw there something which she had seen in the eyes of men before that night; and which always roused in her a longing to rub their noses in the dust.

“Let us hope they are not all crowned with hats,” she said laughingly. “Memory might be over-crowded.”

He was delighted with her. To be witty as well as pretty! That made the game worth the heat and toil of the chase! Thus they stood, the rose-lights from the fires about them, the great crushed pearl above them; taking each other’s measure, marking down each other’s weaknesses, and each secretly registering a vow to the other’s undoing. But they parted with the pleasant conventional phrases under which both good and bad intentions are so subtly concealed.

She breakfasted within sight the next morning, but he did not go near her, being content after having exchanged a morning greeting, to sit under his tree and reflect upon the ten good days to come. She made a charming picture in her dark short skirt, white blouse, and the rather rakish Panama he remembered so well as a feature of their first encounter in Randal’s winkel. She had brightened up wonderfully since then, he thought. Perhaps the relief of leaving all her domestic troubles behind her had something to do with it, but certainly disillusion had done no harm to her complexion so far, nor worry spoiled the fine line of her cheek and chin. Her looks had an edge to them that appealed to the connoisseur in him. It was not so much that she was pretty, as that she had good lines and that her clear pallor, the tilt of her head, and her dainty walk, carried an air of race and insolence with them; both things that meant something to a man like Bettington who admired the quality of insolence in women almost more than anything—probably because he knew how unworthy he was of anything but their insolent toleration.

Before the day’s trek began, there was a lot of gathering up and stowing away of belongings to be done, and it was natural that Bettington being on the spot should help Mrs Stannard.

Natural too that he should suggest a tramp ahead as per the example set by numerous other couples, all anxious to avoid the dust and monotony of the trek and get some exercise into the bargain. She tramped a little while with him, and he liked her long swinging walk, and found her mind as buoyant as her feet. When the boy who was perched on the brake of her waggon guarding little Aimée came running to report that the bébé was awake and crying, Bettington could have kicked him with the greatest blessing in the world. Moreover it occurred to him that babies were odious little beasts, and that no nice woman ought to saddle herself with such things.

But on later afternoons he blessed the pale and fretful Aimée, for without her as a chaperon he could not have sat hour after hour on the brake of Mrs Stannard’s waggon talking to her on every subject in the world but the one that filled his mind and was to be read plainly in his eyes by anyone who took the trouble to look deep enough.

Mrs Stannard was very careful to look neither deep nor long. Bettington came to the conclusion that she was a very clever woman, though he often wondered where she had got her experience. Marriage with Stannard might well have constituted an education, of a kind. But where had she learned that delightful way of assuming all the frank innocence of a young girl?—that lent such piquancy to the fact that she was really a married woman doing a bolt from her duties! And where achieved the subtle art of keeping a man with his toe to the chalk line, without wearing him out or allowing him to show his impatience for the starting bell? Bettington admired her almost to stupefaction for these things. At least it was to stupefaction he assigned the fact that he sometimes found himself sitting and gazing at her until the red crept in a little curly wave from her chin to the bronzy hair. Then indeed it was time to talk about literature, or make himself so useful and amusing to Aimée that Aimée’s mother would not have the heart to drive him away, under the pretext that she had a headache or that Aimée wanted to go to sleep.

She had beautiful eyes of an uncommon colour, rather like liquid amber, and as full of dots and dashes as a Marconi message, only far more interesting to read. So thought Bettington at least, and would have liked to spend a great deal of time in sorting out and classifying the natural shades and shadows in them from those brought flickering there by humour or melancholy or any other mood that seized her. When he found out one day by picking up a bracelet which belonged to her that she was called Amber, he rejoiced with his journalistic sense at the singular appropriateness of it, and that night found him lying under the waggon scribbling in his note-book a poem which began:

O amber heart, and amber eyes!

That the subject of it was sitting not far off in the gloaming shadows, hushing Aimée to sleep and looking rather like a gentle modern Madonna, lent the sting of secret and forbidden pleasure to his occupation. As Wilde says: “The simplest thing is a joy when it is secret!”

The one fly in the amber, so to speak, was Aimée. She was always on the spot, and as ubiquitous as only a baby less than a year old can be. True, Mrs Stannard commanded the services of a nurse-boy called September, but the latter was mostly busy with the pots and pans, and Aimée preferred the society of her mother or, failing that, of Bettington. Yes, much to his secret annoyance (and this secret was no joy) the little animal actually liked to sprawl over him, clutching at his moustache and poking her fingers in his ears and up his nose. Sometimes she howled for him to hush her to sleep, and once she refused to take her bottle unless he gave it to her! Another time she spilled her bottle all over his very spick and span breeches and gaiters, and upon that festival he could very willingly have killed and eaten her. Another and horrible occasion when he was lying peacefully on his rug under the waggon, with Amber Eyes sitting sewing on a water barrel near by, the baby crawled over to him, lolled upon him amorously and was sick amongst his hair! Amber released him from its clutches and he escaped to the river, but he hated to look back on that moment—it was not one of those in which he could truthfully claim to have been the master of his fate and the captain of his soul!

He never could make out what on earth Mrs Stannard saw in the little monkey to justify the amount of devotion she lavished on it. Many a time and oft, when to his mind a sound spanking would have filled the bill, he was astonished to see with what tenderness and patience Amber Eyes beguiled the peevish elf back to happiness. But, somehow, though it made him impatient he never could help liking her all the better for it. The trouble was that everything she did made him like her the better, but she gave no sign of being similarly affected, and the ten good days were speeding by with never a silver arrow nor a red rose to mark their flight! Five were already gone, and nothing achieved but this one-sided love affair with the abominable Aimée! When he came to think of it, it made him tired. After all, he was a man and a journalist, and something more he hoped to Gad, than food for babes and sucklings! What did Amber Eyes take him for? Having asked himself this question several times, he grew very broody, and wasted a sixth day in sulking.

This, he was delighted to note brought her to her bearings, and she began to give him more of her attention. Aimée, whose health was visibly improving from day to day, was handed over more often to the tender care of September, and Mrs Stannard and Bettington resumed their tramps ahead of the waggons, spending long afternoons and evenings in an intimacy that for two people who were nothing to each other would have been almost impossible anywhere else in the world except on the South African veld. None of the other people with the waggons made any comment, most of them being busy grinding little axes of their own, and the rest too full up with the weariness of life to care two bones how that fellow Bettington (who thought such a deuce of a lot of himself!) and Mrs Stannard (whom none of them knew) were occupying their time.

So that Bettington had quite a lot of

Time and place and woman altogether

in which to reveal the other side of his soul to Amber Eyes. In fact, he felt that it was up to him to show her the kind of man she had been turning into a nurse-maid and mother’s help; and Bettington in the showing-off attitude was an entrancing spectacle. Fortunately, he sometimes became so interested in the mind of his listener that he forgot to “show off” and then she was really to be felicitated, for Bettington, once you got past a thin outer crust of conceit and arrogance, was an uncommonly clever fellow. In fact, in the matter of his work, he was something of a genius, and when a man has the star of genius glimmering—however faintly—within, a dozen good qualities will be sure to be found, like attendant satellites waiting upon it and throwing it into prominence. Furthermore, he loved his profession with a wholehearted love and knew the practising of it inside out, and up and down the earth, and backwards and forwards upon it, and most things that were to be known about literature past, present, and future. And to his intense satisfaction, Amber Eyes cared also for these things. Her mind had not been spoiled by shallow reading, for she had been educated with great simplicity, and since coming to Rhodesia had lived among men more familiar with sport and outdoor life than with intellectual matters. But she had a natural taste for literature and took to all things pertaining to it as a duck to water. Bettington found her mind not only ready to receive, but to retain what he could feed to it and thereafter to formulate opinions and convictions on what she had heard. He was greatly pleased with her, and as happy as a sparrow on a pump handle, until she went away from him to eat or sleep or mind the baby. Then, he poignantly remembered that it was not thus he had planned to spend the time between Umtali and Beira! What booted it to him to turn a pretty unhappy woman’s eyes inwards to the cultivation of her literary instincts instead of in his own direction? He derided himself for a duffer and was more tormented by the thought of imaginary silver arrows gone astray than was Saint Sebastian by the real steel-tipped article. He dreamed of red roses left ungathered by the roadside, and he wrote another poem.

