A Veldt Official Part 19

"Rather. But I'll be hanged if I would for the whole of Doppersdorp."

"Ha! ha! But poor old Doppersdorp isn't such a bad place. There are a lot of people in it who are d.a.m.n sweeps; but I can always pull with everybody--even d.a.m.n sweeps. When I'm on the Bench it's another thing.

I don't care for anybody then. But when you've got to be in a place, Musgrave, you may as well make the best of it."

"And that I flatter myself I do. What with yourselves, Mr Van Stolz, and the Suffields, and one or or two more, I am not particularly discontented with the place."

"Ha! ha! And one or two more!" laughed the magistrate mischievously.

"What did the wife say when you first came up here, Musgrave? And wasn't she right? Own up, now. When is it to come off?"

From anybody else this sort of chaff would have more than annoyed Roden--indeed, hardly anybody else would have ventured upon it with him.

Coming from whom it did, he merely laughed, and said that, if for no other reason, he did not see how anything real or imaginary could "come off," in the light of the munificent rate of pay wherewith a paternal Government saw fit to remunerate the labours of the junior members of its judicial service. Then he turned the conversation into other channels, and thus, alternately subsiding into silence as the nature of their work required, and smoking a pipe or two and narrating an anecdote as something suggested one to either, this happily a.s.sorted brace of officials got through the first half of an afternoon, until the tread of a pair of heavy boots on the boarded floor of the Court-room without was heard drawing near.

"Some confounded Boer, I suppose, who'll extend a clammy paw, and put his hat on the ground and spit five times, preparatory to beginning some outrageous lie," growled Roden, thinking it was about time to take himself off.

"May I come in?" sang out a voice.

"Hallo! It's Suffield. Come in, Suffield!" cried the magistrate, jumping up.

"Busy, I see!" said Suffield, having shaken hands, and looking rather awkward, for what with Mona worrying his life out for the last half hour, and what with the confounded cheek, as he reckoned it, of suggesting that Musgrave should knock off work and come along, he felt himself in that figurative but highly graphic predicament known as between the devil and the deep sea. But the eyes of the most good-natured man in the world read and interpreted his look.

"Going to take him away with you, Suffield?" he said.

"Well--um--ah--"

"Off you go, Musgrave; I expect Miss Ridsdale will comb your hair for you for keeping her waiting, and it's nearly five. And I say, Suffield," he called out after them when they were leaving; "don't let him try to tumble over any more cliffs, eh! So long!" and chuckling heartily, the genial official turned back to light a fresh pipe and do another h.o.a.r of his own work, and that of his a.s.sistant too.

Ambling along the dusty waggon road which led up to the gra.s.sy _nek_ about a mile from the township, preparatory to striking off into the open veldt beyond, the trio were in good spirits enough.

"Well, and why haven't you blown me up for keeping you waiting?" said Roden.

"Do I ever blow you up? Besides, you couldn't help it," answered Mona.

"Ah, 'To err is human' says the cla.s.sic bard. He might have added, 'to blow a man up for what he can't help is feminine.'"

"Don't be cynical now, and sarcastic. And it's our last day."

"Why, hang it, the chap isn't going to be away for a year," cut in Suffield, who was at that moment struggling with a villainously manufactured lucifer match, which gave him rather the feeling of smoking sulphur instead of tobacco. And then there was a clatter of hoofs behind, and they were joined by a couple of Boers of the ordinary type, sunburned and not too clean of visage--one clad in "store-clothes" the other in corduroy, and both wearing extremely greasy and battered slouch hats. These, ranging their wiry, knock-kneed nags alongside, went through the usual ceremony of handshaking all round, and thereafter the swapping of pipe-fills with the male element in the party.

Boers, in their queer and at times uncouth way, are, when among those they know, the most sociable of mortals, and never dream that their room may be preferable to their company; wherefore this accession to the party was heartily welcomed by Mona, for now these two could ride on ahead with Charlie and talk sheep and ostriches, and narrate the bold deeds they had done while serving in Kreli's country, in Field-Commandant Deventer's troop, which had just returned covered with laurels--and dust--from that war-ridden region. But alas! while one carried out this programme to the letter, his fellow, the "store-clothes" one, persisted in jogging alongside of Roden discoursing volubly, of which discourse Roden understood about three words in twenty.

"_Ja, det is reegt, Johannes_," ["Yes. That is right."] the latter would a.s.sent in reply to some statement but poorly understood. "Darn the fellow, can't he realise that two's company, three's a bore--in this instance a Boer! Nay what, Johannes. _Ik kan nie Hollands praat. Jy verstaand_, [I can't talk Dutch. You understand?]. Better jog on and talk to Suffield, see? He can talk it like a Dutch uncle; I can't."

"_Det is jammer_?" ["That's a pity."] said the Boer, solemnly shaking his head. Then after a moment's hesitation he spurred up his nag and jogged on to join the other two.

The open veldt now lay outstretched before them, and Suffield and the two Dutchmen were cantering on some distance ahead. Rearing up on their left rose the great green slopes and soaring cliff walls of the mountain range, and, away on the open side, the rolling, gra.s.sy plains, stretching for miles, but always bounded nearer or farther by mountains rising abruptly, and culminating in cliff wall, or jagged, naked crags.

