Jess / Haggard, H. Rider (Henry Rider), 1856-1925

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Title: Jess

Author: H. Rider Haggard

Release Date: April 22, 2006 [EBook #5898]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JESS ***




Produced by John Bickers; Dagny





JESS

By H. Rider Haggard

First Published 1887.




TO MY WIFE





JESS



CHAPTER I

JOHN HAS AN ADVENTURE

The day had been very hot even for the Transvaal, where the days still
know how to be hot in the autumn, although the neck of the summer is
broken--especially when the thunderstorms hold off for a week or two, as
they do occasionally. Even the succulent blue lilies--a variety of the
agapanthus which is so familiar to us in English greenhouses--hung their
long trumpet-shaped flowers and looked oppressed and miserable, beneath
the burning breath of the hot wind which had been blowing for hours like
the draught from a volcano. The grass, too, near the wide roadway
that stretched in a feeble and indeterminate fashion across the veldt,
forking, branching, and reuniting like the veins on a lady's arm, was
completely coated over with a thick layer of red dust. But the hot wind
was going down now, as it always does towards sunset. Indeed, all that
remained of it were a few strictly local and miniature whirlwinds,
which would suddenly spring up on the road itself, and twist and twirl
fiercely round, raising a mighty column of dust fifty feet or more into
the air, where it hung long after the wind had passed, and then slowly
dissolved as its particles floated to the earth.

Advancing along the road, in the immediate track of one of these
desultory and inexplicable whirlwinds, was a man on horseback. The man
looked limp and dirty, and the horse limper and dirtier. The hot wind
had "taken all the bones out of them," as the Kafirs say, which was
not very much to be wondered at, seeing that they had been journeying
through it for the last four hours without off-saddling. Suddenly the
whirlwind, which had been travelling along smartly, halted, and the
dust, after revolving a few times in the air like a dying top, slowly
began to disperse in the accustomed fashion. The man on the horse halted
also, and contemplated it in an absent kind of way.

"It's just like a man's life," he said aloud to his horse, "coming from
nobody knows where, nobody knows why, and making a little column of dust
on the world's highway, then passing away, leaving the dust to fall to
the ground again, to be trodden under foot and forgotten."

The speaker, a stout, well set-up, rather ugly man, apparently on the
wrong side of thirty, with pleasant blue eyes and a reddish peaked
beard, laughed a little at his own sententious reflection, and then gave
his jaded horse a tap with the _sjambock_ in his hand.

"Come on, Blesbok," he said, "or we shall never get to old Croft's place
to-night. By Jove! I believe that must be the turn," and he pointed with
his whip to a little rutty track that branched from the Wakkerstroom
main road and stretched away towards a curious isolated hill with a
large flat top, which rose out of the rolling plain some four miles to
the right. "The old Boer said the second turn," he went on still talking
to himself, "but perhaps he lied. I am told that some of them think it
is a good joke to send an Englishman a few miles wrong. Let's see, they
told me the place was under the lee of a table-topped hill, about half
an hour's ride from the main road, and that is a table-topped hill, so I
think I will try it. Come on, Blesbok," and he put the tired nag into
a sort of "tripple," or ambling canter much affected by South African
horses.

"Life is a queer thing," reflected Captain John Niel to himself as he
cantered along slowly. "Now here am I, at the age of thirty-four, about
to begin the world again as assistant to an old Transvaal farmer. It is
a pretty end to all one's ambitions, and to fourteen years' work in the
army; but it is what it has come to, my boy, so you had better make the
best of it."

Just then his cogitations were interrupted, for on the farther side of
a gentle slope suddenly there appeared an extraordinary sight. Over the
crest of the rise of land, now some four or five hundred yards away, a
pony with a lady on its back galloped wildly, and after it, with wings
spread and outstretched neck, a huge cock ostrich was speeding in
pursuit, covering twelve or fifteen feet at every stride of its long
legs. The pony was still twenty yards ahead of the bird, and travelling
towards John rapidly, but strive as it would it could not distance the
swiftest thing on all the earth. Five seconds passed--the great bird was
close alongside now--Ah! and John Niel turned sick and shut his eyes as
he rode, for he saw the ostrich's thick leg fly high into the air and
then sweep down like a leaded bludgeon!

_Thud!_ It had missed the lady and struck her horse upon the spine, just
behind the saddle, for the moment completely paralysing it so that it
fell all of a heap on to the veldt. In a moment the girl on its back was
up and running towards him, and after her came the ostrich. Up went the
great leg again, but before it could come crashing across her shoulders
she had flung herself face downwards on the grass. In an instant the
huge bird was on the top of her, kicking at her, rolling over her, and
crushing the very life out of her. It was at this juncture that John
Niel arrived upon the scene. The moment the ostrich saw him it gave up
its attacks upon the lady on the ground and began to waltz towards him
with the pompous sort of step that these birds sometimes assume before
they give battle. Now Captain Niel was unaccustomed to the pleasant ways
of ostriches, and so was his horse, which showed a strong inclination to
bolt; as, indeed, under other circumstances, his rider would have been
glad to do himself. But he could not abandon beauty in distress, so,
finding it impossible to control his horse, he slipped off it, and with
the _sjambock_ or hide-whip in his hand valiantly faced the enemy. For
a moment or two the great bird stood still, blinking its lustrous round
eyes at him and gently swaying its graceful neck to and fro.

Then all of a sudden it spread out its wings and came for him like
a thunderbolt. John sprang to one side, and was aware of a rustle of
rushing feathers, and of a vision of a thick leg striking downwards
past his head. Fortunately it missed him, and the ostrich sped on like
a flash. Before he could turn, however, it was back and had landed
the full weight of one of its awful forward kicks on the broad of his
shoulders, and away he went head-over-heels like a shot rabbit. In a
second he was on his legs again, shaken indeed, but not much the worse,
and perfectly mad with fury and pain. At him came the ostrich, and at
the ostrich went he, catching it a blow across the slim neck with his
_sjambock_ that staggered it for a moment. Profiting by the check, he
seized the bird by the wing and held on like grim death with both hands.
Now they began to gyrate, slowly at first, then quicker, and yet more
quick, till at last it seemed to Captain John Niel that time and space
and the solid earth were nothing but a revolving vision fixed somewhere
in the watches of the night. Above him, like a stationary pivot, towered
the tall graceful neck, beneath him spun the top-like legs, and in front
of him was a soft black and white mass of feathers.

Thud, and a cloud of stars! He was on his back, and the ostrich, which
did not seem to be affected by giddiness, was on _him_, punishing him
dreadfully. Luckily an ostrich cannot kick a man very hard when he is
flat on the ground. If he could, there would have been an end of John
Niel, and his story need never have been written.

Half a minute or so passed, during which the bird worked his sweet will
upon his prostrate enemy, and at the end of it the man began to feel
very much as though his earthly career was closed. Just as things were
growing faint and dim to him, however, he suddenly saw a pair of white
arms clasp themselves round the ostrich's legs from behind, and heard a
voice cry:

"Break his neck while I hold his legs, or he will kill you."

This roused him from his torpor, and he staggered to his feet. Meanwhile
the ostrich and the young lady had come to the ground, and were rolling
about together in a confused heap, over which the elegant neck and open
hissing mouth wavered to and fro like a cobra about to strike. With a
rush John seized the neck in both his hands, and, putting out all his
strength (for he was a strong man), he twisted it till it broke with a
snap, and after a few wild and convulsive bounds and struggles the great
bird lay dead.

Then he sank down dazed and exhausted, and surveyed the scene. The
ostrich was perfectly quiet, and would never kick again, and the lady
too was quiet. He wondered vaguely if the brute had killed her--he was
as yet too weak to go and see--and then fell to gazing at her face. Her
head was pillowed on the body of the dead bird, and its feathery plumes
made it a fitting resting-place. Slowly it dawned on him that the face
was very beautiful, although it looked so pale just now. Low broad brow,
crowned with soft yellow hair, the chin very round and white, the mouth
sweet though rather large. The eyes he could not see, because they
were closed, for the lady had fainted. For the rest, she was quite
young--about twenty, tall and finely formed. Presently he felt a little
better, and, creeping towards her (for he was sadly knocked about), took
her hand and began to chafe it between his own. It was a well-formed
hand, but brown, and showed signs of doing plenty of hard work. Soon she
opened her eyes, and he noted with satisfaction that they were very good
eyes, blue in colour. Then she sat up and laughed a little.

"Well, I am silly," she said; "I believe I fainted."

"It is not much to be wondered at," said John Niel politely, and lifting
his hand to take off his hat, only to find that it had gone in the fray.
"I hope you are not very much hurt by the bird."

"I don't know," she said doubtfully. "But I am glad that you killed the
_skellum_ (vicious beast). He got out of the ostrich camp three days
ago, and has been lost ever since. He killed a boy last year, and I told
uncle he ought to shoot him then, but he would not, because he was such
a beauty."

"Might I ask," said John Niel, "are you Miss Croft?"

"Yes, I am--one of them. There are two of us, you know; and I can guess
who you are--you are Captain Niel, whom uncle is expecting to help him
with the farm and the ostriches."

"If all of them are like that," he said, pointing to the dead bird, "I
don't think that I shall take kindly to ostrich farming."

She laughed, showing a charming line of teeth. "Oh no," she said,
"he was the only bad one--but, Captain Niel, I think you will find it
fearfully dull. There are nothing but Boers about here, you know. No
English people live nearer than Wakkerstroom."

"You overlook yourself," he said, bowing; for really this daughter of
the wilderness had a very charming air about her.

"Oh," she answered, "I am only a girl, you know, and besides, I am
not clever. Jess, now--that's my sister--Jess has been at school at
Capetown, and she _is_ clever. I was at Cape Town, too, though I didn't
learn much there. But, Captain Niel, both the horses have bolted; mine
has gone home, and I expect yours has followed, and I should like to
know how we are going to get up to Mooifontein--beautiful fountain,
that's what we call our place, you know. Can you walk?"

"I don't know," he answered doubtfully; "I'll try. That bird has knocked
me about a good deal," and accordingly he staggered on to his legs, only
to collapse with an exclamation of pain. His ankle was sprained, and
he was so stiff and bruised that he could hardly stir. "How far is the
house?" he asked.

"Only about a mile--just there; we shall see it from the crest of the
rise. Look, I'm all right. It was silly to faint, but he kicked all the
breath out of me," and she got up and danced a little on the grass to
show him. "My word, though, I am sore! You must take my arm, that's all;
that is if you don't mind?"

"Oh dear no, indeed, I don't mind," he said laughing; and so they
started, arm affectionately linked in arm.



CHAPTER II

HOW THE SISTERS CAME TO MOOIFONTEIN

"Captain Niel," said Bessie Croft--for she was named Bessie--when they
had painfully limped one hundred yards or so, "will you think me rude if
I ask you a question?"

"Not at all."

"What has induced you to come and bury yourself in this place?"

"Why do you ask?"

"Because I don't think that you will like it. I don't think," she added
slowly, "that it is a fit place for an English gentleman and an army
officer like you. You will find the Boer ways horrid, and then there
will only be my old uncle and us two for you to associate with."

John Niel laughed. "English gentlemen are not so particular nowadays, I
can assure you, Miss Croft, especially when they have to earn a living.
Take my case, for instance, for I may as well tell you exactly how I
stand. I have been in the army fourteen years, and I am now thirty-four.
Well, I have been able to live there because I had an old aunt who
allowed me 120 pounds a year. Six months ago she died, leaving me the
little property she possessed, for most of her income came from an
annuity. After paying expenses, duty, &c., it amounts to 1,115 pounds.
Now, the interest on this is about fifty pounds a year, and I can't live
in the army on that. Just after my aunt's death I came to Durban with
my regiment from Mauritius, and now they are ordered home. Well, I liked
the country, and I knew that I could not afford to live in England, so I
got a year's leave of absence, and made up my mind to have a look round
to see if I could not take to farming. Then a gentleman in Durban told
me of your uncle, and said that he wanted to dispose of a third interest
in his place for a thousand pounds, as he was getting too old to manage
it himself. So I entered into correspondence with him, and agreed to
come up for a few months to see how I liked it; and accordingly here I
am, just in time to save you from being knocked to bits by an ostrich."

"Yes, indeed," she answered, laughing; "you've had a warm welcome at any
rate. Well, I hope you _will_ like it."

Just as he finished his story they reached the top of the rise over
which the ostrich had pursued Bessie Croft, and saw a Kafir coming
towards them, leading the pony with one hand and Captain Niel's horse
with the other. About twenty yards behind the horses a lady was walking.

"Ah," said Bessie, "they've caught the horses, and here is Jess come to
see what is the matter."

By this time the lady in question was quite close, so that John was able
to gather a first impression of her. She was small and rather thin, with
quantities of curling brown hair; not by any means a lovely woman,
as her sister undoubtedly was, but possessing two very remarkable
characteristics--a complexion of extraordinary and uniform pallor, and a
pair of the most beautiful dark eyes he had ever looked on. Altogether,
though her size was almost insignificant, she was a striking-looking
person, with a face few men would easily forget. Before he had time to
observe any more the two parties had met.