It was at Massi-kessi that she found it lying loose between the leaves of a volume of Henley he had lent her, and she could not but read it for it wore her initials at its head:

You came and called me when the world was grey, You whispered of a land of endless May; Of flowers abloom, fair skies, birds always singing: And I, half-listening, lingered on my way. Yes, I half-lingered with a troubled heart, Your dearest sweetness had a touch of smart! Ever at fall of eve I heard the tolling Of Life’s grim curfew bidding us to part. Ah! was it well to take the lonelier way? To thrust with prudent hands the cup away, To leave the harvest of your heart ungarnered, And all the precious treasure of our love to pay?

When she had read it, she gave a curious, furious little laugh and said,

“What abominable impertinence!”

But if Bettington could have seen the colour in her cheeks he would have counted unto himself the first red rose.

They left the waggons at Massi-kessi for it was the railway terminus from the coast and they were all to embark next day on the Portuguese train for a journey through Portuguese territory. In the meantime, most of the travellers—for the sake of sleeping in a bed again, and eating a dinner cooked on a stove and served on a table—adjourned to the corrugated-iron hotel which stood bleak and blue in the midst of a waste of sands. Mrs Stannard and her baby were amongst those who went over, and, needless to say, Bettington followed the trail. He spent a good deal of the morning arranging the menu for an exclusive little dinner party composed of himself and Mrs Stannard. It was a charming dinner too and the menu a great success, though it embraced nothing more original than a fried sole, lamb cutlets with green vegetables, a sweet omelette, fresh fruit for dessert, and a bottle of wine on ice. This does not sound pretentious, but in the “good old times” in Rhodesia people never saw fresh fruit or fresh fish from one month’s end to another; goat was the only meat ever available and ice a thing remembered only in fevered dreams as a feature of life in some far-away fair land of a long-ago existence. Wherefore Bettington and his guest dined chez Lucullus that evening, and felt very well and happy after it as they sat with a dozen other people on the cool dark stoep, or strolled up and down the one long street of sand. There was a huge mountain of wool-bales lying ready for transportation just beside the hotel, and Amber Eyes, who for some reason was as gay as a canary in a golden cage, had a fancy for climbing this mountain and sitting on its summit, so as to get as near the stars as possible, she said. Their two cigarette tips were the only points of light in the vapoury darkness. She had never smoked a cigarette in her life before, and this fact refreshed the jaded heart of Bettington, accustomed to women who mostly smoked too many. They sat talking there, under the stars and their old friend the crushed pearl who arrived late, until after midnight, and he beguiled her with brilliant tongue and words sweeter than honey in the honeycomb. But her hand was never once within reach of his. Neither did she confide in him that her husband was a brute! Certainly she was an original woman!

Since none of the usual confidences were forthcoming from her direction then, Bettington began to unfold (so eloquently that he almost believed it himself) on the poignant loneliness and misery of such a lot in life as his. But his word pictures evoked nothing better from her than silvery giggles, and after she had had enough, she took a firm hand on the reins once more, and turned his nose into the safe fields of literature and adventure. He had tired of these subjects and was a little inclined to fall into gloom when she would not listen to the tales of his woes, but she was so gay and sparkly it seemed a pity to dim her pleasure, and churlish not to sparkle and be gay with her. So he bottled up his emotions for the time being, though he did not omit to put as much of them as he dared into his good-night handshake. He possessed very firm magnetic hands and had rather specialised in the use of them in cases where speech was not permitted.

He slept badly that night. It seemed to him that, in spite of all the good fun he got out of his success as a soldier of fortune and journalist, he was missing some vital thing in life and he could not bear it. He hated missing things. It made him feel like the “weariest river” making a bee-line for the nearest sea.

In the tender sunshine of early morning, they took train for the coast. The carriages were two long narrow affairs on a two-foot gauge, built like tram-cars, with seats running down the sides and the passengers sitting in two lines facing each other. Amber Eyes and her baby had a seat in a corner of the men’s compartment because for one reason, Aimée could not bear to be separated from her unwilling love, Bettington, and for another because in the other compartment a woman was too critically ill to be able to bear the noise of a little child.

Hour by hour, the tender sunshine of dawn developed into smiting, biting heat that blistered the paint on the roof above their heads. Some of the men slept uneasily and some sat wrapt in reflection. Bettington could have done with an idle hour himself, but Aimée kept him busy. She sprawled and clambered on him, and banged his watch against his nose. He would have liked to bang her nose on the floor, but the fact that Amber Eyes in her corner grew paler and paler every moment, drooping like a flower in the heat, kept a galvanised smile on his face. If he did not look after Aimée she would torment her mother, and that contingency was not to be thought of. But oh! how he would have enjoyed pushing the little worm out of the window,—and probably would have done it if it could have been engineered without suspicion attaching to himself. He saw some of the wounded warriors exchanging facetious smiles as Aimée tore his hair, whooping like a Comanchee on the war-path, and could only glare at them and curse inwardly, meditating on the revenge he would take out of their pockets on the voyage down coast.

“I’ll rook them of every red cent at poker,” he promised savagely. “I’ll make them cough up their last bone!”

Towards afternoon Aimée felt seedy, and despite all his efforts to keep her, climbed over to Amber Eyes and lay lamenting in her arms. Then did Bettington sitting forward, contort his face and do strange tricks with his fingers, and almost burst himself in the effort to amuse her. But nothing was any good. She would stare for a moment with her large slate-coloured eyes, then they would fill up and brim over with tears, even while they remained wide open and observant, and she lamented like a banshee. Sometimes she screwed herself into a ball and ejected sharp barking sounds, and sometimes she lengthened herself into a plank that would not be bent up again; but always at spasmodic intervals she howled. The heat beat down through the carriage roof on to the cooped-up travellers and came in sweltering waves through the open windows. Mrs Stannard grew paler than ever and great purple shadows lay like pansies under the amber eyes. Suddenly her hold on the baby relaxed and the latter rolled on to the floor. Some other man picked her up and comforted her as best he might while Bettington made play with the water bottle and brandy flask. After a little while, Mrs Stannard recovered and rewarded him with a pale smile and stammering apology.

“I am ashamed. It is too bad of us—first Aimée and now me. How you must hate us!”

It was at about that time that Bettington began to realise that he loved her. The real thing had got hold of him at last. He wished he could take her in his arms and kiss away her troubles and her tears forever. He would have given his skin to sole her shoes with. He wished he could die for her. But he only turned very pale himself, and set his arrogant jaw, and took Aimée on his knees and hushed her, and didn’t give a damn any more what the other men thought, and prayed for the end of that infernal journey as he had never prayed for anything in his life.

At length, the weary day drew to a close, and in the hot darkness the train pulled up at Fontes-Villa, which is—or was in those days—a unique little corrugated-iron Hades situated on one of the best malarial and mosquito sites in the world. The swamp on which it stood sizzling resembled a large stage carpet made of coarse artificial grass and rushes dyed a bright green by the arsenate-of-copper process. Sliding past in stealthy grim silence, full of crocodiles, and germs, and green slime, was the Pungwe River.

