Luck at the Diamond Fields

by Dalrymple J. Belgrave

The day for the wedding had been almost settled when the troubles in Zululand began. Jack must needs go to it. It was too good a chance to miss, and Kitty had to make up her mind to wait. So she said good-bye to him, and he went off to join a corps of Irregular Colonial Horse as a Captain. She stopped at Kimberley and looked after the ‘Frozen Bar.’ She was terribly anxious when the first bad news came from Zululand, and until she heard that he was all right. But she tried to be brave and be thankful that he was having a chance of distinguishing himself.

She prospered fairly well, though she began to encourage a class of custom which was not very remunerative. The warriors who had served with Jack in the Diamond Field Horse took to frequenting the bar. They found that if they only talked enough about Jack, and told stories that redounded to his credit, Kitty would take the cards they signed for drinks in lieu of ready money without murmuring, and she would listen to these stories, somewhat to the neglect of gentlemen of the diamond market who, if their lives were less romantic, paid with greater regularity for what they had to drink.

There was a good deal to do in Zululand for the Irregular Horse, and when there was anything to be done, Jack was in his right place. He was on the Zlobani Hill on that fatal day on which so many of the Light Horse were killed. There were a good many brave deeds done that day, comrade risking life to save comrade in that wild rush from the Kaffirs who had again out-manoeuvred their white foes. Jack was cool and collected on that day, as he usually was in danger. As he rode down the hill for his life he heard a shout behind him. A young Guardsman, who had come out on special service, had come to grief; his horse had been killed and the Kaffirs were almost upon him. How Jack got through the Kaffirs and managed to get away with the man he took up he hardly knows, but he did, and he brought him back to safety.

It happened that the youngster whom Jack saved was the son of a great English statesman, and heir to half a county; and this was all the better for him, for nothing now-a-days gets much of a price unless it is well advertised: and the brave deeds of soldiers (as some men have learnt to their profit) are no exceptions to this rule.

As it was, Jack’s deed was much written about by special correspondents, and when the news came home, much talked about in London drawing-rooms; and in time the news came out to South Africa, that Jack was to be made a V.C.

When the news came to Kimberley, some one lent Kitty a packet of English papers so that she could read what they were saying about Jack at home. She had taken them and one of Jack’s letters and had gone up the Garden, as a desolate bit of land was called where some trees had been planted, and some feeble attempt at gardening had been made; she wanted to be by herself to think it all over.

She read all about Jack in the papers, and learnt that he was the nephew of the General Douglas, who was a distinguished officer in the Crimea. The report said he had been at Harrow, but was silent about his career at Sandhurst.

The papers were full of him, and every one at home seemed to be proud of the brave young colonial soldier, who at the peril of his life had saved the high-born boy, about whom everybody was glad to have an excuse for talking and writing. His picture was in two of the illustrated papers. There was a leader about him in one of the dailies. Of course Kitty thought the latter a very beautiful piece of writing, and wondered what all the classical quotations meant, and who the long-named persons to whom Jack was compared were. And this was the man who loved her—this hero, this brave soldier. How she wished she was different from what she was!—a lady who would be fit for him, not a poor half-taught woman, who had lived a hard life amongst rough, coarse people, and had got the little education she had from the bits of plays she had learnt and the novels she had read, and the queer side of society which she had seen. Well, if she was the finest lady in the world, she thought, she would not be worthy of him. Cynical little Kitty, who was so well able to sum any one up at their right value, and whose estimates were seldom too favourable, had at last set up an idol which she bowed down before and worshipped none the less reverently because her experience ought to have taught her that it was made of rather poor clay. She had been sitting some time thinking over her past, and wondering what her future would be, torturing herself by doubting whether he really did care for her, or could care for her, and reading over his letter again and again, when she heard Jack Douglas’s name spoken by some one. She was sitting on a bench by a cactus hedge; there were two men on the other side who were talking about him, as a good many people in Kimberley were. “I know all about him,” one man said; “he comes from the same part of the country that I do. He would have had his uncle, General Douglas’s property, only he got into some row at Sandhurst, and his uncle said he had disgraced himself, and turned him adrift. My people tell me that the General intends to have him back again and forgive him, he is so pleased at his getting the V.C. So he’d be all right, only he has been fool enough to have got engaged to some woman out here. What’s her name? That woman who keeps ‘The Frozen Bar.’

“By George, what a fool! Not that she isn’t a jolly little woman in her way, but one wouldn’t care to introduce her to one’s people at home as one’s wife,” said the other.

“Yes; I spoke to him about it when he was here last, but he didn’t take what I said over well. I fancy he knew he was making a fool of himself and was sick of it, though it didn’t matter then, as there wasn’t much chance of his uncle ever making it up with him,” the other man said, and then they began talking about something else, little knowing who had overheard, and what a nasty wound their words had made.