An I.D.B. in South Africa Part 4

Without ambition to rise above this misfortune, she left the stage, her career ended.

A few weeks later, impelled by a craving for new sights and surroundings, and a desire for rest far from the scenes of her triumphs and disasters, she arrived in Africa.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

HORSES AND RIDERS.

Donald Laure grew more and more morose; some grief was silently preying on his mind. He could not sleep, and often walked the floor of his room during the weary hours of the night.

He became at last so restless that he sought the society of a nature stronger than his own. This society he found in the company of Schwatka, who was now a daily visitor at the house.

Dainty observed his altered appearance, but was unable to fathom its cause.

As his manner grew more and more restrained toward her, she unconsciously turned to Schwatka, whose equable temperament seemed to invite her confidence and her friendship.

Gradually the Austrian made himself a necessary factor in the lives of both husband and wife, and he was her constant attendant in her rides and drives over the veldt.

All this time Dainty was only conscious that his presence made her supremely happy. He was always thoughtful of her welfare, always doing little acts of kindness, which, for the first time in his life, were spontaneous.

She was a refreshing rest to his blase, worldly nature. When a man who has become selfish, and therefore cruel, in satisfying his own vanity, and pandering to his own appet.i.tes, meets with a fresh, guileless soul like Dainty's, he is at once enthralled, and, whether he admits it even to himself, sets about winning a new toy.

Herr Schwatka's new delight was a constant surprise to him; and as he drew out forces in her nature, of whose latent existence he had been ignorant, she more and more revealed charming little traits of character, which had been hidden from Donald.

She loved to ride, and heretofore Donald had always gladly accompanied her in these equestrian pleasures. But as solitude wrapped him up more and more, Schwatka began to take the place at her side. As soon as the outskirts of the town were reached, she would give rein to her horse, and together they would speed over the veldt. The colour came to her cheeks, and a sparkle to her eye, which made her look like an houri in the rosy morn.

Kate Darcy's early morning ride was also her chief delight. Seated on her horse "Beauty," she would leave the camp locked in slumber, and scamper across the barren waste of country, to greet the first rays of the rising sun. Fearless and independent in all her actions, she had learned to rely on her own judgment, and to adapt herself to her surroundings. On several occasions she had seen a couple of equestrians appear on the horizon; and as the outline of their forms became visible, and she recognised Herr Schwatka and Dainty, with a word her horse would shoot away in an opposite direction. She knew human nature, and perceived that the Austrian was gaining a mental ascendency over her friend. Was this to be the beginning of the too-oft repeated story of mistaken love? If so she would avoid seeing a human spider weave his web at that beautiful hour of the day. So she would shake off a sensation of depression, and, in love with dear old Mother Nature, free as air she would bound away, until they were lost to view; only so restored to mental quiet. With swift and graceful motions, "Beauty"

flew across the shrubless plain, and when she talked to him caressingly, he would shake his head and lift his ears with as much expression in them as in a coquette's eyes, and dash forward with a sense of untrammelled delight.

As "Beauty" leaped ditches and hillocks, Kate would laugh aloud with the spirit of freedom which filled her; that spirit which fills the air of old Africa, with its spiky topped mountains and its barbaric elements, which exploration, civilisation, and Christianity have not conquered.

The sleeping barbarian within wakens more or less in every human heart, attuned to nature, when in Africa.

At times, the hollowness and baubles of civilisation, with its art and science, its looms, wheels, and fiery engines, its conventionalities and restrictions, contrasted with the sun-baths, health, and ignorance of disease, in the Zulu mind, with its contented pastoral existence, its adherence to the laws of morality, virtue, and cleanliness, suggests the question: "What is gained by civilisation?"

On his arrival in England, old King Cetewayo innocently asked:

"When Queen Victoria has all this, why does she want my poor little corner of the earth?"

Herr Schwatka could have won hearts in his Vienna home, as food for his vanity. Why did he want to mesmerise this little creature? Why must he bring into her life the gewgaws of civilisation, the tales of wonderful cities where she would be happy, and shine like a meteor in a heaven of celestial beauties?

Could he, with his mesmeric mentality, which would at times rouse her to such a pitch that her spirit would become restless almost to agony, could he offer her the tranquillity of a life which would fold its wings in happy security from hidden enemies, and lull her to rest, safe from the cruel shafts of the tongues rooted in the mouths of those hideous moral volcanoes who, with the gusts of their smiles and flatteries, would overturn and wreck her innocent life?

Men sometimes act as if they believed themselves to be G.o.ds.

Few men live up to the reflection of their real selves. Few men are G.o.dlike; therefore, few are happy.

CHAPTER NINE.

POKER AND PHILOSOPHY.

There were few Americans on the Fields, scarcely a score, but you heard from each one of them, as an individual, and soon learned on what footing you must meet him. Were he a gentleman from the "States," if you had not heard of that country, he had, and could give you information about it, from its present commander-in-chief to the one who in early days first held aloft the screaming eagle--that invincible bird!--a man like himself in one particular--he could not tell a lie.