"What on earth is the matter, Bessie?" Jess said, with a quick glance
at her sister's companion, and speaking in a low full voice, with just
a slight South African accent, that is taking enough in a pretty woman.
Thereon Bessie broke out with a history of their adventure, appealing to
Captain Niel for confirmation at intervals.

Meanwhile Jess Croft stood quite still and silent, and it struck John
that her face was the most singularly impassive one he had ever seen. It
never changed, even when her sister told her how the ostrich rolled on
her and nearly killed her, or how they finally subdued the foe. "Dear
me," he thought to herself, "what a very strange woman! She can't have
much heart." But just as he thought it the girl looked up, and then he
saw where the expression lay. It was in those remarkable eyes. Immovable
as was her face, the dark eyes were alight with life and a suppressed
excitement that made them shine gloriously. The contrast between the
shining eyes and the impassive face beneath them struck him as so
extraordinary as to be almost uncanny. As a matter of fact, it was
doubtless both unusual and remarkable.

"You have had a wonderful escape, but I am sorry for the bird," she said
at last.

"Why?" asked John.

"Because we were great friends. I was the only person who could manage
him."

"Yes," put in Bessie, "the savage brute would follow her about like a
dog. It was just the oddest thing I ever saw. But come on; we must be
getting home, it's growing dark. Mouti"--which, being interpreted, means
Medicine--she added, addressing the Kafir in Zulu--"help Captain Niel
on to his horse. Be careful that the saddle does not twist round; the
girths may be loose."

Thus adjured, John, with the help of the Zulu, clambered into his
saddle, an example that the lady quickly followed, and they set off once
more through the gathering darkness. Presently he became aware that they
were passing up a drive bordered by tall blue gums, and next minute the
barking of a large dog, which he afterwards knew by the name of Stomp,
and the sudden appearance of lighted windows told him that they had
reached the house. At the door--or rather, opposite to it, for there
was a verandah in front--they halted and got off their horses. As they
dismounted there came a shout of welcome from the house, and presently
in the doorway, showing out clearly against the light, appeared a
striking and, in its way, a most pleasant figure. He--for it was a
man--was very tall, or, rather, he had been very tall. Now he was much
bent with age and rheumatism. His long white hair hung low upon his
neck, and fell back from a prominent brow. The top of the head was
quite bald, like the tonsure of a priest, and shone and glistened in the
lamplight, and round this oasis the thin white locks fell down. The
face was shrivelled like the surface of a well-kept apple, and, like
an apple, rosy red. The features were aquiline and strongly marked; the
eyebrows still black and very bushy, and beneath them shone a pair
of grey eyes, keen and bright as those of a hawk. But for all its
sharpness, there was nothing unpleasant or fierce about the face; on
the contrary, it was pervaded by a remarkable air of good-nature and
pleasant shrewdness. For the rest, the man was dressed in rough tweed
clothes, tall riding-boots, and held a broad-brimmed Boer hunting hat in
his hand. Such, as John Niel first saw him, was the outer person of old
Silas Croft, one of the most remarkable men in the Transvaal.

"Is that you, Captain Niel?" roared out the stentorian voice. "The
natives said you were coming. A welcome to you! I am glad to see
you--very glad. Why, what is the matter with you?" he went on as the
Zulu Mouti ran to help him off his horse.

"Matter, Mr. Croft?" answered John; "why, the matter is that your
favourite ostrich has nearly killed me and your niece here, and that I
have killed your favourite ostrich."

Then followed explanations from Bessie, during which he was helped off
his horse and into the house.

"It serves me right," said the old man. "To think of it now, just to
think of it! Well, Bessie, my love, thank God that you escaped--ay, and
you too, Captain Niel. Here, you boys, take the Scotch cart and a
couple of oxen and go and fetch the brute home. We may as well have the
feathers off him, at any rate, before the _aasvogels_ (vultures) tear
him to bits."

After he had washed himself and tended his injuries with arnica and
water, John managed to limp into the principal sitting-room, where
supper was waiting. It was a very pleasant room, furnished in European
style, and carpeted with mats made of springbuck skins. In the corner
stood a piano, and by it a bookcase, filled with the works of standard
authors, the property, as John rightly guessed, of Bessie's sister Jess.

Supper went off pleasantly enough, and after it was over the two girls
sang and played whilst the men smoked. And here a fresh surprise awaited
him, for after Bessie, who apparently had now almost recovered from her
mauling, had played a piece or two creditably enough, Jess, who so
far had been nearly silent, sat down at the piano. She did not do
this willingly, indeed, for it was not until her patriarchal uncle had
insisted in his ringing, cheery voice that she should let Captain Niel
hear how she could sing that she consented. But at last she did consent,
and then, after letting her fingers stray somewhat aimlessly along the
chords, she suddenly broke out into such song as John Niel had never
heard before. Her voice, beautiful as it was, was not what is known as
a cultivated voice, and it was a German song, therefore he did not
understand it, but there was no need of words to translate its burden.
Passion, despairing yet hoping through despair, echoed in its every
line, and love, unending love, hovered over the glorious notes--nay,
possessed them like a spirit, and made them his. Up! up! rang her wild
sweet voice, thrilling his nerves till they answered to the music as an
Aeolian harp answers to the winds. On went the song with a divine sweep,
like the sweep of rushing pinions; higher, yet higher it soared, lifting
up the listener's heart far above the world on the trembling wings
of sound--ay, even higher, till the music hung at heaven's gate, and
falling thence, swiftly as an eagle falls, quivered, and was dead.

John sighed, and so strongly was he moved, sank back in his chair,
feeling almost faint with the revulsion of feeling that ensued when the
notes had died away. He looked up, and saw Bessie watching him with
an air of curiosity and amusement. Jess was still leaning against the
piano, and gently touching the notes, over which her head was bent low,
showing the coils of curling hair that were twisted round it like a
coronet.

"Well, Captain Niel," said the old man, waving his pipe in her
direction, "and what do you say to my singing-bird's music, eh? Isn't it
enough to draw the heart out of a man, eh, and turn his marrow to water,
eh?"

"I never heard anything quite like it," he answered simply, "and I have
heard most singers. It is beautiful. Certainly, I never expected to hear
such singing in the Transvaal."

Jess turned quickly, and he observed that, though her eyes were alight
with excitement, her face was as impassive as ever.

"There is no need for you to laugh at me, Captain Niel," she said
quickly, and then, with an abrupt "Good-night," she left the room.

The old man smiled, jerked the stem of his pipe over his shoulder after
her, and winked in a way that, no doubt, meant unutterable things, but
which did not convey much to his astonished guest, who sat still and
said nothing. Then Bessie rose and bade him good-night in her pleasant
voice, and with housewifely care inquired as to whether his room was to
his taste, and how many blankets he liked upon his bed, telling him that
if he found the odour of the moonflowers which grew near the verandah
too strong, he had better shut the right-hand window and open that on
the other side of the room. Then at length, with a piquant little nod of
her golden head, she went off, looking, John thought as he watched
her retreating figure, about as healthy, graceful, and generally
satisfactory a young woman as a man could wish to see.

"Take a glass of grog, Captain Niel," said the old man, pushing the
square bottle towards him, "you'll need it after the mauling that brute
gave you. By the way, I haven't thanked you for saving my Bessie! But
I do thank you, yes, that I do. I must tell you that Bessie is my
favourite niece. Never was there such a girl--never. Moves like a
springbuck, and what an eye and form! Work too--she'll do as much work
as three. There's no nonsense about Bessie, none at all. She's not a
fine lady, for all her fine looks."

"The two sisters seem very different," said John.

"Ay, you're right there," answered the old man. "You'd never think
that the same blood ran in their veins, would you? There's three years
between them, that's one thing. Bessie's the youngest, you see--she's
just twenty, and Jess is twenty-three. Lord, to think that it is
twenty-three years since that girl was born! And theirs is a queer story
too."

"Indeed?" said his listener interrogatively.

"Ay," Silas went on absently, knocking out his pipe, and refilling it
from a big brown jar of coarse-cut Boer tobacco, "I'll tell it to you if
you like: you are going to live in the house, and you may as well know
it. I am sure, Captain Niel, that it will go no further. You see I
was born in England, yes, and well-born too. I come from
Cambridgeshire--from the fat fen-land down round Ely. My father was a
clergyman. Well, he wasn't rich, and when I was twenty he gave me his
blessing, thirty sovereigns in my pocket, and my passage to the Cape;
and I shook his hand, God bless him, and off I came, and here in the old
colony and this country I have been for fifty years, for I was seventy
yesterday. Well, I'll tell you more about that another time, it's of the
girls I'm speaking now. After I left home--some years after--my dear
old father married again, a youngish woman with some money, but rather
beneath him in life, and by her he had one son, and then died. Well, it
was but little I heard of my half-brother, except that he had turned
out very badly, married, and taken to drink, till one night some twelve
years ago, when a strange thing happened. I was sitting here in this
very room, ay, in this very chair--for this part of the house was up
then, though the wings weren't built--smoking my pipe, and listening to
the lashing of the rain, for it was a very foul night, when suddenly an
old pointer dog I had, named Ben, began to bark.

"'Lie down, Ben, it's only the Kafirs,' said I.

"Just then I thought I heard a faint sort of rapping at the door, and
Ben barked again, so I got up and opened it, and in came two little
girls wrapped in old shawls or some such gear. Well, I shut the door,
looking first to see if there were any more outside, and then I turned
and stared at the two little things with my mouth open. There they
stood, hand in hand, the water dripping from both of them; the elder
might have been eleven, and the second about eight years old. They
didn't say anything, but the elder turned and took the shawl and hat off
the younger--that was Bessie--and there was her sweet little face and
her golden hair, and damp enough both of them were, and she put her
thumb in her mouth, and stood and looked at me till I began to think
that I was dreaming.

"'Please, sir,' said the taller at last, 'is this Mr. Croft's house--Mr.
Croft--South African Republic?'

"'Yes, little Miss, this is his house, and this is the South African
Republic, and I am he. And now who might you be, my dears?' I answered.

"'If you please, sir, we are your nieces, and we have come to you from
England.'

"'What!' I holloaed, startled out of my wits, as well I might be.

"'Oh, sir,' says the poor little thing, clasping her thin wet hands,
'please don't send us away. Bessie is so wet, and cold and hungry too,
she isn't fit to go any farther.'

"And she set to work to cry, whereon the little one cried also, from
fright and cold and sympathy.

"Well, of course, I took them both to the fire, and set them on my
knees, and called for Hebe, the old Hottentot woman who did my cooking,
and between us we undressed them, and wrapped them up in some old
clothes, and fed them with soup and wine, so that in half an hour they
were quite happy and not a bit frightened.

"'And now, young ladies,' I said, 'come and give me a kiss, both of you,
and tell me how you came here.'

"This is the tale they told me--completed, of course, from what I learnt
afterwards--and an odd one it is. It seems that my half-brother married
a Norfolk lady--a sweet young thing--and treated her like a dog. He was
a drunken rascal, was my half-brother, and he beat his poor wife and
shamefully neglected her, and even ill-used the two little girls, till
at last the poor woman, weak as she was from suffering and ill health,
could bear it no longer, and formed the wild idea of escaping to this
country and of throwing herself upon my protection. That shows how
desperate she must have been. She scraped together and borrowed some
money, enough to pay for three second-class passages to Natal and a few
pounds over, and one day, when her brute of a husband was away on the
drink and gamble, she slipped on board a sailing ship in the London
Docks, and before he knew anything about it they were well out to sea.
But it was her last effort, poor dear soul, and the excitement of it
finished her. Before they had been ten days at sea, she sank and
died, and the two little children were left alone. What they must have
suffered, or rather what poor Jess must have suffered, for she was old
enough to feel, God only knows, but I can tell you this, she has never
got over the shock to this hour. It has left its mark on her, sir.
Still, let people say what they will, there is a Power who looks after
the helpless, and that Power took those poor, homeless, wandering
children under its wing. The captain of the vessel befriended them,
and when at last they reached Durban some of the passengers made a
subscription, and paid an old Boer, who was coming up this way with his
wife to the Transvaal, to take them under his charge. The Boer and his
_vrouw_ treated the children fairly well, but they did not do one thing
more than they bargained for. At the turn from the Wakkerstroom road,
that you came along to-day, they put the girls down, for they had no
luggage with them, and told them that if they went along there they
would come to _Meinheer_ Croft's house. That was in the middle of the
afternoon, and they were till eight o'clock getting here, poor little
dears, for the track was fainter then than it is now, and they wandered
off into the veldt, and would have perished there in the wet and cold
had they not chanced to see the lights of the house. That was how my
nieces came here, Captain Niel, and here they have been ever since,
except for a couple of years when I sent them to the Cape for schooling,
and a lonely man I was when they were away."

"And how about the father?" asked John Niel, deeply interested. "Did you
ever hear any more of him?"

"Hear of him, the villain!" almost shouted the old man, jumping up in
wrath. "Ay, d--n him, I heard of him. What do you think? The two chicks
had been with me some eighteen months, long enough for me to learn to
love them with all my heart, when one fine morning, as I was seeing
about the new kraal wall, I saw a fellow come riding up on an old
raw-boned grey horse. Up he comes to me, and as he came I looked at
him, and said to myself, 'You are a drunkard you are, and a rogue, it's
written on your face, and, what's more, I know your face.' You see I did
not guess that it was a son of my own father that I was looking at. How
should I?

