Luck at the Diamond Fields Part 12

"What are you to say? Why, you don't want me to write a love-letter to my own wife--it's more in your line than mine; but make it pretty sweet, for I don't know but that the old plan isn't best after all."

Smythe had written love-letters to other men's wives before, but never under similar circ.u.mstances, with the husband witnessing the performance with a loaded revolver in his hand, nor had he ever made such a very expensive present. It was some time before he could pull himself together sufficiently to write, and one or two attempts were condemned by his severe critic, who said,--

"No, that sort of slush ain't good enough. Put a little more sugar in it. Why, d.a.m.n it, man, I thought you were so good at it!"

At last the right sort of note was written. "That will do. Here, what do you think of it, Jen?" said the Captain, pa.s.sing the note across to his partner.

"Why, I think it a dear little note; it's a beautiful note; the prettiest note I ever got. What a darling man you are to give me such a present, and yet what a wicked wretch you are to write like that to me!"

and Mrs Hamilton looked at her correspondent, who was regarding her with no very loving glance, and then burst into a peal of silvery laughter.

The Captain seemed to take up the joke. "Why, hang it, man," he said, "but you're a generous big-hearted fellow. There are some men who wouldn't care about their wives taking presents from such a gay cuss as you, but I know you mean no harm, old fellow;" and the Captain gave him a slap on the back with his unoccupied hand, which made him start with terror. "No," he continued, as his visitor made as if he was going, "you sha'n't go yet. Stop and drink, stop and drink," he repeated, with a warning gesture with his revolver.

Mr Smythe sat down at this pressing invitation, and took one or two gla.s.ses of brandy-and-water. He felt that his nerve was altogether gone, and that he was obliged to obey the other. At last Hamilton let him go, and opening the door for him, took a noisy leave of him, that the neighbours must have heard; and then he lurched home in such a state of brandy and shock that he could hardly realise his loss before he tumbled into bed.

The next morning he did not wake up until it was late, past ten o'clock, and then he, by degrees, remembered the events of the night before.

"Was it a dream?" he thought; and he went to his safe, and found out that it was no dream--the diamonds were not there! What could he do to get his diamonds back? was his first thought. He could think of nothing, for he remembered the letters he had written, and already it was too late to stop the cheque, for he knew it would have been presented as soon as the bank opened. Then he began to think that the best thing he could do would be to keep his sorrows to himself, for no one would believe his story; and the people who lived next door to the Hamiltons would have heard Captain Hamilton let him out of his house, and would never believe that anything of the sort had happened to him that evening. So Mr Smythe did nothing, and he was not surprised that evening to hear that among the pa.s.sengers by the coach to Capetown were his friends the Hamiltons.

He never saw them again, nor did he wish to. They were last seen, some time ago, in Paris. Hamilton was the same stolid, heavy-dragoon looking man, and Jenny Hamilton was as young and charming-looking as ever; and they seemed to be very prosperous, so they probably did well with Smythe's diamonds.

Story 7.

A VAAL RIVER HEIRESS.

Part One.

The General, as he had been called since diamond-digging first broke out on the banks of the Vaal River, inhabited a hut built of rough stones and thatched with reeds near the river-bank at Red Shirt Rush.

He was the owner of some claims, and he had worked at Red Shirt since he came up to the Vaal from the colony to try his luck as a diamond-digger; and when other diggers went hither and thither to new places on the river, or were attracted by the rich diggings which afterwards became famous as the South African diamond mines, the old General worked on at Red Shirt as if he were quite satisfied with the rewards that fortune thought fit to bestow upon his labours there, and would laugh at the men who were attracted elsewhere by glowing reports. He could hardly be said to be contented with Red Shirt--certainly if he were he expressed his content peculiarly, for he seldom talked of the place without an uncomplimentary epithet; but he probably was imbued with the gambler's belief in the doctrine of chances, and hoped his luck would change, while he was too discontented with the results of every move he had made in his life to care to make any more. He was generally supposed to be the unluckiest man down the river, and his bad luck was a very favourite subject for discussion and exaggeration at the canteens and places where diggers congregated.

