He no longer worked. The management of the farm had devolved entirely on Chrissie, and though she was no fool, the burden of care and responsibility weighed heavily on her shoulders.
So absorbed was the old man in this business of watching that he appeared to have forgotten everything else. He came out in the dawn and sat through the unsheltered day in his reimpje chair. Sometimes even after night-fall he sat on, staring through the darkness until the camp lights died out and all was wrapped in silence. Then he would lift up his great bulk and shamble heavily to bed.
And with each day his bulk seemed to grow greater. It was not a wasting sickness, this sickness he had of hate and rage. Chrissie noticed on the day of his last return from Cape Town, that he had assumed a curious resemblance to her mother in the latter stages of her illness. Old Tanta Christina had died of dropsy, and the girl sometimes wondered sadly whether the same disease, common amongst Boers, would snatch away her father. But though he grew swollen and visibly stouter there was none of the transparent whiteness which accompanies dropsy. Rather his colouring was red and purple, almost as if a fire, flaming within, boiled the very blood in his veins, bloating out his body and blearing his eyes. There were hours when Chrissie had a childish fear that he would burst. These were usually the hours when the gangers were at work with dynamite.
For the engineer and his gang were not finding the affair of bridging the river and laying the rails across Jackalsfontein any too easy to accomplish. The rocks, concerning whose presence the valuers had been so explicit, justified their existence by appearing in places where they could best have been dispensed with. Dynamiting went on three times a day, and three times a day men fled in every direction for shelter. Once, during the first days they ran to the farm, but no more than once. The grim man sitting so quiet in his armchair frightened them. There was something awe-inspiring about that big figure and the sombre, vigilant glance of the bloodshot eyes. A superstitious Irish navvy declared that the farmer possessed the evil eye and had put the black curse of Ballyshane on them all.
It is true that an extraordinary number of accidents had distinguished the rail-laying operations since Diepner’s land had been left for Retief’s. Scarcely a day passed without witnessing the sight of a trolley carrying off some injured ganger to the Cape Town Hospital.
Those in charge too, had experienced trouble. Three different engineers had come and gone since the commencement of the bridge. First, Braddon, after waiting for two months on the Diepner side of the river, had barely settled his men on the Retief side, when he went down with enteric and had to be trollied off to the old Somerset Hospital at Cape Town. The next man broke his leg three weeks after taking charge. The third got blood-poisoning from a veld sore. A temporary man, put in charge, was called away to Kimberley by the sudden death of his wife. Now Braddon, after a long and slow convalescence, was back again.
He and Chrissie had met only twice since the date of their first acquaintance. One afternoon he had ridden over with the prints of her photograph in his pocket. Old Retief was away on his first visit to Cape Town, and a girl friend from Piquetberg had come to keep Chrissie company in her father’s absence. It happened that some folk from a neighbouring farm were also visiting Jackalsfontein, and there was rather a large gathering in the big Eat-kammer. The girls, merry as mossies in the corn, entertained their guests with coffee and cookies and there was a great deal of laughing. Mart Lategan, the Piquetberg girl, was of the giggling, hoydenish type, and if Chrissie had shown herself of the same inclination the party might have developed into rather a rowdy affair. It is easy in out-of-the-way places on the veld where there are no particular standards of conduct and the climate insidiously slackens the moral and physical muscles, to pass from unrestrained laughter to the broad jokes that distinguish social intercourse amongst the less cultivated Boers.
But about Chrissie Retief there was a new and quiet dignity that toned down the noisy humour of the others, and kept a certain sweet quality in the atmosphere, like a fresh breeze blowing through the room. It seemed as though in her father’s absence she felt the honour of the house upon her shoulders, and must carry it carefully. Braddon’s eye rested often on her, and though hardly any conversation passed between them that was not common with, and to, the others, their glances sometimes crossed, blended, and ended in each other’s eyes. Just before he left, they were alone for a moment, and Braddon was able to produce the photographs. She went red with pleasure, looking quickly from one pose to the other.
“Is that me, then? My! how nice I look!”
“Not nearly nice enough for you. All your lovely colouring is lost,” he said, looking at her rosy cheek.