He had pleaded to be allowed the use of the tent he had hitherto occupied—at any rate, until nightfall. Not many more hours of God’s air and sunshine would be his, he had urged. But a decided refusal had been returned—a refusal tinged with characteristic sanctimoniousness. He would be better in confinement. There he would find nothing to distract his thoughts in his preparation for the great and solemn change, he was told, as would be the case if he were where he could see and hear everyday sights and sounds, and others moving about him. So here he was, under a strong guard, locked up within a not very clean or sweet-smelling stable for the few remaining hours of his life.
He looked around. Even then he could hardly realise it. More than once he had been in here before, seeing to his horse, on such occasions as he visited Gideon Roux. The worm-eaten and much bitten crib, the pile of old forage ends, and stamped-in grains of stale mealies underneath it, and a curry-comb and brush, and an old headstall or two hanging from a peg—the forage cutter had been taken away—all looked so home-like and everyday. It seemed incredible, incongruous, even absurd to try and realise that this place was for him as truly a condemned cell as the massive walls and stone floor of the preliminary living tomb in old Newgate or Holloway.
He could hear the sounds of the camp—the hum of harsh voices, and now and then the tramp of a horse. Sounds, too, redolent of peaceful and everyday life—the clucking of poultry, the bleat of a goat, the fretful yelp of a child, and the now monotonous, now querulous voices of women, for the house was but a few score yards away. Yes, it was hard to realise that these four brick walls constituted but the ante-room to the far narrower walls of earth, which by that time to-morrow would have closed round his bloody and lifeless remains.
Was there no prospect of escape? Again and again, while pacing up and down his strange prison, had he calculated his chances. Frank Wenlock had escaped, but only through aid from without. Who would aid him, and if any would, how could they? As for any efforts of his own, of what avail? The window was strongly barred, and two guards, armed with magazine rifles, were posted immediately beneath, as he was reminded by the frequent appearance of a face at the said bars. Two more were before the door, and as for drilling an aperture in the wall, why he had nothing to do it with. The possibility, too, of tunnelling under the foundation of the further wall occurred to him, and here his eye once more rested on the old curry-comb. But the floor of the place was stone paved, and the noise inevitable to the undertaking would betray him twenty times over, even at night. Moreover, he was only too well aware that in view of the former escape the vigilance of his custodians would be more than doubled.
He remembered Andries Botma’s final offer of assistance, and his first appeal had been that the judgment upon himself should be postponed until he had communicated with the man for whom these here professed such profound veneration. But this proposal Schoeman had curtly negatived, nor would he permit any communication whatever with the outside world. Such farewell words as the prisoner had to leave for relatives or friends he might remit to the predikant, but even these must be written in the presence of Mynheer himself.
Once the thought of sending for Adrian De la Rey crossed his mind. An appeal to Adrian’s superstitions and a solemn warning to him to withdraw from this deliberate act of murder might be effectual. But the idea was scouted as soon as conceived. Adrian had everything to gain by his destruction—and was he likely to throw away the crowning triumph of his plot at the very moment of grasping it? Not in the very least likely, and besides, the barrier of pride rose up against any such course.
And what of Aletta? Never now would he get at the mystery which had dictated that enigmatical message, never now ascertain what had caused her great love to fail and waver in distrust and doubt. That Adrian was behind this, too, he was equally certain. He had not been mistaken in Aletta. Her nature was no ordinary one to be disturbed and shaken by a mere ordinary motive for doubt, however craftily suggested. Yet what was the secret of that doubt? Try, rack his brains as he would, he got no nearer to it than before. Her words were always in his mind: ‘Remember, I saw,’ but never suggesting even the feeblest glimmer of explanation. What had she seen—when, where, and how? Nothing that regarded him. On that point his conscience was perfectly clear. Since they had exchanged their mutual love vows his conscience, as towards her, was as clear as the sky above them at that moment. Yes, looking back now upon those long and happy months, he realised that the latter end of his life, at any rate, had contained for him all that was worth living for. And now that he had touched its outer edge, a strange philosophical feeling of satisfaction that she, at any rate, would not have her life spoiled by his memory, if she had already learned to distrust him, came over him—a satisfaction that well-nigh quenched the bitterness and disillusioning that she had done so. Almost, but not quite—for, after all, he was but human.
The hours wore on. His guards thrust food and drink—of the coarsest description—into his prison, and retired without a word, carefully relocking the door. It was evident that they were under very special orders, and would answer no questions. He was left once more to his own thoughts.
Colvin stood in no greater fear of death than most other men who have more than once seen it very near; yet that helpless sense of being shut up, to meet it in cold blood at a given time, was a trifle creepy and unnerving. More than once, in his dreams, he had been under sentence of death, had even come to the steps of the scaffold, and each time had seemed every bit as realistic as the last, or, if possible, more so. Was this, too, a dream? Should he wake up directly and find himself back again at Pretoria, or at Ratels Hoek, or his own farm? He looked around. Was he really awake—or was this, too, only another nightmare? Ah no. It was very real.
About his worldly affairs he felt but scant anxiety. They were all in order. He was a fairly methodical man, and before leaving for the theatre of battle and hourly risk he had seen to all that. After all, some would be the gainers by his end—some perhaps who needed to be, very sorely—some who would even in consequence remember him with a little kindness and gratitude. Yet there was but little of the last in this world, he reflected, tolerantly cynical.