His former history, and the reasons which led him to take to diamond-digging, were subjects which afforded scope for imaginations which found life down the river, when finds were few and far between, barren of topics of interest; and certainly his appearance and manners seemed to show that he was much out of place in the community he found himself in. He was an aristocratic, reserved man, from whom years of rough life had not taken the unmistakable stamp of the military officer.

It was generally believed down the river that the General's relations at home were very great people, and he was looked upon as a man with a history. Luney White, the Vaal River poet, whose contribution to the Diamond Field newspapers caused quite a furore down the river, many bets being made, and much fighting and drinking being occasioned, by the difficult question of what they were all about, and what he meant by them at all, retailed, on the pretence of having heard it from an army officer at Capetown, a story that the General had allowed the suspicion of a terrible murder to rest upon him so as to shield the really guilty person, a lady of exalted rank, and was, at present, a fugitive from justice in consequence of his n.o.ble conduct. Luney's story rather took for a day or two, until some one remembered having read just such a tale in a book the poet had borrowed from him--a circ.u.mstance which threw doubts, not only upon the veracity of the story, but on the originality of their poet's genius, which, up to then, they had believed in. The General's real name was hardly known, and he was never spoken of by it, though it was to be seen on a tombstone in the Barkly Cemetery, which was put up to the memory of Constance, wife of John Stanby, of Red Shirt Rush, Vaal River. He was the father of a golden-haired little girl of seventeen, who had grown up from a child on the banks of the Vaal. His story had not really been a romantic or remarkable one. Like many another man of good old family but no money he had gone into the army.

After serving for some dozen years he had got into the clutches of the Jews by backing a bill for a brother officer. For some years he fought against his debts, but in the end he was obliged to surrender his commission to his enemies, and leave the service. Then, when his affairs were sufficiently hopeless, he fell in love with and married a girl who had not a penny, and, after having tried in vain to get something to do in England, went out to the Cape and was attracted up to Vaal River when diamonds were first found. Though he was under fifty, he had become a grizzled, old-looking man, broken in spirits by persistent misfortune; and yet he was a strange mixture, for at times he was as sanguine as when he first put a pick into the soil of South Africa.

Those who said that he never found exaggerated his ill-success, though not perhaps his ill-luck; at long intervals a few ill-looking, off-coloured little diamonds had turned up on his sorting-table, which, if they were to be considered as a recompense for all his weary work, were Fortune's insults added to her injuries; but nevertheless kept up in him a curious sort of hope, which through all his bad luck he retained, notwithstanding his bitter grumbling against South Africa in particular, and all things in general. To himself constantly, and to others when he met any one he cared to speak to, he would inveigh bitterly against his luck. First of all he would wish that he had never gone into the army; then he would curse the fate which had made him choose the particular branch of the service he had gone into; then he would curse the day he had left the service; and then he would collect every malediction he had made use of and every other he knew, and fire one withering sulphurous volley at fate, which had made him a digger on the Vaal River. These explosions would seem to do him much good, for after one of them he would generally seem much relieved, and as likely as not in a few minutes would be talking about what he would do when he found, as he felt sure he would find when he had got the top stuff off his claim, or got into the lime layer which he would strike in another ten feet, or started into the new ground he was going to work in a month or two.

There were two diggers at Red Shirt with whom the General was on intimate terms--Charlie Langdale and Jim Heap. The former was a light-hearted, cheery youngster of about twenty-two, in many respects a typical river-digger. He was restless and unable to take kindly to any work which entailed obedience; had a rare gift for getting into any mischief that was going on, while he possessed very little reverence for his seniors and those who thought themselves his betters; on the other hand, he was superior to many colonial youths in that he did not lie as a rule, nor boast overmuch, and could speak a few sentences without swearing hideously. The first time the General had seen him he was holding his own against a big Irish digger who was trying to bully him out of a claim he was working; and the nonchalant way in which he laughed at the Irishman's threats, and put the right value on them, impressed the General so much in his favour that he at once struck up an intimacy, and the two became great allies.

The other, Jim Heap, was an old Australian digger who had settled at Red Shirt, where he had become a fixture; for besides having some claims, he had become the proprietor of a store, which his wife looked after for him.

