“Why, look here, this d—d thief of a nigger wants to sell me this ’ere,” was Gonivavitski’s answer, given in tones of simulated indignation.
“This ’ere,” however, was not the forty-carat white diamond of a few minutes before, G. was too clever for that, it was merely a piece of boart not worth a sovereign that he now produced.
A crowd soon gathered to watch the thief marched off to jail, the honest man following in his wake to lay the charge. Next day at the trial, a little perjury more or less was immaterial, the boy was sentenced to imprisonment and lashes, whilst Mr. G. in a few days found it necessary for the sake of his health to proceed to Europe, where he disposed of the diamond for a good round sum. With this addition to his former capital he returned to the Fields, where he still remains, boasting the possession of an ample fortune, gained, as he always says, by “’ard work and hearly rising.”
One of the most generally admitted apothegms of worldly wisdom is that “a man should always tell the truth to his doctor and his lawyer,” but like many far more valuable maxims it is frequently disregarded. An instance in which (albeit I am happy to say I have a tolerably good opinion of my fellow creatures) I could not place confidence in the statements of my patient, occurs to my mind in connection with the anecdotes of which this chapter is composed.
About two o’clock one morning in the year 1872 I was roused from the sleep I so much needed, as it was a sickly and busy season, by a hurried rapping at my front door. A doctor’s slumbers are through force of habit light, and in a few seconds my dressing-gown and slippers were assumed, and I hastened to answer the imperative summons of my visitor. A middle-aged citizen, whose reputation, although never openly impugned, was yet hardly enviable, greeted me in somewhat quavering accents, and with pallid cheeks desired my services without a moment’s delay. Having ushered him into my consulting-room I at once discovered the secret of his alarm. The sufferer informed me that “he had been discussing with some friends the means by which the rascally illicits evaded the law and concealed their ill-gotten gems on any sudden emergency, suiting the action to the word he had swallowed (or otherwise concealed from view) two sovs. and a diamond.”
I listened to the story with all becoming gravity, and proceeded to perform a surgical operation for the removal of the foreign substances, with the anatomical details of which it is wholly unnecessary to weary my readers. When relieved from his distress of mind and body he was desirous of further explaining the circumstances under which the sad occurrence took place, but as the subject did not particularly interest me I suggested that “time was on the wing,” which hint he promptly took, dividing the corpora delicti by leaving the gold with me and putting the diamond (a thirty-carat stone) in his pocket. Years afterward, when I heard that while sitting among the Dii majores of the Kimberley club this gentleman’s main topic of conversation was his extreme horror of the illicit traffic with its train of evils—I could not help calling to mind the episode of 1872. However, as we are told “the reformed rake makes the best husband,” I hope that my ex-patient believes all he now enunciates, and what is still more important has the courage of his opinions.
I shall finish these few sketches of I. D. B. with the recital of an incident which occurred to me personally: the moral to be gathered I leave to my readers.
As nearly as I can remember, it was late on a cold winter’s night in June, 187–, that I heard a tapping at my bedroom window. It was a dreadful night. The south wind was blowing the sand from the débris heaps in fitful gusts, whilst the dust clouds were careering along so thickly that to see but a yard or two ahead was impossible. To those who know the mine and its surroundings it will require but a slight stretch of imagination to picture the bottomless pit from which “all hell had broken loose.”
Mentally anathematizing my nocturnal visitor, I rose and opened the door, when a Kafir thrust into my hand a piece of paper on which was scrawled in pencil:
“Dry Diggings Hospital.