Aletta Part 12

Colvin Kershaw p.r.i.c.ked up his ears, but did not raise his head. For that which she was singing was a s.n.a.t.c.h of the Transvaal "Volkslied,"

the Republican National Anthem. She was singing it _at_ him, of course.

This was really getting funny. She was quite close to him now.

"Ons vrye vlag Geef nou onstag, Die vierkleur waal in eer, En wapper oer die Republiek; Geen mag, geen lis, geen politiek Van Kaffer, Brit, of Jingo-kliek, Haal ooit die vlag weer neer.

Haal ooit die vlag weer neer!"

[Note 2.]

"Good morning, Mr Kershaw. You are up early. Englishmen are not fond of early rising as a rule."

"Good morning, Miss De la Rey. You seem in a vastly patriotic mood this morning. Can a poor Englishman by any chance do anything that comes within measurable distance of being right?"

Aletta laughed, but not quite in the same whole-hearted way she usually did. There was something in the look of this man, standing there, easy, good-humoured, smiling, which seemed to strike her. She had been favourably impressed with him the evening before, when he had not shown externally to the best advantage, and, whatever cheap ethicists may propound to the contrary, externals and impressions go very much hand in hand. Now he was clad in his own clothes, not in scratch garments many sizes too wide for him. As she had just been telling her mother, she had seen at a glance that he was thoroughbred; now he looked more so than ever.

"Oh yes, he can--sometimes," she said. "You know, I like the English of a certain sort, though I detest those of another."

"Well, why do you bear down upon me singing an aggressive war-song--at me? _At_ me, of course."

"Was I?"

"You know you were. You were rubbing in Bronker's Spruit, and Ingogo, and Majuba, and all that."

"It's rather chilly after the rain," she said, looking around with a shiver. "But it is going to be a lovely day."

Her irrelevant prediction was true enough. Not a cloud remained in the sky, which was deepening more and more to its vivid daylight blue, as the sun, just rising over a great ironstone krantz which crested the range beyond the river, flooded the wide valley, dissipating the faint mist engendered by the night's moisture, and causing the raindrops still lingering on the Karroo bushes and scattered mimosa to scintillate like the purest diamonds. Birds twittered among the willows by the dam, and in the quince hedges, and away over the wide veldt, the c.o.c.k koorhaans answered each other in their shrill, barking crow, as though rejoicing in the glowing splendour of the newly-born day.

"Yes, I think it is," he answered. "But, to come back to what we were saying. I don't think that 'Volkslied' is much of a song, you know.

For instance, 'Van Kaffer, Brit, of Jingo-kliek' is a pretty good sample of doggerel. Then, again, the whole thing is a little too pietistic for ordinary use. The tune is a fine one, but the words--well, they are a trifle poor."

"Are they? Oh yes--and what about 'G.o.d Save the Queen'? Isn't that just as pietistic? And 'Confound their politics, frustrate their knavish tricks'--how is that for doggerel, eh?" And, firing up with her subject, Aletta's face became quite animated, and the colour rushed over it in such wise as to render it very attractive--at least, so thought the onlooker, and secretly rejoiced in the situation, enjoying it hugely.

"H'm, well, perhaps. But, doesn't it strike you, Miss De la Rey, that you are wasting your cartridges by blazing them into me? Why, I am more than half of your way of thinking already. Ask your father if I am not."

The girl's face changed entirely, taking on a wondrously pleased expression. The defiant one had utterly vanished. Colvin began fumbling for a match wherewith to relight his pipe, which had gone out.

In reality he was thinking what there was about this girl which appealed to him so strongly. She was not even pretty. Yet, standing there, tall and graceful and fresh, in the early morning; a very soul of mind looking out of her eyes with the enthusiasm born of a cherished subject, she was more--she was marvellously attractive. The strange, lingering feeling which her presence had left upon him the night before was intensified here in the prosaic morning hour. What was it?

"There are patriots, however," he went on, "who are not always shining angels of light. Listen now, and I'll tell you what happened to me yesterday in that connection. Would you like to hear?"

"Of course I would."

