Luck at the Diamond Fields

by Dalrymple J. Belgrave

“He’s all right; it will be a rope that will break his neck,” said Brawnston, as the man on the ground began to move. The other two men began to pull themselves together, and after a good deal of bad language from the defeated party, the incident came to an end, and every one turned off to sleep; Darrell thinking to himself that his endeavour to prevent the lady passenger’s sleep from being disturbed had been singularly unsuccessful.

The next morning when the coach started, several black eyes and damaged faces bore witness to the disturbance of the night before. Aarons was badly marked, and seemed by no means to have recovered the rough handling he had received; for he was much less cheerful than he had been, and his conversation for some time was confined to a few muttered vows of vengeance against Darrell. Jim Brawnston, too, had the satisfaction of being able to admire the colour he had put on to the faces of Aarons’ two friends. The treatment seemed to have been very beneficial in taking the insolence and noise out of the patients who had been subjected to it, and in consequence the journey became much pleasanter; and after all it was not so bad as it had promised to be. Brawnston had plenty of stories to tell of South African adventure. After Darrell expressed his remorse at having been to a certain extent the cause of the unseemly broil of the night before, and had been forgiven by Kate, as he was soon enough, a sympathy that became stronger every day grew up between them.

It was on the fourth day of their journey that the coach had outspanned at a farm-house by the roadside, and Kate and Darrell were sitting under some trees in the garden of the farm-house, by the edge of a cool shaded pool of water. There is a certain charm about those South African farms which most travellers in the country must have experienced. One seems to have never before enjoyed seeing trees and the soft green of vegetation until one has travelled for miles in the desert. The few bright flowers and the patch of waving maize are more grateful than in a country of fields and trees the most carefully tended garden could be. One of the team of mules which had been inspanned at the last station had turned sick, and the guard of the coach, careless of the remonstrance of the other passengers, who were in a hurry to get to their journey’s end, had prolonged their outspan for some hours to give the sick beast time to get round. Neither Darrell nor Kate were indignant at the delay or were in a hurry to start. They had only known each other for a few days, but already they felt as if they were old friends. Those long days of travelling across the stretches of desert veldt can be pleasant enough. There is something in the atmosphere and surroundings of the country that makes one forget the past, and feel careless of the future; it has the same effect upon one’s mind as the sea has. One gets the feeling of rest and distance, and begins to fancy that one has little to do with oneself, as one was once in other lands that seem so far away. There is nothing to be met with that reminds one of the rest of the world. The strings of laden waggons slowly wending their way over the veldt to the distant Diamond Fields, give an idea of carelessness about time, and worry, and the world in general. The sleepy looking farm-houses, where there is none of the thriving bustle of other lands—and everything suggests progression only at ox-waggon pace—help to carry out the idea.

In those days Darrell had learnt almost all that there was to learn about this companion’s history, but had in return told her very little about himself, though she had gathered from what he said that he had seen a good deal of life, had lived most of his life in good society, was a gentleman, but for some reason or other, so she fancied, the memory of his past life was painful to him, though she was sure that his story had not been discreditable. As they sat in the shade looking at the group of passengers collected round the sick mule, and listening lazily to the voice of the member of the Legislative Assembly, who was denouncing the guard for not inspanning at once, the same thought was in both their minds—their journey would soon be at an end, and very likely they would never see each other again; for the farm she was going to was sixty miles from Kimberley, while he was going to the Vaal River diggings. One thought had been for some time in his mind. Why should his whole life be wrecked because of that act of folly in his youth? Did not the thousands of miles that separated him from England break the shameful tie he loathed? Who need ever know that George Darrell, digger, of Red Shirt Rush, Vaal River, was the same man as Darrell of the Lancers, who like a fool made his good old name shameful by giving it to the woman he had married. He cursed his folly as he remembered himself little more than a boy marrying a woman years older than himself, who, wild as he was then, was as much his inferior morally as she was socially. It was the life he had been leading which had left him weak enough to become drunk with that woman’s coarse beauty, he told himself, as he cursed the folly of that one sin, for which fate never forgives a man, which he had committed. She did not want anything more from him. He had settled all he had on her before he left England for ever; she had got all she married him for, and would not bother him any more. Why should he not forget all about her and his old life?

“Yes,” he said, partly answering something she had said and partly continuing his own thoughts, “there is something in this country that gets rid of old memories, hopes, and ambitions. Four or five generations of it have turned the descendants of knightly French Huguenots into the dull brutish Dutch Boers one meets here, who have not two ideas in their heads beyond eating and sleeping, and are far less civilised than the Kaffirs. Yes, it’s a good country to forget in.”

“I hope not,” she answered; “I don’t want to forget my past; I have plenty of happy memories.” As she spoke a sad look came into her eyes.

“You have a past you can look back on with pleasure; I can only curse my folly when I look back,” he said bitterly.

For a second or two he was silent, struggling with himself. Why should he suppose that she would take any interest in hearing the shameful secret of his life?—but something told him that he had better tell it. Then without leading up to it, he told her the story of his marriage, and about the woman in England who was his wife.

Very clumsily he told it, but he felt all the better when he had got it out. At first when she heard his story she realised how much she had begun to care for this man whom she had known only a few days; then she felt angry with herself for feeling so much interested in his history, and determined that he should never know that she had not listened to it with perfect indifference.

“What a fool I was to think that she would care; I might have saved myself the trouble of telling her my private affairs,” Darrell said to himself, when, having listened to him with ostentatious unconcern, she made some excuse to leave him and go to the coach.