Luck at the Diamond Fields

by Dalrymple J. Belgrave

“What good fun that woman is; such a lot of ‘go’ in her,” said one of the men who had left the place to another as they walked home together. “I don’t like to hear her,” said the other, a man whose ideals were somewhat higher, though his habits of life were even more irregular than those of most men on the Diamond Fields. “She is such a good little woman—a deal too good to talk as she does.”

These men would have been surprised if they had seen the woman they were talking about whom they had left in such high spirits. The place was empty, she was leaning with her elbows on the bar and her shapely hands covering her face, sobbing as if her heart would break. Yes, she thought, she was a fool to have cared anything for him or any other man. Were they not all either hard, selfish, and heartless, or reckless, prodigal, and hopeless?

With all her knowledge of the world she lived in, she had made what her experience told her was the most hopeless of mistakes a woman can commit, for she had let herself care a great deal too much for Jack, the ne’er-do-well and loafer, whose fate his old friends had been discussing. What they had said was probably true, she thought; it was no use doing anything for him. She had tried to help him. She had found some money to send him on a prospecting trip down the Vaal—not because she believed in the new mine he was prospecting, but because she thought it would be a good thing for him to get away from Kimberley—but here he was, having left his work to look after itself, back again in the camp at Kimberley, enjoying its pleasures such as they were. Yes, they were right, there was not much chance for him: his associates were about the worst lot in the camp. He seemed to be going the road which has taken so many a Kimberley man to the prison, yet she couldn’t leave him to travel it. Ah, what a fool she was, she thought. She had forgotten to call her boy to shut the place up though it was late, and she hears a step at the door. At once she wipes her eyes and looks herself again.

He was a man of about five-and-twenty. Once he must have been very good-looking, and even then his face had some of its old grace about it. Now, however, it told a very ugly story plainly enough. It was haggard and worn with drink and dissipation, and he had a reckless, defiant expression as if he refused to show a shame he felt. Even for the Diamond Fields his dress was rather careless. One of his eyes was discoloured, while on his cheek he had marks of a more recent cut. Any one who knew colonial life could sum him up. An Englishman well-born, who has gone to the bad; a type of man to be met with all over the colonies, the man who has been sent abroad so that he should not disgrace his people at home. There are openings for such men abroad, so their kind friends at home say, and so there are;—canteen-doors, the gates of divers colonial jails, and then one six feet by two, not made too deep, the job being badly paid for.

Staggering up to the bar he asked Kitty how she was, and called for a drink. There was rather a sharper tone than usual in her voice as she told him that it was too late and that she was going to close. “You had better go back to the ‘Corner Bar,’ that is more in your line than this place, isn’t it?” she added.

“All right,” he said, “I will clear out. I suppose I am not good enough for this shanty. So good night.”

“Stop,” she said, changing her mind as he turned to go away; “you needn’t be in such a hurry; I want to ask you something. What are you doing—where are you staying now?”

“Staying? Oh, anywhere. I slept on the veldt last night; I am going to sleep at old Sloeman’s place to-night. He is a good sort, is old Sloeman—don’t turn his back on a man because he is down on his luck. I am going to work with him.”

Mr Sloeman was the owner of some claims in one of the mines which nobody else had ever made pay, but in which, without doing much work, he professed to have found a great many diamonds. He also was the proprietor of a canteen of more than shady reputation, and had an interest in one or two Kaffir stores. Some people were unkind enough to suggest that the diamonds he professed to find in his claims were bought at his canteen, or at his stores, from Kaffirs who had stolen them from their masters’ claims. Mr Sloeman was notorious for the kindly interest he took in likely young men who were out of work. He gave them a billet in one of his stores, or in his canteen, or as an overseer to work in those wonderful claims. Curiously enough a large proportion of those young men had attracted the attention of the detective police, and had found their way to the prison charged with buying stolen diamonds; but Mr Sloeman himself prospered.

“Stop, Jack, you are not going up there to-ight. One of my rooms is empty, you can have that. I wouldn’t go up there to-night,” said Kitty.