Luck at the Diamond Fields

by Dalrymple J. Belgrave

Jim Heap, when he had heard of his intention to start off at once, could not understand it.

“There’s nothing sticking out up there for a man without capital, and there is nothing to hurry off there for; I should have thought that you’d have waited till Miss Connie was well enough to see you; I don’t think she will take it over well you’re going off like this without saying good-bye; she’d like to say that, let alone saying thank you for finding it for her.”

“There’s no reason for her to thank me, it didn’t give me any trouble to pick it up; and as for saying good-bye, you must say that for me. Tell her that I hope she will go home, as the old General always wished her, and that she’ll be happy. I’d better clear off these Fields at once.”

“You haven’t been doing anything wrong—not been on the cross in any way? That Bill Jeffson hasn’t been letting you in or getting you to go in for anything shady?” Jim Heap asked, for from experience a sudden necessity to leave a place was associated in his mind with a desire to get away from the jurisdiction of criminal courts.

“No, don’t think that of me; I haven’t been doing anything that’s mean or dishonest, but I ain’t sure I sha’n’t if I stay here,” Charlie said, and, shaking Jim Heap’s horny hand, he left him in a state of considerable bewilderment.

Jim Heap was right about Connie taking his sudden departure rather badly. When she was told the two pieces of news, she seemed far more surprised and hurt at Charlie’s having left without saying good-bye to her than she was rejoiced to learn that she was the owner of one of the largest diamonds in the world, and seemed to think that the good luck had come too late now that her father was dead and could not rejoice over it. She did not say much about Charlie, but Jim Heap and his wife both thought that she was a good deal hurt about it. After she had first expressed her surprise at his having gone she rarely mentioned his name. She wanted some share of the price of the diamond, which sold for 20,000 pounds, to be given to him for finding it, but as she was a minor that was impossible. To the plan of her going home she made no objections, for though she looked forward to a change of life without much pleasure, she knew it was what her father would have wished; and one day, some weeks after the diamond was found, a crowd of diggers gave her a last cheer as Jim Heap drove her across the veldt to Barkly, where she was to meet the wife of the clergyman there, who was going home and had arranged to take her under her protection, and duly introduce her to her father’s relations; and nothing was left of the General and Connie except the house in which they used to live and the claims where the big diamond was found; though their memory will live and their story will be told so long as diamonds are dug for on the banks of the Vaal River.

After some months, Charlie came back from the gold-fields on foot, for he had found, as Jim Heap prophesied, that there was nothing much sticking out for him up there. He came back with empty pockets and worn-out boots, but he did not seem sickened of the chances of digging, or had not the energy to try anything else, for he turned to his old occupation again. Fortune thought fit to do him a good turn, as it did to many others down the river that year. The Vaal that winter became unusually shallow, and the diggers who went to work in its bed, as they do when they can get at it, found very well. When the river came down again, Charlie had found a nice lot of diamonds which he sold for eight hundred pounds, and, rather to the surprise of every one who knew him, he announced his intention of going for a run home. Maybe he would never have another chance, he said, and he would like to know a little bit more of the world than South Africa. The truth was that he felt a longing to know something about the world in which Connie would live; not that he supposed there was any chance of his seeing her—he did not want to see her, he told himself. So he took his passage home, and in a few weeks found himself in London.

After a few weeks of the round of theatres, race meetings, and sight-seeing, which colonists generally go in for, he began to feel half tired and bored with it all. The feeling of being alone in a crowd chilled him, as it does those who have always lived in a small community, and he began to feel something that was very like home-sickness. He was delighted when he came across any one he had known on the Diamond Fields, even finding himself pleased to talk to men whom at the mine he had rather disliked and avoided. He was in this state of mind when he met one Brown, a man whom out there he had always looked upon as an ass. Mr Brown was equally lonely and in want of a companion; he was about to set out on a Continental trip; and though he doubted whether Charlie was not a little too colonial to be a desirable travelling companion, still he thought that it would be better to get him to go with him than travel by himself, so they agreed to travel together, and started for the regulation Rhine and Switzerland trip. Mr Brown’s misgivings as to Charlie were confirmed by his conduct. He hadn’t got the mind for travel, and took nothing in. He was all very well on the Diamond Fields, but he ought to have stopped there, was the opinion expressed to himself of Charlie after they had travelled together for two days. On the Rhine steamer his disgust reached a climax. Charlie showed his hopeless ignorance by saying that the Rhine reminded him of the Vaal River, and he seemed to take more interest in that grovelling fancy than in anything he saw. He refused to listen to Mr Brown’s stories from Murray about the castles and islands he was passing by, nor did he seem to care to have the special beauties of the scenery pointed out to him—for Mr Brown had a nice taste for Nature—but he sat silent and stupid. To tell the truth, his thoughts were far away amongst old familiar scenes. He seemed to see the hut by the river, to hear the swish of the diggers’ cradles and Kaffirs jabbering at their work, and Connie’s silvery laugh as she ran along the bank to her father’s claim. That scene had come back to his mind twenty times a day since he had left Africa.

“Did you see that pretty girl who got in at Boppart? You don’t see that sort of woman in Africa. There she is, sitting opposite, next to that white-haired old buffer. Oh, what a fellow you are! you won’t take an interest in anything,” Mr Brown was saying when Charlie woke up from his day-dream, and looking across the deck he saw Connie sitting opposite. She was at the same time wonderfully altered, and yet her old self. The battered old straw hat and the old bright-coloured frock bought at the Barkly store in celebration of one of the General’s meagre finds, which Charlie remembered so well, were replaced by soft deftly-made garments, and she had grown even more beautiful than she promised to be; but Charlie knew her at once, and as he saw her she looked round, and a joyous look of recognition came into her face. In a second he was shaking hands and was being introduced (as Mr Langdale, who was a great friend of ours in South Africa, and who found my diamond for me) to a white-haired gentleman and an elderly, somewhat grim-looking lady, who eyed him rather dubiously, as if they were inclined to doubt whether acquaintances made on the Diamond Fields were very desirable ones; but neither Connie nor Charlie troubled themselves much about them.

“What made you go to the gold-fields without waiting to say good-bye to me?” Connie said to him when they were able to talk without being overheard.