"'Is your name Croft?' he said.

"'Ay,' I answered.

"'So is mine,' he went on with a sort of drunken leer. 'I'm your
brother.'

"'Are you?' I said, beginning to get my back up, for I guessed what his
game was, 'and what may you be after? I tell you at once, and to your
face, that if you are my brother you are a blackguard, and I don't want
to know you or have anything to do with you; and if you are not, I beg
your pardon for coupling you with such a scoundrel.'

"'Oh, that's your tune, is it?' he said with a sneer. 'Well, now,
my dear brother Silas, I want my children. They have got a little
half-brother at home--for I have married again, Silas--who is anxious to
have them to play with, so if you will be so good as to hand them over,
I'll take them away at once.'

"'You'll take them away, will you?' said I, all of a tremble with rage
and fear.

"'Yes, Silas, I will. They are mine by law, and I am not going to
breed children for you to have the comfort of their society. I've taken
advice, Silas, and that's sound law,' and he leered at me again.

"I stood and looked at that man, and thought of how he had treated those
poor children and their young mother, and my blood boiled, and I grew
mad. Without another word I jumped over the half-finished wall, and
caught him by the leg (for I was a strong man ten years ago) and jerked
him off the horse. As he came down he dropped the _sjambock_ from his
hand, and I laid hold of it and then and there gave him the soundest
hiding a man ever had. Lord, how he did holloa! When I was tired I let
him get up.

"'Now,' I said, 'be off with you, and if you come back here I'll bid the
Kafirs hunt you to Natal with their sticks. This is the South African
Republic, and we don't care overmuch about law here.' Which we didn't in
those days.

"'All right, Silas,' he said, 'all right, you shall pay for this.
I'll have those children, and, for your sake, I'll make their lives
a hell--you mark my words--South African Republic or no South African
Republic. I've got the law on my side.'

"Off he rode, cursing and swearing, and I flung his _sjambock_ after
him. This was the first and last time that I saw my brother."

"What became of him?" asked John Niel.

"I'll tell you, just to show you again that there is a Power which keeps
such men in its eye. He rode back to Newcastle that night, and went
about the canteen there abusing me, and getting drunker and drunker,
till at last the canteen keeper sent for his boys to turn him out. Well,
the boys were rough, as Kafirs are apt to be with a drunken white man,
and he struggled and fought, and in the middle of it the blood began to
run from his mouth, and he dropped down dead of a broken blood-vessel,
and there was an end of him. That is the story of the two girls, Captain
Niel, and now I am off to bed. To-morrow I'll show you round the farm,
and we will have a talk about business. Good-night to you, Captain Niel.
Good-night!"



CHAPTER III

MR. FRANK MULLER

John Niel woke early the next morning, feeling as sore and stiff
as though he had been well beaten and then wrapped up tight in
horse-girths. He made shift, however, to dress himself, and then, with
the help of a stick, limped through the French windows that opened from
his room on to the verandah, and surveyed the scene before him. It was
a delightful spot. At the back of the stead was the steep boulder-strewn
face of the flat-topped hill that curved round on each side, embosoming
a great slope of green, in the lap of which the house was placed. It
was very solidly built of brown stone, and, with the exception of the
waggon-shed and other outbuildings which were roofed with galvanised
iron, that shone and glistened in the rays of the morning sun in a way
that would have made an eagle blink, was covered with rich brown thatch.
All along its front ran a wide verandah, up the trellis-work of which
green vines and blooming creepers trailed pleasantly, and beyond was the
broad carriage-drive of red soil, bordered with bushy orange-trees laden
with odorous flowers and green and golden fruit. On the farther side
of the orange-trees were the gardens, fenced in with low walls of rough
stone, and the orchard planted with standard fruit-trees, and beyond
these again the oxen and ostrich kraals, the latter full of long-necked
birds. To the right of the house grew thriving plantations of blue-gum
and black wattle, and to the left was a broad stretch of cultivated
lands, lying so that they could be irrigated for winter crops by means
of water led from the great spring that gushed out of the mountain-side
high above the house, and gave its name of Mooifontein to the place.

All these and many more things John Niel saw as he looked out from the
verandah at Mooifontein, but for the moment at any rate they were lost
in the wild and wonderful beauty of the panorama that rolled away for
miles and miles at his feet, till it was bounded by the mighty range of
the Drakensberg to the left, tipped here and there with snow, and by the
dim and vast horizon of the swelling Transvaal plains to the right and
far in front of him. It was a beautiful sight, and one to make the blood
run in a man's veins, and his heart beat happily because he was alive
to see it. Mile upon mile of grass-clothed veldt beneath, bending and
rippling like a corn-field in the quick breath of the morning, space
upon space of deep-blue sky overhead with ne'er a cloud to dim it, and
the swift rush of the wind between. Then to the left there, impressive
to look on and conducive to solemn thoughts, the mountains rear their
crests against the sky, and, crowned with the gathered snows of the
centuries whose monuments they are, from aeon to aeon gaze majestically
out over the wide plains and the ephemeral ant-like races who tread
them, and while they endure think themselves the masters of their little
world. And over all--mountain, plain, and flashing stream--the glorious
light of the African sun and the Spirit of Life moving now as it once
moved upon the darkling waters.

John stood and gazed at the untamed beauty of the scene, in his mind
comparing it to many cultivated prospects which he had known, and coming
to the conclusion that, however desirable the presence of civilised man
might be in the world, it could not be said that his operations really
add to its beauty. For the old line, "Nature unadorned adorned the
most," still remains true in more senses than one.

Presently his reflections were interrupted by the step of Silas
Croft, which, notwithstanding his age and bent frame, still rang firm
enough--and he turned to greet him.

"Well, Captain Niel," said the old man, "up already! It looks well if
you mean to take to farming. Yes, it's a pretty view, and a pretty place
too. Well, I made it. Twenty-five years ago I rode up here and saw this
spot. Look, you see that rock there behind the house? I slept under it
and woke at sunrise and looked out at this beautiful scene and at the
great veldt (it was all alive with game then), and I said to myself,
'Silas, for five-and-twenty years have you wandered about this great
country, and now you are getting tired of it; you've never seen a fairer
spot than this or a healthier; be a wise man and stop here.' And so I
did. I bought the 3,000 _morgen_ (6,000 acres), more or less, for 10
pounds down and a case of gin, and I set to work to make this place, and
you see I have made it. Ay, it has grown under my hand, every stone and
tree of it, and you know what that means in a new country. But one way
or another I have done it, and now I have grown too old to manage it,
and that's how I came to give out that I wanted a partner, as Mr. Snow
told you down in Durban. You see, I told Snow it must be a gentleman; I
don't care much about the money, I'll take a thousand for a third share
if I can get a gentleman--none of your Boers or mean whites for me. I
tell you I have had enough of Boers and their ways; the best day of my
life was when old Shepstone ran up the Union Jack there in Pretoria and
I could call myself an Englishman once more. Lord! and to think that
there are men who are subjects of the Queen and want to be subjects of
a Republic again--Mad! Captain Niel, I tell you, quite mad! However,
there's an end of it all now. You know what Sir Garnet Wolseley told
them in the name of the Queen up at the Vaal River, that this country
would remain English until the sun stood still in the heavens and the
waters of the Vaal ran backwards.[*] That's good enough for me, for, as
I tell these grumbling fellows who want the land back now that we have
paid their debts and defeated their enemies, no English government is
false to its word, or breaks engagements solemnly entered into by its
representatives. We leave that sort of thing to foreigners. No, no,
Captain Niel, I would not ask you to take a share in this place if I
wasn't sure that it would remain under the British flag. But we will
talk of all this another time, and now come in to breakfast."

[*] A fact.--Author.

After breakfast, as John was far too lame to walk about the farm, the
fair Bessie suggested that he should come and help her to wash a batch
of ostrich feathers, and, accordingly, off he went. The _locus operandi_
was in a space of lawn at the rear of a little clump of _naatche_
orange-trees, of which the fruit is like that of the Maltese orange,
only larger. Here were placed an ordinary washing-tub half-filled with
warm water, and a tin bath full of cold. The ostrich feathers, many of
which were completely coated with red dirt, were plunged first into the
tub of warm water, where John Niel scrubbed them with soap, and then
transferred to the tin bath, where Bessie rinsed them and laid them on
a sheet in the sun to dry. The morning was very pleasant, and John soon
came to the conclusion that there are many more disagreeable occupations
in the world than the washing of ostrich feathers with a lovely girl to
help you. For there was no doubt but that Bessie was lovely, looking a
very type of happy, healthy womanhood as she sat opposite to him on the
little stool, her sleeves rolled up almost to the shoulder, showing
a pair of arms that would not have disgraced a statue of Venus, and
laughed and chatted away as she washed the feathers. Now, John Niel was
not a susceptible man: he had gone through the fire years before and
burnt his fingers like many another confiding youngster but, all the
same, he did wonder as he knelt there and watched this fair girl, who
somehow reminded him of a rich rosebud bursting into bloom, how long
it would be possible to live in the same house with her without falling
under the spell of her charm and beauty. Then he began to think of Jess,
and of what a strange contrast the two were.

"Where is your sister?" he asked presently.

"Jess? Oh, I think that she has gone to the Lion Kloof, reading or
sketching, I don't know which. You see in this establishment I represent
labour and Jess represents intellect," and she nodded her head prettily
at him, and added, "There is a mistake somewhere, she got all the
brains."

"Ah," said John quietly, and looking up at her, "I don't think that you
are entitled to complain of the way in which Nature has treated you."

She blushed a little, more at the tone of his voice than the words, and
went on hastily, "Jess is the dearest, best, and cleverest woman in the
whole world--there. I believe that she has only one fault, and it is
that she thinks too much about me. Uncle said that he had told you how
we came here first when I was eight years old. Well, I remember that
when we lost our way on the veldt that night, and it rained so and was
so cold, Jess took off her own shawl and wrapped it round me over my
own. Well, it has been just like that with her always. I am always to
have the shawl--everything is to give way to me. But there, that is Jess
all over; she is very cold, cold as a stone I sometimes think, but when
she does care for anybody it is enough to frighten one. I don't know a
great number of women, but somehow I do not think that there can be many
in the world like Jess. She is too good for this place; she ought to go
away to England and write books and become a famous woman, only----"
she added reflectively, "I am afraid that Jess's books would all be sad
ones."

Just then Bessie stopped talking and suddenly changed colour, the bunch
of lank wet feathers she held in her hand dropping from it with a little
splash back into the bath. Following her glance, John looked down the
avenue of blue-gum trees and perceived a big man with a broad hat and
mounted on a splendid black horse, cantering leisurely towards the
house.

"Who is that, Miss Croft?" he asked.

"It is a man I don't like," she said with a little stamp of her foot.
"His name is Frank Muller, and he is half a Boer and half an Englishman.
He is very rich, and very clever, and owns all the land round this
place, so uncle has to be civil to him, though he does not like him
either. I wonder what he wants now."

On came the horse, and John thought that its rider was going to pass
without seeing them, when suddenly the movement of Bessie's dress
between the _naatche_ trees caught his eye, and he pulled up and looked
round. He was a large and exceedingly handsome man, apparently about
forty years old, with clear-cut features, cold, light-blue eyes, and a
remarkable golden beard that hung down over his chest. For a Boer he
was rather smartly dressed in English-made tweed clothes, and tall
riding-boots.

"Ah, Miss Bessie," he called out in English, "there you are, with your
pretty arms all bare. I'm in luck to be just in time to see them. Shall
I come and help you to wash the feathers? Only say the word, now----"

Just then he caught sight of John Niel, checked himself, and added:

"I have come to look for a black ox, branded with a heart and a 'W'
inside of the heart. Do you know if your uncle has seen it on the place
anywhere?"

"No, _Meinheer_ Muller," replied Bessie, coldly, "but he is down there,"
pointing at a kraal on the plain some half-mile away, "if you want to go
and ask about it."

"_Mr._ Muller," said he, by way of correction, and with a curious
contraction of the brow. "'_Meinheer_' is very well for the Boers, but
we are all Englishmen now. Well, the ox can wait. With your permission,
I'll stop here till _Oom_ Croft (Uncle Croft) comes back," and, without
further ado, he jumped off his horse and, slipping the reins over its
head as an indication to it to stand still, advanced towards Bessie with
an outstretched hand. As he came the young lady plunged both her arms
up to the elbow in the bath, and it struck John, who was observing the
scene closely, that she did this in order to avoid the necessity of
shaking hands with her stalwart visitor.

"Sorry my hands are wet," she said, giving him a cold little nod. "Let
me introduce you, Mr. (with emphasis) Frank Muller--Captain Niel--who
has come to help my uncle with the place."

John stretched out his hand and Muller shook it.

"Captain," he said interrogatively--"a ship captain, I suppose?"

"No," said John, "a Captain of the English Army."

"Oh, a _rooibaatje_ (red jacket). Well, I don't wonder at your taking to
farming after the Zulu war."

"I don't quite understand you," said John, rather coldly.

