Loe raamatut: «A Veldt Official: A Novel of Circumstance», lehekülg 9

Chapter Sixteen.
“Within the Veins of Time.”

“Then you won’t give up going to this wretched war?”

“Well, no. You see I’ve got it all arranged now. I can’t throw up the plan. Besides, I want to see how they work a war of this kind. My mind is made up.”

No one knew better than Mona that when the speaker said his mind was made up, why, then it was made up. Still she continued to plead.

“Ah, don’t go! Besides, it is a paltry affair, and hardly worth a man’s while to touch. It is quite sickening to hear these Doppersdorp ‘heroes’ brag. They go away nearly three hundred strong, and come back again with three men slightly scratched, and talk big about ‘terrible hand-to-hand conflicts lasting all day,’ ‘assegais flying as thick as hail,’ and so forth. Dear, don’t go; I have a presentiment something will happen.”

Roden laughed.

“How does that pan out for a lovely bit of feminine consistency?” he said. “After labouring to show that the whole thing is child’s play, and the merest walk over, you adjure me not to go, on the ground that I shall come to grief if I do.”

“And that day on the cliff; was my warning right or wrong then?”

His face softened at the recollection. For a moment they stood gazing into each other’s eyes.

“You saved a strange sort of life, Mona.”

Instead of replying, she moved to the window and declared, in a commonplace way, that there was a big dust-cloud whirling up the road; for the place they were in was a certain staring and fly-blown apartment, which did duty for “drawing-room,” at the Barkly Hotel, and now steps were approaching the door. The latter opened, admitting the head and half the person of Sonnenberg.

“Beg pardon. Thought Suffield was here.” Then meaningly and with an impudent grin, “Sorry to interrupt. ‘Two’s company,’” and the door closed behind him.

“See now,” went on Roden, “it isn’t a case of going to the front. I’m only going to ride over to the Camp for three or four days. It’s a good opportunity. Darrell wants to go too, so we are going together.”

“Only two of you?”

“Oh, we may pick up others on the way.”

“And what about getting back?”

“Must chance that.”

Mona looked as if about to renew her pleading, but just then Suffield’s voice, and the voices of others were heard coming up the stairs; for it was just before the one o’clock dinner at the Barkly. So she whispered hurriedly:

“Dear, you will ride out with us this afternoon?”

“H’m! there are a lot of things to be put straight, and I start the first thing in the morning. I don’t like to shirk. What’ll the Chief say?”

“Mr Van Stolz? I’ll ask him myself.”

“No, no,” he said, laughing at her eagerness, and locking his fingers in hers, for her hands had crept into his after the interruption on the part of the objectionable Jew. “I’ll work it somehow. But, dear, you must make Suffield wait, for I can’t in conscience shut up shop this side of four, at the earliest.”

This side of four! Why, she thought about seven was going to be the hoar named. Make Suffield wait! Why, Charlie should wait till midnight if she chose. And the voice, the tone! When Roden spoke thus he could make her do whatever he liked. Was he beginning really to care a little for her at last? Her heart beat tumultuously as she went down the stairs, laughing and talking commonplace with her companion. Could he ever love her as she loved him? Was it not all a one-sided affair and therefore despicable? Ah! but – she told herself – there was a possibility; and this it was which underlaid the strange wellspring of new-born happiness which had sprung up in Mona’s heart, completely transforming her. Now and then a corner of the curtain which hid his inner nature was lifted – lifted just enough to convince her that the capabilities which lay behind were those which it was in her power to call into play, and that the day might come when her love should be returned tenfold.

After all, thought is swift, and can cover a great deal while the thinker is descending one flight of rather rickety and not very well-swept stairs.

Nothing was said during dinner about Roden’s impending trip, for an absence from duty of upwards of two days was irregular, to say the least of it, on any other terms than a formal application to headquarters, which, at that distance from the Colonial Office, would necessitate a couple of weeks’ correspondence and a due expenditure of red tape. When Roden returned to the office he found Mr Van Stolz already there, letting off steam in a few harmless “cuss words,” for the post had just arrived, bringing with it from headquarters an unusually large batch of circulars, desiring information of no conceivable utility; also some returns.

“Musgrave, old chap, look at all this damn nonsense,” said the jolly little R.M., with a mischievous laugh, shoving away the obnoxious papers and lighting his pipe. “What, the devil! do they think we’ve got nothing better to do – and with all these troops of burghers pushing through to the front, and knocking us up in the middle of the night to find rations for them? These stoopid returns ’ll take at least a week of turning out dead-and-buried records to make up.”