Here the train stood brooding for some hours as if considering the advisability of a midnight plunge. No one seemed to know what was going to happen next, and no one cared much. Enough that after the waggling, jerking, switch-back movements that had prevailed all day there was quiescence. A turgid, heavily-smelling breeze of sorts that meandered unwillingly through the long compartment seemed a heaven-sent zephyr, and everything would have been beautiful if only Aimée had not been vile. She continued her clamourings with renewed energy, and Amber Eyes said that she needed a bottle and that if Bettington would hold the poor little thing she would go and find September and send him up to the hotel (if there was one) to get warm water and mix a bottle of condensed milk. Naturally Bettington volunteered to go and lug out September himself from the truck in which the native boys were sleeping. After an interval then, September arrived with the mixed bottle and Aimée got her supper. But before she was half through it, Amber Eyes discovered that the water was stone cold and would probably be the cause of cramps in Aimée’s anatomy for the rest of the voyage. Again the luckless Bettington went a-hunting for September, but this time the quest was unsuccessful of any result except the news that both September and his own boy Bat had made up their mysterious and labyrinthian minds that they did not care to proceed further on the journey, therefore had taken their blankets and headed back for Umtali. Another thing that Bettington learned was that September had not gone to the hotel at all for water for the baby’s bottle, nor even looked for an hotel, but had simply slunk down to the river’s edge, shipped a bottle of the grey-green slime and mixed it au naturel with the condensed milk. This information the journalist kept to himself. He did not think it would be of the slightest use to Mrs Stannard, and if Aimée were poisoned—tant pis for Aimée! But he doubted there being any such luck. Aimée, he felt convinced, was destined to live to be the scourge of other fine men.

His next job was to go up to the hotel himself and get hot water to make the bottle. Even that was better than sitting still in the little devildom Aimée was creating in the compartment since she found herself robbed of the solacing bottle. Besides Bettington was getting used to his job, even as eels get used to skinning.

One thing to the good was that when he did discover the hotel and rouse the inmates he was able to achieve a whiskey and soda, and sandwich for himself, and bear back similar trophies to the fainting and haggard Amber Eyes. As for Aimée, she had her bottle at last, and Bettington felt that the whole noble army of martyrs were not in the running with him. “And after all these vices there was peace!”

Just as silence and slumber were spreading their wings over the weary caravan, the railway officials appeared from nowhere and briskly routed the passengers out in a great hurry to cross the river on a pont and embark on another train waiting on the further side. Ensued a great struggle and scramble after baggage. Eventually the change was accomplished and the journey continued until arrival at the Beira station.

It was for the passengers to find out for themselves that the station was about two miles away from the only possible hotel, and the country between of the roughest kind of veld—all scrub, hillocks, bush, and ant-holes; that there were no conveyances or porters; and that it was up to every man to shoulder his own pack and foot it for home. And it was for Bettington, the brilliant journalist, fascinating man of the world, and gifted poet, to take up the White Man’s Burden once more. With Aimée in his arms, a basket containing Aimée’s impedimenta on his back, his own knapsack slung about his waist, and Amber Eyes laden with smaller articles bringing up the rear, he felt like a prehistoric man on a forced march for fair pastures and better hunting. And in his heart he was saying:

“I may as well take on the job for good! I’ve become a family man. I’ve got used to fixing baby’s bottle now and lugging her around. Oh, pot!”

All round them, struggling in the dimness over ant-hill and ant-bear hole, were other baggage-laden forms, faithfully padding the hoof. The “wounded bunch,” as became warriors were making light of their woes. From their ranks came an occasional laugh and snatches of a ribald song set to the opening bars of the “Soldier’s March” in Faust, accompanied by bang and boom of a tin pannikin and some hollow article (perhaps a bread box?)

Drunk (bang!) last night, Drunk the night before (boom!) Drunk (bang!) last night, Never get drunk any more! (Boom!)

Bettington felt that he was different to these men. Nobler in some sort. Between them and him lay a great gulf fixed. He had deeper depths and could rise to higher heights. Thank God he was not as these!

Eventually they reached the hotel and Amber Eyes having engaged a room disappeared with the baby and Bettington was his own man once more. He in turn engaged himself a room, and went to bed, to dream that he had a baby of his own and was going to take in washing to earn his living.

As no steamer awaited them at Beira, the passengers from Rhodesia had to amuse themselves as best they might until a steamer turned up. No difficult feat this. Beira also was a corrugated-iron Hades, but at least the verandah of the Royal Hotel was deep and cool and palm-shaded; and there were supplies of fresh fish and fruit; and ice to clink in the glass; and though the sea was chocolate-coloured and “jiggers” hid in the sands, it was the sea, and it smelled of home, and brought memories of far-away joys that were getting nearer! Anyway, it was good to be leaving Rhodesia and trouble behind, with faces set to a new horizon where trouble had not yet materialised! So thought most of the travellers. And perhaps it was the philosophy of Amber Eyes too, and perhaps that was why she so visibly brightened and bloomed. All was well with Aimée as Bettington had opined, in spite of Pungwe River germs, and all was well with the world.

Only Bettington was troubled in his mind. He too had a philosophy that, so far, had helped him to waggle his way pretty well through a weary world, but for the moment it seemed to be suffering from a weak spine. His philosophy had always been to desire things and he would get them, especially if he gave Fate a leg up every now and again, and reached out far enough. True the leg up sometimes hit him a clout in the eye, and the reached-out hand sometimes got its fingers burned; but that was all in the day’s shooting and part of the game. The main point was that always in the long run he had got what he greatly desired.

And now it did not look as if things were going to work out that way! He found himself desiring something that was already in the possession of someone else—for “better or worse, for richer or poorer!” He who had made up his mind never to have a wife and baby of his own, was now hankering to take possession of the wife and baby of someone else! The thing was ridiculous of course. It was so silly that he could even laugh at it himself.

“What a fool I should look carting Stannard’s baby round the world. Blow that Aimée! After all, if I’m going to be a nurse-maid, surely I can get a baby of my own to mind!”

Yes, he could laugh and gibe at it himself, but even in the act of doing so something gripped him round the heart and made him feel physically sick. It was the thought of the day when he would see the Amber Eyes no more! Wherefore he gazed into them all that day as much as decency permitted, and a trifle over. He was overjoyed to see that she could no longer return his gaze with her frank, disarming glance of girlish innocence. A bird sang in his breast every time the colour sprang into her cheek under his hardy eye.

She had got another nurse-boy for the baby and so had a little liberty in which to roam about Beira, looking at the coolie curio-shops, and riding on the trollies that ran up and down the town. She bought herself an Indian silk shirt of delicate rainbow tints softly blending into one another, and he acquired a set of six twisted gold bangles for an imaginary sister, and a little one for Aimée. Then he wanted to give Amber Eyes a little black ebony walking-stick knobbed and tipped with ivory. But she would not have it.

“Not even a little remembrance of our journey down?” he pleaded.

“It looks like a memento mori,” she protested.

“It will be one if you use it to walk away from me.”

“I am able to do that without the use of a crutch,” she laughed.

“I daresay. What you are not able to do is to prevent me from following, even if I have to come on crutches.”

“Surely you are too clever a man to waste your time?”

She turned away from him with a bright cheek, leaving no time for a response. Not that he had a response ready. He was not quite sure whether he was a clever man or not, nor whether he stood on his head or his heels. But he meant to keep his balance. And he did—right up to nine o’clock that night.

At that time he was seated beside her in a trolley car which also contained half a dozen other people bent on a moonlight drive. The little bag she carried slipped to the floor and in stooping to recover it for her in the contracted space his face touched her knee whereon lay her hand. Under an uncontrollable impulse he pressed his lips to it. She instantly drew it away, and they sat in silence for a moment. Then, below the noise of the trolley wheels she heard his voice very low and vibrating:

“Amber, I love you!”

She stared straight ahead, making no kind of response. He was left to wonder whether or not she had heard, and obliged to assume an air of calm he did not feel. A little of the red had slipped out of his complexion before they reached the end of the drive, but also his jaw had taken on its most dogged look, and as they all dismounted and began to stroll towards the hotel he said with the quiet deliberation of the man who means to have his way:

“Walk down to the little bridge with me, please. I must speak to you.”

“It is getting late,” she demurred.

“I shall not keep you long.”

They walked in silence, their feet slipping and slithering in the loose sand, until they reached the bridge; then stopped to lean on the low parapet and stare down at the water just below.

“You heard what I said in the car?” he asked.

Perhaps she thought he was addressing the fishes for she made no answer. Then very quietly he said again:

“I love you, Amber!”