"Oh, no offence, Captain, no offence. I only meant that you
_rooibaatjes_ did not come very well out of that war. I was there with
Piet Uys, and it was a sight, I can tell you. A Zulu had only to show
himself at night and one would see your regiments _skreck_ (stampede)
like a span of oxen when they wind a lion. And then they'd fire--ah,
they did fire--anyhow, anywhere, but mostly at the clouds, there was no
stopping them; and so, you see, I thought that you would like to turn
your sword into a ploughshare, as the Bible says--but no offence, I'm
sure--no offence."

All this while John Niel, being English to his backbone, and cherishing
the reputation of his profession almost as dearly as his own honour,
was boiling with inward wrath, which was all the fiercer because he knew
there was some truth in the Boer's insults. He had the sense, however,
to keep his temper--outwardly, at any rate.

"I was not in the Zulu war, Mr. Muller," he said, and just then old
Silas Croft rode up, and the conversation dropped.

Mr. Frank Muller stopped to dinner and far on into the afternoon, for
his lost ox seemed to have entirely slipped his memory. There he sat
close to the fair Bessie, smoking and drinking gin-water, and talking
with great volubility in English sprinkled with Boer-Dutch terms that
John Niel did not understand, and gazing at the young lady in a manner
which John somehow found unpleasant. Of course it was no affair of his,
and he had no interest in the matter, but for all that he thought this
remarkable-looking Dutchman exceedingly disagreeable. At last, indeed,
he could bear it no longer, and hobbled out for a little walk with Jess,
who, in her abrupt way, offered to show him the garden.

"You don't like that man?" she said to him, as they went slowly down the
slope in front of the house.

"No; do you?"

"I think," replied Jess quietly, but with much emphasis, "that he is
the most odious man I ever saw--and the most curious." Then she relapsed
into silence, only broken now and again by an occasional remark about
the flowers and trees.

Half an hour afterwards, when they arrived again at the top of the
slope, Mr. Muller was just riding off down the avenue of blue gums. By
the verandah stood a Hottentot named Jantje, who had been holding the
Dutchman's horse. He was a curious, wizened-up little fellow, dressed
in rags, and with hair like the worn tags of a black woollen carpet.
His age might have been anything between twenty-five and sixty; it was
impossible to form any opinion on the point. Just now, however,
his yellow monkey face was convulsed with an expression of intense
malignity, and he was standing there in the sunshine cursing rapidly
beneath his breath in Dutch, and shaking his fist after the form of the
retreating Boer--a very epitome of impotent but overmastering passion.

"What is he doing?" asked John.

Jess laughed, and answered, "Jantje does not like Frank Muller any more
than I do, but I don't know why. He will never tell me."



CHAPTER IV

BESSIE IS ASKED IN MARRIAGE

In due course John Niel recovered from his sprained ankle and the other
injuries inflicted on him by the infuriated cock ostrich (it is, by the
way, a humiliating thing to be knocked out of time by a feathered fowl),
and set to work to learn the routine of farm life. He did not find this
a disagreeable task, especially when he had so fair an instructress as
Bessie, who knew all about it, to show him the way in which he should
go. Naturally of an energetic and hard-working temperament, he very soon
fell more or less into the swing of the thing, and at the end of six
weeks began to talk quite learnedly of cattle and ostriches and sweet
and sour veldt. About once a week or so Bessie used to put him through
a regular examination as to his progress; also she gave him lessons in
Dutch and Zulu, both of which tongues she spoke to perfection; so
it will be seen that John did not lack for pleasant and profitable
employment. Also, as time went on he grew much attached to Silas Croft.
The old gentleman, with his handsome, honest face, his large and varied
stock of experience and his sturdy English character, made a great
impression on his mind. He had never met a man quite like him before.
Nor was this friendship unreciprocated, for his host took a wonderful
fancy to John Niel.

"You see, my dear," he explained to his niece Bessie, "he is quiet, and
he doesn't know much about farming, but he's willing to learn, and such
a gentleman. Now, where one has Kafirs to deal with, as on a place
like this, you must have a _gentleman_. Your mean white will never get
anything out of a Kafir; that's why the Boers kill them and flog them,
because they can't get anything out of them without. But you see Captain
Niel gets on well enough with the 'boys.' I think he'll do, my dear,
I think he'll do," and Bessie quite agreed with him. And so it came to
pass that after this six weeks' trial the bargain was struck finally,
and John paid over his thousand pounds, becoming the owner of a third
interest in Mooifontein.

Now it is not possible, in a general way, for a man of John Niel's age
to live in the same house with a young and lovely woman like Bessie
Croft without running more or less risk of entanglement. Especially
is this so when the two people have little or no outside society or
distraction to divert their attention from each other. Not that there
was, at any rate as yet, the slightest hint of affection between them.
Only they liked one another very much, and found it pleasant to be a
good deal together. In short, they were walking along that easy, winding
road which leads to the mountain paths of love. It is a very broad road,
like another road that runs elsewhere, and, also like this last, it has
a wide gate. Sometimes, too, it leads to destruction. But for all that
it is a most agreeable one to follow hand-in-hand, winding as it does
through the pleasant meadows of companionship. The view is rather
limited, it is true, and homelike--full of familiar things. There stand
the kine, knee-deep in grass; there runs the water; and there grows
the corn. Also you can stop if you like. By-and-by it is different.
By-and-by, when the travellers tread the heights of passion, precipices
will yawn and torrents rush, lightnings will fall and storms will blind;
and who can know that they shall attain at last to that far-off peak,
crowned with the glory of a perfect peace which men call Happiness?
There are those who say it never can be reached, and that the halo which
rests upon its slopes is no earthly light, but rather, as it were, a
promise and a beacon--a glow reflected whence we know not, and lying on
this alien earth as the sun's light lies on the dead bosom of the moon.
Some declare, again, that they have climbed its topmost pinnacle
and tasted of the fresh breath of heaven which sweeps around its
heights--ay, and heard the quiring of immortal harps and the swan-like
sigh of angels' wings; and then behold! a mist has fallen upon them, and
they have wandered in it, and when it cleared they were on the mountain
paths once more, and the peak was far away. And a few there are who tell
us that they live there always, listening to the voice of God; but
these are old and worn with journeying--men and women who have outlived
passions and ambitions and the fire heats of love, and who now, girt
about with memories, stand face to face with the sphinx Eternity.

But John Niel was no chicken, nor very likely to fall in love with the
first pretty face he met. He had once, years ago, gone through that
melancholy stage, and there, he thought, was an end of it. Moreover, if
Bessie attracted him, so did Jess in a different way. Before he had
been a week in the house he came to the conclusion that Jess was the
strangest woman he had ever met, and in her own fashion one of the most
attractive. Her very impassiveness added to her charm; for who is there
in this world who is not eager to learn a secret? To him Jess was
a riddle of which he did not know the key. That she was clever and
well-informed he soon discovered from her rare remarks; that she could
sing like an angel he also knew; but what was the mainspring of her
mind--round what axis did it revolve--this was the puzzle. Clearly
enough it was not like most women's, least of all like that of happy,
healthy, plain-sailing Bessie. So curious did he become to fathom these
mysteries that he took every opportunity to associate with her, and,
when he had time, would even go out with her on her sketching, or rather
flower-painting, expeditions. On these occasions she would sometimes
begin to talk, but it was always about books, or England or some
intellectual question. She never spoke of herself.

Yet it soon became evident to John that she liked his society, and
missed him when he did not come. It never occurred to him what a boon
it was to a girl of considerable intellectual attainments, and still
greater intellectual capacities and aspirations, to be thrown for the
first time into the society of a cultivated and intelligent gentleman.
John Niel was no empty-headed, one-sided individual. He had both read
and thought, and even written a little, and in him Jess found a mind
which, though of an inferior stamp, was more or less kindred to her own.
Although he did not understand her she understood him, and at last, had
he but known it, there rose a far-off dawning light upon the twilight
of her heart that thrilled and changed it as the first faint rays of
morning thrill and change the darkness of the night. What if she should
learn to love this man, and teach him to love her? To most women such a
thought more or less involves the idea of marriage, and that change of
status which for the most part they consider desirable. But Jess did not
think much of that: what she did think of was the blessed possibility of
being able to lay down her life, as it were, in the life of another--of
at last finding somebody who understood her and whom she could
understand, who would cut the shackles that bound down the wings of
her genius, so that she could rise and bear him with her as, in Bulwer
Lytton's beautiful story, Zoe would have borne her lover. Here at length
was a man who _understood_, who was something more than an animal, and
who possessed the god-like gift of brains, the gift that had been a
curse rather than a blessing to her, lifting her above the level of
her sex and shutting her off as by iron doors from the comprehension of
those around her. Ah! if only this perfect love of which she had read
so much would come to him and her, life might perhaps grow worth the
living.

It is a curious thing, but in such matters most men never learn wisdom
from experience. A man of John Niel's age might have guessed that it
is dangerous work playing with explosives, and that the quietest, most
harmless-looking substances are sometimes the most explosive. He might
have known that to set to work to cultivate the society of a woman with
such tell-tale eyes as Jess's was to run the risk of catching the fire
from them himself, to say nothing of setting her alight: he might have
known that to bring all the weight of his cultivated mind to bear on her
mind, to take the deepest interest in her studies, to implore her to let
him see the poetry Bessie told him she wrote, but which she would
show to no living soul, and to evince the most evident delight in her
singing, were one and all hazardous things to do. Yet he did them and
thought no harm.

As for Bessie, she was delighted that her sister should have found
anybody to whom she cared to talk or who could understand her. It never
occurred to her that Jess might fall in love. Jess was the last person
to fall in love. Nor did she calculate what the results might be to
John. As yet, at any rate, she had no interest in Captain Niel--of
course not.

And so things went on pleasantly enough to all concerned in this drama
till one fine day when the storm-clouds began to gather. John had been
about the farm as usual till dinner time, after which he took his gun
and told Jantje to saddle up his shooting pony. He was standing on the
verandah, waiting for the pony to appear, and by him was Bessie, looking
particularly attractive in a white dress, when suddenly he caught sight
of Frank Muller's great black horse, and upon it that gentleman himself,
cantering up the avenue of blue gums.

"Hullo, Miss Bessie," he said, "here comes your friend."

"Bother!" said Bessie, stamping her foot; and then, with a quick look,
"Why do you call him my friend?"

"I imagine that he considers himself so, to judge from the number of
times a week he comes to see you," John answered with a shrug. "At any
rate, he isn't mine, so I am off shooting. Good-bye. I hope that you
will enjoy yourself."

"You are not kind," she said in a low voice, turning her back upon him.

In another moment he was gone, and Frank Muller had arrived.

"How do you do, Miss Bessie?" he said, jumping from his horse with the
rapidity of a man who had been accustomed to rough riding all his life.
"Where is the _rooibaatje_ off to?"

"Captain Niel is going out shooting," she said coldly.

"So much the better for you and me, Miss Bessie. We can have a pleasant
talk. Where is that black monkey Jantje? Here, Jantje, take my horse,
you ugly devil, and mind you look after him, or I'll cut the liver out
of you!"

Jantje took the horse, with a forced grin of appreciation at the joke,
and led him off to the stable.

"I don't think that Jantje likes you, _Meinheer_ Muller," said Bessie,
spitefully, "and I do not wonder at it if you talk to him like that. He
told me the other day that he had known you for twenty years," and she
looked at him inquiringly.

This casual remark produced a strange effect on her visitor, who turned
colour beneath his tanned skin.

"He lies, the black hound," he said, "and I'll put a bullet through him
if he says it again! What should I know about him, or he about me? Can
I keep count of every miserable man-monkey I meet?" and he muttered a
string of Dutch oaths into his long beard.

"Really, _Meinheer!_" said Bessie.

"Why do you always call me '_Meinheer_'?" he asked, turning so fiercely
on her that she started back a step. "I tell you I am not a Boer. I
am an Englishman. My mother was English; and besides, thanks to Lord
Carnarvon, we are all English now."

"I don't see why you should mind being thought a Boer," she said coolly:
"there are some very good people among the Boers, and besides, you used
to be a great 'patriot.'"

"Used to be--yes; and so the trees used to bend to the north when the
wind blew that way, but now they bend to the south, for the wind
has turned. By-and-by it may set to the north again--that is another
matter--then we shall see."

Bessie made no answer beyond pursing up her pretty mouth and slowly
picking a leaf from the vine that trailed overhead.

The big Dutchman took off his hat and stroked his beard perplexedly.
Evidently he was meditating something that he was afraid to say. Twice
he fixed his cold eyes on Bessie's fair face, and twice looked down
again. The second time she took alarm.

"Excuse me one minute," she said, and made as though to enter the house.

"_Wacht een beeche_" (wait a bit), he ejaculated, breaking into Dutch
in his agitation, and even catching hold of her white dress with his big
hand.

Drawing the dress from him with a quick twist of her lithe form, she
turned and faced him.

"I beg your pardon," she said, in a tone that could not be called
encouraging: "you were going to say something."

"Yes--ah, that is--I was going to say----" and he paused.

Bessie stood with a polite look of expectation on her face, and waited.

"I was going to say--that, in short, that I want to marry you!"

"Oh!" exclaimed Bessie with a start.

"Listen," he went on hoarsely, his words gathering force as he spoke, as
is the way even with uncultured people when they speak from the heart.
"Listen! I love you, Bessie; I have loved you for three years. Every
time I have seen you I have loved you more. Don't say me nay--you don't
know how I do love you. I dream of you every night; sometimes I dream
that I hear your dress rustling, then you come and kiss me, and it is
like being in heaven."

