He stared at the sheet of paper, and his look of bewilderment grew blanker and blanker. What did it mean? What on earth could it mean? No explanations needed? But they very much were needed, he thought. And what on earth mystery lay covered by those words, so significantly underlined—“I saw?” What did the writer see? The thing passed comprehension. He turned to the other letter with some wild hope of finding enlightenment there.
It did not afford him much. Aletta had asked her to enclose this note to him, wrote Mrs Plessis, and was going back home to Ratels Hoek at once. “I hope there is nothing wrong,” she went on, “but the child has been very strange during the last two or three days. I don’t know what to make of it. She will not give me her confidence, and made me promise faithfully not so much as to hint to Piet that anything had upset her. She leaves us to-morrow, and travels back home in charge of Adrian. But I trust there is nothing really the matter.”
In charge of Adrian! Ah, now he began to see light. Adrian was behind whatever had happened. Why, of course. His every motive made that way. All that cordiality of his had not altogether gone down with Colvin. There was a suggestion of malice underlying it, which should have put him more on his guard. Adrian had played him some dirty trick in his absence, though what it might be he could as yet form no idea.
He glanced at the letter, also at the note. Both bore a date some ten days old. Why, Aletta would have been home now for days. Well, his mind was made up. Instead of returning to Pretoria, he would proceed straight to Ratels Hoek. No explanation needed! It struck him that that very thing was most urgently needed.
He applied to Andries Botma for facilities, which, being English, he would need to prosecute his journey and to ensure his safe passage through any of the Republican forces he might fall in with. These were readily granted, and the Commandant bade him a kind and cordial farewell.
“I need not remind you, Mynheer Kershaw,” he said, in Dutch, for “The Patriot” never spoke English, although perfectly able to do so, unless positively obliged—“I need not remind you that you have pledged your solemn word of honour to divulge nothing that you may have seen or heard during the time you have been with us. But it is not entirely the other side I distrust, and therefore I would impress upon you the necessity of using the greatest caution in conversing with those who, by nationality, are our own people. But many of them (with shame I say it) are not really our own people—that is, they are not heart and soul with us. They will not strike a blow for the sacred cause—at least not yet. They are waiting to see which will prove the victorious side—as if there could be any doubt. These are the people I would warn you against, when you are back once more across the river. But you are one of us now, for I hear you are to marry Stephanus De la Rey’s daughter. In that receive my most cordial wishes—and carry my compliments to Stephanus and all our good friends in the Wildschutsberg. And if hereafter I can be of service to you at any time—why, it will be to me an agreeable duty. Farewell.”
Colvin shook hands warmly with the kindly Dutch Commandant, and, armed with his credentials, went forth. At the moment he little thought of the weight of that last promise, still less what it might or might not be destined to mean for him in the not distant future. He thought more on the subject of the other’s congratulations, for they stirred up a very real and desolating misgiving. What if events should already have rendered them devoid of meaning?
His journey to the border seemed to him intolerably long and depressing, but its monotony was varied more than once by meeting with a party of burghers patrolling the country or on their way to join Cronje’s force. These would scan his credentials narrowly and suspiciously, but the name of Andries Botma was as a very talisman, and they allowed him to proceed. At the passage of the Orange River, some delay occurred. This, however, was at last surmounted, but it was towards the close of the third day that he found himself—riding a very tired horse—entering the Wildschutsberg range, just beyond which lay his own home, and, yet nearer, Ratels Hoek.
Straight to the latter he intended to proceed, and now, as he drew so near, for the hundredth time he was cudgelling his brains over the mystery of Aletta’s strange behaviour, and for the hundredth time was forced to own himself no nearer finding a clue to it than before—except that he still connected it in some way with the evil influence or trickery of Adrian. Well, two or three hours more would clear it up, for he and Aletta would talk face to face, and in her own home.