“Then I won’t go down to the Camp to-morrow, sir,” said Roden, thinking how he would quietly chaff Mona as being in league with the people at headquarters to knock his trip on the head.

“No, no, Musgrave. It isn’t so important as all that. I’ll get them together, somehow, and Somers can give a hand. Besides, we needn’t hurry. It doesn’t do, either, to break one’s neck being over zealous. You don’t get any the more appreciation for it, or promotion either; at least, that’s what I’ve learnt after my twenty odd years in the Service, though of course it wouldn’t do to say that to every sort of a youngster who happened to be one’s clerk. And, I say, Musgrave, old fellow, that pony of yours has had quite his share of work of late, after Stoffel Van Wyk’s rhyboks. Why not take my horse to go down there on? He’s a young horse, but a good one, and he’ll stand fire like an armchair, as you know, though he does shy like a fool now and again at a schuilpaat (Dutch. The small land tortoise common all over South Africa.) the size of a snail.”

“It’s awfully good of you, Mr Van Stolz, but – ”

“Tut, tut! What’s a horse for, if not to be ridden? Any fellow knows he can always have mine when I’m not using him, and I’m not often.”

“Rather – why, you keep the whole township going in riding material.”

“Ha! ha! I believe I do!” was the jolly reply. “Why, no less than three fellows wanted to borrow Bles to-day, but I thought it might be as well if you took him to go and have a shot at the Kaffirs, instead of your own, Musgrave, so I let him have a rest to-day.”

“Well, as a matter of fact, I shall be very glad to accept the offer,” said Roden. “My pony is perhaps a little in want of a rest. Upon my word, though, Mr Van Stolz, there may be more good-natured people in the world than yourself, but with some experience of that orb I don’t believe there are.”

“Pooh, pooh!” laughed the genial little man, not ill-pleased with such a spontaneous outburst on the part of his self-contained, cynical, and generally somewhat unpopular assistant. “Why, man, you’d do such a trifle as that for me, wouldn’t you?”

“Rather. But I’ll be hanged if I would for the whole of Doppersdorp.”

“Ha! ha! But poor old Doppersdorp isn’t such a bad place. There are a lot of people in it who are damn sweeps; but I can always pull with everybody – even damn sweeps. When I’m on the Bench it’s another thing. I don’t care for anybody then. But when you’ve got to be in a place, Musgrave, you may as well make the best of it.”

“And that I flatter myself I do. What with yourselves, Mr Van Stolz, and the Suffields, and one or or two more, I am not particularly discontented with the place.”

“Ha! ha! And one or two more!” laughed the magistrate mischievously. “What did the wife say when you first came up here, Musgrave? And wasn’t she right? Own up, now. When is it to come off?”

From anybody else this sort of chaff would have more than annoyed Roden – indeed, hardly anybody else would have ventured upon it with him. Coming from whom it did, he merely laughed, and said that, if for no other reason, he did not see how anything real or imaginary could “come off,” in the light of the munificent rate of pay wherewith a paternal Government saw fit to remunerate the labours of the junior members of its judicial service. Then he turned the conversation into other channels, and thus, alternately subsiding into silence as the nature of their work required, and smoking a pipe or two and narrating an anecdote as something suggested one to either, this happily assorted brace of officials got through the first half of an afternoon, until the tread of a pair of heavy boots on the boarded floor of the Court-room without was heard drawing near.

“Some confounded Boer, I suppose, who’ll extend a clammy paw, and put his hat on the ground and spit five times, preparatory to beginning some outrageous lie,” growled Roden, thinking it was about time to take himself off.

“May I come in?” sang out a voice.

“Hallo! It’s Suffield. Come in, Suffield!” cried the magistrate, jumping up.

“Busy, I see!” said Suffield, having shaken hands, and looking rather awkward, for what with Mona worrying his life out for the last half hour, and what with the confounded cheek, as he reckoned it, of suggesting that Musgrave should knock off work and come along, he felt himself in that figurative but highly graphic predicament known as between the devil and the deep sea. But the eyes of the most good-natured man in the world read and interpreted his look.

“Going to take him away with you, Suffield?” he said.

“Well – um – ah – ”

“Off you go, Musgrave; I expect Miss Ridsdale will comb your hair for you for keeping her waiting, and it’s nearly five. And I say, Suffield,” he called out after them when they were leaving; “don’t let him try to tumble over any more cliffs, eh! So long!” and chuckling heartily, the genial official turned back to light a fresh pipe and do another hoar of his own work, and that of his assistant too.