There was a great stillness between them. Truly as the wise people of old held, to give a man the use of your name is to give him power over you! He felt that he had power over her and perhaps that was why her hand lying on the bridge rail trembled, though her voice was quite level.

“Why do you call me by that name, Mr Bettington?”

“Because I love you, woman with the amber eyes, and the amber hair, and the clear amber heart,” he said gently and strongly, and took her hands in his. “And I think that you love me.”

“You are mistaken,” she said coldly, drawing away her hands.

The light went out of his face like a quenched flame. He turned away and leaned heavily on the bridge. She continued calmly:

“You merely have for me the terrible charm that a bad man has for a woman when he is the first bad man she has ever known.”

“Me?” cried Bettington, forgetting dignity and grammar and everything else in genuine astonishment. “I’m not bad! I like that! What about Stannard?”

She seemed flabbergasted for a moment, then:

“How generous you are!” she said scornfully. “Besides he is not really a bad man, only a weak one.”

“One bad man is worth forty weak ones,” averred Bettington bitterly. He was astonished and indignant at the line the conversation had taken.

“I do not deny that there is much good in you,” she said more kindly. “I can never forget how kind you have been on the journey down. When I think of all the things you did for me and Aimée I hardly know how to thank you.”

“Don’t try,” he interrupted. “I did nothing any man wouldn’t have done for you.”

He had to gulp all the same, thinking of Aimée and her bottles and her bag of impedimenta.

“And now you spoil it all,” she said sorrowfully. “By taking me for one of those hateful, disloyal women to whom any man may make love the moment she is out of her husband’s sight!”

“In all humility I beg you to forgive me,” said Bettington.

There was no doubt about it that for once in his life he was getting the worst of it, but somehow he minded that fact less than he minded the tightening grip round his heart. In grim earnest, now, he heard “the tolling of Life’s curfew” bidding them to part, and he wondered what he should do with the rest of his life. She had not quite finished rubbing his nose in the dust.

“How can I forgive you? I should not consider myself worthy of the worst or weakest man in the world if I were such a woman as you thought.”

But Bettington’s nose was too sore for any further ill-treatment. His natural combativeness began to reassert itself.

“I didn’t think anything,” he said moodily. “I just couldn’t help loving you, that’s all. If you want me to abase myself any more, Amber, say so, and I’ll do it. But that won’t prevent me from going on loving you.”

She intimated with great dignity that she wished nothing further of him but the courtesy of his escort back to the hotel. They returned in silence, but at the door of the stoep, just as she was on the point of going in, she said quietly:

“I may as well tell you that my name is Juliet. Amber is my sister’s name.”

That was the last straw! He went away raging. How could he have wasted the golden treasure of his heart on her? She was one of those coldblooded brutes of women who think they can do anything they like with men—(instead of letting men do anything they like with them!) He thought he should never feel better again, except after a bottle of Guinness’s mixed with a pint of champagne. But even that had a less satisfactory effect than usual.

No sign of her for the greater part of next day, and discreet inquiry of Rupee, the new nurse-boy, elicited the fact that she was resting with a bad headache. For some occult reason the information cheered Bettington wonderfully. The steamer that was to take them all down to Durban arrived, and he and some of the warrior men went down to choose their cabins for the next day’s departure. Bettington knew the Captain well, and accepted an invitation to lunch. He had a sort of feeling that by so doing he was scoring off the falsely-called Amber. She should see that though she didn’t want him somebody else did,—if it was only the Captain of a Union-Castle liner. He knew the feeling was childish, but he had it all the same.

When he got back to the hotel, there she was sitting in the verandah. She went on writing her letters and pretended not to see him, so he got a newspaper and pretended to read it. This state of affairs continued for a long time, until an interruption came in the shape of a Cape cart with four spanking mules which pulled up before the hotel. A little hardy blue-eyed woman descended, and Bettington immediately recognised in her a lady whom he knew very well. She was the wife of a South African railway contractor, and the Madame Sans Gêne of Salisbury, from whence she and her husband had evidently just driven in their own conveyance. She did not see Bettington at once, but pounced on Amber Eyes and shook her hand vigorously.

“How do, Miss van Rimmel? We came through Umtali and I saw your sister, Mrs Stannard. She loaded me with loving messages for you. I also have a parcel for the baby. Hope she’s fit?”

“Ah! Thank you,” cried Amber Eyes, and looked over the other woman’s shoulder to where Bettington stood with mouth open and eyes starting in his head. “My sister’s baby is very well. I had such excellent help with her on the way down.”

“Good! Mrs Stannard was rather anxious as to how you would manage. Stan is getting along fine, and they hope to join you and Aimée in Durban much sooner than they expected. Hullo, Bet! What you doing here?”

Bettington came forward and made such genuflections as were expected of him. His eyes had resumed their normal position, and his mouth was now trimmed with a sarcastic smile. But it is fair to say that the sarcasm was at his own expense. When Mrs Paulton had gone in and left them alone, he said gravely:

“I hope it gave you great pleasure to make a fool of me?”

“To do one’s duty should always be pleasant,” she responded with a ghost of a smile in her eye.

“Do you think you played quite fair?”

“Do you think you did? Because I look like my sister, and borrow her Panama, and wear her bangle, are those any reasons why you should take me for a married woman—and a disloyal one at that?”

Bettington had to take his medicine like a man. The best he could do was to mutter with a pious eye that he “thanked God she was not.”

“I thank God too,” she said inflexibly. But a little later she added more kindly:

“Perhaps we both rather meanly took advantage of private information.”

“I don’t know what inexpiable things you could have heard about me?” he asked reproachfully, secure in a sense of self-righteousness.

“When I persuaded my sister to let me go at the last moment instead of herself, Mr Randal gave me a brief résumé of your character and career. No doubt he thought it might interest me to know something of the man whose waggon I was to share.”

Ah! He almost wished he had time to go back to Umtali for a few days. Yet he really could not feel very mad with Randal or anyone else. Life looked so beguilingly fair all at once. His heart was light as a cork, but he pitched his voice to a becomingly humble key.

“Don’t you think we might begin again from quite a new basis?” he asked, looking at her with all the arrogance gone out of his eyes. “Without remembering any secret information or old scores?”

She considered a little while with downcast eyes, and a faint flush in her cheek. At last: “All right,” she said softly. Then added reflectively: “Aimée will want a lot of looking after on the voyage.”

But Bettington’s spirit was not quite broken.

“No!” he said clearly and firmly, “I bar Aimée.”

“She is rather a little reptile,” said Aimée’s aunt.

Chapter Seven.

Progress.

Old Nick Retief sat on his stoep gazing at the six thousand morgen of naked veld that constituted his share of the world, and there was trouble in his eagle-like gaze. He had the peculiar Boer eye, a vague light-blue feature sheathed with puckered skin, capable of seeing a tremendous distance, and apparently always searching for sheep in some far-off bush.

His undulating acres were composed for the most part of pasturage and poor pasturage at that. The rocky soil just escaped being “sour veld,” but was grey with rhenoster bush and dotted by countless yellow patches of stink-boschie. Sugar-bush too, that signal of unfertile land was more plentiful than propitious. Only about one hundred morgen were sufficiently rich to produce forage for the beasts, and there were no fruit lands except for an orchard of ancient apricot trees, and a little orange grove that nestled in a sheltered kloof near the river.

A poor enough place from the point of view of the wealthy Paarl or Worcester-district farmers with their vineyards of rich black soil and river pasturage. But to Nick Retief it had no parallel among the beauty spots of the earth.

On the sun-baked, wind-swept farm, bare of trees except for a line of blue gums before the house, a few clusters of pomegranate, and an old kameeldorn down by the goat kraal—the big blonde old Boer had been bred and reared, and in turn had bred and reared his family. After his brooding inarticulate fashion, he loved its bareness and bleakness, the wide loneliness of it, and above all the deep silences that from day to day were unbroken save by the purling of the river, the voices of his “boys” busy at their tasks, or the lowing of homing cattle.

