Chapter Sixteen.
“Within the Veins of Time.”
“Then you won’t give up going to this wretched war?”
“Well, no. You see I’ve got it all arranged now. I can’t throw up the plan. Besides, I want to see how they work a war of this kind. My mind is made up.”
No one knew better than Mona that when the speaker said his mind was made up, why, then it was made up. Still she continued to plead.
“Ah, don’t go! Besides, it is a paltry affair, and hardly worth a man’s while to touch. It is quite sickening to hear these Doppersdorp ‘heroes’ brag. They go away nearly three hundred strong, and come back again with three men slightly scratched, and talk big about ‘terrible hand-to-hand conflicts lasting all day,’ ‘assegais flying as thick as hail,’ and so forth. Dear, don’t go; I have a presentiment something will happen.”
Roden laughed.
“How does that pan out for a lovely bit of feminine consistency?” he said. “After labouring to show that the whole thing is child’s play, and the merest walk over, you adjure me not to go, on the ground that I shall come to grief if I do.”
“And that day on the cliff; was my warning right or wrong then?”
His face softened at the recollection. For a moment they stood gazing into each other’s eyes.
“You saved a strange sort of life, Mona.”
Instead of replying, she moved to the window and declared, in a commonplace way, that there was a big dust-cloud whirling up the road; for the place they were in was a certain staring and fly-blown apartment, which did duty for “drawing-room,” at the Barkly Hotel, and now steps were approaching the door. The latter opened, admitting the head and half the person of Sonnenberg.
“Beg pardon. Thought Suffield was here.” Then meaningly and with an impudent grin, “Sorry to interrupt. ‘Two’s company,’” and the door closed behind him.
“See now,” went on Roden, “it isn’t a case of going to the front. I’m only going to ride over to the Camp for three or four days. It’s a good opportunity. Darrell wants to go too, so we are going together.”
“Only two of you?”
“Oh, we may pick up others on the way.”
“And what about getting back?”
“Must chance that.”
Mona looked as if about to renew her pleading, but just then Suffield’s voice, and the voices of others were heard coming up the stairs; for it was just before the one o’clock dinner at the Barkly. So she whispered hurriedly:
“Dear, you will ride out with us this afternoon?”
“H’m! there are a lot of things to be put straight, and I start the first thing in the morning. I don’t like to shirk. What’ll the Chief say?”
“Mr Van Stolz? I’ll ask him myself.”
“No, no,” he said, laughing at her eagerness, and locking his fingers in hers, for her hands had crept into his after the interruption on the part of the objectionable Jew. “I’ll work it somehow. But, dear, you must make Suffield wait, for I can’t in conscience shut up shop this side of four, at the earliest.”
This side of four! Why, she thought about seven was going to be the hoar named. Make Suffield wait! Why, Charlie should wait till midnight if she chose. And the voice, the tone! When Roden spoke thus he could make her do whatever he liked. Was he beginning really to care a little for her at last? Her heart beat tumultuously as she went down the stairs, laughing and talking commonplace with her companion. Could he ever love her as she loved him? Was it not all a one-sided affair and therefore despicable? Ah! but—she told herself—there was a possibility; and this it was which underlaid the strange wellspring of new-born happiness which had sprung up in Mona’s heart, completely transforming her. Now and then a corner of the curtain which hid his inner nature was lifted—lifted just enough to convince her that the capabilities which lay behind were those which it was in her power to call into play, and that the day might come when her love should be returned tenfold.
After all, thought is swift, and can cover a great deal while the thinker is descending one flight of rather rickety and not very well-swept stairs.
Nothing was said during dinner about Roden’s impending trip, for an absence from duty of upwards of two days was irregular, to say the least of it, on any other terms than a formal application to headquarters, which, at that distance from the Colonial Office, would necessitate a couple of weeks’ correspondence and a due expenditure of red tape. When Roden returned to the office he found Mr Van Stolz already there, letting off steam in a few harmless “cuss words,” for the post had just arrived, bringing with it from headquarters an unusually large batch of circulars, desiring information of no conceivable utility; also some returns.
“Musgrave, old chap, look at all this damn nonsense,” said the jolly little R.M., with a mischievous laugh, shoving away the obnoxious papers and lighting his pipe. “What, the devil! do they think we’ve got nothing better to do—and with all these troops of burghers pushing through to the front, and knocking us up in the middle of the night to find rations for them? These stoopid returns ’ll take at least a week of turning out dead-and-buried records to make up.”