Ambling along the dusty waggon road which led up to the grassy nek about a mile from the township, preparatory to striking off into the open veldt beyond, the trio were in good spirits enough.

“Well, and why haven’t you blown me up for keeping you waiting?” said Roden.

“Do I ever blow you up? Besides, you couldn’t help it,” answered Mona.

“Ah, ‘To err is human’ says the classic bard. He might have added, ‘to blow a man up for what he can’t help is feminine.’”

“Don’t be cynical now, and sarcastic. And it’s our last day.”

“Why, hang it, the chap isn’t going to be away for a year,” cut in Suffield, who was at that moment struggling with a villainously manufactured lucifer match, which gave him rather the feeling of smoking sulphur instead of tobacco. And then there was a clatter of hoofs behind, and they were joined by a couple of Boers of the ordinary type, sunburned and not too clean of visage – one clad in “store-clothes” the other in corduroy, and both wearing extremely greasy and battered slouch hats. These, ranging their wiry, knock-kneed nags alongside, went through the usual ceremony of handshaking all round, and thereafter the swapping of pipe-fills with the male element in the party.

Boers, in their queer and at times uncouth way, are, when among those they know, the most sociable of mortals, and never dream that their room may be preferable to their company; wherefore this accession to the party was heartily welcomed by Mona, for now these two could ride on ahead with Charlie and talk sheep and ostriches, and narrate the bold deeds they had done while serving in Kreli’s country, in Field-Commandant Deventer’s troop, which had just returned covered with laurels – and dust – from that war-ridden region. But alas! while one carried out this programme to the letter, his fellow, the “store-clothes” one, persisted in jogging alongside of Roden discoursing volubly, of which discourse Roden understood about three words in twenty.

“Ja, det is reegt, Johannes,” (“Yes. That is right.”) the latter would assent in reply to some statement but poorly understood. “Darn the fellow, can’t he realise that two’s company, three’s a bore – in this instance a Boer! Nay what, Johannes. Ik kan nie Hollands praat. Jy verstaand, (I can’t talk Dutch. You understand?). Better jog on and talk to Suffield, see? He can talk it like a Dutch uncle; I can’t.”

“Det is jammer?” (“That’s a pity.”) said the Boer, solemnly shaking his head. Then after a moment’s hesitation he spurred up his nag and jogged on to join the other two.

The open veldt now lay outstretched before them, and Suffield and the two Dutchmen were cantering on some distance ahead. Rearing up on their left rose the great green slopes and soaring cliff walls of the mountain range, and, away on the open side, the rolling, grassy plains, stretching for miles, but always bounded nearer or farther by mountains rising abruptly, and culminating in cliff wall, or jagged, naked crags. Here and there in the distance, a white dot upon the green, lay a Boer homestead, and a scattered patch of moving objects where grazed a flock of sheep or goats. The slanting rays of the afternoon sun, now not far from his western dip behind yon cluster of ironstone peaks, shed upon this bright, wavy, open landscape that marvellous effect of clear and golden radiance which renders the close of a cloudless day upon the High Veldt something like a dream of enchanted worlds.

They were rather silent, these two. The thrilling, vivid happiness of the one, was dashed by a certain amount of apprehensive dread on behalf of the other, who was going quite unnecessarily to expose himself to danger, possibly great, possibly small, but at any rate unnecessary. On the part of that other, well, what had he to do with anything so delusive as the fleeting and temporary thing called happiness, he whose life was all behind him? Yet he was very – contented; that is how he put it; and he owned to himself that he was daily growing more and more – contented.

“I can’t make out what has come over us,” he said, as though talking to himself, but in his voice there was that which made Mona’s heart leap, for she knew she was fast attaining that which she most desired in life. Then they talked – talked of ordinary things, such as all the world might have listened to; but the tone – ah! there was no disguising that. Thus they cantered along in the sweet, pure air, over the springy plain, against the background of great mountain range, and soon the walls of the homestead drew in sight, and Mrs Suffield came out to greet them, and the dogs broke into fearful clamour only equalled by that of the children, and the two Boers dismounted with alacrity to go in, sure of a good glass of grog or two beneath Suffield’s hospitable roof, ere they should resume their homeward way.

Chapter Seventeen.
“It is Sweeter to Love – It is Wiser to Dare.”

Now night had fallen, and at Quaggasfontein the sounds of household and nursery were alike hushed, and these four sat out upon the stoep, enjoying the still freshness; discussing, too, Roden’s trip to the nearest seat of hostilities, on which topic Grace Suffield was inclined to be not a little resentful.

