Mevrouw received the politeness less graciously than the potatoes. That man with the eyes and the greedy red mouth was a woman-eater, she knew. Not for sheep and bear would she, grandmother as she was, trust herself in house barn alone with a klant like that. But her Commandant had uses for him, the twinkling-eyed, soft-mannered, big rogue. She watched him walking off with P. Blinders, for whom she entertained a distaste grounded on the knowledge that no good ever came of these double-tongued Free Staters.
And this one could write in the accursed shibboleth of England as well as in the Taal. She shook her head as the potatoes rattled into the big pot hanging over the fire. And he walked out on Sundays with the young German woman who was maid to the refugee-widow staying at Kink's Hotel, and who never showed her nose inside the Gerevormed Kerk, the godless thing! or went out except by bat-light. Of that one the Mevrouw Brounckers had her opinion also. And time would show who was right.
Meanwhile, Van Busch and P. Blinders, who had left the dorp behind them, and strolled up the almost dry bed of a sluit leading up amongst the hills, conversed, in Sabbath security from English artillery, and reassuring remoteness from Dutch eavesdroppers. And their theme was the German drummer's refugee-widow who never went to kerk.
Van Busch, who found it helpful in his business never to forget faces, had met her on the rail, months back, travelling up first-class from Cape Town. Early in October it was, while the road was still open. And men who kept their eyes skinned went backwards and forwards and round and about, getting the hang of things, and laying up accurate mental notes, because the other kind were even more risky to carry than the nuggets and raw dust that are hidden in the padded linings of the gold-smugglers' heavy garments.
The lady, small, dark, stylishly-tailored, and with bright black, bird-like eyes, was not a German drummer's widow when Van Busch and she first met. She had chatted in her native English with her square, bulky, sleek-looking fellow-passenger, well-dressed in grey linen drill frock-coat and trousers, with blazing diamonds studding the bosom of his well-starched shirt and linking his cuffs.
The wide felt hat he politely removed as he came into the carriage revealed to Lady Hannah a tall, expansive, well-developed forehead. Below the line of the hat-rim he was burned coffee-brown, like many another British Colonial. The observant eye of "Gold Pen" took in the man's vulgarly handsome features and curiously light eyes, and twinkled at the flaring jewellery and the whiskers of obsolete Dundreary pattern that stood out on either side the jewelled one's full, smooth chin. His large, bold, over-red mouth, with the curling outward flange to it, gave her a disagreeable impression. One would have been grateful for a beard that hid that mouth.
Lady Hannah found it curiously disquieting until her fellow-traveller began to talk, in a thick, lisping voice, with curiously candid and simple intonations. He presented himself, and she accepted him at his own valuation, as a British Johannesburger, and influential member of the Chamber of Mines, possessing vast interests among the tall chimneys and white dumping-heaps of the Rand.
Van Busch called his efforts to be ingratiating "sucking up to" the lady. He sucked up, thinking at first she might be the wife of the English field officer who had been ordered down from the north to take over the Gueldersdorp command. Then he found she was only the grey mare of an officer of the Staff....
She plied Van Busch in his triple character of politician, patriot, and mine-owner with questions. Thought she was juicing a lot of information, whereas Van Busch was the one who learned things. Kind of playing at being newspaper-woman she was, and taking notes for London newspaper articles all the time. Had laid out to be a little tin imitation of Dora Corr, or, say, nickel-plated, with cast chasings. Was burning for an opening in the diplomatic go-betweening line; wanted to dabble in War Correspondence, and so on. But Van Busch gathered that the biggest egg in the little lady's nest of ambitions was the desire to do a flutter on the Secret Service lay.
She wanted to be what he termed a "slew," and she would have called a spy. He fiddled to her dancing, and wearied before she did.