A Veldt Official: A Novel of Circumstance

by Bertram Mitford

The flourish of trumpets which had enveloped the departure of his predecessor was an offence to him, possibly as suggesting the certainty of a very different farewell, when his own time should come. In this spirit he went closely into all connected with the office, hoping to discover some pretext for throwing mud at Mr Van Stolz’ administration. But he might as well have tried to chip a snowball out of the moon.

To Roden Musgrave he took an intense dislike, which he exhibited in first pointedly wondering at finding a man of his age in that position; an impertinence which its recipient could afford utterly to ignore. From the very first, however, he had made up his mind to bring about a change, partly to secure the berth for a relation of his wife, partly because he only felt comfortable with young subordinates, whom he could treat as he chose; whereas this one, even he realised that he could not treat as he chose.

For he knew that in experience and knowledge of the world, this man was immeasurably his superior; and the better able to hold his own, that he was most thoroughly up to his work. He had mastered all the ins and outs of office and court routine, and had everything at his fingers’ ends. He would be an extremely difficult man to oust; yet as we have said, Mr Shasten made up his mind from the very first that ousted he should be.

By the attorneys and law-agents practising in the District Court the new R.M. was most cordially detested. Not one of them but had been snubbed more or less—frequently more—when practising before Mr Van Stolz, but never undeservedly, and this they well knew. So, too, did they know that outside the Court, that sunny-natured official would be the first to crack a joke with them, or lend them his horse, or do them a good turn in any way he could. The present occupant of the Bench, however, was past master in the art of delivering himself of cold, scathing, contemptuous rebukes. The practitioners for once agreed among themselves. They put their heads together and arranged to “go for” him whenever opportunity offered, and now and again it did offer, for Mr Shaston was at times a trifle shaky, alike in his procedure and in his judgments. Then they went for him tooth and nail, Darrell especially, who feared no man living, and between whom find the new official many a passage of arms would occur, of increasing fierceness and frequency.

With the farmers, too, he was unpopular. Mr Van Stolz, himself a Dutchman, had been pre-eminently the right man in the right place. Mr Shaston, however, was utterly devoid of that bluff, open-hearted species of blarney which is the right way to the Boer heart; consequently, by that stolid and wooden-headed race, he was regarded as the most stiff and starched type of the verdommde Engelschman. Moreover, rightly or wrongly, he soon acquired a reputation for favouring the native servants, as against their white employers, in such cases as came before him; which reputation once established on the part of a magistrate is a very death knell to his popularity among the Boers, and scarcely less so among their fellow English stock-raisers.

Some among the townspeople he condescended to admit to a certain degree of friendship. Among these was Lambert, the District Surgeon, also Sonnenberg; both of whom toadied him fulsomely, for they began to see in the new R.M. a possible weapon for striking a deadly blow at the object of their respective hate. His dislike of his subordinate was by this time patent, and both worthies now began to chuckle; for they foresaw the not far distant removal of the latter from Doppersdorp. Not that this would satisfy the malice of the vindictive Jew; nothing would, short of the ruin and disgrace of his enemy. Since the gun episode, resulting so signally in the biter being bit, and bit hard, Sonnenberg had cudgelled his crafty and scheming brain to hit upon a plan, but hitherto in vain. As postmaster, the thought had crossed his mind that he might in some way or another strike at his enemy through his correspondence. But then the latter never received or despatched any correspondence; never from month’s end till month’s end. This in itself was singular, and set the Jew thinking.

Now, if there was one individual whom the change of administration concerned almost more than all the rest of the community put together, that individual was Roden himself. No more was the daily routine lightened by an occasional cheery talk, the ever-present joke, and the sociable pipe, and above all by the most perfect of mutual good feeling. This he was prepared for. But when his new superior began to show his hostility in the most needlessly gratuitous fashion; to find fault, and that too often publicly, where, as a matter of fact, no fault was to be found, his temper, at no time a long-suffering one, began to feel the strain. Still he kept it in hand, observing the most rigid scrupulosity in the discharge of his duties, and giving no handle to the other for putting him in the wrong. He knew that an explosion was only a question of time, and was shrewd enough so to order his doings as to keep on the right side.

But, if in his new official superior he had found an enemy, he had made one in the person of that functionary’s wife, though this was perhaps inevitable. Personally Mrs Shaston was a good-looking woman, tall, and of rather striking appearance, who had once been very handsome. But to her husband’s brusquerie she added a commanding manner, or, to drop euphemy, a domineering one, which rendered her a trifle more unpopular than himself, if that were possible. She had at first inclined to a modicum of reserved graciousness towards Roden Musgrave, which soon changed to the most bitter and virulent rancour, when she discovered that he had no notion whatever of being turned into a sort of running footman. Her husband’s subordinates were her subordinates; such was her creed, and what did a subordinate mean but one who had to do as he was told? So when Roden took the earliest opportunity of differing with her on this point, and that in the most practical way possible, she became his bitter enemy for all time.

Daily his position became more manifestly unpleasant. He had never laid himself out to win anybody’s goodwill, and this sin of omission had rendered him as unpopular as those of commission on the part of his chief had brought about a like result concerning the latter. Of two unpopular officials in a place like Doppersdorp, or for the matter of that anywhere, the most powerful would score, and Mr Shaston after all was a power in the community. Moreover, such a community has a special faculty for producing a large litter of curs, wherefore many who had been effusively civil to Roden Musgrave when the latter was hand-in-glove with Mr Van Stolz, now showed their real nature by turning round and barking at him unceasingly.

Now, of course such pleasant little amenities as smoking pipes in office hours, or shutting up at all sorts of times when there was nothing particular doing, though tending to render life pleasant, were, after all, irregular, and no one knew this better than Roden; consequently he was quite prepared for all sorts of changes in this direction, and accepted them cheerfully. But his new superior thought he saw a very promising ground of annoyance, which might, if deftly worked, bring about the revolt he desired.