He was a favourite confidant of the General, who would explain to him his theories about diamonds, and show him why he felt certain he would soon find and be able to leave the country--theories which Jim Heap would listen to gravely enough, though he did not believe in them one bit; but, as he would say to Charlie, what was the good of putting a damper on the old man's hopes? His life was bad enough as it was, but would be unbearable if he did not go on hoping that he would soon make his pile, and be able to take his little girl home to England.

Sometimes, however, he would offer him advice, which the old General-- who, though he considered diamond-digging a hateful occupation into which he had been forced by a malignant fate, believed himself to be as good an authority as any one on the subject--would greatly resent.

Charlie Langdale also would sometimes venture on the same subject, and one morning, as he sat after dinner smoking under the trees near the General's house, he had greatly aroused his old friend's anger by criticising his way of working.

"What! say my drive is dangerous!" the General had burst out, after he had listened to Charlie for some time, "and I shan't get anything in that ground I am driving into! I should like to know what you mean by talking to me about it. Why, if I don't know something about river digging, I'd like to know who does. I have been digging since they first found diamonds in this cursed country, and have stuck to the river all the time, and never left it for the New Rush when all the others did. A lot I have got for it so far. Well, it's a long lane that has got no turning; and there is Connie, perhaps she wouldn't be as well as she is if we had left the river and gone to Kimberley," he added.

"By Jove, yes, you're right, it's healthier here than at Kimberley, and she couldn't look better than she does, could she?" Charlie answered, with a flush of admiration coming across his bright young face, as he looked round and saw a golden-haired, blue-eyed girl, whose bright beauty was unharmed by the pitiless South African sun and climate, which often enough makes sad havoc of a woman's looks.

The sight of Connie, however, made Charlie go back to his subject, regardless of the General's wrath. "I don't like the look of that drive, don't like those boulders that are above you; why don't you leave it alone and go into fresh ground? I think it dangerous, so does Jim Heap; he told Connie that you ought not to work in it; and she is wretched about it every time you go to the claim."

"It seems to me that every one thinks they can interfere with me--you and Connie, and then Jim Heap, who thinks no one understands anything about digging but himself;" and the General drew in his breath to prepare for a burst of eloquence anent Jim Heap, when his daughter came up, and, feeling that he couldn't do justice to the subject in her presence, he went into the house choking with indignation.

"I wish some one could persuade him to give up that work. But it's no use, he thinks he is a greater authority about digging than any one else," Connie said, guessing from her father's suppressed indignation that Charlie had been broaching the question of the dangerous state of his claim.

"Yes, I wish he would go into fresh ground. I never believed in those claims of his, they're too near the river."

"You will never get him to do that. You know that years ago he saw a big diamond found in the claim next to where he is, which looked, he said, as if it were chipped off a much bigger one, and he is as sure in his own mind as he is of anything that the other bit is somewhere about near where he is working."

"Well, I dare say the claim is safe enough, and I hope he will come across the big 'un, which is going to make his fortune," said Charlie, who was always ready to look at the bright side of things. "It was only the other day he was saying that it was about time he found, as you were growing too old to be living at Red Shirt."

"Poor old dear, he is always troubling himself about me, and says I am growing up a perfect savage, without any accomplishments and very little education, and shall have terribly hard work to make up for lost time when I get home. Well, I'll back myself to cook, set a line for fish, nurse any one who's down with fever, and sort for diamonds, against any one on the river; these are accomplishments enough for Red Shirt, and that's where I shall be all my life, so far as I can see. He was talking the other day about sending me home, and staying out here himself; but that's absurd, isn't it?"

Charlie did not answer. The idea of Red Shirt Rush without Connie was miserable enough, for all his good sense told him that the General was right. Connie ought not to be growing up in a digger's camp, with little education that was not of a very practical character.

"Why don't you say that I couldn't be improved, Charlie? You're not half polite. I suspect you're comparing me with some of those fine ladies you have met at Kimberley. Come, I bet I know about as much out of books as they do, for I have read all the old man has, and they are a good mixed lot. Besides, if I want educating ever so much, how could I go home and leave him by himself? He is wretched enough as it is, and I couldn't bear to leave him--besides, I don't want to say good-bye to all my old friends."

