Bessie thrust the letter into the pocket of her dress, then again she caught hold of the verandah post, and supported herself by it, while the light of the sun appeared to fade visibly out of the day before her eyes and to replace itself by a cold blackness in which there was no break. He was dead!—her lover was dead! The glow had gone from her life as it seemed to be going from the day, and she was left desolate. She had no knowledge of how long she stood thus, staring with wide eyes at the sunshine she could not see. She had lost her count of time; things were phantasmagorical and unreal; all that she could realise was this one overpowering, crushing fact—John was dead!
“Missie,” said the ill-favoured messenger below, fixing his one eye upon her poor sorrow-stricken face, and yawning.
There was no answer.
“Missie,” he said again, “is there any answer? I must be going. I want to get back in time to see the Boers take Pretoria.”
Bessie looked at him vaguely. “Yours is a message that needs no answer,” she said. “What is, is.”
The brute laughed. “No, I can’t take a letter to the Captain,” he said; “I saw Jan Vanzyl shoot him. He fell so,” and suddenly he collapsed all in a heap on the path, in imitation of a man struck dead by a bullet. “I can’t take him a message, missie,” he went on, rising, “but one day you will be able to go and look for him yourself. I did not mean that; what I meant was that I could take a letter to Frank Muller. A live Boer is better than a dead Englishman; and Frank Muller will make a fine husband for any girl. If you shut your eyes you won’t know the difference.”
“Go!” said Bessie, in a choked voice, and pointing her hands towards the avenue.
Such was the suppressed energy in her tone that the man sprang to his feet, and while he rose, interpreting her gesture as an encouragement to action, the old dog, Stomp, who had been watching him all the time, and occasionally giving utterance to a low growl of animosity, flew straight at his throat from the verandah. The dog, which was a heavy one, struck the man full in the chest and knocked him backwards. Down came dog and man on the drive together, and then ensued a terrible scene, the man cursing and shrieking and striking out at the dog, and the dog worrying the man in a fashion that he was not liable to forget for the remainder of his life.
Bessie, whose energy seemed again to be exhausted, took absolutely no notice of the fray, and it was at this juncture that her old uncle arrived upon the scene, together with two Kafirs—the same whom Bessie had seen idling.
“Hullo! hullo!” he halloed in his stentorian tones, “what is all this about? Get off, you brute!” and what between his voice and the blows of the Kafirs the dog was persuaded to let go his hold of the man, who staggered to his feet, severely mauled, and bleeding from half a dozen bites.