Wild Honey Part 29

How could she mind? But she said with her Greuze air:

"I can't think why you should want them!"

"I will tell you some day," was his last word to her, and he rode away with a smile on his lips.

The next time they had encountered out riding. Chrissie, taking a canter in the cool of the afternoon on one of the Clan-William bays, met him returning from a long day of acquiring stores in Piquetberg.

He was hot and tired and thirsty and filled with weariness; but after a few moments in her company remembered none of these things. It was as if a tree had sprung up by the wayside, with a seat beside it to rest on, and a well of cool spring water for refreshment. There was something so alive, yet restful and a.s.suaging about the girl. The wind had beaten a bright colour into her face, health and vitality showed in every line of her, and she was br.i.m.m.i.n.g over with that quality which he had recognised at their first meeting and which had turned him from a casual caller into a man who would come again. The thing had been inexplicable to him then and it was still so; but it remained a fact.

It was as intangible as spirit, yet the lure of coquetry and curves and things physical was queerly mixed up with it; loyalty, and strength, and tenderness; and a certain hardness of purpose, and a hint of her father's vague shrewdness as his eye searched the bush for far-off sheep; and more than a hint of his dogged obstinacy and love of a fight.

Braddon came of a good cla.s.s of people and had known in his own country many charming girls, most of them prettier, cleverer, and far more cultivated than Chrissie. Yet in her he divined this something which they had lacked. Some fire burned in her of which no spark had gleamed in them. What he did _not_ know was that he had met in Chrissie one of those subtle combinations of sweetheart-wife-and-mother which old Nature specially breeds in big wide open countries where she needs strong, hardy, l.u.s.ty children to people her empty s.p.a.ces. He only knew when he rode away from Chrissie Retief that day that he loved her and meant to do all he could to get her for his own.

But before they met again much was to happen. During the next few weeks, the old man's cause was clearly lost though litigation still dragged on, and orders came to Braddon to commence operations at Jackalsfontein. The political situation provided a further complication for it was 1899 and there were rumours of war in the air. The relation between Boer and Briton had long been acutely strained, but the strain was now approaching cracking-point. Negotiations between England and the Transvaal were still going forward, but it was clear that a break-down in them could be expected at any time, and the Boers, fighters by nature and inclination, and longing for another turn-up with the ancient enemy, were praying for that break-down to come. A feeling of hostility between the two races exhibited itself all over the country and in every relation of life. Braddon was aware of it when he went into Piquetberg or had any dealing with the farmers, and it betrayed itself in constant rows between his men, who though they were mostly "coloured," took sides, and were prepared to fight for their opinions.

The skilled mechanics were white men and all Britishers except for a couple of half-Dutch colonials.

Braddon was a good deal worried about Chrissie, and what att.i.tude her father would take up in the event of his being required to accept an Englishman as his son-in-law; but fate postponed the problem for him, for a time at least, by laying her hand (with typhoid fever in it) upon him and tucking him safely away in hospital for a couple of months. Now he was back. Chrissie had not seen him with her eyes, but she knew very well that he was there.

The door opened now and she came out and stood looking sadly at her father. She too had subtly changed. Some of the bubbling youth was gone out of her; the shadows in the gay forget-me-not eyes had grown deeper; her lips tipped downwards at the corners.

The coming war between Boer and Briton had already thrown its shadow on her spirit; and too, the gloom of her father's lost law-case enveloped her as it did all else at the farm. She knew he was a ruined man, with nothing in the world but a couple of hundred pounds, and the farm reduced to half its value. She was no longer the catch of the neighbourhood from a marriageable point of view. The two thousand pounds to which, as her father's only living child, she had been heiress was gone in litigation, leaving her just like any other poor back-veld farmer's daughter, a girl who must take the best husband she could get.

Not that that worried her. It was her father's changed habit and appearance that frightened her. She looked at him now with sorrowful eyes.

"Ach! my lieber fader, don't let it turn your blood like that, then!"

She often made that remark to him, and he never took any notice, never even removed his eyes from the land, though his hand would sometimes mechanically search in his coat pocket for the stumpy roll of _tabac_ and penknife.

"Won't you come in, Poppa? The sun is toch so hot out here for you!"

The front of the house in fact lay bathed in the full flood of noon-day heat. No shade of flickering blue-gum leaves sheltered it now, for the old man had cut down the row of trees level with the stoep so that no obstacle should impede a clear vision of the dirty work going forward.

"No what, I am _maar_ better here," he said slowly. "I can _maar_ see the scoundrels."

