When he came up some ten minutes after he found that she had left the party. The people to whose farm she was going had been to Kimberley, and on their way back they had come round to meet the coach. She was to go with them, and had got into their waggon. The horses were inspanned to the coach; he had only time to say good-bye when they started off. Would they ever meet again, he thought, as he looked back over the flat at the waggon, until it became a white speck on the horizon.
Chapter Two.
A year had passed since Kate said good-bye to George Darrell. Her life seemed to her to be divided into three volumes—her early life, the journey up to the Diamond Fields, and her present life at Jagger’s Drift. The last volume seemed likely to be dull enough. Day after day passed without any strange face coming or any incident happening. The family consisted of Mr Van Beers, a good-natured old Dutchman, who slept a good deal, and had very little to say for himself when he was awake; his wife, who had never time to attend to anything but the children, of whom there were about a dozen, the eldest a boy of fourteen, the youngest an infant in arms. Taking it altogether, Kate’s life was a fairly happy one, for though it was dull, there was very little to trouble her, and it was free from many of the little vexations which would be her lot at home. One drawback of it was, that she had too much time for thinking, and her thoughts curiously often went back to the incidents of the journey up, and she often in her mind’s eye saw the face of George Darrell as it looked when he blurted out the secret of his life. From that day she had never heard of him; little news ever came to Jagger’s Drift, and none would be likely to come of such an obscure person as George Darrell, digger, of Red Shirt Rush, Vaal River. That digging she had heard was up the river some sixty miles off. Many a time she had looked up stream and wondered how he was faring, and whether he still ever thought of her. The Homestead at Jagger’s Drift was a large, one-storied house, with a garden running down to the river. On the other side the house fronted a long flat, stretching far away to a range of low hills in the distance. A dozen or so of wood waggons would pass every day on their way to the Diamond Fields, but there was little other traffic. Across the river was Gordon, a place which some speculative people fondly believe is destined to be an important centre in the future. It had for reasons known to the authorities at Capetown, and to no one else, been chosen as the seat of the magistracy for a large district, and there was a magistrate’s house, a jail, and some police tents; while a court-house was being built. There were also two canteens, in one or the other of which in turn the spare population collected and listened to the proprietor of the establishment as he cursed his rival.
The new Government buildings were to be on a grand scale, quite up to what Gordon was destined to become in the future, according to the estimate of the most sanguine believers in it. “They mock us with their damned buildings,” was the opinion often expressed by Jack Johnstone, the Civil Commissioner’s clerk, as he looked at the new erections with a malevolent eye, for he had applied persistently and in vain for an increase of his salary, and he looked upon all other expenditure of Government money as a personal insult.
“Blessed if they haven’t brought a lot of white convicts over here to muddle away at that cursed place,” he said to McFlucker the canteen-keeper one afternoon, as, with a pipe in his mouth, he stood outside the latter’s store, and looked towards the hated erection, where some Kaffirs and white men were working listlessly as convicts do work. “That’s not a lag’s face, I’d have bet; if I had seen it anywhere else I’d have sworn that fellow was a gentleman and an honest man; he looks it, though he has got a broad arrow stamped on his shirt,” he said, as he noticed one convict, a tall man, who looked very unlike his companions. “But I dare say he is the biggest scoundrel of the lot,” he added.
Just then Kate Gray, who had come across the river with some of the young Van Beers, walked past the building. Johnstone, as he watched her with a good deal of admiration, noticed that she was also looking in the direction of the tall convict who had attracted his attention. To his surprise he felt almost certain that he saw their eyes meet with a glance of recognition. She seemed to start and almost pause for a second. The convict pushed his hat over his eyes, and stooped over his work as if he did not wish to be recognised.
“By Jove, I’d have bet those two know each other, or have seen each other before, but it must be only a fancy though—it isn’t likely,” Johnstone thought to himself, as he took off his hat and shook hands with Miss Gray. After they had talked for some time about the few subjects for conversation that their life at Gordon afforded—the health of McFlucker the storekeeper’s wife, the date of the return of the magistrate at Gordon, who was away on leave, and the fact that the river was rising—Miss Gray turned the conversation to the subject that had interested them both.
“Who are those men working at the court-house,—the white men I mean?” she asked, as Johnstone thought, with considerable interest.
“They are gentlemen who are working for her gracious Majesty without pay, and receiving their board and lodging gratis.”