That is to say, if you dared to doubt his word, you could immediately have a chance to choose your weapons.

He was celebrated for his talent in forming stock companies, then running up the price of shares and quietly selling out; after which, intimating that he needed a vacation, he would return to the States, leaving the bubble to burst after his departure.

Sometimes he was known as a physician who, with his patent medicines, pretended to successfully combat those African fevers which English flesh is heir to; or a surgeon of skill, with instruments acknowledged to be as keen as Damascus blades, compared with those with which his English professional brother was "handicapped."

He was not less renowned for playing a beautiful hand at the (so-called) American national game of Poker, and for teaching some highly intellectual emissary of Duke of This and Lord That, who had come out to speculate for their Serene Highnesses, how neatly the game could be played, provided they took a few lessons, and paid well for them.

Among the few Americans on the Fields none stood higher in public favour than the really skilful surgeon, Dr Fox, who took a deep interest in all public matters.

Dr Fox was sitting in his office puffing at his briar-wood, and thinking of--nothing; a subject which he made it a point to reflect on daily, at least one hour of his sixteen waking ones.

He had knocked around the world a good deal, and now, among people from everywhere, was "settled" for the time at Kimberley. Strange as it may seem, it was no less a fact, that right here amidst the most intense excitement of an easily excited population he had suddenly stumbled across a thought. That thought was not to think: here where everybody was thinking and thinking, he thought of the thought--not to think. To give his brain a rest, he stopped thinking in the very midst of a deep thought. Great scheme!

This idea came to him something in this wise. He had been walking until he became very tired. Wanting to rest, and not being near a convenient hotel, or at home, or in any place where he could go to bed, he sat down, pulled out his pipe, lit it, and smoked. As he smoked he thought; he had not yet learned how not to think.

"My body rests while sitting: I do not always go to sleep to rest. Why not sit down for an hour, and think of nothing, and rest my brain by vacancy, instead of sleep?"

He did so. While resting his body by keeping still, he rested his brain by not thinking. When the hour expired he said to himself:

"To think constantly on one subject, will relax our hold on it. Given a subject we think and think on it, until all the grip of the brain is lost. I'll give the grey matter a rest."

On this evening, his hour for meditating on nothing was interrupted by a visit from Herr Schwatka and Major Kildare.

"Good evening, Doctor."

"Good evening, gentlemen; glad to see you. Cool night this, after such a hot day. These African nights are glorious. Step inside," and the doctor led the way to his private room. "Now, with your permission, I will mix you a concoction, the secret of which I learned in New York; 'tis a nectar fit for--men," and turning to the sideboard loaded with lemons, spices, and cooling beverages, he commenced to prepare the summer drink whose delights he had extolled.

"Do you know," said Kildare, "I have not tasted a drop of palatable water since I've been on the Fields?"

"I have had many encounters with the water question, and have subdued, but not yet conquered it. I had a barrel brought from the Dam yesterday. The brownish liquid you see in that jar is some of it.

Don't look so disgusted, Major, the little water you will drink in the compound I am mixing has been filtered through that Faitje of powdered charcoal," and the doctor pointed to a bag suspended from the ceiling of an adjoining room.

Major Kildare was a retired English officer, who had been sent, as Agent of his Grace the Duke of Graberg, to purchase from the unsuspecting Boers, at nominal sums, their Transvaal farms on which he knew there was gold. Many of these farms were valueless stone mountains, but if His Grace the Duke allowed his name to appear at the head of the great South African gold mining company, it must be a good thing to invest in.

The Agent had an original idea--so he thought--as to the way a certain game of cards should be played, suggested by an American Diplomat at the Court of Saint James, from whom he had taken several expensive lessons.

He unfolded his scheme to the two gentlemen present, and proposed a practical exhibition of his science. Dr Fox, having limited the game to eleven o'clock, at which hour he had an appointment with two other M.D.'s, for an important consultation, consented, and then proceeded to become initiated in the mysteries of the game of Poker, as taught by an Englishman, and in endeavouring to graduate in it, lost several large sums of money. The three played until Herr Schwatka protested that he was no match for the other two, and withdrew from the game.

The Yankee Doctor soon began to exhibit signs of having known--perhaps in some pre-historic existence which he was just beginning to remember-- something of how the game should be played himself.

"Doctor," said Schwatka, "if I could develop so great a talent as you have, in so short a time, at a game you seemed to know but little of, I should stop giving medicine for a living."

"Ah! would you," replied the doctor. "I rarely do give medicine. Five out of every ten physicians give their patients medicine simply to follow traditions. The friend of my boyhood, old Dr Snow, used to say, that giving medicine to a patient, is like going into a dark room where your friend is in mortal combat with an enemy. All is dark, not a ray of light to distinguish friend from foe. You raise a club and strike in the location of the struggle. If you miss your friend and hit his foe, your friend is saved!"

"The deal is with you, Doctor."

"Excuse me for talking shop, though you'll have to charge that to Herr Schwatka," said the doctor, dealing. "How many cards, Major?"