Here and there in the distance, a white dot upon the green, lay a Boer homestead, and a scattered patch of moving objects where grazed a flock of sheep or goats. The slanting rays of the afternoon sun, now not far from his western dip behind yon cl.u.s.ter of ironstone peaks, shed upon this bright, wavy, open landscape that marvellous effect of clear and golden radiance which renders the close of a cloudless day upon the High Veldt something like a dream of enchanted worlds.

They were rather silent, these two. The thrilling, vivid happiness of the one, was dashed by a certain amount of apprehensive dread on behalf of the other, who was going quite unnecessarily to expose himself to danger, possibly great, possibly small, but at any rate unnecessary. On the part of that other, well, what had he to do with anything so delusive as the fleeting and temporary thing called happiness, he whose life was all behind him? Yet he was very--contented; that is how he put it; and he owned to himself that he was daily growing more and more-- contented.

"I can't make out what has come over us," he said, as though talking to himself, but in his voice there was that which made Mona's heart leap, for she knew she was fast attaining that which she most desired in life.

Then they talked--talked of ordinary things, such as all the world might have listened to; but the tone--ah! there was no disguising that.

Thus they cantered along in the sweet, pure air, over the springy plain, against the background of great mountain range, and soon the walls of the homestead drew in sight, and Mrs Suffield came out to greet them, and the dogs broke into fearful clamour only equalled by that of the children, and the two Boers dismounted with alacrity to go in, sure of a good gla.s.s of grog or two beneath Suffield's hospitable roof, ere they should resume their homeward way.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

"IT IS SWEETER TO LOVE--IT IS WISER TO DARE."

Now night had fallen, and at Quaggasfontein the sounds of household and nursery were alike hushed, and these four sat out upon the _stoep_, enjoying the still freshness; discussing, too, Roden's trip to the nearest seat of hostilities, on which topic Grace Suffield was inclined to be not a little resentful.

"How can you go out of your way to shoot a lot of wretched Kaffirs, who haven't done you any harm, Mr Musgrave?" she said.

"That holds good as regards most of the fellows at the front," he replied.

"No, it doesn't. Many of them are farmers, who have had their stock plundered, perhaps their homes destroyed. Now, nothing of the kind holds good of yourself. I call it wicked--yes, downright wicked, and tempting Providence, to throw oneself into danger unnecessarily. Your life is given you to take care of, not to throw away."

"I don't know that it's worth taking such a lot of care of," he murmured queerly. But she overheard.

"Yes it is, and you've no right to say that. Putting it on the lowest grounds, don't you come out here and help amuse us? That's being of some use. Didn't you help me splendidly when we crossed that horrible Fish River in flood? I believe you saved my life that night. Isn't that being of some use?"

"Here, I say, Mrs Suffield, are you all in league to 'spoil' a fellow?"

he said, in a strange, deep voice that resembled a growl. For more forcibly than ever, her words seemed to bring back to the lonely cynic, how, amid the whole-hearted friendship of these people, he had been forced again to live his life--if indeed he could--if only he could!

"Don't know about 'spoiling.' You seem to be catching it pretty hot just now, Musgrave, in my opinion," laughed Suffield.

"And he deserves to," rejoined that worthy's wife, with a tartness which all her hearers knew to be wholly counterfeit. "Doesn't he, Mona?"

"I don't know. As you're so savagely down upon him, I think I shall have to take his part."

"Hear, hear!" cried Roden. "Well, Mrs Suffield, you have mistaken your vocation. You ought to have been a preacher--a good, out-and-out, whole-souled tub-thumper. However, you seem determined I am destined to glut the a.s.segai of John Kaffir, and as you are so savage on the subject, it is to Mona I shall impart my last will and testament-- orally, of course. So, come along, Mona, and give it, and me, your most careful attention."

Left alone on the _stoep_, the husband and wife laughed softly together, as they watched Mona's white dress disappear in the darkness.

"All is coming right, as I told you it would, Grace. Musgrave is a precious careful bird; but he's limed safe and sound at last. Mark my words."

"You needn't be so awfully vulgar about it, Charlie. That's quite a horrid way of putting things."

Now in the silence and darkness those two wandered on--on beneath the loaded boughs of the fruit garden, and on by the low sod wall, then out in the open, and finally into gloom beneath the drooping, feathery branches of the willows. It was a silence unbroken by either, unless-- unless for a soft shuddering sigh, which followed upon a long kiss.

In the dark and velvety moonless vault great constellations flashed as though they were fires, throwing out the black loom of the distant mountains away beyond the open waste, and flaming down into the smooth mirror of the water, upon which the willow boughs trailed. Even beneath the shadowy gloom their light pierced; shining upon the white dress, and throwing the large, supple figure of the girl into ghostly relief.

"I love you, Mona. Here on the very spot where we first beheld each other, I tell you I love you. And you had better have let me fall to my death, shattered to atoms that day, than that I should tell it you."

The tone, a trifle unsteady, but firm and low, was rather that of a man unfolding a revelation of a painful but wholly unavoidable nature than the joyous certainty of a lover, who knew his pa.s.sion was returned in measure as full as the most ardent could possibly desire. But the girl for a moment made no answer. Her lips were slightly parted in a smile of unutterable contentment, and the light in her eyes was visible under the stars. Again he kissed the upturned lips, long and tenderly as he had never done before.

"Yes. This is the spot where we first met," she said at last, with a glad laugh in her voice. "My hammock was slung there--and look, there it is still. I remember so well what we were talking about that day.