"Fi! my poor Poppa! what does it then do for you, but? Only makes your blood turn more and more."

"Chrissie," he said solemnly. "My blood is turned already. I feel strange in the stomach and in the head since that Judge--" He shook a great fist in the direction of the railway workings. It seemed to her that ever since that morning his hand had strangely increased in size.

"Poppa you are swelling up!" she said in awestruck tones.

"Ja, I am not myself," he muttered dully. "It is those stink-machines-- and that cursed Judge."

She sighed. It was nearly two months since the final edict had been given against him, yet here was his mind still travelling back and forth on the thing as though it had happened yesterday! The world had stood still for him! She let her gaze follow the same direction as his, putting up her hand to shelter her eyes from the glare. At the camp not more than four hundred yards away the men could be seen moving about.

Some trolley loads of machinery had just come in, and the gangers were swarming over them like ants; pulling at and handing down sleepers, rails, and great steel girders. A figure dressed in white ducks came out of a tent and directed the scene. At the sight of his straight back and easy walk a little wave of colour curved into the girl's cheek.

Suddenly as if moved by machinery the red-shirted, grey-legged men all ran together, converging in a cl.u.s.ter about one spot. Some of them stooped down, others leaned over the stoopers to look at what lay on the ground. Chrissie held her breath until she saw the white-clothed man waving the others off. It was one of the red-shirted labourers who lay so still on the ground.

"There has been an accident!" she said aloud, looking at her father.

"There will be many an accident before it is finished," he muttered darkly. "G.o.d is on my side. He will make them pay with blood."

"_Maar_, Poppey, it is not the fault of those poor men! They have to earn their living, but," she expostulated. "Look, they are carrying him to a tent--now they are--" She broke off and stayed watching. It was plain that Braddon was giving certain instructions. He pointed towards the farm, and the men looked that way, but shook their heads and hung back. Then Braddon himself started for the farm with long swinging paces. The colour waned out of Chrissie's face, leaving her very pale.

"Poppa, the engineer is coming here--you remember him?"

"Ja, I remember the _rooi-nek_ good enough."

They stayed in silence then, until Braddon reached the stoep. His eyes and Chrissie's met for a moment as he stood with his hat off, but it was Retief whom he addressed.

"We have had an accident, Oom, and by bad luck not a drop of brandy in the camp. Can you let us have a little? Enough to keep the man going until we get him into hospital."

"I have brandy but not for you," was the surly response.

Braddon reddened angrily, but he knew the old man's trouble, and strove to be patient.

"Oom, it is not for me. The poor fellow's leg is broken in two places.

I ask you in common humanity."

"That talk is no good here. You will get no brandy of mine."

"Sis, Poppey, then--" put in Chrissie in soft remonstrance. But Poppey turned on her bellowing like a wounded bull.

"Is this my house or yours? _Mastag_! Do I keep brandy to pour down the throats of _rooi-neks_ who steal my land?"

Braddon who had been standing with his hat off now replaced it and turned away. It was only too clear that he was wasting time. But he threw one Parthian shot over his shoulder.

"As a matter of fact it is a Dutchman who is hurt. A decent young fellow, too, of the same name as your own." He walked away.

"How can you be so cruel, Poppa, then?" cried the girl turning fiercely on her father, her eyes bright with tears and anger.

Receiving no answer she ran into the house, emerging three minutes later with a cappie on her head and a bottle in her hand. Defiantly she stood before her father.

"I am going to take him the brandy. You can beat me if you will, but I shall take the brandy."

The old man looked at her with terrible eyes but spake no word.

"He is one of us--a Retief--a Boer! It would be a shame on us if we let him perhaps die of his sufferings."

For an instant longer, she paused, her foot on the step, waiting for some relenting word from him, but he spake nothing. So she ran down the steps and across the veld after Braddon. He had already reached the camp before she caught him up, and another man was saddling a horse to ride to Diepner's, some three miles off.

"Here is the brandy," said Chrissie breathlessly, touching his arm just as he was about to enter the tent where the injured man lay. She was very white for all her running. Braddon took the bottle from her with grateful words, and would have kept her hand, but she drew back coldly.

"I cannot shake hands with my father's enemies. It is only because the man is a Boer, like ourselves, that I have come."

The Englishman, intensely chagrined, stood staring at her a moment.

Then he said abruptly:

"Wait one moment while I give Retief a dose. Do not go. I must speak to you."

While she stood hesitating, he disappeared into the tent, returning almost immediately.

"Come, I will walk back with you."