Here Bessie made a gesture of disgust.

"There, I have offended you, but don't be angry with me. I am very rich,
Bessie; there is the place here, and then I have four farms in Lydenburg
and ten thousand _morgen_ up in Waterberg, and a thousand head of
cattle, besides sheep and horses and money in the bank. You shall have
everything your own way," he went on, seeing that the inventory of his
goods did not appear to impress her--"everything--the house shall be
English fashion; I will build a new _sit-kammer_ (sitting-room) and it
shall be furnished from Natal. There, I love you, I say. You won't say
no, will you?" and he caught her by the hand.

"I am very much obliged to you, Mr. Muller," answered Bessie, snatching
away her hand, "but--in short, I cannot marry you. No, it is no use, I
cannot indeed. There, please say no more--here comes my uncle. Forget
all about it, Mr. Muller."

Her suitor looked up; there was old Silas Croft sure enough, but he was
some way off, and walking slowly.

"Do you mean it?" he said beneath his breath.

"Yes, yes, of course I mean it. Why do you force me to repeat it?"

"It is that damned _rooibaatje_," he broke out. "You used not to be like
this before. Curse him, the white-livered Englishman! I will be even
with him yet; and I tell you what it is, Bessie: you shall marry me,
whether you like or no. Look here, do you think I am the sort of man
to play with? You go to Wakkerstroom and ask what sort of a man Frank
Muller is. See! I want you--I must have you. I could not live if I
thought that I should never get you for myself. And I tell you I will
do it. I don't care of it costs me my life, and your _rooibaatje's_ too.
I'll do it if I have to stir up a revolt against the Government. There,
I swear it by God or by the Devil, it's all one to me!" And growing
inarticulate with passion, he stood before her clinching and unclinching
his great hand, and his lips trembling.

Bessie was very frightened; but she was a brave woman, and rose to the
emergency.

"If you go on talking like that," she said, "I shall call my uncle. I
tell you that I will not marry you, Frank Muller, and that nothing
shall ever make me marry you. I am very sorry for you, but I have not
encouraged you, and I will never marry you--never!"

He stood for half a minute or so looking at her, and then burst into a
savage laugh.

"I think that some day or other I shall find a way to make you," Muller
said, and turning, he went without another word.

A couple of minutes later Bessie heard the sound of a horse galloping,
and looking up she saw her wooer's powerful form vanishing down the
vista of blue gums. Also she heard somebody crying out as though in pain
at the back of the house, and, more to relieve her mind than for any
other reason, she went to see what it was. By the stable door she found
the Hottentot Jantje, shrieking, cursing and twisting round and round,
his hand pressed to his side, from which the blood was running.

"What is it?" she asked.

"Baas Frank!" he answered--"Baas Frank hit me with his whip!"

"The brute!" said Bessie, the tears starting to her eyes with anger.

"Never mind, missie, never mind," gasped the Hottentot, his ugly face
growing livid with fury, "it is only one more to me. I cut it on this
stick"--and he held up a long thick stick he carried, on which were
several notches, including three deep ones at the top just below the
knob. "Let him look out sharp--let him search the grass--let him creep
round the bush--let him watch as he will, one day he will find Jantje,
and Jantje will find him!"

"Why did Frank Muller gallop away like that?" asked her uncle of Bessie
when she got back to the verandah.

"We had some words," she answered shortly, not seeing the use of
explaining matters to the old man.

"Ah, indeed, indeed. Well, be careful, my love. It's ill to quarrel with
a man like Frank Muller. I've known him for many years, and he has a
black heart when he is crossed. You see, my love, you can deal with a
Boer and you can deal with an Englishman, but cross-bred dogs are hard
to handle. Take my advice, and make it up with Frank Muller."

All of which sage advice did not tend to raise Bessie's spirits, that
were already sufficiently depressed.



CHAPTER V

DREAMS ARE FOOLISHNESS

When, at the approach of Frank Muller, John Niel left Bessie on the
verandah, he had taken his gun, and, having whistled to the pointer dog
Pontac, he mounted his shooting pony and started in quest of partridges.
On the warm slopes of the hills round Wakkerstroom a large species of
partridge is very abundant, particularly in the patches of red grass
with which the slopes are sometimes clothed. It is a merry sound to hear
these birds calling from all directions just after daybreak, and one to
make the heart of every true sportsman rejoice exceedingly. On leaving
the house John proceeded up the side of the hill behind it--his pony
picking its way carefully between the stones, and the dog Pontac ranging
about two or three hundred yards off, for in this sort of country it
is necessary to have a dog with a wide range. Presently seeing him
stop under a mimosa thorn and suddenly stiffen out as if he had been
petrified, John made the best of his way towards him. Pontac stood still
for a few seconds, and then slowly and deliberately veered his head
round as though it worked on a hinge to see if his master was coming.
John knew his ways. Three times would that remarkable old dog look round
thus, and if the gun had not then arrived he would to a certainty run
in and flush the birds. This was a rule that he never broke, for his
patience had a fixed limit. On this occasion, however, John arrived
before it was reached, and, jumping off his pony, cocked his gun and
marched slowly up, full of happy expectation. On drew the dog, his eye
cold and fixed, saliva dropping from his mouth, and his head, on
which was frozen an extraordinary expression of instinctive ferocity,
outstretched to its utmost limit.

Pontac was under the mimosa thorn now and up to his belly in the warm
red grass. Where could the birds be? _Whirr!_ and a great feathered
shell seemed to have burst at his very feet. What a covey! twelve brace
if there was a bird, and they had all been lying beak to beak in a space
no bigger than a cart wheel. Up went John's gun and off too, a little
sooner than it should have done.

"Missed him clean! Now then for the left barrel." Same result. We will
draw a veil over the profanity that ensued. A minute later and it was
all over, and John and Pontac were regarding each other with mutual
contempt and disgust.

"It was all you, you brute," said John to Pontac. "I thought you were
going to run in, and you hurried me."

"Ugh!" said Pontac to John, or at least he looked it. "Ugh! you
disgusting bad shot. What is the good of pointing for you? It's enough
to make a dog sick."

The covey--or rather the collection of old birds, for this kind of
partridge sometimes "packs" just before the breeding season--had
scattered all about the place. It was not long before Pontac found some
of them, and this time John got one bird--a beautiful great partridge he
was too, with yellow legs--and missed another. Again Pontac pointed, and
a brace rose. Bang! down goes one; bang with the other barrel. Caught
him, by Jove, just as he topped the stone. Hullo! Pontac is still on the
point. Slip in two more cartridges. Oh, a leash this time! bang! bang!
and down come a brace of them--two brace of partridges without moving a
yard.

Life has joys for all men, but, I verily believe, it has no joy to
compare to that of the moderate shot and earnest sportsman when he
has just killed half a dozen driven partridges without a miss, or ten
rocketing pheasants with eleven cartridges, or, better still, a couple
of woodcock right and left. Sweet to the politician are the cheers
that announce the triumph of his cause and of himself; sweet to the
desponding writer is the unexpected public recognition by reviewers of
talents with which previously nobody had been much impressed; sweet to
all men are the light of women's eyes and the touch of women's lips. But
though he have experienced all these things, to the true sportsman and
the _moderate shot_, sweeter far is it to see the arched wings of the
driven bird bent like Cupid's bow come flashing fast towards him, to
feel the touch of the stock as it fits itself against his shoulder,
and the kindly give of the trigger, and then, oh thrilling sight! to
perceive the wonderful and yet awful change from life to death, the puff
of feathers, and the hurtling passage of the dull mass borne onward by
its own force to fall twenty yards from where the pellets struck it.
Next session the politician will be hooted down, next year perhaps
the reviewers will cut the happy writer to ribbons and decorate their
journals with his fragments, next week you will have wearied of those
dear smiles, or, more likely still, they will be bestowed elsewhere.
Vanity of vanities, my son, each and all of them! But if you are a true
sportsman (yes, even though you be but a moderate shot), it will always
be a glorious thing to go out shooting, and when you chance to shoot
well earth holds no such joy as that which will glow in your honest
breast (for all sportsmen are honest), and it remains to be proved if
heaven does either. It is a grand sport, though the pity of it is that
it should be a cruel one.

Such was the paean that John sang in his heart as he contemplated those
fine partridges before lovingly transferring them to his bag. But his
luck to-day was not destined to stop at partridges, for hardly had he
ridden over the edge of the boulder-strewn side, and on to the flat
table-top of the great hill which covered some five hundred acres of
land, before he perceived, emerging from the shelter of a tuft of grass
about a hundred and seventy yards away, nothing less than the tall neck
and whiskered head of a large _pauw_ or bustard.

Now it is quite useless to try and ride straight up to a bustard, and
this he knew. The only thing to do is to excite his curiosity and fix
his attention by moving round and round him in an ever-narrowing circle.
Putting his pony to a canter, John proceeded to do this with a heart
beating with excitement. Round and round he went; the _pauw_ had
vanished now, he was squatting in the tuft of grass. The last circle
brought him to within seventy yards, and he did not dare to ride any
nearer, so jumping off his pony he ran in towards the bird as hard as he
could go. When he had covered ten paces the _pauw_ was rising, but they
are heavy birds, and he was within forty yards before it was fairly on
the wing. Then he pulled up and fired both barrels of No. 4 into it.
Down it came, and, incautious man, he rushed forward in triumph without
reloading his gun. Already was his hand outstretched to seize the prize,
when, behold! the great wings spread themselves out and the bird was
flying away. John stood dancing upon the veldt, but observing that it
settled within a couple of hundred yards, he ran back, mounted his pony,
and pursued it. As he drew near it rose again, and flew this time
a hundred yards only, and so it went on till at last he got within
gun-shot of the king of birds and killed it.

By this time he was across the mountain-top, and on the brink of the
most remarkable chasm he had ever seen. The place was known as Lion's
Kloof, or Leeuwen Kloof in Dutch, because three lions had once been
penned up by a party of Boers and shot there. This chasm or gorge was
between a quarter and half a mile long, about six hundred feet in width,
and a hundred and fifty to a hundred and eighty feet deep. Evidently it
owed its origin to the action of running water, for at its head, just to
the right of where John Niel stood, a little stream welling from hidden
springs in the flat mountain-top trickled from stratum to stratum,
forming a series of crystal pools and tiny waterfalls, till at last it
reached the bottom of the mighty gorge, and pursued its way through
it to the plains beyond, half-hidden by the umbrella-topped mimosa and
other thorns that were scattered about. Without doubt this little stream
was the parent of the ravine it trickled down and through, but, wondered
John Niel, how many centuries of patient, never-ceasing flow must
have been necessary to the vast result before him? First centuries
of saturation of the soil piled on and between the bed rocks that lay
beneath it and jutted up through it, then centuries of floods caused
by rain and perhaps by melting snows, to carry away the loosened mould;
then centuries upon centuries more of flowing and of rainfall to wash
the debris clean and complete the colossal work.

I say the rocks that jutted up through the soil, for the kloof was not
clean cut. All along its sides, and here and there in its arena, stood
mighty columns or fingers of rock, not solid indeed, but formed by huge
boulders piled mason fashion one upon another, as though the Titans of
some dead age had employed themselves in building them up, overcoming
their tendency to fall by the mere crushing weight above, that kept them
steady even when the wild breath of the storms came howling down the
gorge and tried its strength against them. About a hundred paces from
the near end of the chasm, some ninety or more feet in height, rose
the most remarkable of these giant pillars, to which the remains at
Stonehenge are but as toys. It was formed of seven huge boulders, the
largest, that at the bottom, about the size of a moderate cottage,
and the smallest, that at the top, perhaps some eight or ten feet in
diameter. These boulders were rounded like a cricket-ball--evidently
through the action of water--and yet the hand of Nature had contrived
to balance them, each one smaller than that beneath, the one upon
the other, and to keep them so. But this was not always the case. For
instance, a very similar mass which once stood on the near side of the
perfect pillar had fallen, all except its two foundation stones, and
the rocks that formed it lay scattered about like monstrous petrified
cannon-balls. One of these had split in two, and seated on it, looking
very small and far off at the bottom of that vast gulf, John discovered
Jess Croft, apparently engaged in sketching.

He dismounted from his shooting pony, and looking about him perceived
that it was possible to descend by following the course of the stream
and clambering down the natural steps it had cut in its rocky bed.
Throwing the reins over the pony's head, and leaving him with the dog
Pontac to stand and stare about him as South African shooting ponies
are accustomed to do, he laid down his gun and game and proceeded to
descend, pausing every now and again to admire the wild beauty of the
scene and examine the hundred varieties of moss and ferns, the last
mostly of the maiden-hair (_Capillus Veneris_) genus, that clothed every
cranny and every rock where they could find foothold and win refreshment
from the water or the spray of the cascades. As he drew near the bottom
of the gorge he saw that on the borders of the stream, wherever the soil
was moist, grew thousands upon thousands of white arums, "pig lilies" as
they call them in Africa, which were now in full bloom. He had noticed
these lilies from above, but thence, owing to the distance, they seemed
so small that he took them for everlastings or anemones. John could not
see Jess now, for she was hidden by a bush that grows on the banks of
the streams in South Africa in low-lying land, and which at certain
seasons of the year is completely covered with masses of the most
gorgeous scarlet bloom. His footsteps fell very softly on the moss
and flowers, and when he passed round the glorious-looking bush it was
evident that she had not heard him, for she was asleep. Her hat was
off, but the bush shaded her, and her head had fallen forward over
her sketching block and rested upon her hand. A ray of light that came
through the bush played over her curling brown hair, and threw warm
shadows on her white face and the whiter wrist and hand by which it was
supported.