He had never seen the sea, this old Boer of the back-veld, though (as the crow flew) it broke against the coast not more than eighty miles away. The purple mountains had no call for him, nor the busy town any lure like the lure of this unsheltered, whitewashed homestead on the flat-lands. In him still brooded something of the spirit of the old Voor-trekkers who trekked for the love of getting away from their fellow-men, and pitched their homes on the open plain with water at their backs and a vast emptiness before them; and to those who broke uninvited upon the silences or intruded on the empty plain, woe betided!

That was the trouble with old Nick Retief. Someone was threatening to intrude on his land and break the spell of its silent loneliness. But it was not an enemy whom he could pot at from behind his laagered waggons, nor a dozen enemies. It was the Government of his country, bent on the business of laying down steel rails that would enable locomotive-engines to tear screaming and belching, back and forth between the Transvaal and the Cape. And ever since he had got the news of it, Nick had cursed the “slegté Government of red necks” on his rising up and at his lying down, and always his slow-moving brain pondered heavily on how he could outwit it and prevent the abominable outrage.

He did not approve of trains, and considered it his duty as a good Boer to resist such inventions of the Devil to the last ditch. He would give them a good fight if they were looking for it, those slegté skepsels! It was his land not theirs, and right was on his side. He would prove that to them, and win out in the fight, even if it took everyone of the thousand golden sovereigns covered over with loose bran and hidden in a paraffin tin under his wife’s bed. Never should they have his permission to come digging and blasting within a few hundred yards of his stoep! The thought was enough to make his wife, old Tanta Christina, turn in her grave over there by the klompje of pomegranates, and bring the two tall sons who rested beside her forth to join in the fray with the verdommeder etceteras.

The first intimation he had received of the evil business was an official letter informing him that the Government had decided that the railway must pass through his land, and requiring him to appoint a valuer to meet and agree with the official valuer as to compensation. To this old Nick had written, or caused to be written—for he was one of those old-time Boers whose literary accomplishments went no further than the ability to sign his name with a laboured flourish—an infuriated reply, rejecting the Government, its valuers, and all that pertained unto the scheme. A second letter from Cape Town decorated with many red seals, contained an official proposal to buy the property known as “Jackalsfontein,” and an inquiry as to what price its owner set upon said property. The reply to this was brief to rudeness. The farm was not in the market and its owner was not selling at any price.

To-day had come the third letter, a frigid document, firm and arrogant as only Governments secure in unlimited power dare be—and the burden of it was that whether the owner of Jackalsfontein liked it or not the Government was going to run a railway across his land. The survey work would proceed, and if Mr Retief objected he was at liberty to seek redress in the courts of his country. It was over this letter that the old man sat brooding in the morning sunshine, eyes on the distant sheep, one gnarled, knobbly hand lying clenched on the arm of his chair, the other hanging straight down almost touching the ground, thumb in the bowl of his pipe. His immense bulk of brawn and fat was clothed in garments cut and sewn by the fingers long since peacefully at rest beneath the pomegranates. The trousers were as two enormous drain pipes that hung suspended from above his middle in the straight lines abhorred of Nature; circling round his generous waist they sprayed out in a wide V over his stomach where the two top buttons failed to collaborate with the buttonholes. His short but roomy coat could easily have accommodated a second man of his size, and over his cotton shirt he wore instead of waistcoat his flowing beard—a tangled grey-brown affair tousled by many a south easter, and somewhat recalling certain lines of Edward Lear’s:

“It is as I feared, Two cocks and a hen, one owl and a wren, Have all made their home in my beard!”

On his feet were home-made veld-schoens of raw-hide, “breyed” to the softness of suède with toes cut square as the nose of a punt.

From within the house could be heard at intervals a little snatch of song, like the chirp of a cheerful bird flying from bough to bough. At last in the doorway appeared Chrissie Retief, daughter and only remaining child of the family, a blithe good-looking girl between eighteen and twenty years of age. She addressed her father in the taal speaking reproachfully:

“Ach! Sis, Pa! you still fretting there over that old Government letter?”

He turned his vague ruminating eyes on her.

“The dogs shall never bring their stink-machines across my land.”

“What can you do then, my poor Poppa? They will bring them here, and you can’t do anything. You can’t shoot them with a gun, or throw them with a stone.”

“I will fight them with the law—if it takes my last pound,” muttered Nick.

“What’s the good? They will win in the end, Governments always do,” said Chrissie who had been to school at Paarl, and knew a few things.

“We’ll see. I’ll go to Piquetberg to-morrow and talk to old Frickie de Villiers. He’s a slim kerel, and ought to be able to vernuck them if anyone can. What is the use of my tin full of money if I can’t get the better of the dogs?”

“Ach toch! What’s the good of fretting your blood then, Pa? Let them make their old railway. We shall see something then, but.”

“Allemagtage! Are you a child of mine?” the old man roared. His vague eyes were suddenly fierce and full of fire. But Chrissie was not of the kidney to be intimidated even by her father. She turned away with a trill of laughter, finger on lip, to listen to a bird that had just perched on a branch of the kameeldorn and was calling out in three high insistent notes:

“Bock-bock-mackeerie! Bock-bock-mackeerie!”

It was the South African whip-poor-will whose cry heralds the arrival of strangers.

“The bock-mackeerie!” cried Chrissie ecstatically.

She was young enough to be keen for excitement in any shape or form and would not have objected to making coffee ten times a day for passing strangers. Anything that broke the monotony of life at Jackalsfontein was welcome to her. She put her hand across her eyes, blue as forget-me-nots, and looked into the distance, hoping for the sight of an approaching Cape cart. The roundness of her upraised arm strained the seams of her cotton sleeve, and a pretty curve from bust to waist and waist to heel was visible if there had been any eye to admire it. Her print dress was badly cut and the pattern faded from much banging on river stones. But there is nothing so difficult to hide as a good figure. Chrissie had got hers from riding astride, bareback, on young fillies and calves, and swimming in the river. The physical-culture mistress at Paarl had put a finishing touch by teaching her the value of poise and controlled muscles. Small wonder that the solitude of Jackalsfontein did not appeal to her as much as to her father. She was still in the romping, young-animal stage when she needed other young creatures to romp with. It was a dull life for the girl.

“I see something, Pa! There is something coming,” she cried suddenly, and gave a skip of excitement.

“Ach!” The old man spat scornfully, took from his pocket a stumpy bit of rolled tobacco, pitch-black in colour, and began to cut it into shreds using the palm of his hand for the operation. The stoep table was dark with tobacco juice and roughened by innumerable tiny cuts from this very business of tobacco cutting; but he always used his hand when he was preoccupied.

His vague eyes had long ago, at three miles’ distance, distinguished that which Chrissie now descried crawling up the sloping land in clouds of red dust.

“A flock of sheep,” she reported, “about fifty.—Some goats—Eight cows, two little calves, three mules—”

“A herd of rubbish belonging to that pat-looper (Road-footer) Carol Uys, sure as a gun,” grunted old man Retief.

“It looks like his Kaffir Jim driving them,” Chrissie agreed. “And there is a man on horseback coming up behind.”

“The pat-looper himself no doubt. Coming to try and sell his broken-down beasts to me.”

“Ach! Pa, you know you got the red heifer from him, and that pair of mules Farnie Roos offered you 30 pounds for last week.”

“Maar! They were not worth 30 pounds when I took them from Carol Uys.”

“No, and you did not give him 30 pounds for them! Sis, Pa, you must be fair, then, but!”

Chrissie’s eye was sparkling. She could not keep her feet still. She was entranced at the prospect of seeing Carol Uys, who was one of her suitors. He was the least prosperous of them, and her father was always crying out upon him, for a pat-looper because he had to augment his poor income by going about and doing a little cattle dealing, but she liked him better than Piet van der Merwe, or big Farnie Roos. She was not in love with any of them, but she was very much in love with love and life, was Chrissie, and could not help a little bubble of pleasure welling up from her heart and escaping from her lips in a girlish laugh as she turned back into the house. A jolly-out-of-doors, healthy girl, chock-full of animal spirits and laughter and fun. One of the kind that old mother Nature has her eye on for purposes of her own!

