Читать книгу Luck at the Diamond Fields - Dalrymple J. Belgrave - Страница 7

“So it seems that the Cape Colony was very nearly saving us the trouble of looking after poor Tom Gray’s girl,” said the Rector of Morden, Warwickshire, to his wife, who sat opposite to him at the breakfast-table, as he put down the newspaper he had in his hand. The Warners of Morden Rectory were distant cousins of Kate, and the Rector had been her father’s greatest friend at college. When they had heard of his death they had written out offering Kate a home, for they were kindly people, and as they only had two boys of their own, they thought she would not be in the way.

“Poor girl, it was very foolish of her to make herself so notorious; however, I like the way she writes. I should not say there was anything sly about her,” answered Mrs Warner.

Kate Gray had, in answer to their invitation, written to them, telling of the trouble she had got into, and confessing that though the jury had acquitted her, she really had helped the convict, whom she believed to be innocent, to escape.

“It is sensible of her to send the newspaper report of the trial. After all it’s just the sort of thing her father would have done at her age,” answered the Rector; and his thoughts went back to his old friend, with whom he had got into many scrapes in their old Christ-Church days.

Mrs Warner was inclined to take rather a more serious view of the affair, but for all that she agreed with her husband that it would be best to have their cousin home to stay with them; and so she was advised to come home as soon as she could, and forget all about her adventure at the Cape, in the pretty Warwickshire village. She was glad enough to accept their offer, for though she had become a heroine at the Cape, she found that heroines were rather at a discount as governesses, and that it was difficult to see what she could do with herself there. So two years from the day of her trial found Kate quite at home at the Rectory, and happy enough in her new life.

“The Watsons are going to bring a friend with them to tennis, I forget his name,” said Mr Warner to his wife one day at luncheon. “He seems rather a pleasant sort of man. I met him at Coventry the other day; he comes from the Diamond Fields, where he made some money. I wonder whether you ever met him out there, Kate?”

Kate looked troubled. It occurred to her that more people were likely to know a young lady who had stood in the dock in a criminal court than she knew; and in consequence she did not feel over comfortable at the idea of meeting any one who came from the Diamond Fields.

The others understood her embarrassment, though they tried to persuade her that there was no reason for her fears. “People who have known one another at the ends of the earth would never tell tales. I should say that rule would be kept for mutual convenience,” said Mr Warner, who, like many an untravelled Englishman, believed that the goings on of those living in distant lands were, as a rule, such as they would wish to keep dark at home. However, Kate showed so much apprehension of a meeting with a man who might remember the trial, that they did not dissuade her from keeping away and avoiding it. So it happened that in the afternoon she was sitting in a school-room by herself, waiting securely there until the visitors had gone away again. She had heard them arrive, and heard a voice in the hall which she knew must belong to the Watsons’ friend from the Cape, and it had seemed somehow to be familiar to her ear. She sat with a book before her, reading very little, and thinking a good deal of the events of two years before, which now seemed so far off—of the long journey across the veldt, of the scene at Jagger’s Drift, and then of her trial at Kimberley. What had become of the man for whom for some motive she could hardly fathom she had risked so much? Likely enough he was buried under the South African sand, or perhaps he was taken again, and was working out his sentence. Again his figure came back to her mind, dressed as he was when she last saw him, in coarse canvas shirt and trousers decorated with numerous broad arrows and other Government marks.

Just then she heard her aunt’s voice from the garden, shouting out to some one in the hall.

“Second door to the right, as you go in, you will find the rackets; no, left I mean.” Whoever was being spoken to did not hear the last words, for instead of going into the room where the rackets were kept, he opened the door of the room she was sitting in. It seemed to her as if her thoughts had taken bodily shape, for there stood the man she was thinking about. He seemed to her to be dressed as he had been when she had seen him last, for his flannel and soft hat had much the effect of his convict garb.

“At last I have found you, and I have been trying to find out where you were for the last year,” he said.

“I thought you were still looking for the rackets, and came to show you where they were kept. I need not introduce my cousin to you, as you seem to have made each other’s acquaintance,” said Mrs Warner, as she came into the room some ten minutes afterwards.

“Yes; we were old friends in South Africa,” answered Darrell.

“I hope you will persuade her to come and play tennis. Do you know you were the cause of her staying away? She was afraid of meeting you because of that foolish business of hers about a convict’s escape, which I suppose you must know all about,” said Mrs Warner.

“Yes; I know a good deal about it, for I happen to be the convict. Don’t be alarmed, though—I am quite a respectable person now, for thanks to Miss Gray, I have proved my innocence and got a pardon.”

Mrs Warner looked somewhat dubiously at her guest. The hero of Kate’s adventure was the last person she had ever expected to entertain in her house. Ex-convicts, even when they have not escaped, but have duly served their sentences, are not thought desirable acquaintances; on the other hand, her guest was perfectly well accredited and she liked his looks. Altogether she was inclined to think Kate less foolish than she used to do; and she did not attempt to prevent her from being persuaded to join the rest of the party in the garden.

