Читать книгу Aletta: A Tale of the Boer Invasion - Mitford Bertram - Страница 5

“Jij verdomde Engelschman! Stil maar! Ik saal nit nou jou kop afslaan!”1

The speaker is a big Dutchman, the scene the stoep of a roadside hotel in the Karroo, the spoken-to Frank Wenlock. We regret, however, to be obliged to record that our friend has taken on board a glass or two more than he can stow with absolute regard either to equilibrium or strict decorum. A Cape cart and a buggy, the harness hung loosely to the splashboard, stand out-spanned by the broad dusty road, and three or four horses with their saddles on are grouped beneath a stumpy, spreading mimosa, as rooted to the spot by the mere fact of two or three inches of their bridles trailing on the ground as though tied fast to anything solid and tangible.

For reply to the threat, Frank Wenlock utters a defiant laugh, then once more lifts up his voice in song:

With a growl and a curse the big Boer comes at him. He is nearly a head the taller and far the heavier and more powerful man; but Frank Wenlock knows how to use his hands a bit, and, “sprung” as he is, he parries the sledge-hammer blow aimed at him by his large assailant, and stands ready. The latter begins to parley:

“What do you insult our President for, then?” he growls.

“Can’t I sing a song if I want?” returns Frank. “Besides, Oom Paul isn’t your President.”

“Ah, but he soon will be. And won’t he make the rooineks run?”

“Well, here’s a rooinek you can’t make run, Hermanus Delport, elephant as you are. Come along and have a try, will you? What? You won’t? You’re a bally coward then – and you’re twice my size.

he begins again in a tone that is insulting and defiant to the last degree.

There are other Dutchmen on the stoep. These, who have laughed hitherto, expecting to see their huge compatriot simply double up the smaller but foolhardy Englishman, now spring to their feet with incensed shouts.

“Go at him, Hermanus. Knock him down and lay your sjambok about him. Cut him into riempjes. We’ll give him Oom Paul!” are some of the cries wherewith they nerve their champion on to war.

There is no backing out of it now. Delport hurls himself upon Frank, who stands there, squaring up, and still singing the nonsensical – and to Boer susceptibilities offensive – quatrain. But a very hard right- and lefthander meets him, and that in each eye, causing him to stagger back. Frank, however, has not come off unscathed, for the big Boer’s fist has more than grazed his cheekbone. The others crowd up behind their champion, renewing their shouts of encouragement.

“Come on, come on! I’ll take the bally lot of you, when I’ve polished off that elephant there,” shouts Frank in English, waltzing towards the group, his hands up and ready.

“No, you jolly well won’t, Frank,” cuts in another English voice, whose owner tranquilly steps in between the combatants. “Come now, stop making a fool of yourself, of all yourselves.”

“I shan’t. Get out of this, Colvin, and – mind your own business,” retorted Frank, speaking none too articulately. “Old elephant Hermanus said he could make rooineks run. I want him to make this rooinek run – if he can.”

“He insulted the President,” shouted the Boers. “Ja, he sang an insulting song.”

“Now, Frank, you know you did, for I heard you while I was getting ready to inspan,” said Colvin Kershaw in his most persuasive tones. “And look here, old chap, fair-play you know is fair-play. If one of them had sung such stuff as that about the Queen – rotten, contemptible stuff as it is – how long would it be before you sailed into him?”

“Not one bally second,” replied Frank briskly.

“Well, then – you’ve trodden on these chaps’ corns pretty hard, and you might as well tell them you were only larking.”

The speaker was on tenterhooks, for he knew by experience what a difficult customer Frank Wenlock was to manage on the few occasions when he had had a drop too much. The chances that he would become obstreperous and provoke a general row or not were about even. But either the moral influence of his mentor was paramount, or some glimmer of the logical faculty had worked its way into Frank’s thoughtless but good-natured mind, and he was amenable.

“Toen, kerelen, I didn’t mean anything,” he called out in Dutch; “I was only larking. Let’s have another drink all-round.”

“No, you don’t, Frank,” said Colvin quickly and in an undertone. “You’ve quite enough of that cargo on board already.”

By this time the horses were inspanned, and the two went among the group of Boers to bid farewell. Some put out a paw with more than half a scowl on their faces, others turned into the house to avoid the necessity of shaking hands with Englishmen at all. Among these was Hermanus Delport.

“Ja, wait a bit!” he growled, half aloud. “Wait a bit, friend Wenlock! If I don’t put a bullet through you before this year is dead, I’ll – I’ll become an Englishman.”

And he rubbed some raw spirit on his now fast-swelling bruises, a dark and vengeful scowl upon his heavy face. The seed scattered by Andries Botma had been well sown.

