From Veldt Camp Fires

by H. A. Bryden

In an hour Parton had recovered from his own hurts. He had luckily received nothing worse than a nasty gash in his left shoulder and sundry cuts and bruises. His broken left arm was unhurt, thanks to Gressex’s careful setting. The struggle seemed to have cleared the lieutenant’s head. His eye was bright, his mind made up. Gressex had for the second time in a few days done him a great service. He had risked his very life this time for a man to whom he owed little enough, if he but knew all, and he now lay apparently at the point of death.

Parton’s doubts and struggles had all vanished into thin air. The fight and Gressex’s ready bravery had braced him—as a fight braces always a good Englishman—and brought to the surface all his better nature, and he now sat down to write certain letters with a calm mind. He had his pocket-book and an indelible pencil, and having seen that all his captives were secure, and the cattle safe in the adjacent veldt, where they were feeding under charge of the Bushman, he sat down in the red sand, with his back against a hut, and began to write. Before his writing is completed, it will be well to glance at those two letters in his breast pocket, of which mention has been previously made. Here is the opened letter, addressed to Lieutenant B.F. Parton, Bechuanaland Border Police:—

“International Hotel, Cape Town, 12th December, 189—

“Dear Mr Parton,—

“The address of this letter will probably surprise you. I received your letter in London on the morning I left for South Africa, whither I have come with my uncle, Colonel Mellersh, and my cousin, Kate Mellersh, on a trip we have long planned. We are staying at Cape Town for a few days, and are then going on to Kimberley to see the diamond mines, and perhaps make an expedition into the Transvaal or Bechuanaland.

“I must first reply to your letter. I am sorry, more sorry than I can express, that you should have reopened that old topic, which I quite thought and hoped, for the sake of your own peace of mind, had been finally dismissed, if not forgotten, nearly three years ago. My mind is as fully made up as it was when I last saw you, nor is it ever likely to change in the way you seem to suggest and hope for. I grieve very much to have to again say this to one whom I respect and like, but it is better to make clear at once that there is not the slightest prospect of any change in my sentiments.

“I must tell you frankly that I have the very strongest of all reasons for this—the reason that my affections have long since drifted in another direction—the direction (I may as well at once say here) of our mutual friend, Mr Mainwaring.

“You say in your letter that if ever you can be of service to me I may command you at any time. I take that expression to be a sincere one, and I am going to put it to a very severe test. Mr Mainwaring, before he left England, purposely avoided seeing me—quite from a mistaken motive—but wrote me a letter telling me of his affection for me, and saying good-bye, as he supposed, for ever. If he had seen me instead of sending that letter, a great deal of misery might have been avoided. I have been unable to glean the slightest hint of his whereabouts until a week before I left England. Mr Mainwaring has within the last few weeks come into some considerable property from an old uncle (from whom he expected absolutely nothing) who has quite lately died, and has now no reason to remain in exile longer. For more than two years I have been moving heaven and earth to get at his whereabouts, and I only received a letter, three days before I sailed, from his cousin and family lawyer, Mr Bladen, who had always refused absolutely before this to disclose his whereabouts, telling me that Mr Mainwaring (under the name of Gressex) is a private in the Bechuanaland Border Police, stationed either at Mafeking or Vryburg. Mr Bladen at the same time informed me of his cousin’s piece of good luck, and assured me that he was only waiting for certain legal documents to write out to Mr Mainwaring informing him of his fortune. As there seems a doubt about his actual address, I am now going to ask you to deliver the inclosed letter, if possible, into Mr Mainwaring’s hands, or, if you cannot see him personally, to send it by special messenger or post it. I am asking, I know, a great deal from your friendship, but I trust to you to help me in this matter, which is to me of very vital importance. You know me sufficiently, I think, to be aware that I am not trying to find Mr Mainwaring because ‘his ship has come in.’ I have—I am almost ashamed to say it—ample means of my own, and Tom’s good luck has nothing to do with the question. But I do want to find him at once, and I can only think of you, as an officer of his regiment, as the likeliest person to help me. Pray, pray, forgive me the double burden that I fear I may be putting upon you by this letter.

“We shall be at Kimberley on the 15th inst. Please address any letters or telegrams to me at the Central Hotel there.

“Believe me, yours always sincerely,—

“Ella Harling.”

Ella’s letter, addressed to “Mr John Gressex, Bechuanaland Border Police. (To be forwarded),” still lay unopened in Parton’s pocket. It had remained there these five days past, although the man to whom it had been addressed had ridden and rested for some days within six feet of it. Fifty times a day had Parton cursed himself for a villain in detaining it, and yet—and yet—he could not give Ella up and help Tom Mainwaring, and so—even after the affair of the broken arm—it had stayed there within his tunic.

Parton’s first note was to Ella Harling, telling her of Gressex’s (Mainwaring we may now call him) serious condition, and begging her, if possible, to come up by rail at once from Kimberley to Vryburg and thence drive as rapidly as possible the hundred miles across the veldt to Masura’s-town, where she would find a trooper who would bring her out to the cattle post where Mainwaring lay. That, as Parton said to himself, was something off his mind. It was some little expiation for the wrong he had done Ella and his old friend, and he felt pounds better already.

His next letter was to the officer in command at Vryburg during his absence, reporting affairs, and requesting that two more troopers should be at once sent to Masura’s-town, to aid in bringing in the prisoners and cattle, and to keep in check any attempt by the disaffected Masura to create trouble. He requested also that a light waggon might be dispatched for the wounded man, with certain nursing comforts and drugs that might be useful. He begged that, if possible, a doctor should also be sent, as the case was an urgent and serious one. One of the troopers, mounted on the best horse—the lieutenant’s—was despatched with these letters, with directions to put Miss Harling’s note into an envelope, carefully addressed, before posting it at Vryburg. The trooper was partially told Mainwaring’s story, and put upon his honour not to read the contents of the letter, at present envelopeless. He was a good fellow, and made a big ride, covering the 120 odd miles to Vryburg in two days on the single horse.

For the next seven days Parton had his hands pretty full at the desert cattle post. He had to guard carefully his prisoners, to see that the cattle were not re-stolen or re-captured, and to overawe Masura, who came out to know why his men were being killed and his cattle seized; and above all he had the heavy charge of nursing Tom Mainwaring, who for some days was spitting blood and in a state of high fever.

For three days and nights Parton nursed him most tenderly and carefully, feeding him with milk and thin mealie-meal gruel and beef-tea made from a slaughtered ox.

Thanks to a sound constitution, Mainwaring turned the corner, and on the fifth day from the affray began slowly to mend. He was still so weak that Parton, burning though he now was to complete his expiation and ease himself of his remaining load of trouble, feared to risk the telling of strange and exciting news. On the morning of the seventh day, however, Mainwaring seemed so much stronger, and the arrival of Ella Harling, if she came at all, must be so near at hand, that Parton delayed no longer. He made a full confession of his delinquencies, told Mainwaring all that had happened, of his recent stroke of good fortune, and finally handed him Ella’s letter.

“Tom,” he said at the end, “I have behaved to you all through the piece like a perfect beast. You, on the other hand, have played the game like a man. You helped me over the broken arm and finally saved my life in that scrimmage—very nearly at the expense of your own. I think I must have been mad. I can only humbly beg your pardon and ask you to try to forgive and forget, and to remember that if I fell I was sorely tried and tempted.”