John stood there and looked at her, and the old curiosity took
possession of him to understand this feminine enigma. Many a man before
him has been the victim of a like desire, and lived to regret that he
did not leave it ungratified. It is not well to try to lift the curtain
of the unseen, it is not well to call to heaven to show its glory, or
to hell to give us touch and knowledge of its yawning fires. Knowledge
comes soon enough; many of us will say that knowledge has come too soon
and left us desolate. There is no bitterness like the bitterness of
wisdom: so cried the great Koheleth, and so hath cried many a son of man
following blindly on his path. Let us be thankful for the dark places
of the earth--places where we may find rest and shadow, and the heavy
sweetness of the night. Seek not after mysteries, O son of man, be
content with the practical and the proved and the broad light of day;
peep not, mutter not the words of awakening. Understand her who would be
understood and is comprehensible to those that run, and for the others
let them be, lest your fate should be as the fate of Eve, and as the
fate of Lucifer, Star of the morning. For here and there beats a human
heart from which it is not wise to draw the veil--a heart in which many
things are dim as half-remembered dreams in the brain of the sleeper.
Draw not the veil, whisper not the word of life in the silence where all
things sleep, lest in that kindling breath of love and pain pale shapes
arise, take form, and fright you!

A minute or so might have passed when suddenly, and with a little start,
Jess opened her great eyes, wherein the shadow of darkness lay, and
gazed at him.

"Oh!" she said with a little tremor, "is it you or is it my dream?"

"Don't be afraid," he answered cheerfully, "it is I--in the flesh."

She covered her face with her hand for a moment, then withdrew it, and
he noticed that her eyes had changed curiously in that moment. They were
still large and beautiful as they always were, but there was a change.
Just now they had seemed as though her soul were looking through them.
Doubtless it was because the pupils had been enlarged by sleep.

"Your dream! What dream?" he asked, laughing.

"Never mind," she answered in a quiet way that excited his curiosity
more than ever. "It was about this Kloof--and you--but 'dreams are
foolishness.'"



CHAPTER VI

THE STORM BREAKS

"Do you know, you are a very odd person, Miss Jess," John said
presently, with a little laugh. "I don't think you can have a happy
mind."

She looked up. "A happy mind?" she said. "Who _can_ have a happy mind?
Nobody who feels. Supposing," she went on after a pause--"supposing one
puts oneself and one's own little interests and joys and sorrows quite
away, how is it possible to be happy, when one feels the breath of human
misery beating on one's face, and sees the tide of sorrow and suffering
creeping up to one's feet? You may be on a rock yourself and out of the
path of it, till the spring floods or the hurricane wave come to sweep
you away, or you may be afloat upon it: whichever it is, it is quite
impossible, if you have any heart, to be indifferent."

"Then only the indifferent are happy?"

"Yes, the indifferent and the selfish; but, after all, it is the same
thing: indifference is the perfection of selfishness."

"I am afraid that there must be lots of selfishness in the world, for
certainly there is plenty of happiness, all evil things notwithstanding.
I should have said that happiness springs from goodness and a sound
digestion."

Jess shook her head as she answered, "I may be wrong, but I don't
see how anybody who feels can be quite happy in a world of sickness,
suffering, slaughter, and death. I saw a Kafir woman die yesterday, and
her children crying over her. She was a poor creature and had a rough
lot, but she loved her life, and her children loved her. Who can be
happy and thank God for His creation when he has just seen such a thing?
But there, Captain Niel, my ideas are very crude, and I dare say very
wrong, and everybody has thought them before: at any rate, I am not
going to inflict them on you. What is the use of it?" and she went
on with a laugh: "what is the use of anything? The same old thoughts
passing through the same human minds from year to year and century to
century, just as the same clouds float across the same blue sky. The
clouds are born in the sky, and the thoughts are born in the brain, and
they both end in tears and re-arise in blind, bewildering mist, and this
is the beginning and end of thoughts and clouds. They arise out of the
blue; they overshadow and break into storms and tears, then they are
drawn up into the blue again, and the story begins afresh."

"So you don't think that one can be happy in this world?" he asked.

"I did not say that--I never said that. I do think that happiness is
possible. It is possible if one can love somebody so hard that one can
quite forget oneself and everything else except that person, and it
is possible if one can sacrifice oneself for others. There is no true
happiness outside of love and self-sacrifice, or rather outside of love,
for it includes the other. This is gold, and all the rest is gilt."

"How do you know that?" he asked quickly. "You have never been in love."

"No," she answered, "I have never been in love like that, but all the
happiness I have had in my life has come to me from loving. I believe
that love is the secret of the world: it is like the philosopher's stone
they used to look for, and almost as hard to find, but if you find it
it turns everything to gold. Perhaps," she went on with a little laugh,
"when the angels departed from the earth they left us love behind, that
by it and through it we may climb up to them again. It is the one thing
that lifts us above the brutes. Without love man is a brute, and nothing
but a brute; with love he draws near to God. When everything else falls
away the love will endure because it cannot die while there is any life,
if it is true love, for it is immortal. Only it must be true--you see it
must be true."

He had penetrated her reserve now; the ice of her manner broke up
beneath the warmth of her words, and her face, usually impassive, had
caught life and light from the eyes above, and acquired a certain beauty
of its own. John looked at it, and understood something of the untaught
and ill-regulated intensity and depth of the nature of this curious
girl. He met her eyes and they moved him strangely, though he was not
an emotional man, and was too old to experience spasmodic thrills at the
chance glances of a pretty woman. He moved towards her, looking at her
curiously.

"It would be worth living to be loved like that," he said, more to
himself than to her.

Jess did not answer, but she let her eyes rest on his. Indeed, she did
more, for she put her soul into them and gazed and gazed till John Niel
felt as though he were mesmerised. And as she gazed there rose up in her
breast a knowledge that if she willed it she could gain this man's heart
and hold it against all the world, for her nature was stronger than his
nature, and her mind, untrained though it be, encompassed his mind and
could pass over it and beat it down as the wind beats down the tossing
seas. All this she learnt in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye: she
could not tell how she knew it, but she did know it as surely as she
knew that the blue sky stretched overhead, and, what is more--for the
moment, at any rate--he knew it too. This strange strong certainty came
on her as a shock and a revelation, like the tidings of some great joy
or grief, and for a moment left her heart empty of all things else.

Jess dropped her eyes suddenly.

"I think," she said quietly, "that we have been talking a great deal of
nonsense, and that I want to finish my sketch."

He rose and left her, for he was wanted at home, saying as he went that
he thought there was a storm coming up; the air was so quiet, and the
wind had fallen as it does before an African tempest. Presently on
looking round she saw him slowly climbing the precipitous ascent to the
table-land above the gulf.

It was one of those glorious afternoons that sometimes come in the
African spring, although it was so intensely still. Everywhere appeared
the proofs of evidences of life. The winter was over, and now, from
the sadness and sterility of its withered age, sprang youth and lovely
summer clad in sunshine, bediamonded with dew, and fragrant with the
breath of flowers. Jess lay back and looked up into the infinite depths
above. How blue they were, and how measureless! She could not see the
angry clouds that lay like visible omens on the horizon. Look, there,
miles above her, was one tiny circling speck. It was a vulture, watching
her from his airy heights and descending a little to see if she were
dead, or only sleeping.

Involuntarily she shuddered. The bird of death reminded her of Death
himself also hanging high up yonder in the blue and waiting his
opportunity to fall upon the sleeper. Then her eyes fell upon a bough of
the glorious flowering bush under which she rested. It was not more than
four feet above her head, but she lay so still and motionless that a
jewelled honeysucker came and hovered over the flowers, darting from one
to another like a many-coloured flash. Thence her glance travelled to
the great column of boulders that towered above her, and that seemed to
say, "I am very old. I have seen many springs and many winters, and
have looked down on many sleeping maids, and where are they now?
All dead--all dead," and an old baboon in the rocks with startling
suddenness barked out "_all dead_" in answer.

Around her were the blooming lilies and the lustiness of springing life;
the heavy air was sweet with the odour of ferns and the mimosa flowers.
The running water splashed and musically fell; the sunlight shot in
golden bars athwart the shade, like the memory of happy days in the
grey vista of a life; away in the cliffs yonder, the rock-doves were
preparing to nest by hundreds, and waking the silence with their cooing
and the flutter of their wings. Even the grim old eagle perched on
the pinnacle of the peak was pruning himself, contentedly happy in
the knowledge that his mate had laid an egg in that dark corner of the
cliff. All things rejoiced and cried aloud that summer was at hand and
that it was time to bloom and love and nest. Soon it would be winter
again, when things died, and next summer other things would live under
the sun, and these perchance would be forgotten. That was what they
seemed to say.

And as Jess lay and heard, her youthful blood, drawn by Nature's
magnetic force, as the moon draws the tides, rose in her veins like the
sap in the budding trees, and stirred her virginal serenity. All the
bodily natural part of her caught the tones of Nature's happy voice that
bade her break her bonds, live and love, and be a woman. And lo! the
spirit within her answered to it, flinging wide her bosom's doors, and
of a sudden, as it were, something quickened and lived in her heart that
was of her and yet had its own life--a life apart; something that sprang
from her and another, which would always be with her now and could
never die. She rose pale and trembling, as a woman trembles at the first
stirring of the child that she shall bear, and clung to the flowery
bough of the beautiful bush above, then sank down again, feeling that
the spirit of her girlhood had departed from her, and another angel had
entered there; knowing that she loved with heart and soul and body, and
was a very woman.

She had called to Love as the wretched call to Death, and Love had come
in his strength and possessed her utterly; and now for a little while
she was afraid to pass into the shadow of his wings, as the wretched
who call to Death fear him when they feel his icy fingers. But the fear
passed, and the great joy and the new consciousness of power and of
identity that the inspiration of a true passion gives to some strong
deep natures remained, and after a while Jess prepared to make her way
home across the mountain-top, feeling as though she were another being.
Still she did not go, but lay there with closed eyes and drank of this
new intoxicating wine. So absorbed was she that she did not notice
that the doves had ceased to call, and that the eagle had fled away for
shelter. She was not aware of the great and solemn hush which had taken
the place of the merry voice of beast and bird and preceded the breaking
of the gathered storm.

At last as she rose to go Jess opened her dark eyes, which, for the most
part, had been shut while this great change was passing over her, and
with a natural impulse turned to look once more on the place where her
happiness had found her, then sank down again with a little exclamation.
Where was the light and the glory and all the happiness of the life that
moved and grew around her? Gone, and in its place darkness and rising
mist and deep and ominous shadows. While she lay and thought, the sun
had sunk behind the hill and left the great gulf nearly dark, and, as is
common in South Africa, the heavy storm-cloud had crept across the blue
sky and sealed the light from above. A drear wind came moaning up the
gorge from the plains beyond; the heavy rain-drops began to fall one
by one; the lightning flickered fitfully in the belly of the advancing
cloud. The storm that John had feared was upon her.

Then came a dreadful hush. Jess had recovered herself by now, and,
knowing what to expect, she snatched up her sketching-block and hurried
into the shelter of a little cave hollowed by water in the side of the
cliff. And now with a rush of ice-cold air the tempest burst. Down came
the rain in a sheet; then flash upon flash gleaming fiercely through the
vapour-laden air; and roar upon roar echoing along the rocky cavities in
volumes of fearful sound. Then another pause and space of utter silence,
followed by a blaze of light that dazed and blinded her, and suddenly
one of the piled-up columns to her left swayed to and fro like a poplar
in a breeze, to fall headlong with a crash which almost mastered the
awful crackling of the thunder overhead and the shrieking of the baboons
scared from their crannies in the cliff. Down it rushed beneath the
stroke of that fiery sword, the brave old pillar that had lasted out so
many centuries, sending clouds of dust and fragments high up into the
blinding rain, and carrying awe and wonder to the heart of the girl who
watched its fall. Away rolled the storm as quickly as it had come, with
a sound like the passing of the artillery of an embattled host; then a
grey rain set in, blotting the outlines of everything, like an endless
absorbing grief, dulling the edge and temper of a life. Through it Jess,
scared and wet to the skin, managed to climb up the natural steps, now
made almost impassable by the prevailing gloom and the rush of water
from the table-top of the mountain, and on across the sodden plain, down
the rocky path on the farther side, past the little walled-in cemetery
with the four red gums planted at its corners, in which a stranger who
had died at Mooifontein lay buried, and so, just as the darkness of the
wet night came down like a cloud, home at last. At the back-door stood
her old uncle with a lantern.

"Is that you, Jess?" he called out in his stentorian tones. "Lord! what
a sight!" as she emerged, her sodden dress clinging to her slight form,
her hands torn with clambering over the rocks, her curling hair which
had broken loose hanging down her back and half covering her face.

