Luck at the Diamond Fields

by Dalrymple J. Belgrave

Story 7.

A Vaal River Heiress.

Part One.

The General, as he had been called since diamond-digging first broke out on the banks of the Vaal River, inhabited a hut built of rough stones and thatched with reeds near the river-bank at Red Shirt Rush.

He was the owner of some claims, and he had worked at Red Shirt since he came up to the Vaal from the colony to try his luck as a diamond-digger; and when other diggers went hither and thither to new places on the river, or were attracted by the rich diggings which afterwards became famous as the South African diamond mines, the old General worked on at Red Shirt as if he were quite satisfied with the rewards that fortune thought fit to bestow upon his labours there, and would laugh at the men who were attracted elsewhere by glowing reports. He could hardly be said to be contented with Red Shirt—certainly if he were he expressed his content peculiarly, for he seldom talked of the place without an uncomplimentary epithet; but he probably was imbued with the gambler’s belief in the doctrine of chances, and hoped his luck would change, while he was too discontented with the results of every move he had made in his life to care to make any more. He was generally supposed to be the unluckiest man down the river, and his bad luck was a very favourite subject for discussion and exaggeration at the canteens and places where diggers congregated.

His former history, and the reasons which led him to take to diamond-digging, were subjects which afforded scope for imaginations which found life down the river, when finds were few and far between, barren of topics of interest; and certainly his appearance and manners seemed to show that he was much out of place in the community he found himself in. He was an aristocratic, reserved man, from whom years of rough life had not taken the unmistakable stamp of the military officer.

It was generally believed down the river that the General’s relations at home were very great people, and he was looked upon as a man with a history. Luney White, the Vaal River poet, whose contribution to the Diamond Field newspapers caused quite a furore down the river, many bets being made, and much fighting and drinking being occasioned, by the difficult question of what they were all about, and what he meant by them at all, retailed, on the pretence of having heard it from an army officer at Capetown, a story that the General had allowed the suspicion of a terrible murder to rest upon him so as to shield the really guilty person, a lady of exalted rank, and was, at present, a fugitive from justice in consequence of his noble conduct. Luney’s story rather took for a day or two, until some one remembered having read just such a tale in a book the poet had borrowed from him—a circumstance which threw doubts, not only upon the veracity of the story, but on the originality of their poet’s genius, which, up to then, they had believed in. The General’s real name was hardly known, and he was never spoken of by it, though it was to be seen on a tombstone in the Barkly Cemetery, which was put up to the memory of Constance, wife of John Stanby, of Red Shirt Rush, Vaal River. He was the father of a golden-haired little girl of seventeen, who had grown up from a child on the banks of the Vaal. His story had not really been a romantic or remarkable one. Like many another man of good old family but no money he had gone into the army. After serving for some dozen years he had got into the clutches of the Jews by backing a bill for a brother officer. For some years he fought against his debts, but in the end he was obliged to surrender his commission to his enemies, and leave the service. Then, when his affairs were sufficiently hopeless, he fell in love with and married a girl who had not a penny, and, after having tried in vain to get something to do in England, went out to the Cape and was attracted up to Vaal River when diamonds were first found. Though he was under fifty, he had become a grizzled, old-looking man, broken in spirits by persistent misfortune; and yet he was a strange mixture, for at times he was as sanguine as when he first put a pick into the soil of South Africa.

Those who said that he never found exaggerated his ill-success, though not perhaps his ill-luck; at long intervals a few ill-looking, off-coloured little diamonds had turned up on his sorting-table, which, if they were to be considered as a recompense for all his weary work, were Fortune’s insults added to her injuries; but nevertheless kept up in him a curious sort of hope, which through all his bad luck he retained, notwithstanding his bitter grumbling against South Africa in particular, and all things in general. To himself constantly, and to others when he met any one he cared to speak to, he would inveigh bitterly against his luck. First of all he would wish that he had never gone into the army; then he would curse the fate which had made him choose the particular branch of the service he had gone into; then he would curse the day he had left the service; and then he would collect every malediction he had made use of and every other he knew, and fire one withering sulphurous volley at fate, which had made him a digger on the Vaal River. These explosions would seem to do him much good, for after one of them he would generally seem much relieved, and as likely as not in a few minutes would be talking about what he would do when he found, as he felt sure he would find when he had got the top stuff off his claim, or got into the lime layer which he would strike in another ten feet, or started into the new ground he was going to work in a month or two.

There were two diggers at Red Shirt with whom the General was on intimate terms—Charlie Langdale and Jim Heap. The former was a light-hearted, cheery youngster of about twenty-two, in many respects a typical river-digger. He was restless and unable to take kindly to any work which entailed obedience; had a rare gift for getting into any mischief that was going on, while he possessed very little reverence for his seniors and those who thought themselves his betters; on the other hand, he was superior to many colonial youths in that he did not lie as a rule, nor boast overmuch, and could speak a few sentences without swearing hideously. The first time the General had seen him he was holding his own against a big Irish digger who was trying to bully him out of a claim he was working; and the nonchalant way in which he laughed at the Irishman’s threats, and put the right value on them, impressed the General so much in his favour that he at once struck up an intimacy, and the two became great allies.