“How can you go out of your way to shoot a lot of wretched Kaffirs, who haven’t done you any harm, Mr Musgrave?” she said.

“That holds good as regards most of the fellows at the front,” he replied.

“No, it doesn’t. Many of them are farmers, who have had their stock plundered, perhaps their homes destroyed. Now, nothing of the kind holds good of yourself. I call it wicked – yes, downright wicked, and tempting Providence, to throw oneself into danger unnecessarily. Your life is given you to take care of, not to throw away.”

“I don’t know that it’s worth taking such a lot of care of,” he murmured queerly. But she overheard.

“Yes it is, and you’ve no right to say that. Putting it on the lowest grounds, don’t you come out here and help amuse us? That’s being of some use. Didn’t you help me splendidly when we crossed that horrible Fish River in flood? I believe you saved my life that night. Isn’t that being of some use?”

“Here, I say, Mrs Suffield, are you all in league to ‘spoil’ a fellow?” he said, in a strange, deep voice that resembled a growl. For more forcibly than ever, her words seemed to bring back to the lonely cynic, how, amid the whole-hearted friendship of these people, he had been forced again to live his life – if indeed he could – if only he could!

“Don’t know about ‘spoiling.’ You seem to be catching it pretty hot just now, Musgrave, in my opinion,” laughed Suffield.

“And he deserves to,” rejoined that worthy’s wife, with a tartness which all her hearers knew to be wholly counterfeit. “Doesn’t he, Mona?”

“I don’t know. As you’re so savagely down upon him, I think I shall have to take his part.”

“Hear, hear!” cried Roden. “Well, Mrs Suffield, you have mistaken your vocation. You ought to have been a preacher – a good, out-and-out, whole-souled tub-thumper. However, you seem determined I am destined to glut the assegai of John Kaffir, and as you are so savage on the subject, it is to Mona I shall impart my last will and testament – orally, of course. So, come along, Mona, and give it, and me, your most careful attention.”

Left alone on the stoep, the husband and wife laughed softly together, as they watched Mona’s white dress disappear in the darkness.

“All is coming right, as I told you it would, Grace. Musgrave is a precious careful bird; but he’s limed safe and sound at last. Mark my words.”

“You needn’t be so awfully vulgar about it, Charlie. That’s quite a horrid way of putting things.”

Now in the silence and darkness those two wandered on – on beneath the loaded boughs of the fruit garden, and on by the low sod wall, then out in the open, and finally into gloom beneath the drooping, feathery branches of the willows. It was a silence unbroken by either, unless – unless for a soft shuddering sigh, which followed upon a long kiss.

In the dark and velvety moonless vault great constellations flashed as though they were fires, throwing out the black loom of the distant mountains away beyond the open waste, and flaming down into the smooth mirror of the water, upon which the willow boughs trailed. Even beneath the shadowy gloom their light pierced; shining upon the white dress, and throwing the large, supple figure of the girl into ghostly relief.

“I love you, Mona. Here on the very spot where we first beheld each other, I tell you I love you. And you had better have let me fall to my death, shattered to atoms that day, than that I should tell it you.”

The tone, a trifle unsteady, but firm and low, was rather that of a man unfolding a revelation of a painful but wholly unavoidable nature than the joyous certainty of a lover, who knew his passion was returned in measure as full as the most ardent could possibly desire. But the girl for a moment made no answer. Her lips were slightly parted in a smile of unutterable contentment, and the light in her eyes was visible under the stars. Again he kissed the upturned lips, long and tenderly as he had never done before.

“Yes. This is the spot where we first met,” she said at last, with a glad laugh in her voice. “My hammock was slung there – and look, there it is still. I remember so well what we were talking about that day. Grace was predicting that my time would certainly come, and I said I didn’t believe anything of the kind, but I rather hoped it would. And I had hardly said so when – oh, darling! you came up! And it has all been so entrancingly sweet ever since. Life has been entirely different, and I am quite a transformed being.”

Thus she ran on – almost rattled on, so airy, so bright and joyous was her tone. But it was so with a purpose; for all her pulses were thrilling; her very mind seemed to reel beneath the surpressed strength of her feeling. She felt giddy. The great stars in the dark vault overhead seemed to be whirling round. With heart panting, she leaned heavily upon the arms which encircled her, then tried to speak, to whisper, but could not.

“Dear, I ought not to have told you – ever at all,” he went on. “But I am going away to-morrow – ”

Then she found her voice.

“Why are you going away to-morrow? Give it up, my heart’s love, and stay near me.”