"Lord! what a sight!" he ejaculated again. "Why, Jess, where have you
been? Captain Niel has gone out to look for you with the Kafirs."

"I have been sketching in Leeuwen Kloof, and got caught in the storm.
There, uncle, let me pass, I want to take these wet things off. It is
a bitter night," and she ran to her room, leaving a long trail of water
behind her as she passed. The old man entered the house, shut the door,
and blew out the lantern.

"Now, what is it she reminds me of?" he said aloud as he groped his way
down the passage to the sitting-room. "Ah, I know, that night when she
first came here out of the rain leading Bessie by the hand. What can the
girl have been thinking of, not to see the thunder coming up? She ought
to know the signs of the weather here by now. Dreaming, I suppose,
dreaming. She's an odd woman, Jess, very." Perhaps he did not quite know
how accurate his guess was, and how true the conclusion he drew from it.
Certainly she had been dreaming, and she was an odd woman.

Meanwhile Jess was rapidly changing her clothes and removing the traces
of her struggle with the elements. But of that other struggle she had
gone through she could not remove the traces. They and the love that
arose out of it would endure as long as she endured. It was her former
self that had been cast off in it and which now lay behind her, an empty
and unmeaning thing like the shapeless heap of garments. It was all very
strange. So John had gone to look for her and had not found her. She was
glad that he had gone. It made her happy to think of him searching
and calling in the wet and the night. She was only a woman, and it was
natural that she should feel thus. By-and-by he would come back and find
her clothed and in her right mind and ready to greet him. She was glad
that he had not seen her wet and dishevelled. A girl looks so unpleasant
like that. It might have set him against her. Men like women to look
nice and clean and pretty. That gave her an idea. She turned to her
glass and, holding the light above her head, studied her own face
attentively. She was a woman with as little vanity in her composition as
it is possible for a woman to have, and till now she had not given her
personal looks much consideration. They had not been of great importance
to her in the Wakkerstroom district of the Transvaal. But to-night all
of a sudden they became very important; and so she stood and looked at
her own wonderful eyes, at the masses of curling brown hair still damp
and shining from the rain, at the curious pallid face and clear-cut
determined mouth.

"If it were not for my eyes and hair, I should be very ugly," she said
to herself aloud. "If only I were beautiful like Bessie, now." The
thought of her sister gave her another idea. What if John were to prefer
Bessie? Now she remembered that he had been very attentive to Bessie.
A feeling of dreadful doubt and jealousy passed through her, for women
like Jess know what jealousy is in its bitterness. Supposing that it was
in vain, supposing that what she had given to-day--given utterly once
and for all, so that she could not take it back--had been given to a man
who loved another woman, and that woman her own dear sister! Supposing
that the fate of her love was to be like water falling unalteringly
on the hard rock that heeds it not and retains it not! True, the water
wears the rock away; but could she be satisfied with that? She could
master him, she knew; even if things were so, she could win him to
herself, she had read it in his eyes that afternoon; but could she, who
had promised to her dead mother to cherish and protect her sister, whom
till this day she had loved better than anything in the world, and
whom she still loved more dearly than her life--could she, if it should
happen to be thus, rob that sister of her lover? And if it should be so,
what would her life be like? It would be like the great pillar after the
lightning had smitten it, a pile of shattered smoking fragments, a very
heaped-up debris of a life. She could feel it even now. No wonder, then,
that Jess sat there upon the little white bed holding her hand against
her heart and feeling terribly afraid.

Just then she heard John's footsteps in the hall.

"I can't find her," he said in an anxious tone to some one as she rose,
taking her candle with her, and left the room. The light of it fell full
upon his face and dripping clothes. It was white and anxious, and she
was glad to see the anxiety.

"Oh, thank God! here you are!" he said, catching her hand. "I began to
think you were quite lost. I have been right down the Kloof after you,
and got a nasty fall over it."

"It is very good of you," she said in a low voice, and again their eyes
met, and again her glance thrilled him. There was such a wonderful light
in Jess's eyes that night.

Half an hour afterwards they sat down as usual to supper. Bessie did
not put in an appearance till it was a quarter over, and then sat
very silent through it. Jess narrated her adventure in the Kloof, and
everybody listened, but nobody said much. There seemed to be a shadow
over the house that evening, or perhaps it was that each party was
thinking of his own affairs. After supper old Silas Croft began talking
about the political state of the country, which gave him uneasiness.
He said that he believed the Boers really meant to rebel against the
Government this time. Frank Muller had told him so, and he always knew
what was going on. This announcement did not tend to raise anybody's
spirits, and the evening passed as silently as the meal had done. At
last Bessie got up, stretched her rounded arms, and said that she was
tired and going to bed.

"Come into my room," she whispered to her sister as she passed. "I want
to speak to you."



CHAPTER VII

LOVE'S YOUNG DREAM

After waiting a few minutes, Jess said "Good-night," and went straight
to Bessie's room. Her sister had undressed, and was sitting on her
bed, wrapped in a blue dressing-gown that suited her fair complexion
admirably, and with a very desponding expression on her beautiful face.
Bessie was one of those people who are easily elated and easily cast
down.

Jess came up to her and kissed her.

"What is it, love?" she said. And Bessie could never have divined the
gnawing anxiety that was eating at her heart as she said it.

"Oh, Jess, I'm so glad that you have come. I do so want you to advise
me--that is, to tell me what you think," and she paused.

"You must tell _me_ what it is all about first, Bessie dear," she said,
sitting down opposite to her in such a position that her face was shaded
from the light. Bessie tapped her naked foot against the matting with
which the little room was carpeted. It was an exceedingly pretty foot.

"Well, dear old girl, it is just this--Frank Muller has been here to ask
me to marry him."

"Oh," said Jess, with a sigh of relief. So that was all? She felt as
though a ton-weight had been lifted from her heart. She had expected
this bit of news for some time.

"He wanted me to marry him, and when I said I would not, he behaved
like--like----"

"Like a Boer," suggested Jess.

"Like a _brute_," went on Bessie with emphasis.

"So you don't care for Frank Muller?"

"Care for him! I loathe the man. You don't know how I loathe him, with
his handsome bad face and his cruel eyes. I always loathed him, and now
I hate him too. But I will tell you all about it;" and she did, with
many feminine comments and interpolations.

Jess sat quite still, and waited till she had finished.

"Well, dear," she said at last, "you are not going to marry him, and so
there is an end of it. You can't detest the man more than I do. I have
watched him for years," she went on, with rising anger, "and I tell you
that Frank Muller is a liar and a traitor. That man would betray his own
father if he thought it to his interest to do so. He hates uncle--I am
sure he does, although he pretends to be so fond of him. I am certain
that he has tried often and often to stir up the Boers against him.
Old Hans Coetzee told me that he denounced him to the Veld-Cornet as
an _uitlander_ and a _verdomde Engelsmann_ about two years before the
annexation, and tried to get him to persuade the Landrost to report him
as a law-breaker to the Raad; while all the time he was pretending to
be so friendly. Then in the Sikukuni war it was Frank Muller who caused
them to commandeer uncle's two best waggons and spans. He gave none
himself, nothing but a couple of bags of meal. He is a wicked fellow,
Bessie, and a dangerous fellow; but he has more brains and more power
about him than any man in the Transvaal, and you will have to be very
careful, or he will do us all a bad turn."

"Ah!" said Bessie; "well, he can't do much now that the country is
English."

"I am not so sure of that. I am not so sure that the country is going
to stop English. You laugh at me for reading the home papers, but I see
things there that make me doubtful. The other party is in power now in
England, and one does not know what they may do; you heard what uncle
said to-night. They might give us up to the Boers. You must remember
that we far-away people are only the counters with which they play their
game."

"Nonsense, Jess," said Bessie indignantly. "Englishmen are not like
that. When they say a thing, they stick to it."

"They used to, you mean," answered Jess with a shrug, and got up from
her chair to go to bed.

Bessie began to fidget her white feet over one another.

"Stop a bit, Jess dear," she said. "I want to speak to you about
something else."

Jess sat or rather dropped back into her chair, and her pale face turned
paler than ever; but Bessie blushed very red and hesitated.

"It's about Captain Niel," she said at length.

"Oh," answered Jess with a little laugh, and her voice sounded cold and
strange in her own ears. "Has he been following Frank Muller's example,
and proposing to you too?"

"No-o," said Bessie, "but"--and here she rose, and, sitting on a stool
by her elder sister's chair, rested her forehead against her knee--"but
I love him, and I _believe_ that he loves me. This morning he told me
that I was the prettiest woman he had seen at home or abroad, and the
sweetest too; and do you know," she said, looking up and giving a happy
little laugh, "I think he meant it."

"Are you joking, Bessie, or are you really in earnest?"

"In earnest! ah, but that I am, and I am not ashamed to say it. I fell
in love with John Niel when he killed that cock ostrich. He looked so
strong and savage as he fought with it. It is a fine thing to see a man
put out all his strength. And then he is such a gentleman!--so different
from the men we meet round here. Oh yes, I fell in love with him at
once, and I have got deeper and deeper in love with him ever since,
and if he does not marry me I think that it will break my heart. There,
that's the truth, Jess dear," and she dropped her golden head on to her
sister's knees and began to cry softly at the thought.

But the sister sat there on the chair, her hand hanging idly by her
side, her white face set and impassive as that of an Egyptian Sphinx,
and the large eyes gazing far away through the window, against which the
rain was beating--far away out into the night and the storm. She heard
the surging of the storm, she heard her sister's weeping, her eyes
perceived the dark square of the window through which they appeared to
look, she could feel Bessie's head upon her knee--yes, she could see
and hear and feel, and yet it seemed to her that she was _dead_. The
lightning had fallen on her soul as it fell on the pillar of rock, and
it was as the pillar is. And it had fallen so soon! there had been
such a little span of happiness and hope! And so she sat, like a stony
Sphinx, and Bessie wept softly before her, like a beautiful, breathing,
loving human suppliant, and the two formed a picture and a contrast
such as the student of human nature does not often get the chance of
studying.

It was the eldest sister who spoke first after all.

"Well, dear," she said, "what are you crying about? You love Captain
Niel, and you believe that he loves you. Surely there is nothing to cry
about."

"Well, I don't know that there is," said Bessie, more cheerfully; "but I
was thinking how dreadful it would be if I lost him."

"I do not think that you need be afraid," said Jess; "and now, dear,
I really must go to bed, I am so tired. Good-night, my dear; God bless
you! I think that you have made a very wise choice. Captain Niel is a
man whom any woman might love, and be proud of loving."

In another minute she was in her room, and there her composure left her,
for she was but a loving woman after all. She flung herself upon her
bed, and, hiding her face in the pillow, burst into a paroxysm of
weeping--a very different thing from Bessie's gentle tears. Her grief
absolutely convulsed her, and she pushed the bedclothes against her
mouth to prevent the sound of it penetrating the partition wall and
reaching John Niel's ears, for his room was next to hers. Even in the
midst of her suffering the thought of the irony of the thing forced
itself into her mind. There, separated from her only by a few inches of
lath and plaster and some four or five feet of space, was the man for
whom she mourned thus, and yet he was as ignorant of it as though he
were thousands of miles away. Sometimes at such acute crises in our
lives the limitations of our physical nature do strike us after this
fashion. It is strange to be so near and yet so far, and it brings the
absolute and utter loneliness of every created being home to the mind
in a manner that is forcible and at times almost terrible. John Niel
sinking composedly to sleep, his mind happy with the recollection of
those two right and left shots, and Jess, lying on her bed, six feet
away, and sobbing out her stormy heart over him, are indeed but types of
what is continually happening in this remarkable world. How often do we
understand one another's grief? And, when we do, by what standard can
we measure it? More especially is comprehension rare, if we chance to
be the original cause of the trouble. Do we think of the feelings of the
beetles it is our painful duty to crush into nothingness? Not at all. If
we have any compunctions, they are quickly absorbed in the pride of our
capture. And more often still, as in the present case, we set our foot
upon the poor victim by pure accident or venial carelessness.

Presently John was fast asleep, and Jess, her paroxysm past, was
walking up and down, down and up, her little room, her bare feet
falling noiselessly on the carpeting as she strove to wear out the first
bitterness of her woe. Oh that it lay in her power to recall the past
few days! Oh that she had never seen his face, which must now be ever
before her eyes! But for her there was no such possibility, and she felt
it. She knew her own nature well. Her heart had spoken, and the word it
said must roll on continually through the spaces of her mind. Who can
recall the spoken word, and who can set a limit on its echoes? It is not
so with most women, but here and there may be found a nature where it is
so. Spirits like this poor girl's are too deep, and partake too much
of a divine immutability, to shift and suit themselves to the changing
circumstances of a fickle world. They have no middle course; they cannot
halt half-way; they set all their fortune on a throw. And when the throw
is lost their hearts are broken, and their happiness passes away like a
swallow.

For in such a nature love rises like the wind on the quiet breast of
some far sea. None can say whence it comes or whither it blows; but
there it is, lashing the waters to a storm, so that they roll in thunder
all the long day through, throwing their white arms on high, as they
clasp at the evasive air, till the darkness that is death comes down and
covers them.