Chucking a sixpence to the ragged, yellow-skinned Hottentot, who sprang away from the horses’ heads, Colvin whipped up, sending the buggy spinning over the flat Karroo road, the dust flying up obliquely from the hoofs and wheels in a long, fan-like cloud. They were returning from Schalkburg, the district town, and had a good two hours of smart driving to reach Spring Holt, the Wenlocks’ farm, before dark – for they had made a late start from the township. For the first hour Frank was a bit drowsy, then, when he had pulled himself together a bit, his guide, philosopher, and friend judged it time to deliver something of a lecture.

“Frank, you know this won’t do. I thought you had more self-control. The last two times we have been into Schalkburg together you’ve come out boozy.”

“Oh, hang it, old chap, it was so beastly hot! If we had started before breakfast instead of at twelve, it would have been all right. But Schalkburg is such a dry hole, and you get such a thirst on!”

“I don’t. But you will get liquoring up with every man Jack who speaks to you.”

“Well, but – you can’t refuse. And then you only go in there once in a blue moon. Surely one can have a bit of a spree.”

“No, you needn’t – not that sort of spree. And you can refuse. I often do. No – no – old chap, you can’t afford to make a Hottentot of yourself, and remember, you’ve got womenkind to look after.”

“Er – I say, Colvin, you know. Don’t let go anything to them about this, will you?”

“Of course not. Don’t you know me better than that? But squarely, Frank, unless you undertake to get on another tack I’ll never go into Schalkburg with you again.”

“Anyone would think I was a regular boozer,” said Frank, sulkily.

“That’s just what I don’t want you to become. And look here, you jolly near got up the devil’s own row at Reichardt’s. Those Dutchmen will spread all over the country that we were both roaring tight. Besides, what if that row had come off – we should come home nice objects with our noses broken and our teeth kicked down our throats? For remember they were a round dozen, and we only two, and some of these very ones, I happen to know, are pretty tough customers. Here, Frank. Take the reins, so long. There are a couple of fine pauw. Think we can get any nearer?”

“No. Let go at them from the cart.”

They had just topped a light swell, and there, about two hundred and odd yards from the road, stalked the great bustards. Quickly Colvin slipped from the buggy, and keeping on its other side, rifle in hand, watched his chance. Taking a careful and steady aim, he fired. Both birds rose, and winged their flight, but, after a few yards, the hindermost half dropped, then, flopping along a little further, came heavily to the earth, where it lay with wings outspread and quite dead.

“That’s good!” observed Colvin; “I knew he’d got it, heard the bullet ‘klop’.”

They picked up the splendid bird and regained the road. But before they had gone half a mile they made out a horseman riding furiously after them as though in pursuit.

“It’s old Sarel Van der Vyver,” said Frank, looking back. “Let’s give him a gallop, eh? He looks in a devil of a rage.”

“No – no! We must smooth him down,” answered Colvin, drawing the pace in to a slow trot. Very soon their pursuer galloped up, and they made out an old Boer in a weather-beaten white chimney-pot hat, and wearing a bushy grey beard. He seemed, as Frank had said, “in a devil of a rage,” and brandished in his hand a long-barrelled Martini.

“Daag, Oom Sarel!” called out the two in the buggy.

But the old man met this amenity with a torrent of abuse. What did they mean by coming into his veldt and shooting his game without his leave, and scaring his ostriches all over the place? He did not keep game to be shot by verdomde rooineks, not he. And much more to the same effect.

Both were rather surprised. They had never been on other than the friendliest of terms with this old man, and now he was rating them as though he had never seen them before in their lives. Well, here was another very significant sign of the times. But it gave Colvin an idea.

“Take the bird, Oom Sarel,” he said, making as though he would pull it out from the back of the buggy. “I only shot it for the fun of the thing – and besides, it was possible that Andries Botma might be at Spring Holt when we got back, and a fine pauw might come in handy for the supper of the Patriot.”

The effect of the name was magical.

“Kyk! Do you know Mynheer Botma, then?” asked the old Boer, in round-eyed astonishment.

“We had a great talk together at Stephanus De la Rey’s the other night, Oom Sarel,” responded Colvin; “but come along with us, and see if he has arrived at Wenlock’s to-night.”

This invitation the old man declined, though somewhat reluctantly. “He could not leave home,” he said. “But the bird – of course they must keep it. A friend of the Patriot! Well, well, Colvin must not mind what had been said at first. He,” the speaker, “had been a little put out that day, and was growing old.” Then exchanging fills out of each other’s pouch, they literally smoked the pipe of peace together, and parted amid much cordial handshaking.

