Perhaps some subtle message passed from her hand to his for his eyes cleared. He went down from the stoep, untied his horse, and mounted. It was a good horse and he sat on it as only a born rider can sit. If Chrissie’s good figure could not be hidden neither could Braddon’s horsemanship, and that is an accomplishment which Boer girls, in common with most other girls, admire. He was well aware of Chrissie’s glance fixed upon him as he rode away, swaying easily and gracefully in his saddle. He was not quite sure why the fact was so pleasing to him, but he whistled a gay little air, and the world looked a good place to him, and life much more attractive than it had looked an hour ago.
Six months later, Nick Retief sat again on his stoep gazing with sombre eyes before him. At a casual glance all seemed unchanged, but a trained observer would have detected two profound differences: the landscape was no longer naked, and the old Boer had grown markedly older.
His beard and hair showed great patches of white amidst their shaggy sandiness, the old eyes were bloodshot and full of strain, the folds of skin sheathing them reddened and weary. It was the sight they looked upon that made them weary: a line of tents not five hundred yards from the stoep, some tin shanties, huge piles of sleepers and rails, and a trail of pitched-up rocks and yellowy-grey earth. The gangers were at work on the business of bridging the Kat River and laying the railway line across Jackalsfontein.
The old veld eyes that stared at that hated sight had seen many strange things since the morning when Braddon made his first appearance at Jackalsfontein. At last they had looked upon the sea, and the ships upon it, and the men that go in the ships; upon tram-cars and hansom cabs and streets crowded with fashionable women. Incidentally they had seen the inside of a Law Court, not once but many times.
On six several occasions Nick had donned his black stove-pipe hat and driven the Clan-William bays acquired from Carol Uys to Piquetberg and been accompanied from thence to Cape Town by Frickie de Villiers the slim. But all the sights his eyes had there beheld brought him no solace, nor a passing thrill of interest. He had been at grapples with the Government; absorbed in the great fight to keep silent and naked the acres that he loved. And the Government had defeated him. The railway had come!
Money had flowed like water, and it was not Government money. Little was now left of the original 2000 pounds that once had lain snug in the paraffin tin under the bed of the defunct Mrs Retief. To drag a case from the ordinary courts to the Supreme Court of the land and from thence to appeal to the House of Assembly does not cost nothing. Neither do the services of such slim ones of the earth as Frickie de Villiers, and a firm of Cape Town solicitors (who were Frickie’s cousins) and, finally, an eminent Q.C. (who was Frickie’s uncle) cost nothing. Nothing costs nothing when it comes to meddling with the law. Nick knew this now to his cost. Knew too that governments can be vindictive as well as arrogant. He had never heard of such a person as Lord Chesterfield, but of one Chesterfieldism at least he was now in a position to prove the truth:
“Never quarrel with large bodies or societies:
Individuals sometimes forgive; societies never do.”
Instead of awarding him the compensation originally suggested for Jackalsfontein the Government had set a fresh brace of men to the task of assessment, with disastrous results for Nick. These officials, practical men with no fantastic illusions about the value of rock veld, rhenoster shrub, and stink-boschie, had written Jackalsfontein down for the poorest kind of cattle land. Such land is dirt-cheap in South Africa, and the Government was well within its rights in paying for it at dirt-cheap rates. What was worse, it would pay for no more than was absolutely needed to lay a narrow track of steel rails. The land that lay on either side of the fenced-off track, Nick was informed he could keep. That these wire fences would cut the farm in two thereby lessening its value, and that the nearest crossing gates were to be erected three miles away, was Nick’s misfortune, part of the reward he had reaped for “quarrelling with large bodies.”
At any rate, it was all over now. Nick had eaten and drunk of Justice, grace had been said, and it was finished. The iron heel of the Law had him down in the dust. Nothing more for the old farmer to do but sit in the sunshine and watch the ridge of pitched-up earth creep over his land. His eyes were weary, but his heart was like a red-hot stone in his side.