It was dark and cool inside the house, for Jackalsfontein, as in all decent Boer farms, had every door and window closed tight at six in the morning and not opened again until six in the evening, this being the Boer method of keeping out the scorching heat of summer. And a very good method too.

In her bedroom, Chrissie proceeded to tidy her crisp blonde hair which was always perfectly tidy, and tie a broad piece of blue ribbon round her neck in such fashion that a fascinating bow was under her hair and the two ends of it stuck out behind each ear making her eyes look so much bluer that they resembled two bits of radiant sky studding her merry face. For some time she meditated over a large silver locket with a flying crane engraved on it, and containing a tin-type photo of her mother. She usually wore this on Sundays, suspended by a black ribbon round her neck, and was aware that it lent great chic to her appearance.

In the end, she decided not to wear it upon this occasion for fear her father should notice and ask her in front of Carol why she had it on. Not for the world would she have had Carol think that she titivated herself for him.

At length, the sound of wheels grating in front of the house made her fly from her glass to the kitchen on the business of preparing coffee for the new-comer. For no matter how unwelcome the caller at a Boer house may be, he is always offered the hospitality of the country—a cup of coffee.

With her own hands, Chrissie set out the bright tin beakers on the table of the Eat-kammer, and piled high a plate of sweet hard rusks. Then opening the front door, she stepped once more into the sunshine.

And, after all, it was not Carol Uys who stood there mopping the beads from his brow with a white handkerchief, and talking to old man Retief. It was a stranger with that red burn on his face and neck which only Britishers seem to achieve in the South African climate, and which long ago won for them the nick-name of “rooi-neks.”

At the sight of him, Chrissie became shy and stood poised on one foot like a bird ready to take wing. It seemed she had arrived at an unpropitious moment. The old man’s eyes were suffused with blood and his fist lay on the table as though he had just banged it down there. His jaw stuck out aggressively. The stranger’s jaw also stuck out, but his hazel eyes had a cool, collected stare in them. This he transferred to Chrissie and removed his hat with the usual Dutch greeting.

“Dag Mevrow.”

She responded, and poised herself on the other foot for a change. After a moment, as old Retief put his pipe in his mouth and made no attempt at an introduction, the stranger continued, speaking with an air of quiet assurance to which her various Boer swains had not accustomed Chrissie.

“Miss Retief?”

She nodded.

“My name is Richard Braddon and I am the engineer in charge of the railway-laying party. I’m trying to persuade your father that it is of no use kicking against the Government. He’d far better let us go about the business quietly.”

“And I tell you you had better save your breath,” snorted Nick, “and keep off my land or I’ll blow you off from the barrel of my old Mauser.”

The young man’s red skin grew a shade redder, but he smiled dryly:

“I’m afraid I’ll have to risk that, Mr Retief, when the time comes.”

Chrissie secretly approved the I-don’t-give-a-damn-for-you-and-your-old-Mauser way in which he said it. That was something to say to old Nick Retief all the same! She turned on her father now expostulating:

“Foy toch, Poppa! It is not his fault, then. He has to do what the Government tells him, but!”

“I’m not going to have the stink-engines on my land,” repeated Nick.

“Well,” said Braddon pleasantly. “Let’s leave it at that. I’m camped out on Diepner’s land now beyond the river but we may get orders to start the bridge any time—and then the rails on this side—I only want you to be reasonable, Mr Retief, and realise that it isn’t our fault.”

Nick rolled a blood-suffused eye on him.

“You start on my land, that’s all,” he said with heavy significance.

A minute later, he let out a terrific roar that shook the rafters of the verandah above him and was addressed to the native who had recently arrived with the sheep and cows.

“What is the matter with you, you base-born son of a baboon, that you put your master’s scabby, leprous sheep into my calves’ kraal when I told you they were to go into that one down by the sluit?”

Following this furious inquiry he arose and betook himself to the kraal, leaving Chrissie and Braddon together.

“Will you drink coffee?” she asked.

“Thank you, I’d like some very much.”

She opened the door and went to fetch the beakers and rusks out on the stoep table. Braddon immediately bestirred himself to her assistance, proving himself still further unlike her several swains, for among the more ignorant class of Boers it is the affair of the women to wait upon men as upon the lords of the earth.

Afterwards, the two sat down by the table and waited for the old man. Braddon made polite conversation. He felt no embarrassment, but neither did he feel much interest. He had met Dutch girls before and they had not “gone to his head” or to his heart either. Their complexions were invariably good, but as conversationalists they were draggy.

“It must be dull for you living out here,” he remarked pleasantly.

“Oh, no,” she answered smiling, “there is plenty of work to do on the farm.”

He liked that spirit and understood it.

“I know. When one is working time flies, doesn’t it? But there are occasional dull hours in the evenings I find.”

“What do you do then?” she asked.

“Oh, study a bit and read the newspaper when I have one, and write home sometimes—and think a lot.”

“What do you think about?” pursued Chrissie.

“Oh, I don’t know—work, and my people at home, there’s always something.”

He examined her with a shade more interest. She was not so draggy after all, this Dutch girl. Certainly he had known them duller.

“What do you think about?” he asked with a quizzical smile.

“I think about the people who come to the farm,” said Chrissie simply.

He looked up as if at a call. It was not so much her words, in fact, he was not sure what it was that gave him a mental jump, but the impression was as startling as if she had taken a little hammer and hit a nail into him hard, only that no pain attached to the proceeding. She had risen, and was busying herself with the coffee-pot. He became aware for the first time of charming contours that could not be concealed by an old print frock. Also, that she moved better than most girls of her class; that her hair was becomingly done; and that the ribbon round her throat lent an added note of colour to her eyes. A glint came into his own eye, but Chrissie’s face was as demure as the face of a Greuze milkmaid. It is to be feared, however, that her heart was less naïve than her remark. The fact is, Chrissie was a natural-born flirt and knew perfectly well what she was about. She sugared the coffee with eyelashes brushing her cheek, biting her under-lip a little as if that helped to concentrate her attention on the task. Certainly it gave Braddon an opportunity of observing how white and even were those same teeth. Her nails too were daintily trimmed. Indeed she was a surprise he had never expected to find at Jackalsfontein, and what he could not understand was why the fact was only just dawning upon him. Certainly she was quite unlike all the other girls he had met on his trips into outlying districts. He wondered what had made him think she would be draggy.

The strap of a case he wore slung round his shoulders chafed him and he unbuckled it and put a camera beside him on the table. Chrissie’s glance immediately seized on it.

“You take photographs?”

“Yes—do you?”

She shook her head, her accomplishments did not run to that.

“I only wish I could.”

“I could soon teach you.”

She laughed and blushed a little, leaning her round face on one shapely hand. He thought what a jolly picture she would make and the thought was father to the desire.

“Will you let me take a photograph of you?”

“Yes,” she said eagerly. “Quickly, before Poppa comes back.”

It was the work of an instant. He snapped twice in case of a failure, then closed the camera and put it away.

“Will you send me one?”

“Or bring it, if you will allow me. I am only a few miles off.”

Chrissie made no response to this but looked into her coffee cup as though it were a crystal ball in which she could read the future.

“I am sorry Mr Retief should feel so badly about the railway,” said Braddon at last. “It’s got to come whether he likes it or not.”

“That’s what I tell him.”

“You are not against us then, Miss Retief?”

Old Nick lumbering back to his chair perhaps prevented her from expressing any opinion on the matter, but she slid Braddon a blue glance that seemed to be an answer to several things besides his question. The old man, who had not recovered his temper, continued to smoke in gloomy silence like a smouldering fire ready to burst into flame at the least puff of wind. Braddon made an effort at conciliation by proffering an inquiry or two as to farming affairs generally, but met with no marked success.

“How goes it with the sheep, Oom?” Oom Nick glowered at him for some time before grunting a response.

“The sheep are a beetje thin.”

Braddon essayed another throw.