“Then I won’t go down to the Camp to-morrow, sir,” said Roden, thinking how he would quietly chaff Mona as being in league with the people at headquarters to knock his trip on the head.
“No, no, Musgrave. It isn’t so important as all that. I’ll get them together, somehow, and Somers can give a hand. Besides, we needn’t hurry. It doesn’t do, either, to break one’s neck being over zealous. You don’t get any the more appreciation for it, or promotion either; at least, that’s what I’ve learnt after my twenty odd years in the Service, though of course it wouldn’t do to say that to every sort of a youngster who happened to be one’s clerk. And, I say, Musgrave, old fellow, that pony of yours has had quite his share of work of late, after Stoffel Van Wyk’s rhyboks. Why not take my horse to go down there on? He’s a young horse, but a good one, and he’ll stand fire like an armchair, as you know, though he does shy like a fool now and again at a schuilpaat (Dutch. The small land tortoise common all over South Africa.) the size of a snail.”
“It’s awfully good of you, Mr Van Stolz, but—”
“Tut, tut! What’s a horse for, if not to be ridden? Any fellow knows he can always have mine when I’m not using him, and I’m not often.”
“Rather—why, you keep the whole township going in riding material.”
“Ha! ha! I believe I do!” was the jolly reply. “Why, no less than three fellows wanted to borrow Bles to-day, but I thought it might be as well if you took him to go and have a shot at the Kaffirs, instead of your own, Musgrave, so I let him have a rest to-day.”
“Well, as a matter of fact, I shall be very glad to accept the offer,” said Roden. “My pony is perhaps a little in want of a rest. Upon my word, though, Mr Van Stolz, there may be more good-natured people in the world than yourself, but with some experience of that orb I don’t believe there are.”
“Pooh, pooh!” laughed the genial little man, not ill-pleased with such a spontaneous outburst on the part of his self-contained, cynical, and generally somewhat unpopular assistant. “Why, man, you’d do such a trifle as that for me, wouldn’t you?”
“Rather. But I’ll be hanged if I would for the whole of Doppersdorp.”
“Ha! ha! But poor old Doppersdorp isn’t such a bad place. There are a lot of people in it who are damn sweeps; but I can always pull with everybody—even damn sweeps. When I’m on the Bench it’s another thing. I don’t care for anybody then. But when you’ve got to be in a place, Musgrave, you may as well make the best of it.”
“And that I flatter myself I do. What with yourselves, Mr Van Stolz, and the Suffields, and one or or two more, I am not particularly discontented with the place.”
“Ha! ha! And one or two more!” laughed the magistrate mischievously. “What did the wife say when you first came up here, Musgrave? And wasn’t she right? Own up, now. When is it to come off?”
From anybody else this sort of chaff would have more than annoyed Roden—indeed, hardly anybody else would have ventured upon it with him. Coming from whom it did, he merely laughed, and said that, if for no other reason, he did not see how anything real or imaginary could “come off,” in the light of the munificent rate of pay wherewith a paternal Government saw fit to remunerate the labours of the junior members of its judicial service. Then he turned the conversation into other channels, and thus, alternately subsiding into silence as the nature of their work required, and smoking a pipe or two and narrating an anecdote as something suggested one to either, this happily assorted brace of officials got through the first half of an afternoon, until the tread of a pair of heavy boots on the boarded floor of the Court-room without was heard drawing near.
“Some confounded Boer, I suppose, who’ll extend a clammy paw, and put his hat on the ground and spit five times, preparatory to beginning some outrageous lie,” growled Roden, thinking it was about time to take himself off.
“May I come in?” sang out a voice.
“Hallo! It’s Suffield. Come in, Suffield!” cried the magistrate, jumping up.
“Busy, I see!” said Suffield, having shaken hands, and looking rather awkward, for what with Mona worrying his life out for the last half hour, and what with the confounded cheek, as he reckoned it, of suggesting that Musgrave should knock off work and come along, he felt himself in that figurative but highly graphic predicament known as between the devil and the deep sea. But the eyes of the most good-natured man in the world read and interpreted his look.
“Going to take him away with you, Suffield?” he said.
