To do Shattuck justice, his apparent hard-heartedness was not without motive, for on the rising of the Court—that is to say immediately, for there were no more cases that day—he asked us to step into his office.
“I am very grieved, Mr Matterson, over the course I have been obliged to take,” he began, stiffly and constrainedly, “but I fully believe I am serving your best interests in doing as I have done. If the boy were given back to you now, would not all the Kafirs around, and Kuliso’s people in particular, at once jump to the conclusion that justice had not been done, and that there was one law for the black and another for the white? In short, I believe his life would be in hourly danger. Their demonstration on your farm seems to point that way, doesn’t it? Well now, if they know he is here in prison—I am not going to have him put in an ordinary cell, by the way—they will be to that extent satisfied, and it will give any strong feelings time to die down a bit. The case is out of my hands now. The records will be forwarded immediately to the Solicitor-General, and of course it rests with him whether the matter goes any further.”
There was sound sense in this, and indeed the magistrate had shown a consideration we had not expected from him. So we parted good friends, and rather arriving at the conclusion that Shattuck was not such a bad sort of fellow after all.
Chapter Twenty Two.
Kuliso’s “Great Place.”
Gonya’s kloof seemed no longer the same place. The period of suspense following upon George’s committal told upon all of us, seeming to cast a gloom over everything, damping our spirits. Of myself especially did this hold good, for Beryl was no longer there. She and Iris had remained in Fort Lamport after the preliminary examination staying with friends, and we three men were alone.
What a difference it made! During the months I had already spent on the place, Beryl had never been absent for a single day, and now that presence which had rendered the hardest of toil sweet, and irradiated the norm of the daily round with a glow that seemed hardly of earth—to myself, that is—was now removed. Yet the sun shone just as brightly and the generous riches of Nature expanded around with the same fairness to eye and sense; but—to myself—all lay as beneath the shadow of a cloud.
Many times a day would I recall the keenness of the pang when she had told us of her intention to remain in the town for the present. The announcement was made in the presence of several persons, or there was no telling how I might have taken it. As it was, I have a confused recollection of turning on a vacuous grin, and hoping she would enjoy her stay; which was about as idiotic a rejoinder as even I could have been guilty of, considering that a state of anxious suspense would be the family portion for perhaps weeks to come. Well, she had removed her presence from among us, and to me it seemed that all the savour had gone out of life. And if this was so during a matter of days or weeks, what would it mean if extended throughout life?