Luck at the Diamond Fields
by Dalrymple J. Belgrave · English · Gutenberg #37619 · 497,732 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Luck at the Diamond Fields
Author: Dalrymple J. Belgrave
Release date: October 4, 2011 [eBook #37619]
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/37619
Credits: Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LUCK AT THE DIAMOND FIELDS ***
Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England
Luck at the Diamond Fields
By Dalrymple J. Belgrave
Published by Ward and Downey, 12 York Street, Covent Garden, London.
This edition dated 1887.
Luck at the Diamond Fields, by Dalrymple J. Belgrave.
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
LUCK AT THE DIAMOND FIELDS, BY DALRYMPLE J. BELGRAVE.
Story 1.
A TALE OF THE KIMBERLEY COACH.
Chapter One.
The coach to the Diamond Fields was just starting from the Beaufort West
railway-station, and the passengers who were destined to travel over
hundreds of miles of burnt-up veldt together, to be jolted over
water-courses, choked in dust-storms, and suffer the many discomforts
and annoyances of South African travel in each other's society, were
eyeing one another distrustfully.
The feeling uppermost in the minds of several of them was that they were
very likely to become not a little tired of one another before they
reached the iron town of Kimberley.
With one or two exceptions they were old residents on the Diamond
Fields, returning after a trip home to Europe or to the Colony, and
therefore they knew each other very well, at least by sight. Their
acquaintanceship as a rule made them look forward with all the more
distaste to the idea of spending some days in the same coach.
There were ten passengers, and Kate Gray, a soft, refined-looking
English girl who was travelling by herself, and whose black dress
suggested that she was equally alone in her journey through life, shrunk
into the corner of the coach with a half shudder, and thought that her
fellow-passengers were a singularly unprepossessing lot. She had tried
to make light in anticipation of the annoyances in store for her; but
now they were forced upon her, and she felt uncomfortable and out of
heart. She had lived for two years in South Africa, and though she had
had great sorrow, none of those rougher experiences of colonial life had
come in her way which it now seemed likely enough that she was destined
soon to meet with. She was the daughter of a retired army officer, who,
believing much in his business capacity and power to make money, had put
his all when he left the army into an ostrich farm in the Cape Colony,
and had taken his daughter out with him. Their life had been a pleasant
one enough for some time. The farm was a pretty place. They were not
very far off Capetown, and they had pleasant neighbours within reach.
Unfortunately the farm was not suited to ostriches. The wretched birds
refused to thrive and increase. They showed a wayward ingenuity in
hunting poisonous plants and shrubs, on which they succeeded in
committing suicide. Colonel Gray, when his birds died, borrowed money
and bought more; then they died, and he bought sheep, which did the
same. Then he died himself--more of sheep and ostriches than anything
else; and after his death it was found out that he had lived long enough
to ruin himself, and to leave his daughter without a penny. She at
first thought of going home, but the long list of girls placed as she
was, who advertised their willingness to teach, or act as companion only
for a home, made her think that she was fortunate to be out of England.
Then she heard of some Cape Dutch people up country near the Diamond
Fields who wanted an English governess, and she took the place. She was
plucky and capable, as well-bred English women are as a rule, and she
had determined to think little about the discomfort of the journey, but
as she noticed one of her fellow-passengers, a peculiarly aggressive
specimen of the Diamond Field Jew, trying to stare her out of
countenance, with an impudent leer of admiration in his coarse face, she
realised that her position was an unpleasant one. This gentleman was a
rather well-known character at Kimberley--a certain Mr Joe Aarons, who
had bought many stolen diamonds during his sojourn on the Fields, and
was represented to be very rich and prosperous. Unfortunately for his
fellow-travellers, Mr Aarons, in the circle in which he moved, was
considered a neat humourist, and already he had made one or two remarks
which gave his audience a foretaste of the comfort he would likely be to
them. Two meaner Jews, men of the Aaron type, but less distinguished
characters, appeared to be highly delighted at Joe's wit; and so was the
only other representative of the fair sex, a lady known on the Diamond
Fields, where she kept a canteen, as Mother Hemp--the prefix being added
to her name rather in a spirit of sarcasm than affection. Probably this
good lady had realised that it was quite useless to expect the arts of
her toilet to withstand the strain of a coach-journey of almost a week,
so she had not even taken the trouble to start fair, and already the
coating of paint and powder was cracking and curling away from her
yellow old cheeks, which looked curiously shrunk. Also, to be more
comfortable on the journey, she had packed away her false teeth. The
rest of the company, however, looked upon Mr Aarons with anything but
favour. A big, important-looking man, Mr Bowker, the great Kimberley
claim-owner, who was just returning from the Cape House of Assembly,
felt somewhat disgusted at the idea of having to travel up to the Fields
in the company of Mr Aarons. He had perhaps had in his time a little
more to do with that person than he would like every one to know, and he
was afraid that he might become too familiar on the journey. Then there
was a young gentleman who was going to practise in the High Court of
Kimberley, and who having had the advantage of three years of home
education, was horribly disgusted with the land of his birth to which he
had returned, and lost no opportunity of railing at all things connected
with Africa. A colonial attorney, on his return from a trip home as he
called it--though in England he was strangely abroad--made up the
aristocratic element. The two other passengers were river-diggers,
partners, and in a way great friends, though men of somewhat different
character, and curiously unlike experience. One of them, Jim Brawnston
by name, was as good a specimen as one might wish to meet with of the
South African born Anglo-Saxon--a brawny giant, of about twenty-eight,
with a bushy beard, a pleasant honest look in his light blue eyes, and a
laugh like a lion's roar. In his time he had followed most of the
callings which are open to a Cape colonist who has a disposition to rove
about rather than to settle down anywhere. He had been a digger when
the Diamond Fields first broke out, then had gone a trading trip up
country, then had taken a turn at transport riding, and had for a time
returned to his old business and become a digger on the banks of the
Vaal.