“Well—um—ah—”
“Off you go, Musgrave; I expect Miss Ridsdale will comb your hair for you for keeping her waiting, and it’s nearly five. And I say, Suffield,” he called out after them when they were leaving; “don’t let him try to tumble over any more cliffs, eh! So long!” and chuckling heartily, the genial official turned back to light a fresh pipe and do another hoar of his own work, and that of his assistant too.
Ambling along the dusty waggon road which led up to the grassy nek about a mile from the township, preparatory to striking off into the open veldt beyond, the trio were in good spirits enough.
“Well, and why haven’t you blown me up for keeping you waiting?” said Roden.
“Do I ever blow you up? Besides, you couldn’t help it,” answered Mona.
“Ah, ‘To err is human’ says the classic bard. He might have added, ‘to blow a man up for what he can’t help is feminine.’”
“Don’t be cynical now, and sarcastic. And it’s our last day.”
“Why, hang it, the chap isn’t going to be away for a year,” cut in Suffield, who was at that moment struggling with a villainously manufactured lucifer match, which gave him rather the feeling of smoking sulphur instead of tobacco. And then there was a clatter of hoofs behind, and they were joined by a couple of Boers of the ordinary type, sunburned and not too clean of visage—one clad in “store-clothes” the other in corduroy, and both wearing extremely greasy and battered slouch hats. These, ranging their wiry, knock-kneed nags alongside, went through the usual ceremony of handshaking all round, and thereafter the swapping of pipe-fills with the male element in the party.
Boers, in their queer and at times uncouth way, are, when among those they know, the most sociable of mortals, and never dream that their room may be preferable to their company; wherefore this accession to the party was heartily welcomed by Mona, for now these two could ride on ahead with Charlie and talk sheep and ostriches, and narrate the bold deeds they had done while serving in Kreli’s country, in Field-Commandant Deventer’s troop, which had just returned covered with laurels—and dust—from that war-ridden region. But alas! while one carried out this programme to the letter, his fellow, the “store-clothes” one, persisted in jogging alongside of Roden discoursing volubly, of which discourse Roden understood about three words in twenty.
“Ja, det is reegt, Johannes,” (“Yes. That is right.”) the latter would assent in reply to some statement but poorly understood. “Darn the fellow, can’t he realise that two’s company, three’s a bore—in this instance a Boer! Nay what, Johannes. Ik kan nie Hollands praat. Jy verstaand, (I can’t talk Dutch. You understand?). Better jog on and talk to Suffield, see? He can talk it like a Dutch uncle; I can’t.”
“Det is jammer?” (“That’s a pity.”) said the Boer, solemnly shaking his head. Then after a moment’s hesitation he spurred up his nag and jogged on to join the other two.
The open veldt now lay outstretched before them, and Suffield and the two Dutchmen were cantering on some distance ahead. Rearing up on their left rose the great green slopes and soaring cliff walls of the mountain range, and, away on the open side, the rolling, grassy plains, stretching for miles, but always bounded nearer or farther by mountains rising abruptly, and culminating in cliff wall, or jagged, naked crags. Here and there in the distance, a white dot upon the green, lay a Boer homestead, and a scattered patch of moving objects where grazed a flock of sheep or goats. The slanting rays of the afternoon sun, now not far from his western dip behind yon cluster of ironstone peaks, shed upon this bright, wavy, open landscape that marvellous effect of clear and golden radiance which renders the close of a cloudless day upon the High Veldt something like a dream of enchanted worlds.
They were rather silent, these two. The thrilling, vivid happiness of the one, was dashed by a certain amount of apprehensive dread on behalf of the other, who was going quite unnecessarily to expose himself to danger, possibly great, possibly small, but at any rate unnecessary. On the part of that other, well, what had he to do with anything so delusive as the fleeting and temporary thing called happiness, he whose life was all behind him? Yet he was very—contented; that is how he put it; and he owned to himself that he was daily growing more and more—contented.
“I can’t make out what has come over us,” he said, as though talking to himself, but in his voice there was that which made Mona’s heart leap, for she knew she was fast attaining that which she most desired in life. Then they talked—talked of ordinary things, such as all the world might have listened to; but the tone—ah! there was no disguising that. Thus they cantered along in the sweet, pure air, over the springy plain, against the background of great mountain range, and soon the walls of the homestead drew in sight, and Mrs Suffield came out to greet them, and the dogs broke into fearful clamour only equalled by that of the children, and the two Boers dismounted with alacrity to go in, sure of a good glass of grog or two beneath Suffield’s hospitable roof, ere they should resume their homeward way.