A Veldt Official Part 5

Before she goes to sleep that night Mona Ridsdale lets her thoughts dwell to a very great extent upon the stranger guest; and for his part, the latter, but a few yards off, allows his thoughts to run very considerably upon her.

That he does so evolves a kind of feeling of self-pity pity not far removed from contempt, yet can he not help it. Beautiful, according to the accepted canons of beauty, she is not, he decides. But of far greater potency than the most faultlessly chiselled features, the cla.s.sic profile, the ivory-and-roses complexion, which she does not possess, is a certain warm, irresistible power of attractiveness which she does possess, and that to a dangerous degree--the strong under-current of vitality pulsating beneath the dark-complexioned skin, the faultless grace of movement, the straight glance from beneath those clearly marked brows, the vast potentialities of pa.s.sion that lurk within the swiftly playing eyes. None of this escaped him--all was summed up in the moment he stood face to face with her. In that moment he has read a faulty character, full of puzzling inconsistencies; one which attracts while it repels, yet attracts more than it repels, and it interests him. Nevertheless, the steel armoury of defence, forged by a life's strange experience, is around him. His mental att.i.tude is that of one who is thoroughly "on guard."

CHAPTER FIVE.

CONCERNING SMALL THINGS.

In due course of time--that is to say, from two to three weeks-- Gonjana's sentence was confirmed by the Eastern Districts Court--such confirmation being required before a judgment involving lashes could be carried out.

"It's hard lines on the poor devils, Musgrave," observed Mr Van Stolz, as he received the confirmation. "Instead of getting their warming at once, and have done with it, they're kept in gaol for about three weeks, expecting it every day. It may be a necessary precaution with some magistrates, but I have never had a conviction quashed or a judgment upset. I don't say it to brag, but it's a fact. But--it's nearly twelve o'clock now. We'll go down and see it done."

The gaol at Doppersdorp was an oblong brick building containing ten cells. These formed three sides of a central courtyard, the fourth const.i.tuting the gaoler's quarters and the kitchen where the prisoners'

rations were prepared. A line of men in broad-arrow stamped suits, all natives, guarded by two armed constables, was filing in from the veldt.

This was the hard-labour gang, returning to the most congenial task in the whole twenty-four hours, the consumption of dinner, to wit; to-day combined with a scarcely less attractive one, to those figuring in it only as spectators--punishment parade.

The convicts, after the regulation search, were drawn up in a line in the prison yard. A long ladder standing against the wall did duty as the triangles. There was another to suffer besides Gonjana, a yellow-skinned Hottentot named Bruintjes, and for a similar offence.

Half beside himself with fear, this fellow stood, shivering and moaning, with quaking, disjointed appeals for mercy. The Kaffir, on the other hand, might have been one of the spectators, for all the sign he gave to the contrary; though now and again his tongue would go up to the roof of his month in a disdainful "click," as he watched the contortions of his fellow-sufferer.

"Which shall I take first, sir?" said the gaoler.

"Oh, the Hottentot," answered Mr Van Stolz. "The poor devil will be dead if he has to wait for the other chap. He isn't quite so cheeky now as he was in Court. Seems to be taken out of him. Ready, doctor?"

The district surgeon, whose presence on such occasions was required by law, replied in the affirmative, and the Hottentot, stripped to the waist, was triced to the ladder. With the first "swish" of the lash, which the gaoler, an old soldier, understood the use of, he set up a screech like a cat in a steel trap; and this he kept up throughout. At the end he was untied, whimpering and howling, and his back sponged.

"Pah! Twenty-five lashes!" growled the gaoler, running his fingers through the strings of his "cat." "A soldier would have taken it grinning, in my time."

Then Gonjana was triced up. But he was made of very different stuff. A slight involuntary quiver in the muscles of the brawny chocolate-coloured back as the lash cut its terrible criss-cross, but that was all. Not a sound escaped the throat of the st.u.r.dy barbarian, not even a wriggle ran through his finely-modelled limbs from first to last. It was like flogging a bronze statue.

"By Jove, he took that well!" exclaimed Roden, moved to admiration.

The Kaffir, who had undergone the sponging as though he were merely being washed, had now huddled his ragged shirt upon his raw and bleeding back.

"He's a plucky fellow!" said Mr Van Stolz, going up to him. "Tell him, Jan, that it will pay him best to be honest in future. But he took his licking well. He can go now."

This the constable duly interpreted. But Gonjana seemed in no hurry to enter upon the sweets of his newly restored liberty. He stood looking at the magistrate with a queer, sidelong expression, his broad nostrils snuffing the air. Then he said something in his own language. The constable sn.i.g.g.e.red.

"He say, sir," interpreted the latter, "he say de lash hurt, but he not afraid of being hurt. He say, sir--he very hungry. He hope sir will not send him away without his dinner."