What is the interpretation of it? Why does the great wind stir the
deep waters? It does but ripple the shallow pool as it passes, for
shallowness can but ripple and throw up shadows. We cannot tell, but
this we know--that deep things only can be deeply moved. It is the
penalty of depth and greatness; it is the price they pay for the
divine privilege of suffering and sympathy. The shallow pools, the
looking-glasses of our little life, know nought, feel nought. Poor
things! they can but ripple and reflect. But the deep sea, in its
torture, may perchance catch some echo of God's voice sounding down the
driven gale; and, as it lifts itself and tosses its waves in agony, may
perceive a glow, flowing from a celestial sky that is set beyond the
horizon that bounds its being.

Suffering, or rather mental suffering, is a prerogative of greatness,
and even here there lies an exquisite joy at its core. For everything
has its compensations. Nerves such as these can thrill with a high
happiness, that will sweep unfelt over the mass of men. Thus he who is
stricken with grief at the sight of the world's misery--as all great and
good men must be--is at times lifted up with joy by catching some faint
gleam of the almighty purpose that underlies it. So it was with the Son
of Man in His darkest hours; the Spirit that enabled Him to compass out
the measure of the world's suffering and sin enabled Him also, knowing
their purposes, to gaze beyond them; and thus it is, too, with those
deep-hearted children of His race, who partake, however dimly, of His
divinity.

Thus, even in this hour of her darkest bitterness and grief, a gleam
of comfort struggled to Jess's breast just as the first ray of dawn was
struggling through the stormy night. She would sacrifice herself to her
sister--that she had determined on; and hence came that cold gleam
of happiness, for there is happiness in self-sacrifice, whatever the
cynical may say. At first her woman's nature had risen in rebellion
against the thought. Why should she throw her life away? She had as good
a right to this man as Bessie, and she knew that by the strength of her
own hand she could hold him against Bessie in all her beauty, however
far things had gone between them; and she believed, as a jealous woman
is prone to do, that they had gone much farther than was the case.

But by-and-by, as she pursued that weary march, her better self rose up,
and mastered the promptings of her heart. Bessie loved him, and Bessie
was weaker than she, and less suited to bear pain, and she had sworn to
her dying mother--for Bessie had been her mother's darling--to promote
her happiness, and, come what would, to comfort and protect her by every
means in her power. It was a wide oath, and she was only a child when
she took it, but it bound her conscience none the less, and surely it
covered this. Besides, she dearly loved her--far, far more than she
loved herself. No, Bessie should have her lover, and she should never
know what it had cost her to give him up; and as for herself, well, she
must go away like a wounded buck, and hide till she got well--or died.

She laughed a drear little laugh, and stayed to brush her hair just as
the broad lights of the dawn came streaming across the misty veldt. But
she did not look at her face again in the glass; she cared no more
about it now. Then she threw herself down to sleep the sleep of utter
exhaustion before it was time to go out again and face the world and her
new sorrow.

Poor Jess! Love's young dream had not overshadowed her for long. It had
tarried just three hours. But it had left other dreams behind.



"Uncle," said Jess that morning to old Silas Croft as he stood by the
kraal-gate, where he had been counting out the sheep--an operation
requiring much quickness of eye, and on the accurate performance of
which he greatly prided himself.

"Yes, yes, my dear, I know what you are going to say. It was very neatly
done; it isn't everybody who can count out six hundred running hungry
sheep without a mistake. But then, I oughtn't to say too much, for you
see I have been at it for fifty years, in the old colony and here. Now,
many a man would get fifty sheep wrong. There's Niel for instance----"

"Uncle," said she, wincing a little at the name, as a horse with a sore
back winces at the touch of the saddle, "it wasn't about the sheep that
I was going to speak to you. I want you to do me a favour."

"A favour? Why, God bless the girl, how pale you look!--not but what you
are always pale. Well, what is it now?"

"I want to go up to Pretoria by the post-cart that leaves Wakkerstroom
to-morrow afternoon, and to stop for a couple of months with my
schoolfellow, Jane Neville. I have often promised to go, and I have
never gone."

"Well, I never!" said the old man. "My stay-at-home Jess wanting to go
away, and without Bessie too! What is the matter with you?"

"I want a change, uncle--I do indeed. I hope you won't thwart me in
this."

Silas looked at her steadily with his keen grey eyes.

"Humph!" he said; "you want to go away, and there's an end of it. Best
not ask too many questions where a maid is concerned. Very well, my
dear, go if you like, though I shall miss you."

"Thank you, uncle," she said, and kissed him; then turned and went.

Old Croft took off his broad hat and polished his bald head with a red
pocket-handkerchief.

"There's something up with that girl," he said aloud to a lizard that
had crept out of the crevices of the stone wall to bask in the sun. "I
am not such a fool as I look, and I say that there is something wrong
with her. She is odder than ever," and he hit viciously at the lizard
with his stick, whereon it promptly bolted into its crack, returning
presently to see if the irate "human" had departed.

"However," he soliloquised, as he made his way to the house, "I am glad
that it was not Bessie. I couldn't bear, at my time of life, to part
with Bessie, even for a couple of months."



CHAPTER VIII

JESS GOES TO PRETORIA

That day, at dinner, Jess suddenly announced that she was going on the
morrow to Pretoria to see Jane Neville.

"To see Jane Neville!" said Bessie, opening her blue eyes wide. "Why,
it was only last month you said that you did not care about Jane Neville
now, because she had grown so vulgar. Don't you remember when she
stopped here on her way down to Natal last year, and held up her fat
hands, and said, 'Ah, Jess--Jess is a _genius!_ It is a privilege to
know her'? And then she asked you to quote Shakespeare to that lump of
a brother of hers, and you told her that if she did not hold her tongue
she would not enjoy the privilege much longer. And now you want to go
and stop with her for two months! Well, Jess, you are odd. And, what's
more, I think it is very unkind of you to run away for so long."

To all of which prattle Jess said nothing, but merely reiterated her
determination to go.

John, too, was astonished, and, to tell the truth, not a little
disgusted. Since the previous day, when he had that talk with her in
Lion Kloof, Jess had assumed a clearer and more definite interest in his
eyes. Before that she was an enigma; now he had guessed enough about her
to make him anxious to know more. Indeed, he had not perhaps realised
how strong and definite his interest was till he heard that she was
going away for a long period. Suddenly it struck him that the farm would
be very dull without this very fascinating woman moving about the
place in her silent, resolute way. Bessie was, no doubt, delightful
and charming to look on, but she had not her sister's brains and
originality; and John Niel was sufficiently above the ordinary run to
thoroughly appreciate intellect and originality in a woman, instead of
standing aghast at it. She interested him intensely, to say the least of
it, and, man-like, he felt exceedingly annoyed, and even sulky, at
the idea of her departure. He looked at her in protest, and, with an
awkwardness begotten of his irritation, knocked down the vinegar cruet
and made a mess upon the table; but she evaded his eyes and took no
notice of the vinegar. Then, feeling that he had done all that in him
lay, he went to see about the ostriches; first of all hanging about a
little in case Jess should come out, which she did not do. Indeed, he
saw nothing more of her till supper time. Bessie told him that she said
she was busy packing; but, as one can only take twenty pounds weight of
luggage in a post-cart, this did not quite convince him that it was so
in fact.

At supper Jess was, if possible, even more quiet than she had been
at dinner. After it was over, he asked her to sing, but she declined,
saying that she had given up singing for the present, and persisting
in her statement in spite of the chorus of remonstrance it aroused. The
birds only sing whilst they are mating; and it is, by the way, a curious
thing, and suggestive of the theory that the same great principles
pervade all nature, that now when her trouble had overtaken her,
and that she had lost the love which had suddenly sprung from her
heart--full-grown and clad in power as Athena sprang from the head of
Jove--Jess had no further inclination to use her divine gift of song.
Probably it was nothing more than a coincidence, although a strange one.

The arrangement was, that on the morrow Jess was to be driven in the
Cape cart to Martinus-Wesselstroom, more commonly called Wakkerstroom,
there to catch the post-cart, which was timed to leave the town at
mid-day, though when it would leave was quite another matter. Post-carts
are not particular to a day or so in the Transvaal.

Old Silas Croft was to drive her with Bessie, who wished to do some
shopping in Wakkerstroom, as ladies sometimes will; but at the last
moment the old man felt a premonitory twinge of the rheumatism to which
he was a martyr, and could not go. So, of course, John volunteered, and,
though Jess raised some difficulties, Bessie furthered the idea, and in
the end his offer was accepted.

Accordingly, at half-past eight on a beautiful morning up came the
tented cart, with its two massive wheels, stout stinkwood disselboom,
and four spirited young horses; to the heads of which the Hottentot
Jantje, assisted by the Zulu Mouti, clad in the sweet simplicity of a
moocha, a few feathers in his wool, and a horn snuffbox stuck through
the fleshy part of the ear, hung on grimly. In they got--John first,
then Bessie next to him, then Jess. Next Jantje scrambled up behind; and
after some preliminary backing and plunging, and showing a disposition
to twine themselves affectionately round the orange-trees, off went
the horses at a hand gallop, and away swung the cart after them, in a
fashion that would have frightened anybody, not accustomed to that mode
of progression, pretty well out of his wits. As it was, John had as much
as he could do to keep the four horses together, and to prevent them
from bolting, and this alone, to say nothing of the rattling and jolting
of the vehicle over the uneven track, was sufficient to put a stop to
any attempt at conversation.

Wakkerstroom is about eighteen miles from Mooifontein, a distance that
they covered well within the two hours. Here the horses were outspanned
at the hotel, and John went into the house whence the post-cart was
to start and booked Jess's seat, and then joined the ladies at the
_Kantoor_ or store where they were shopping. When their purchases were
made, they went back to the inn together and ate some dinner; by which
time the Hottentot driver of the cart began to tune up lustily, but
unmelodiously, on a bugle to inform intending passengers that it was
time to start. Bessie was out of the room at the moment, and, with the
exception of a peculiarly dirty-looking coolie waiter, there was nobody
about.

"How long are you going to be away, Miss Jess?" asked John.

"Two months, more or less, Captain Niel."

"I am very sorry that you are going," he said earnestly. "It will be
dull at the farm without you."

"You will have Bessie to talk to," she answered, turning her face to the
window, and affecting to watch the inspanning of the post-cart in the
yard on to which it looked.

"Captain Niel!" she said suddenly.

"Yes?"

"Mind you look after Bessie while I am away. Listen! I am going to tell
you something. You know Frank Muller?"

"Yes, I know him, and a very disagreeable fellow he is."

"Well, he threatened Bessie the other day, and he is a man who is quite
capable of carrying out a threat. I can't tell you anything more about
it, but I want you to promise me to protect Bessie if any occasion for
it should arise. I do not know that it will, but it might. Will you
promise?"

"Of course I will; I would do a great deal more than that if you asked
me to, Jess," he answered tenderly, for now that she was going away he
felt curiously drawn towards her, and was anxious to show it.

"Never mind me," she said, with an impatient little movement. "Bessie
is sweet enough and lovely enough to be looked after for her own sake, I
should think."

Before he could say any more, in came Bessie herself, saying that the
driver was waiting, and they went out to see her sister off.

"Don't forget your promise," Jess whispered to him, bending down as he
helped her into the cart, so low that her lips almost touched him, and
her breath rested for a second on his cheek like the ghost of a kiss.

In another moment the sisters had embraced each other, tenderly enough;
the driver had sounded once more on his awful bugle, and away went the
cart at full gallop, bearing with it Jess, two other passengers, and
her Majesty's mails. John and Bessie stood for a moment watching its
mad career, as it fled splashing and banging down the straggling street
towards the wide plains beyond; then they turned to enter the inn again
and prepare for their homeward drive. At that moment, an old Boer, named
Hans Coetzee, with whom John was already slightly acquainted, came
up, and, extending an enormously big and thick hand, bid them "_Gooden
daag._" Hans Coetzee was a very favourable specimen of the better sort
of Boer, and really came more or less up to the ideal picture that is so
often drawn of that "simple pastoral people." He was a very large, stout
man, with a fine open face and a pair of kindly eyes. John, looking at
him, guessed that he could not weigh less than seventeen stone, and that
estimate was well within the mark.

"How are you, Captain?" he said in English, for he could talk English
well, "and how do you like the Transvaal?--must not call it South
African Republic now, you know, for that's treason," and his eye
twinkled merrily.

"I like it very much, _Meinheer_," said John.

"Ah, yes, it's a beautiful veldt, especially about here--no horse
sickness, no 'blue tongue,'[*] and a good strong grass for the cattle.
And you must find yourself very snug at _Oom_ Croft's there; it's the
nicest place in the district, with the ostriches and all. Not that
I hold with ostriches in this veldt; they are well enough in the old
colony, but they won't breed here--at least, not as they should do. I
tried them once and I know; oh, yes, I know."

[*] A disease that is very fatal to sheep.

"Yes, it's a very fine country, _Meinheer_. I have been all over the
world almost, and I never saw a finer."

"You don't say so, now! Almighty, what a thing it is to have travelled!
Not that I should like to travel myself. I think that the Lord meant us
to stop in the place He has made for us. But it is a fine country, and"
(dropping his voice) "I think it is a finer country than it used to be."

"You mean that the veldt has got 't