“How goes it with the land?”

After a long silence.

“The land is a beetje dry.”

This was melancholy. Braddon, about to conclude with the usual polite query: “How goes it with the wife?” caught a swift glance from Chrissie and was reminded that he had heard of the old man being a widower of long standing.

“How goes it with the fruit?” he ventured instead.

“The fruit is a beetje behind-time.”

Nick looked gloomily towards his apricot orchard. Chrissie having piloted Braddon past a bad place was now smiling down her retroussé nose. He was considering the matter of moving on when someone else entered upon the scene. Old Retief had seen the Cape cart coming long since but, according to his wont, said nothing. The others were too much occupied with their own thoughts to notice anything, until the dust of Carol Uys’s trap blew over them from the loose ground in front of the stoep.

“Dag, Oom!”

“Dag, Carol!”

The thin long-legged young Boer descended from his cart, fastened the pole of it to a staple driven into one of the blue-gum trees and came up the stoep steps. He was a pleasant-faced fellow about six feet three inches in height but of rather slight build. Chrissie had always liked his gentle eyes and gentle ways inherited from some far-off Huguenot ancestor, but to-day she noticed for the first time that he walked flat-footed and that the toe of one of his shoes pointed east and the other west. For the first time too she was not impatient at her father’s off-hand, rather scornful manner of greeting him. Old Retief despised the Uys clan, lock, stock, and barrel, because they were bad farmers. In fact though they lived on farms they were no farmers at all. Everyone knew it. An Uys farm was always farthest away from the markets and always pushed away in the corner of some mountainous kloof where the grazing was sour for the beasts and the land would grow nothing. Naturally there was nothing for the sons of such a farmer to do to make ends meet but take to transport riding or cattle dealing. And the truth was that the Uys taste lay that way—that was what old Retief had against them. They were horsey men, fonder of the road than the roof-tree, men who would sooner ride a hundred miles to deal for a pair of goats than do one day’s work at the tail of a plough. Retief despised such shiftless wanderers and wanted nothing of the sort for a son-in-law. Wherefore Carol Uys was none too welcome at Jackalsfontein. However, the handshaking that ensued was hearty enough and Chrissie, with heightened colour, poured coffee for the new-comer, and fresh cups all round.

“Well? What broken-down old crocks have you got with you to-day, Carol?” asked the old man grimly.

Uys waved his hand at the two handsome bays with black manes and tails, harnessed to the cart.

“Look then! They speak for themselves, Oom. As smart a pair of Cape horses as you will see from here to Johannesburg. The very thing to drive Miss Chrissie to kerk with on Sunday.”

Needless to say Retief had passed a shrewd eye over them long since and come to his own conclusions. His business now was to conceal those conclusions, which happened to be favourable, behind a contemptuous smile and such sarcasm as he could muster. No very great amount!

“I’m not on the look-out for grandparents for those I have to take Chrissie to church with already!” he remarked.

“Ah! Oom Nick must not make jokes about those bays,” expostulated Carol seriously. “They are Clan-William horses—three-year olds. Why, they haven’t whistled yet (cut their baby-teeth). Oompie can look in their mouths and see.”

“Mastag! It is hard enough to see them at all, they are so maar (thin)!”

Carol aggrieved, turned to Chrissie.

“No one could call them maar. It is a dry season and I haven’t been able to get them much forage by the way, but no one can call them maar.”

“How much do you want for them?” asked Braddon.

“Sixty pounds apiece, not a sixpence less,” declared Carol. “Don’t you think I’m right, Miss Chrissie?”

Chrissie, with her father’s eye on her, knew better than to respond.

“Hundred and twenty the pair! A stiff price,” remarked the engineer.

“Not too stiff. Oom Nick knows the value of a good horse and is able to pay it,” said Carol firmly. He may have been no farmer but he knew his business as a horse-seller.

“Their feet are too soft for this veld,” grumbled old Retief.

“Not a bit of it, Oom. Clan-William horses are hard-veld horses—iron feet and mouths of velvet. You know it good enough.”

“Well, and what’s the matter with my own horses that I drive to kerk every Sunday?” asked Nick Retief aggressively.

“Oom, they are not bad horses. I’m not saying they are bad horses, but they are five years old and don’t match—you know they don’t match. One has got a bless (white blaze down forehead) and the other has a white foot.”

This hit the old man hard. That bless and white foot had been his bane for many a day.

“Oompie mustn’t drive to church like that any longer,” said Carol decisively. “It is unlucky.”

“Ah! unlucky? I am unlucky enough,” glowered Oom Nick and reflected awhile in his beard while Carol drank more coffee and looked at Chrissie with his brown eyes which became very gentle and shy the moment he was not discussing horses. Chrissie inquired for his mother and sisters and brothers, naming each separately. Braddon tattooed the table, bored and vaguely irritated. At last, the old man got up and went down to the horses and began examining them minutely from mouth to hoof, jeering all the time and expostulating with Uys who had followed him.

The engineer and Chrissie left alone sat a long time in silence apparently listening to the haggling and jeering below them, but in reality listening to queer little drumlike sounds going on within themselves.

“May I bring you the photo when it is finished?” Braddon said at last in a low voice.

She laughed her little bubbling laugh.

“You see how it is with Poppa—he does not like the railway.”

He looked at her steadily.

“You mean I will not be welcome here?”

“Poppa will not welcome you,” said Chrissie with the Greuze look. “Have another cup of coffee?”

Her father and Uys were returning to the stoep. Evidently some arrangement had been come to, but they were still haggling.

“Come on, Oom, you don’t want that red ox, now, it will pair with one I have and that will let you off another five pounds. Then I will take your old bays for 55 pounds and you will have only to pay me 40 pounds cash.”

“Forty cash!” complained Nick. “It is too much.”

“No, no, Uncle. It is not too much—you know that good enough. I couldn’t sell for less, even to Miss Chrissie’s father.”

He looked with his shy brown eyes at the girl and she smiled back. Braddon got up quickly.

“Well, I must go. Good-bye, Oom.”

The old man scowled at him but shook hands.

“Good-day, kerel.”

“Good-day, Miss Retief.”

“Good-day, Mr Braddon.”

Perhaps some subtle message passed from her hand to his for his eyes cleared. He went down from the stoep, untied his horse, and mounted. It was a good horse and he sat on it as only a born rider can sit. If Chrissie’s good figure could not be hidden neither could Braddon’s horsemanship, and that is an accomplishment which Boer girls, in common with most other girls, admire. He was well aware of Chrissie’s glance fixed upon him as he rode away, swaying easily and gracefully in his saddle. He was not quite sure why the fact was so pleasing to him, but he whistled a gay little air, and the world looked a good place to him, and life much more attractive than it had looked an hour ago.

Six months later, Nick Retief sat again on his stoep gazing with sombre eyes before him. At a casual glance all seemed unchanged, but a trained observer would have detected two profound differences: the landscape was no longer naked, and the old Boer had grown markedly older.

His beard and hair showed great patches of white amidst their shaggy sandiness, the old eyes were bloodshot and full of strain, the folds of skin sheathing them reddened and weary. It was the sight they looked upon that made them weary: a line of tents not five hundred yards from the stoep, some tin shanties, huge piles of sleepers and rails, and a trail of pitched-up rocks and yellowy-grey earth. The gangers were at work on the business of bridging the Kat River and laying the railway line across Jackalsfontein.

The old veld eyes that stared at that hated sight had seen many strange things since the morning when Braddon made his first appearance at Jackalsfontein. At last they had looked upon the sea, and the ships upon it, and the men that go in the ships; upon tram-cars and hansom cabs and streets crowded with fashionable women. Incidentally they had seen the inside of a Law Court, not once but many times.

On six several occasions Nick had donned his black stove-pipe hat and driven the Clan-William bays acquired from Carol Uys to Piquetberg and been accompanied from thence to Cape Town by Frickie de Villiers the slim. But all the sights his eyes had there beheld brought him no solace, nor a passing thrill of interest. He had been at grapples with the Government; absorbed in the great fight to keep silent and naked the acres that he loved. And the Government had defeated him. The railway had come!