Darrell did not play tennis that afternoon. Sitting on a low garden-chair he told Kate his history since the moment she had seen him lose himself in the distance as he rode for his liberty. His life in Stellaland had been full enough of adventure, but nothing had happened that had any particular effect on his history, until one day when he was sitting with some of his companions at the house he had first seen them at. He was feeling rather sick of his life, although he liked the excitement and adventure of it, and he was willing enough to fight for Mankoran, who was being left in the lurch by the English, to whom he had always been loyal, and attacked without any cause by Boer freebooters who wanted his land. He was getting rather tired of the lawlessness of his companions, who cared more for what they could make than for the justice of their cause, and were not too particular about whom they took plunder from, so long as they could get hold of it.

As he sat smoking his pipe, and wondering what would be the end of his life, a man drove up to the door in a cart, and giving the reins to a Kaffir who was with him, got out and walked into the store.

Darrell recognised the man at once. He was the man Seers who had trapped him. At last he had a chance of finding out something about the plot of which he had been made a victim.

Seers walked into the house, and then started back in no little terror, for he found himself in a nest of hornets. There were two other men besides Darrell whom he had helped to get into trouble when he was acting for the police. They were both inside, and as soon as he saw them Seers ran back and jumped into his cart before Darrell could stop him. The man Seers had recognised was an American, who they called Colerado Joe—one of the most reckless ruffians of their band. As he caught sight of his enemy he made a rush for him, but was too late. Then he ran back to the house for his carbine, and followed by the other man, who was also armed, began to fire at the cart. Three shots were fired, and one of the horses fell down dead. Colerado Joe with a yell ran up to the cart, which had come to a stop.

Things looked like going pretty hard with Mr Seers. He had been hit pretty badly, but his condition did not commend him to the pity of his enemies.

“Guess we’ll hang him at once, before the others turn up. It’s more our affair than theirs; eh, Pat?” the American said to his friend.

The other took pretty much the same view, and they were both somewhat entertained by the ghastly terror of Seers. Just then Darrell came up. When Seers saw another of his victims appear on the scene he felt his position hopeless.

Darrell, however, was by no means inclined to allow the mouth of the man who had given false evidence to be closed for ever. He stuck to the point that Seers’ life should be spared, and after the matter had nearly ended in a fight, he was allowed to have his way.

“Well, that carrion ain’t worth fighting about. If you want him you can have him, but he won’t be much use to you long,” the American said, as he turned away, followed by his mate.

Darrell picked up the wounded man, took him to the house and looked after him.

The wound, however, which he had received, turned out to be a fatal one, and when Seers became satisfied that he was not going to recover, he made a clean breast of it.

“You have a nasty bitter enemy in Kimberley, I don’t know whether you know it—that fellow Joe Aarons. He has a down on you, has Joe. He knew my game—that I was working for the detectives—and he came and offered me a hundred if I’d trap you. I had been sent down the river to look after what was going on down there, and it didn’t seem a very hard job, so I went in for it. You found a little just about the time you were run in. Well, that was—thanks to me. I put those diamonds amongst the gravel you were washing. They were police stuff, and the police knew you sold ’em. When it actually came to trapping you, it wer’n’t so easy. But, lord, those police, when you have done a bit in their way, get to believe in you wonderful. I worked it; bless you, I hid the coin that I swore you give me near the tent, and after I had slipped the diamond down, I got out the money and then I hollored out for the police. The clearest case he had ever seen, the blessed beak said. Well, it were clear like the three-card-trick is clear. It wer’n’t fair, and I am sorry for it, only that Joe Aarons shouldn’t have come down with his hundred. I always had a weakness for a lump sum. It was the only time I ever went wrong while I was working for them. But bless yer, as soon as I began to do a bit of buying again on my own account, they are down on me, and I, like a fool, cleared for this country. I’d have done better to have stopped in Kimberley and done my sentence. I see that as soon as I come across that devil Colerado,” the man said in a husky, quavering voice.

Darrell managed to get a border magistrate to come up and take the deposition before Seers died. With this evidence he easily got his sentence quashed. After that he had gone back to the river, where he did fairly well, and putting what he made at the river into some claims in one of the mines, just before a sudden rise in their value, he managed to make a fairly good thing of it.

“I have to thank you for everything. I should still be wearing convict’s clothes if it had not been for you. I have felt ashamed of myself when I have thought how I rode off and left you to get out of the trouble you might have got into how you could. I never could hear what happened to you after the trial. I have been longing to thank you,” he said, when he had come to the end of his story.

“My trouble was not very great,” she said; and she began to think that it would have been better if she had never met him again. She remembered their last conversation.

“I have wanted to tell you something. You remember when we last talked to one another on the road up to the Fields. That story I told you of is all over; the person I told you about then is dead.”

Their minds both went back to that conversation on the veldt, and they took up their story as it had been left off then. Before it was time for Darrell to say good-bye, they had settled how it was to end.