“There’s a sign of the times for you, Frank,” said Colvin as they resumed their way. “Andries Botma’s name is one to conjure with these days. But note how his influence crops up all along the line! Even old Sarel Van der Vyver was prepared to make himself disagreeable. Not a Dutchman round here will hesitate to join the Transvaal, if things go at all wrong with us.”

“I’d cut short his influence with a bullet or a rope if I were Milner,” growled Frank.

Soon, in the distance, the homestead came in sight Colvin dropped into silence, letting his thoughts wander forth to the welcome that awaited him, and the central figure of that welcome spelt May Wenlock. He was not in love with her, yet she appealed to more than one side of his nature. She was very pretty, and very companionable; and girls of whom that could be said were very few and far between in the Wildschutsberg surroundings. Several of the Boer girls were the first, but few of them had any ideas, being mostly of the fluffy-brained, giggling type. May was attractive to him, undeniably so, but if he tried to analyse it he decided that it was because they had been thrown so much together; and if he had evoked any partiality in her, he supposed it was for the same reason – there was no one else.

“Who’s that likely to be, Frank?” he said, as they drew near enough to make out a male figure on the stoep.

“Eh? Who? Where?” returned Frank, starting up, for he was drowsy. “Maagtig, it looks like Upton, the scab-inspector. Ja. It is.”

No – there was nothing lacking in the welcome that shone in May’s eyes, thought Colvin, as they exchanged a hand-pressure. And he was conscious of a very decided feeling of gratification; indeed he would not have been human were it otherwise.

“Well, Upton, what’s the news?” said Frank, as they were outspanning, and unpacking the contents of the buggy. “Is it going to be war?”

“Don’t know. Looks like it. The troops in Grahamstown and King are getting ready for all they know how. Man, but things are looking nasty. The Dutchmen up in the Rooi-Ruggensberg are as bumptious as they can be. Two of them wouldn’t let me look at their flocks at all. I shall have to summon them, I suppose.”

The duties of the speaker being to overhaul periodically the flocks of all the farmers, Dutch and British, within a large area, in search of the contagious and pestilential scab, it followed that he was in the way of gauging the state of feeling then prevalent. Personally, he was a very popular man, wherefore the fact of his having met with active opposition was the more significant as to the state of the country.

“They’re just the same here,” said Frank. “For my part, the sooner we have a war the better. I wish our farm was somewhere else, though. We are too much in among the Dutch here for things to be pleasant for the mother and May when the fun does begin.”

Now Master Frank, though carefully omitting to specify what had led up to the incident of the road wherewith this chapter opens, expatiated a great deal upon the incident itself in the course of the evening, thereby drawing from his mother much reproof, uttered, however, in a tone that was more than half an admiring one. But in that of May was no note of admiration. It was all reproving.

“You are much too quarrelsome, Frank,” she said; “I don’t see anything particularly plucky in always wanting to fight people. It’s a good thing you had someone to look after you.” And the swift glance which accompanied this should have been eminently gratifying to the “someone” who had looked after him.

“Oh, if you’re all down upon a chap, I shall scoot. I’m going round to give the horses a feed. Coming, Upton?”

“Ja,” replied that worthy; and they went out. So did Mrs Wenlock, having something or other to see to in the kitchen.

There was silence between the two thus left. Colvin, sitting back in a cane chair, was contemplating the picture before him in the most complacent state of satisfaction. How pretty the girl looked bending over the ornamental work she was engaged in, the lamplight upon her wavy golden hair, the glow of freshness and health in her cheeks, the thick lashes half veiling the velvety-blue eyes!

“Well?” she said softly, looking up. “Talk to me.”

“Haven’t got anything to say. I’m tired. I prefer to look at you instead.”

“You are a dear to say so,” she answered. “But all the same I want livening up. I am getting a dreadful fossil – we all are – stuck away here, and never seeing a soul. I believe I shall get mother to let me go away for quite a long time. I am horribly tired of it all.”

“And of me?”

“You know I am not.”

The blue eyes were very soft as they met his. A wave of feeling swept over the man. Looking at her in her winning, inviting beauty as she sat there, an overwhelming impulse came upon him to claim her – to take her for his own. Why should he not? He knew that it lay entirely with him. He made a movement to rise. In another moment she would be in his arms, and he would be pouring words of passion and tenderness into her ear. The door opened.

“Haven’t those two come in yet?” said Mrs Wenlock briskly, as she re-entered, and quietly resumed her seat, thus unconsciously affecting a momentous crisis in two lives. Was it for good or for ill? We shall see.

Note.

A nonsensical bit of popular doggerel. In Dutch it makes a jingling rhyme.