But she handled the misused girl tenderly enough, for hers was a maternal heart, though soured by spinsterhood; and Bert, when he saw her set about it, turned away with haste to the stable.
Before setting out on his long ride, he came back to warn Anna not to admit anybody on any pretext while he was away; and arranged that when he returned with the doctor he would give a certain number of signal taps upon the window.
Then, springing to the saddle, he dashed away through the night, his wild heart drumming to the music of the flying hoofs, and his imaginings soaring to the purple velvet dome of heaven.
CHAPTER IX
THE SCANDALISING OF SLABBERT'S POORT
"Priests
Should study passion; how else cure mankind,
Who come for help in passionate extremes?"
—ROBERT BROWNING (Caponsacchi).
When Carol Mayne got back to the Mission on the afternoon of the second day after this, he was told that Oom Pieters and the Boer Predikant were waiting to see him.
The news they brought fairly staggered him.
Bert Mestaer had, during the night after the funeral, forced an entrance into Lutwyche's and abducted Millie. That he had done this by force was evident from the blood-stained floor of her garret and the evidences of a struggle, the bedding being torn and scattered about. He had taken her to his own house, and kept her there, in defiance of all Christian laws, to the crying scandal of the whole community. Oom Pieters had been insulted when he went to remonstrate; and the Predikant, who, at his urgent entreaty, had gone to warn the headstrong girl of the penalties of living in sin, had been literally, not metaphorically, kicked off the premises by the lawless ravisher. Putting things together, they would have been inclined to fear that the girl had actually been made away with, but for the assurance of Anna to the contrary. They thought that heavy drinking must be the cause of Bert's outrageous behaviour, since he had picked a quarrel with Otis earlier in the evening, and so mishandled him that he had been unable to appear in public since.
Horrible as the news was, Mayne, knowing the violence of Bert's passion, his fear that Millie was to be taken away, and his intemperate habits, felt it possible that a great part of what he heard might be true. His disappointment was keen. He had looked for better things from Mestaer, whom he liked better than anyone else in Slabbert's Poort; and the behaviour now attributed to him was that of a wild beast. He hurried off without rest or refreshment to the High Farm; and all the way he was trying to piece the story together—to think how the lover who had always been so tongue-tied and shamefaced, could possibly have proceeded to such lengths; and the more he reflected, the more he felt sure that he had heard a perverted version of what had really happened.