Both looked furtively at each other and then at their father. The latter did not seem overjoyed at the news. In point of fact he was not. Personally the presence in his house of the Transvaal delegate would have afforded him the keenest gratification but that he knew as surely as though he had been told that the latter’s visit would be purely of a political nature, and Stephanus De la Rey preferred to leave politics severely alone. Not only that, but that his own conversion to the ranks of the secret agitators was the motive of the visit he more than suspected.
“Where did you hear that, Jan?” he said.
“Adrian told us, Pa. We saw him as we passed Friedrik Schoemann’s. He is coming up to-night too. Ja! you should hear him talk of the Patriot. He heard him two nights ago at Jan Grobbelaar’s. The Patriot spoke to him too—to him, Adrian. He says in a month or two we shall have driven all the English out of the country. See, Cornelis,” turning to his brother, “I wonder if that second post from the gate away yonder were an Englishman how long it would be standing there,” and he levelled his long Martini as though to put the matter to the test. But the reply which this demonstration elicited from their habitually easy-going and indulgent father both surprised and startled the two youths, and that mightily.
“Are you not ashamed of yourself, Jan, to stand there before me and talk such wicked nonsense? Is that the sort of Christianity the teaching of Mynheer, as well as of your own parents, has implanted in you, that you can talk about shooting men—Christian men like ourselves, remember—as you would talk of shooting buck? I have nothing to do with Adrian’s movements or ideas, although he is my nephew, but I have with yours; so listen to me. There is a great deal of wild talk being flung around just now, but I wish you to have nothing to do with it. Of course you cannot help hearing it from time to time, there is too much of it everywhere unfortunately; but I enjoin you not to take part in it. It is shameful the light way in which such weighty and serious subjects are discussed. When our fathers took up arms to defend their rights and liberties and their lives they did so prayerfully and with the full weight of their solemn responsibilities, and that is why they were victorious. But now such matters are bragged and chattered about by a herd of thoughtless boys. Leave them alone. The times are quite troublous enough, and things may come right or may not, but the only way in which we can help is to be quiet and to attend to our own business.”
“Oh, goeije! What are you giving those children such a scolding about, father?” chimed in a cheery voice, whose owner came bustling out on to the stoep.
Stephanus De la Rey turned his head, with a smile.
“I am giving them a little good advice,” he said, relighting his pipe. “And I don’t think I’ve ever given them any bad. Have I, boys?”
“No, Pa,” they answered, meaning it, too, but not sorry that their mother had come to the rescue: yet profoundly impressed by the stern earnestness of the paternal expostulation.
“Here come people,” said Stephanus, gliding easily from the subject, which he had no wish to prolong. “Can you make them out, Cornelis?”
“I think so,” replied the youth, shading his eyes, and gazing at two distant but rapidly approaching horsemen. “One is Adrian, and the other—I believe it’s an Englishman from the way he holds his feet in the stirrups. Ja—it is. It must be Colvin Kershaw.”