Wild Honey Part 28

"Oom, they are not bad horses. I'm not saying they are bad horses, but they are five years old and don't match--you know they don't match. One has got a _bless_ [white blaze down forehead] and the other has a white foot."

This. .h.i.t the old man hard. That bless and white foot had been his bane for many a day.

"Oompie mustn't drive to church like that any longer," said Carol decisively. "It is unlucky."

"Ah! unlucky? I am unlucky enough," glowered Oom Nick and reflected awhile in his beard while Carol drank more coffee and looked at Chrissie with his brown eyes which became very gentle and shy the moment he was not discussing horses. Chrissie inquired for his mother and sisters and brothers, naming each separately. Braddon tattooed the table, bored and vaguely irritated. At last, the old man got up and went down to the horses and began examining them minutely from mouth to hoof, jeering all the time and expostulating with Uys who had followed him.

The engineer and Chrissie left alone sat a long time in silence apparently listening to the haggling and jeering below them, but in reality listening to queer little drumlike sounds going on within themselves.

"May I bring you the photo when it is finished?" Braddon said at last in a low voice.

She laughed her little bubbling laugh.

"You see how it is with Poppa--he does not like the railway."

He looked at her steadily.

"You mean I will not be welcome here?"

"_Poppa_ will not welcome you," said Chrissie with the Greuze look.

"Have another cup of coffee?"

Her father and Uys were returning to the stoep. Evidently some arrangement had been come to, but they were still haggling.

"Come on, Oom, you don't want that red ox, now, it will pair with one I have and that will let you off another five pounds. Then I will take your old bays for 55 pounds and you will have only to pay me 40 pounds cash."

"Forty cash!" complained Nick. "It is too much."

"No, no, Uncle. It is not too much--you know that good enough. I couldn't sell for less, even to Miss Chrissie's father."

He looked with his shy brown eyes at the girl and she smiled back.

Braddon got up quickly.

"Well, I must go. Good-bye, Oom."

The old man scowled at him but shook hands.

"Good-day, _kerel_."

"Good-day, Miss Retief."

"Good-day, Mr Braddon."

Perhaps some subtle message pa.s.sed from her hand to his for his eyes cleared. He went down from the stoep, untied his horse, and mounted.

It was a good horse and he sat on it as only a born rider can sit. If Chrissie's good figure could not be hidden neither could Braddon's horsemanship, and that is an accomplishment which Boer girls, in common with most other girls, admire. He was well aware of Chrissie's glance fixed upon him as he rode away, swaying easily and gracefully in his saddle. He was not quite sure why the fact was so pleasing to him, but he whistled a gay little air, and the world looked a good place to him, and life much more attractive than it had looked an hour ago.

Six months later, Nick Retief sat again on his stoep gazing with sombre eyes before him. At a casual glance all seemed unchanged, but a trained observer would have detected two profound differences: the landscape was no longer naked, and the old Boer had grown markedly older.

His beard and hair showed great patches of white amidst their s.h.a.ggy sandiness, the old eyes were bloodshot and full of strain, the folds of skin sheathing them reddened and weary. It was the sight they looked upon that made them weary: a line of tents not five hundred yards from the stoep, some tin shanties, huge piles of sleepers and rails, and a trail of pitched-up rocks and yellowy-grey earth. The gangers were at work on the business of bridging the Kat River and laying the railway line across Jackalsfontein.

The old veld eyes that stared at that hated sight had seen many strange things since the morning when Braddon made his first appearance at Jackalsfontein. At last they had looked upon the sea, and the ships upon it, and the men that go in the ships; upon tram-cars and hansom cabs and streets crowded with fashionable women. Incidentally they had seen the inside of a Law Court, not once but many times.

On six several occasions Nick had donned his black stove-pipe hat and driven the Clan-William bays acquired from Carol Uys to Piquetberg and been accompanied from thence to Cape Town by Frickie de Villiers the _slim_. But all the sights his eyes had there beheld brought him no solace, nor a pa.s.sing thrill of interest. He had been at grapples with the Government; absorbed in the great fight to keep silent and naked the acres that he loved. And the Government had defeated him. The railway had come!

Money had flowed like water, and it was not Government money. Little was now left of the original 2000 pounds that once had lain snug in the paraffin tin under the bed of the defunct Mrs Retief. To drag a case from the ordinary courts to the Supreme Court of the land and from thence to appeal to the House of a.s.sembly does not cost nothing.

Neither do the services of such _slim_ ones of the earth as Frickie de Villiers, and a firm of Cape Town solicitors (who were Frickie's cousins) and, finally, an eminent Q.C. (who was Frickie's uncle) cost nothing. Nothing costs nothing when it comes to meddling with the law.

Nick knew this now to his cost. Knew too that governments can be vindictive as well as arrogant. He had never heard of such a person as Lord Chesterfield, but of one Chesterfieldism at least he was now in a position to prove the truth:

"Never quarrel with large bodies or societies: Individuals sometimes forgive; societies never do."