From the open windows of the prison kitchen the strong fumes of a savoury stew were wafted into the yard, for it was the dinner-hour. The gaol ration of meat and mealies was a liberal one, and it was noteworthy that every convict who had completed his term of hard-labour came out of prison sleek and fat, whatever might have been his condition at the time of incarceration. Mr Van Stolz burst out laughing.

"Give the poor devil his dinner and let him go," he said. "He took his dose well. It's little enough dinner I'd want if I were in his shoes, eh, doctor?"

This to the district surgeon, who had joined them as they left the gaol.

He was a young M.D. named Lambert, a new arrival, newer even than Roden, having been recently appointed. There was nothing specially remarkable about him, unless it were a species of brisk self-a.s.sertiveness which some might call b.u.mptiousness, and which might not altogether be to his disadvantage in a place like Doppersdorp, where the District Surgeon was something of a personage, and apt to be toadied accordingly. But between him and Roden Musgrave there was an indefinable instinct of antipathy, which is perhaps best expressed in saying that they had not taken to each other.

This feeling being, for the present at any rate, merely a pa.s.sive one, they found themselves strolling towards the Barkly Hotel together, Mr Van Stolz having left them. Two ladies were seated on the _stoep_, who as they drew near took the ident.i.ty of Mrs Suffield and Mona Ridsdale.

"Well, Dr Lambert," said the latter, with a wicked look at Roden, when greetings had been exchanged; "and how do you like Doppersdorp? But there, I forgot, I must not ask you that. Well then, what was the meaning of that dreadful noise we heard going on at the gaol just now, for we could hear it all the way from here?"

"Only a fellow getting a licking in due course of law--a Hottentot, for sheep-stealing," answered the doctor. "The other n.i.g.g.e.r took it like a man."

"Oh, how dreadful! And do you mean to say you went to see that?"

"I had to. You see I am compelled to be present on such occasions,"

answered Lambert; with a stress on the p.r.o.noun, as if to convey the idea that the other was not, which, strictly speaking, was the case.

"What horrid creatures men are!"

"I agree; they are," said Roden. "The remark is made so often that it must be true."

Then he went indoors, and Mona, thus deprived of all opportunity of reply, did not know whether to feel angry or not. For these two had seen something of each other daring the three weeks which had elapsed since Roden's first visit to the Suffields. In fact, there were not lacking ill-natured people, who declared that Mona had got a new string to her bow, or rather, a new bow to a very well-worn string.

The young doctor, however, who had met her once before, had, for his part, been very much struck at first sight, as was the wont of Mona's admirers: they were apt to cool off later, but that was her fault.

Now being left with the coast clear, Lambert laid himself out to be excessively agreeable, and the bell having rung, hurried them in to dinner, in order to secure the seat next to Mona before the objectionable Musgrave should reappear. But the latter did not seem to care two straws, when he came in presently with Suffield, whom he had picked up in the bar.

"So he took it well, did he?" that worthy was saying as they sat down.

"Gonjana is a good bit of a _schelm_, but Kaffirs are generally plucky.

Talking of that, there's rumour of a scare in the Transkei."

"There always is a scare in the Transkei," struck in Jones, the landlord, who was carving.

"Well, scare or no scare, it wouldn't affect us much," said Suffield.

"Oh, wouldn't it? I don't know so much about that. There's them Tambookie locations out Wildschutsberg way; they're near enough to make it lively, I imagine."

"That's where you get your best custom from, eh, Jones? They'll come to you first, if only that they know the way to your grog. What's this, eh? Not mutton. Buck, isn't it?"

"Yes, rhybok. Mr Musgrave shot it yesterday morning."

"So! Where did you go, Musgrave?"

"As nearly as possible on your own place, Suffield," said Roden, starting, for he had been in something like a brown study. "You know that big double _krantz_ you see from the road? Well, just under that."

"Why didn't you come and look us up, man?"

"Hadn't time. You see, I have to turn out almost in the middle of the night to get among the rocks by the time it's light enough to shoot; rhybok are precious leery. Then I've got to be back early, too, so as to be at the office by half-past nine."

"I didn't know you were such a Nimrod," said Mrs Suffield.

"He brings back a buck every time he goes out," said Jones. "Piet Van der Merwe was here the other day fuming because some one had been shooting on his farm; but when I told him who it was, he said he didn't mind, because no Englishman could hit a haystack if he were a yard away from it. He told Mr Musgrave he could go there whenever he liked, and I expect soon there won't be a buck left on the place."

"If I were Musgrave, I should make you take me at half-price, on the strength of keeping your larder supplied, Jones," laughed Suffield. "We must get up a day's shoot, though. Doctor, are you keen on shooting?"

The doctor replied that he was, and then followed much discussion as to when a good long day could be arranged.

"Why not come out with us this afternoon?" proposed Suffield. "We could get away upon the _berg_ by sundown, and perhaps pick up a buck or two."