“That is just why I am going away – to be away from you for a few days. Wait,” seeing she was about to interrupt. “This was my idea. I wanted to be at such a distance that it would be impossible to see you merely by taking one hour’s short ride. I wanted to try if I could break the influence which you were so surely weaving round me.”

“Ah, why would you try?”

“For the good of us both; but especially for your good. Listen, Mona. I am no longer young, and my experience of the world is not small. Well, nothing lasts. We are both of a strong nature. Two strong natures cannot fuse, cannot intertwine. Then comes disillusion.”

“Now, I wonder if, since the world began, any living woman was ever convinced by such reasoning as that,” said Mona decisively. But not heeding her, he went on —

“To every one of us the cup of life is filled but once. The contents of mine are nearer the dregs than the brim; whereas you are but beginning to sip at yours.”

“Which dark syllogism I quite grasp, and fully appreciate – at its proper value,” she returned. “But come; have we not had about enough solemn wisdom beneath the stars? Why, just before we first saw you – here, on this very spot – Gracie was trying to make me believe you were quite a sober and middle-aged fogey. Those were her words; and if you go on a little longer in this strain, I shall begin to think she was right. I remember, too, how I answered her. I said I was about tired of boys. So let’s hear no more about ‘cups of life’ and ‘dregs,’ but repeat what you said just now – just before – my beloved one!”

The glad, laughing voice changed to one of tenderest adjuration. And it may be that he did repeat it.

“Now,” he went on, “would you rather I had told you this before going away, or after my return?”

“But you are not going away, now?”

“I am – more than ever, I was going to say. I want a few days to think.”

“Roden!” she exclaimed suddenly, with a catching in her voice; “this is not an artifice? You are coming back – coming back to me?”

“If John Kaffir allows me – certainly. Dwelling a moment upon which consideration, perhaps that is why I told you before I left, what I have just told you. Would you rather I had not?”

“Would I rather forego one moment of the life, the soul, those words have given me? Love of my heart, I know it is of no use to try and persuade you to give up this plan now. But be careful of your life. You are mine, remember. I won you when I held back your life that awful day upon the brow of the cliff; and that consciousness, and that alone, enabled me to do it. Whatever will and strength was given me then was through that alone. Now, say, are you not mine? mine for ever – throughout all the years?”

“Dear, ‘for ever’ is a long time. Had we not better put it, ‘as long as you think me worth keeping’?”

“Why do you say such a thing, and in such a voice?” This with a shiver, as though she had received a sudden stab.

“Mona, what was it I was trying to impress upon you but a minute or so back? I have got my life all behind me, remember. Nothing lasts. I have seen eyes melt, as those dear eyes of yours are melting now – have heard voices tremble in the same sweet intensity of tone. Well, it did not last. Time, separation, new interests, and it was swept away; nor did the process take very long, either. Nothing lasts! Nothing lasts! It may be my curse; but, child, I have reached a stage at which one believes in nothing and nobody.”

“Did they – those of whom you speak – love you as I do? Was their secret wrenched from them at the very jaws of death?”

“No. Never did I hear words of love under such, strange circumstances. And yet, Mona, the fact that it was so, nearly turned me against you, for I seemed bound – bound to you in common gratitude. If you had left me to myself, I believe that feeling would have changed into strong dislike.”

“And when did the change come – the change for the better?” she said softly.

“I don’t know. It has all been so gradual. But there is something, some magic about you, dear, that drew me to you in spite of myself – and kept me there.”

“Then one can love, really love, more than once in a lifetime?”

“Of course. The notion to the contrary was invented for the purposes of fiction of the most callous sort. More than once, more than twice. But the difference is that through it all runs the interwoven thread of misgiving, that the thing is ill-judged and destined to end in blank – or worse.”

“Mine throughout all the years, did I not say just now?” she whispered, again drawing down his head. “This seals it,” and again speech was stilled in a long, clinging kiss. “This is our farewell – only for a few days – and oh, my heart’s life, how slowly they will drag! I will go to the place where I held you up from death, and there – on that, to me the sweetest, spot on earth – pray, and pray with all my soul that no danger may come near you.”

Were his very senses slipping away from him in that warm embrace? Was it indeed upon him that this love was outpoured, or upon somebody else? The thought passed with jarring hammer strokes through his brain. And like the distant echo of gibing demon-voices, came that old, grim, cynical refrain, “Nothing lasts! Nothing lasts!”

And as a little later he rode homeward through the stillness of the night, on the puffs of the fresh night breeze billowing up the grass, sighing through the coarse bents, still that goading, tormenting refrain kept shrieking in his ears, “Nothing lasts! Nothing lasts!”