Instead of awarding him the compensation originally suggested for Jackalsfontein the Government had set a fresh brace of men to the task of a.s.sessment, with disastrous results for Nick. These officials, practical men with no fantastic illusions about the value of rock veld, rhenoster shrub, and stink-boschie, had written Jackalsfontein down for the poorest kind of cattle land. Such land is dirt-cheap in South Africa, and the Government was well within its rights in paying for it at dirt-cheap rates. What was worse, it would pay for no more than was absolutely needed to lay a narrow track of steel rails. The land that lay on either side of the fenced-off track, Nick was informed he could keep. That these wire fences would cut the farm in two thereby lessening its value, and that the nearest crossing gates were to be erected three miles away, was Nick's misfortune, part of the reward he had reaped for "quarrelling with large bodies."

At any rate, it was all over now. Nick had eaten and drunk of Justice, grace had been said, and it was finished. The iron heel of the Law had him down in the dust. Nothing more for the old farmer to do but sit in the sunshine and watch the ridge of pitched-up earth creep over his land. His eyes were weary, but his heart was like a red-hot stone in his side.

He no longer worked. The management of the farm had devolved entirely on Chrissie, and though she was no fool, the burden of care and responsibility weighed heavily on her shoulders.

So absorbed was the old man in this business of watching that he appeared to have forgotten everything else. He came out in the dawn and sat through the unsheltered day in his reimpje chair. Sometimes even after night-fall he sat on, staring through the darkness until the camp lights died out and all was wrapped in silence. Then he would lift up his great bulk and shamble heavily to bed.

And with each day his bulk seemed to grow greater. It was not a wasting sickness, this sickness he had of hate and rage. Chrissie noticed on the day of his last return from Cape Town, that he had a.s.sumed a curious resemblance to her mother in the latter stages of her illness. Old Tanta Christina had died of dropsy, and the girl sometimes wondered sadly whether the same disease, common amongst Boers, would s.n.a.t.c.h away her father. But though he grew swollen and visibly stouter there was none of the transparent whiteness which accompanies dropsy. Rather his colouring was red and purple, almost as if a fire, flaming within, boiled the very blood in his veins, bloating out his body and blearing his eyes. There were hours when Chrissie had a childish fear that he would burst. These were usually the hours when the gangers were at work with dynamite.

For the engineer and his gang were not finding the affair of bridging the river and laying the rails across Jackalsfontein any too easy to accomplish. The rocks, concerning whose presence the valuers had been so explicit, justified their existence by appearing in places where they could best have been dispensed with. Dynamiting went on three times a day, and three times a day men fled in every direction for shelter.

Once, during the first days they ran to the farm, but no more than once.

The grim man sitting so quiet in his armchair frightened them. There was something awe-inspiring about that big figure and the sombre, vigilant glance of the bloodshot eyes. A superst.i.tious Irish navvy declared that the farmer possessed the evil eye and had put the black curse of Ballyshane on them all.

It is true that an extraordinary number of accidents had distinguished the rail-laying operations since Diepner's land had been left for Retief's. Scarcely a day pa.s.sed without witnessing the sight of a trolley carrying off some injured ganger to the Cape Town Hospital.

Those in charge too, had experienced trouble. Three different engineers had come and gone since the commencement of the bridge. First, Braddon, after waiting for two months on the Diepner side of the river, had barely settled his men on the Retief side, when he went down with enteric and had to be trollied off to the old Somerset Hospital at Cape Town. The next man broke his leg three weeks after taking charge. The third got blood-poisoning from a veld sore. A temporary man, put in charge, was called away to Kimberley by the sudden death of his wife.

Now Braddon, after a long and slow convalescence, was back again.

He and Chrissie had met only twice since the date of their first acquaintance. One afternoon he had ridden over with the prints of her photograph in his pocket. Old Retief was away on his first visit to Cape Town, and a girl friend from Piquetberg had come to keep Chrissie company in her father's absence. It happened that some folk from a neighbouring farm were also visiting Jackalsfontein, and there was rather a large gathering in the big _Eat-kammer_. The girls, merry as _mossies_ in the corn, entertained their guests with coffee and cookies and there was a great deal of laughing. Mart Lategan, the Piquetberg girl, was of the giggling, hoydenish type, and if Chrissie had shown herself of the same inclination the party might have developed into rather a rowdy affair. It is easy in out-of-the-way places on the veld where there are no particular standards of conduct and the climate insidiously slackens the moral and physical muscles, to pa.s.s from unrestrained laughter to the broad jokes that distinguish social intercourse amongst the less cultivated Boers.

But about Chrissie Retief there was a new and quiet dignity that toned down the noisy humour of the others, and kept a certain sweet quality in the atmosphere, like a fresh breeze blowing through the room. It seemed as though in her father's absence she felt the honour of the house upon her shoulders, and must carry it carefully. Braddon's eye rested often on her, and though hardly any conversation pa.s.sed between them that was not common with, and to, the others, their glances sometimes crossed, blended, and ended in each other's eyes. Just before he left, they were alone for a moment, and Braddon was able to produce the photographs.

She went red with pleasure, looking quickly from one pose to the other.

"Is that me, then? My! how nice I look!"

"Not nearly nice enough for you. All your lovely colouring is lost," he said, looking at her rosy cheek.

"Ach! sis, toch, Mr Braddon, you just say those things," she murmured, casting down her lashes.

"They are true though."

"Are these both for me?" she asked shyly.

"Yes, but I have taken the liberty of keeping a print of each for myself. I hope you don't mind?"