Then he told her--told her everything, from the discovery of the concealed arms to the suspicious non appearance of the man he had gone to see; of Hans Vermaak's mysterious warning, and the subsequent ample justification thereof--the narrow escape he and his servant had had for their lives when fired upon murderously in the darkness by ambushed a.s.sailants--up to the time of his arriving at Ratels Hoek, when she had first seen him. Told her the whole story--her--this girl whom twelve hours ago he had never seen--this girl only just out of her teens. Told her, when as yet he had not told her father, a strong man of mature age, and one of his most intimate friends. Why did he do it? He hardly knew himself, unless it were that something in her personality appealed to him as marking her out not merely from the rest of her s.e.x, but from the general ruck.

She listened attentively, absorbedly; her eyes fixed upon his face.

"Yes, that was bad," she said. "But then, you know, Mr Kershaw, as you English say--there are black sheep in every flock, and the people back there in the Wildschutsberg are a low cla.s.s of Boer, very little removed from _bijwoners_ [squatter labourers]. But"--as if she had said too much and was trying to cover it--"do you not think they may have been only wanting to frighten you; to play a joke on you?"

"It was a joke that cost me an uncommonly good mare," he answered. "The poor brute was plugged through and rolled into the river. I dare say she is half-way down to the sea by this time--as I and Gert would have been but for, I suppose, Providence."

She was looking grave enough now, and for a few moments made no reply.

"What are you going to do about it?" she asked.

"Nothing."

He fancied a look of relief came into her face. She must be intensely imbued with the cause of her countrymen, with racial partisanship, he decided.

"Nothing? But if you think they tried to murder you?"

"Oh, I don't think much of that. I'm not going to bother any more about it. Why should I?"

"But you English are always such a--well, vindictive race. It is one of your favourite boasts that you never let anybody get the better of you-- that you are always even with them--I think that is the phrase," she said, and there was a strange look upon her face which rather puzzled him.

"Are we? Well, here's an exception then. Life is too short to bother oneself about trifles merely for the sake of 'being even with' somebody.

Likely one of these days Gideon Roux will be the first to be sorry he shot at me. He needn't have done it. The cave affair and the rifles didn't concern me. I shouldn't have given it away. But he won't come down with the value of the mare, because I believe the poor devil is none too flush at any time. So what does it matter?"

That strange look upon Aletta's face deepened. He did not quite know how to read it.

"Have you told father about this?" she said.

"Not yet. I had meant to. I don't think I shall at all now. It doesn't seem worth while."

"Then why did you tell me?"

"I don't know."

Again they stood looking at each other in silence, as though reading each other. He was thinking of how he had seen her last night--bright, sparkling, girlish--full of humour and merriment; yet even then he had judged her temperament to have another side. Now his judgment was borne out. She could show herself serious, grave, judicious--in short, full of character when a matter of moment was under discussion. She for her part was thinking that of all the men she had met, and she had met many--for Stepha.n.u.s De la Rey was connected with some of the best old Dutch families at the Cape, and in the society of the capital, Dutch or English, Aletta had not merely had the _entree_, but had been in request--she had never come into contact with one who was quite like this. He was right outside her ordinary experience.

A sound of approaching hoof-strokes aroused them--on Aletta's part with something of a start. A bridle path threaded the garden here, affording a considerable short cut up from the river drift, and the horseman now advancing along this had come out through the quince hedge almost upon them. In him they recognised Adrian De la Rey.

"_Daag_, Aletta. I have only just heard you were home again," he said in Dutch, as he sprang from his horse and shook hands with her. But Colvin did not fail to notice that the young Boer's greeting of himself was markedly cold, not to say grim.

"So ho!" said he to himself. "That is the way the cat jumps? I see."

Then aloud, "What sort of rifle have you there, Adrian?" For the latter was clad and armed as though for the chase, and had a bandolier full of cartridges slung round him.

"One of the new kind," was the crisp reply. "A Mauser. _Ja_, you can kill a man at thousands of yards with this."

"So you could, if you could only see him," was the perfectly good-humoured reply.

"I shall see him plainly enough, at whatever distance. _Ja_, at whatever distance," repeated the young Boer with meaning; and, looking as black as thunder, he turned his back upon the other in rather a pointed manner, and began to converse with his cousin.

"Yet," said Colvin to himself, "yet we have always been the best of friends. But that would prove a very awkward customer if--Yes," he repeated, always to himself. "If--"

Note 1.

"Speak, Bronkersspruit, With pride speak out; Call Potchefstrom by name.

Pretoria and Langnek's Pa.s.s, Ingogo and Majuba, Where our Deliverer was with us, Proclaim them all together."