Money had flowed like water, and it was not Government money. Little was now left of the original 2000 pounds that once had lain snug in the paraffin tin under the bed of the defunct Mrs Retief. To drag a case from the ordinary courts to the Supreme Court of the land and from thence to appeal to the House of Assembly does not cost nothing. Neither do the services of such slim ones of the earth as Frickie de Villiers, and a firm of Cape Town solicitors (who were Frickie’s cousins) and, finally, an eminent Q.C. (who was Frickie’s uncle) cost nothing. Nothing costs nothing when it comes to meddling with the law. Nick knew this now to his cost. Knew too that governments can be vindictive as well as arrogant. He had never heard of such a person as Lord Chesterfield, but of one Chesterfieldism at least he was now in a position to prove the truth:

“Never quarrel with large bodies or societies: Individuals sometimes forgive; societies never do.”

Instead of awarding him the compensation originally suggested for Jackalsfontein the Government had set a fresh brace of men to the task of assessment, with disastrous results for Nick. These officials, practical men with no fantastic illusions about the value of rock veld, rhenoster shrub, and stink-boschie, had written Jackalsfontein down for the poorest kind of cattle land. Such land is dirt-cheap in South Africa, and the Government was well within its rights in paying for it at dirt-cheap rates. What was worse, it would pay for no more than was absolutely needed to lay a narrow track of steel rails. The land that lay on either side of the fenced-off track, Nick was informed he could keep. That these wire fences would cut the farm in two thereby lessening its value, and that the nearest crossing gates were to be erected three miles away, was Nick’s misfortune, part of the reward he had reaped for “quarrelling with large bodies.”

At any rate, it was all over now. Nick had eaten and drunk of Justice, grace had been said, and it was finished. The iron heel of the Law had him down in the dust. Nothing more for the old farmer to do but sit in the sunshine and watch the ridge of pitched-up earth creep over his land. His eyes were weary, but his heart was like a red-hot stone in his side.

He no longer worked. The management of the farm had devolved entirely on Chrissie, and though she was no fool, the burden of care and responsibility weighed heavily on her shoulders.

So absorbed was the old man in this business of watching that he appeared to have forgotten everything else. He came out in the dawn and sat through the unsheltered day in his reimpje chair. Sometimes even after night-fall he sat on, staring through the darkness until the camp lights died out and all was wrapped in silence. Then he would lift up his great bulk and shamble heavily to bed.

And with each day his bulk seemed to grow greater. It was not a wasting sickness, this sickness he had of hate and rage. Chrissie noticed on the day of his last return from Cape Town, that he had assumed a curious resemblance to her mother in the latter stages of her illness. Old Tanta Christina had died of dropsy, and the girl sometimes wondered sadly whether the same disease, common amongst Boers, would snatch away her father. But though he grew swollen and visibly stouter there was none of the transparent whiteness which accompanies dropsy. Rather his colouring was red and purple, almost as if a fire, flaming within, boiled the very blood in his veins, bloating out his body and blearing his eyes. There were hours when Chrissie had a childish fear that he would burst. These were usually the hours when the gangers were at work with dynamite.

For the engineer and his gang were not finding the affair of bridging the river and laying the rails across Jackalsfontein any too easy to accomplish. The rocks, concerning whose presence the valuers had been so explicit, justified their existence by appearing in places where they could best have been dispensed with. Dynamiting went on three times a day, and three times a day men fled in every direction for shelter. Once, during the first days they ran to the farm, but no more than once. The grim man sitting so quiet in his armchair frightened them. There was something awe-inspiring about that big figure and the sombre, vigilant glance of the bloodshot eyes. A superstitious Irish navvy declared that the farmer possessed the evil eye and had put the black curse of Ballyshane on them all.

It is true that an extraordinary number of accidents had distinguished the rail-laying operations since Diepner’s land had been left for Retief’s. Scarcely a day passed without witnessing the sight of a trolley carrying off some injured ganger to the Cape Town Hospital.

Those in charge too, had experienced trouble. Three different engineers had come and gone since the commencement of the bridge. First, Braddon, after waiting for two months on the Diepner side of the river, had barely settled his men on the Retief side, when he went down with enteric and had to be trollied off to the old Somerset Hospital at Cape Town. The next man broke his leg three weeks after taking charge. The third got blood-poisoning from a veld sore. A temporary man, put in charge, was called away to Kimberley by the sudden death of his wife. Now Braddon, after a long and slow convalescence, was back again.

He and Chrissie had met only twice since the date of their first acquaintance. One afternoon he had ridden over with the prints of her photograph in his pocket. Old Retief was away on his first visit to Cape Town, and a girl friend from Piquetberg had come to keep Chrissie company in her father’s absence. It happened that some folk from a neighbouring farm were also visiting Jackalsfontein, and there was rather a large gathering in the big Eat-kammer. The girls, merry as mossies in the corn, entertained their guests with coffee and cookies and there was a great deal of laughing. Mart Lategan, the Piquetberg girl, was of the giggling, hoydenish type, and if Chrissie had shown herself of the same inclination the party might have developed into rather a rowdy affair. It is easy in out-of-the-way places on the veld where there are no particular standards of conduct and the climate insidiously slackens the moral and physical muscles, to pass from unrestrained laughter to the broad jokes that distinguish social intercourse amongst the less cultivated Boers.

But about Chrissie Retief there was a new and quiet dignity that toned down the noisy humour of the others, and kept a certain sweet quality in the atmosphere, like a fresh breeze blowing through the room. It seemed as though in her father’s absence she felt the honour of the house upon her shoulders, and must carry it carefully. Braddon’s eye rested often on her, and though hardly any conversation passed between them that was not common with, and to, the others, their glances sometimes crossed, blended, and ended in each other’s eyes. Just before he left, they were alone for a moment, and Braddon was able to produce the photographs. She went red with pleasure, looking quickly from one pose to the other.

“Is that me, then? My! how nice I look!”

“Not nearly nice enough for you. All your lovely colouring is lost,” he said, looking at her rosy cheek.

“Ach! sis, toch, Mr Braddon, you just say those things,” she murmured, casting down her lashes.

“They are true though.”

“Are these both for me?” she asked shyly.

“Yes, but I have taken the liberty of keeping a print of each for myself. I hope you don’t mind?”

How could she mind? But she said with her Greuze air:

“I can’t think why you should want them!”

“I will tell you some day,” was his last word to her, and he rode away with a smile on his lips.

The next time they had encountered out riding. Chrissie, taking a canter in the cool of the afternoon on one of the Clan-William bays, met him returning from a long day of acquiring stores in Piquetberg.

He was hot and tired and thirsty and filled with weariness; but after a few moments in her company remembered none of these things. It was as if a tree had sprung up by the wayside, with a seat beside it to rest on, and a well of cool spring water for refreshment. There was something so alive, yet restful and assuaging about the girl. The wind had beaten a bright colour into her face, health and vitality showed in every line of her, and she was brimming over with that quality which he had recognised at their first meeting and which had turned him from a casual caller into a man who would come again. The thing had been inexplicable to him then and it was still so; but it remained a fact. It was as intangible as spirit, yet the lure of coquetry and curves and things physical was queerly mixed up with it; loyalty, and strength, and tenderness; and a certain hardness of purpose, and a hint of her father’s vague shrewdness as his eye searched the bush for far-off sheep; and more than a hint of his dogged obstinacy and love of a fight.

Braddon came of a good class of people and had known in his own country many charming girls, most of them prettier, cleverer, and far more cultivated than Chrissie. Yet in her he divined this something which they had lacked. Some fire burned in her of which no spark had gleamed in them. What he did not know was that he had met in Chrissie one of those subtle combinations of sweetheart-wife-and-mother which old Nature specially breeds in big wide open countries where she needs strong, hardy, lusty children to people her empty spaces. He only knew when he rode away from Chrissie Retief that day that he loved her and meant to do all he could to get her for his own.