Kate thought, as she caught a glance of the face of the other, a man
some half dozen years older than his companion, that he was the most
interesting of her fellow-travellers. Though his get-up was rough
enough--he wore a flannel shirt, a pair of Bedford cord trousers, and an
old shooting coat, which, though an expert would recognise it as having
been the work of a good maker, was curiously faded and worn--Kate felt
certain that he was an English gentleman. And there was an expression
in his tanned face and sad-looking eyes--eyes which seemed to tell that
he had had in his time a good deal of trouble--which made her feel that
his presence in the coach would make the journey less distasteful to
her. He was listening with an expression of grave amusement to the two
limbs of the law as they swaggered about England, what they had done
when they were at home, where they had been, and whom they had known.
His expression altered to one of anger and disgust when he caught some
of Aarons' conversation, and noticed how horrified and frightened Kate
looked. "Surely she can't be travelling with that old hag," he thought
to himself, as he looked at Mrs Hemp.
"And are you going up to the Fields, my dear?" said that lady to Kate,
with a sham smile on her evil old face. "We two ladies and all these
gentlemen; well, we must look after each other, and keep them in their
right place."
"I am in my right place sitting next to you, ain't I, miss?" said
Aarons, with a look of insolent admiration, which made her feel
extremely uncomfortable.
Jim Brawnston had always found that his partner George Darrell avoided
woman's society, and seemed to have a deep-rooted dislike to the sex,
but to his surprise on this occasion he interfered.
"I think you had better change places with me, you will be more
comfortable," he said to Kate, with a look at Aarons which expressed a
good deal. The latter seemed to be considerably surprised.
"Sit where you are, my dear," he said; "you're in very good company
where you are, and I'll look after you." However, the young lady
changed places without paying any attention to him, and as they settled
themselves down, there was a crack of the whip and a yell from the
driver, and the horses started off at a gallop.
Darrell took his seat next to Aarons, and after he had settled himself
down, he turned round to his neighbour.
"You hound, if you open your lips to speak to that lady I will throw you
out of the coach," he whispered to him.
The Jew replied, with a choice collection of bad language, that he would
talk to whom he pleased.
"Who are you, with your damned side? I dare say you 'aven't got a
couple of pound in the pocket of your ragged coat; who the--" Joe said,
and then pulled up and stopped--there was something in the other's
expression he didn't like. Darrell had no more to say to him, but
leaned back in his seat and smoked his pipe.
He wondered whether or no he had not made a fool of himself in
interfering. Well, it would have annoyed him all the journey to have
seen her sitting near that greasy-looking brute of a Jew, he thought to
himself; she seemed a good deal happier sitting next to Jim Brawnston,
and talking to him brightly enough. The woman didn't live who would not
be perfectly reassured by that kindly giant's honest face.
It was a pretty face enough, Darrell thought; it reminded him of days
long past before he left all he cared for behind, and became the
hopeless wanderer he was now. "She looks as if she has had a good deal
of trouble; what can she be going up to the Diamond Fields by herself
for? If she had people there they ought to look after her better than
that," he thought. As he looked at her, another face rose up before his
memory, which had once intoxicated him by its beauty till he threw his
life away for it--the face of the woman in England who called herself by
his name, and had a right to do so. He had seen no refined woman for
years, and there was something in Kate's face which brought old memories
back. Yes, he had made a mess of it and spoilt his life--that was the
burthen of his thoughts as the coach made its way across the sandy
veldt, and the sun got up and scorched them, and the dust-clouds
gathered together and choked them, and the stones on the road threw them
up and down till all their bones ached.
"Well, I do declare he ain't much company; seems mighty proud, and I
dare say he ain't got a penny to spend. I knows his sort, and don't
like 'em," said Mrs Hemp to Mr Aarons, after she had addressed several
remarks to Darrell and got no answer.
