And in it Aletta was destined to pass some very happy days. To begin with, the capital of the principal Dutch Republic stood to her as a kind of Mecca, viewed in the light of her former lofty ideals; to others, of course, it was just a pretty, leafy little town, nestling between its surrounding hills. Brother officials of Piet’s would often come to the house—men who hitherto had been but names to her; genial, highly cultured gentlemen, differing pole-wide from the black-browed conspiring Guy Fawkes—such as the Colonial papers had delighted in painting them. Uitlanders too, with a grievance of course, would frequently show up: jolly, jovial, well-to-do looking, grievance and all; and at first it fairly puzzled her to note on what excellent terms they appeared to stand with their theoretical tyrants and oppressors. Sometimes, too, she got more than a passing glimpse of the President himself. Here again she failed to identify the perfidious ogre she had so often seen portrayed, both in type and pencil, by the newspapers aforesaid. Nay, more, she was even heretical enough to wonder whether if that personality, with all its shrewd intelligence, had been on the English side, ample tribute would not have been paid even to the outward aspect of the man—so far only described to be held up to repulsion and ridicule—the strong face, the impassive reticence, wherein alone lay a world of diplomatic might—the long stern record of pioneer, voortrekker, leader of men; the opening up of wild uncivilised lands—bearing a man’s part in wresting the wilderness from the inheritance of savagery to render it the heritage of posterity, and the unwavering fixity of purpose wherewith he had devoted every energy to preserving it for his own people and their children’s children. If her sojourn in Cape Town had been a liberal education to Aletta, truly Pretoria constituted a worthy continuation of the same.
“Now look at that, Piet,” she said, a day or two after her arrival, exhibiting an excellent portrait of her fiancé. “Didn’t I tell you there were Englishmen and Englishmen. Now, this one is not like the rest. Is he?”
“No. I don’t know that he is,” replied Piet Plessis, scanning the likeness intently. But to himself he was saying, “So! I must have a few inquiries made. I have seen that worthy before. Oh yes, I have.” But to her, “So he has been a neighbour of yours the last year or so, Aletta?”
“Yes. He was already settled down on his own place some time before I came home.”
“Was he? Never went off it, I suppose?”
“No”—wonderingly. “He has been there since he came back from Rhodesia, he and Frank Wenlock together. At least, he was looking out for a farm at first, while he was staying with the Wenlocks. Then he got one and hasn’t been off it since.”
“Not?”
“No—except to go into Schalkburg now and then, or to come and see us.”
“Oh yes. To come and see you?” rejoined Piet, jocosely. “Hasn’t been up here at all of late, eh?”
“He has been up here before, but not lately, not within the last year. I think longer, because he served through the Matabele rising. But he was up in Rhodesia some little while after that.”