Charlie's heart gave rather a jump--he wondered whether he were one of the friends she would most mind saying good-bye to. He didn't believe much in the General's sanguine expectations being realised, and thought that Connie was likely to stand in need some day of a stronger protector than her father; and her words gave him a feeling of hope, and he determined that he would speak out. Just then, however, the General's voice was heard calling for Connie, and the interruption disconcerted Charlie, who turned off a sentence he was beginning and determined to put it off for another day. His heart failed him, and he thought that the old General would not like it, and that Connie might take it amiss; so knocking the ashes out of his pipe he said good-bye to Connie, and walked up the bank to where he was working, although he longed to stay and talk to her, and there was not the slightest reason why he should not have done so. On his way to his claim he pa.s.sed the ground where the General was working. It was a claim which had been partly worked in the old days, before the New Rush, as the Kimberley mine was then called, was found, and had been deserted before it had been worked out.

After its former owners had abandoned it and had gone to try their luck at the new diggings, the General had worked it down to the bed rock, some thirty feet deep, and was driving into the side of the claim towards the ground where he had seen the diamond found. Charlie stood for a moment or two watching him at work.

The drive certainly did not look very safe; the old man was working near a ma.s.s of rock which jutted out over him. The ground into which he was driving was the only part of the adjoining claim that had not been worked out, its former owners having thrown their stones and rubbish there, and so had been unable to get at it easily when they had worked out the rest of the claim. The weight on the natural surface of the ground made the place where the General was driving into look all the more awkward.

"I say, that's rather a nasty-looking boulder you are working under, isn't it? It would flatten out any one in the drive pretty well if it were to slip," Charlie shouted out to the General, who had crawled out of his drive for a minute.

"Slip! Bosh! Suppose the moon were to slip. Nothing but dynamite would move that boulder! Perhaps you would like to teach me how to work the claim," the elder digger growled out in response; and then he crawled into the tunnel, and Charlie went on, knowing that it was useless to remonstrate any more, and hoping that it would be all right.

"Well, youngster, you've come back to work at last; you're a pretty sort of partner! Been down at the General's? You're always loafing down there--it makes me laugh to see how that little bit of a girl fools you," a big dissipated-looking man, who was lying on the ground smoking a pipe, said as Charlie came up to the claim.

This was his partner, Bill Jeffson, and as he heard his voice Charlie thought to himself that one of the first steps he would take towards turning over a new leaf would be to break with Mr Bill, so he answered him rather shortly, and told him that he had better mind his own business.

"That's it, quarrel with an old chum, I suppose. I ain't good enough for you now you've got to know the old General. I don't know what's come over you: you can't take a joke, you never go on the spree, and you put on no end of frills just because you know that poverty-stricken old dead-beat and his daughter," Jeffson growled out as he got up, stretched himself, and lounged into the claim, while Charlie settled down at the sorting-table.

Several hours had pa.s.sed without anything happening to vary the dull monotony of the work, when Charlie suddenly sprang up with an exclamation of surprise.

"Hullo! what's up? Have you found one?" Jeffson called out.

"Found one! no. I heard some one cry out; there it is again. It's from the General's claim," said Charlie, as he started to run, leaving his partner, who was never over much interested in other people's affairs, to lounge after him.

After Charlie had gone a little way, he met Connie, who, with a white startled face, was running towards him, crying loudly for help.

"Go back and get picks and a crowbar. You have one. It's father; he has had an accident; the ground has come down. I will go and bring some other men," she gasped out; and then she ran past him towards the claims where Jim Heap and some other diggers were working.

The first glance Charlie got of the claim to which he ran, after he had shouted to his partner to bring the Kaffirs with their tools, told him what had happened.

Jim Heap's prophecy turned out to be true! The drive had fallen, and it was blocked up by a ma.s.s of boulders and earth. Of the poor old General nothing could be seen; but it was not hard to guess where he was, and Charlie began to dig madly with his hands into the fallen earth and throw some of the loose stones on one side, a cold sweat running down his face as he realised the terrible fate that had come to his old friend. He had not been at his work long before better help arrived.

Jeffson with the Kaffirs set to work with their shovels; and Jim Heap, who at once took in the situation, and, giving the others directions, set to work at the fallen ground, looking up as he did so at Connie, who, having followed him back, stood watching them.

"Don't take on, my dear. I have seen men come out all right from worse places than this, and be none the worse for it," he said to her; but his tone was not quite as hopeful as his words.