Joe Aarons scowled at Darrell and made no reply. When his interests
were not at stake he seldom felt very keenly about anything, but he did
long to pay the other out for the treatment he had received from him,
and for supposing that he, Mr Aarons, the well-known Kimberley
diamond-buyer, who was worth his fifty thousand pounds, insulted a girl
who was travelling up by herself and couldn't be of much account, by
talking to her. He felt mad with anger as he looked at him. How he
would like to pound in that face which had borne a look of such
unaffected contempt for him, and hear that cold insolent voice cry out
for mercy! Darrell paid little attention to him, and sat gloomily wrapt
in his own thoughts.
Mrs Hemp addressed various remarks to him which he did not listen to.
The English girl in the front seat talked to Jim Brawnston.
"Queer tastes that girl must have," Aarons thought to himself; "talks to
that digger chap who's as rough as they make 'em, and looks at me when I
say a word to her as if I were dirt," and he looked at the diamond rings
on his coarse dirty hands, and wondered at that to him unknown specimen
of humanity, the English gentlewoman.
Some hours after sunset the coach drew up at one of those squalid
roadside canteens which in South Africa are dignified by the name of
hotels. The days one spends in South African travel are bad enough, but
the nights at the worst of all bad inns are far more wretched. A
blanket in the open air under the marvellous star-lit Southern sky is
something to look back to with pleasure, though the chill half hour
before daybreak is not so very pleasant at the time. But those hotel
bedrooms are things to shudder at, not to see; they open up to one's
mind new possibilities of dirtiness. Then there is the evil-smelling
dining-room, where the table has a historic cloth supposed once to have
been white, which bears the grease and stains of long-forgotten meals,
which generally consist of lumps of mutton and hard poached eggs served
on the same plate. If the master of the house is a Dutchman, he will
most likely be full of dull, brutish insolence; if he is an Englishman,
he probably will be drunk. The waitress will be a filthy Hottentot
woman; while as one eats in the inner rooms one will hear noisy natives
getting drunk off Cape smoke just outside.
It was at such a place as this that the coach stopped for the night, and
discharged its passengers for a few hours' enjoyment of the
accommodation it afforded.
A meal had been served, and those passengers who were able to secure
beds had retired for the night. Darrell was smoking and reading by the
dim light of a flickering oil lamp in the living-room. Jim Brawnston
was stretched upon the floor in a sleep from which he would not easily
wake. The Jews were listlessly fingering a dirty pack of cards; nobody
had cared to play with them, and they had not thought it worth while to
play with one another; while the landlord, who was not very sober, was
laughing hoarsely at some not over pleasant stories they were telling.
"Do you know there is a lady in the next room?" said Darrell, who had
thrown his book down and walked up to where they sat.
"Lady? Do you mean Mother Hemp, or the other girl?" said Aarons, and
his brutal nature found vent in a sentence of Houndsditch sarcasm. His
words were coarse enough to have aroused a milder temper than Darrell's,
whose face turned pale with anger as he heard them. Aarons' sentence
was not quite completed, for before he finished it Darrell's long left
arm had swung out from his shoulder, and his fist had come down with a
crash on to the Jew's jaw. The others saw that if they joined in they
would be four to one, so they made a rush at Darrell, the landlord
swearing that he'd be damned if he'd see a gent who'd behaved like a
gent in his place, ordering drinks and paying for them, hit like that.
He looked at Jim Brawnston's sleeping form, and reassured by the sound
of a deep snore, he joined in the fight, aiming a blow at Darrell's head
with a bottle. The latter was not quite as cool as a man ought to be
who is fighting four men at once. Instead of keeping on the defensive,
he only thought of inflicting as much punishment as possible upon
Aarons, and pressed on to strike him again as he staggered back from the
first blow. This gave the landlord a chance of getting at him from
behind, and he succeeded in pinning his arms, and preventing him from
hitting out. A savage gleam came into the Jew's eyes; he saw that his
enemy was in his power as he forced back Darrell's face with his left
hand so as to get a good blow at it with his right.
"Now, my broken-down swell, you're going to learn not to give your
betters any of your damned cheek," he was saying with a tone of triumph
in his voice. The whole group had been too busy to notice a bedroom
door which led into the living-room open, and a figure dressed in white
glide up to where Brawnston lay sleeping. Kate, as she tried in vain to
get some sleep, had heard the row from the beginning. It was not a
pleasant scene for a young lady to take part in, but she had heard
enough to tell her that the man who had been foolish enough to begin the
fight on her account was likely to suffer more than he deserved. She
had not understood Aarons' brutal remark, and would have been better
pleased if Darrell had not answered it so forcibly, but she knew the
blow she had heard through the door had been given on her account. As
she opened the door she saw Brawnston's sleeping figure close to it;
near him on a table there was a jug of water; she dashed it over his
face as the quickest way of waking him. The experiment had succeeded
admirably. He had woke up with a start, saw the fight which was going
on, and in a second was in it. It did not take him long to knock two of
the Jews out of time, while the landlord, seeing how things were going,
took up the position of a non-combatant.
"Leave him to me," Darrell cried out as he tried to close with Aarons.
There was a look in his partner's white face which made Brawnston know
that he meant mischief. A few seconds' struggling and then Darrell's
long, lithe fingers were round the Jew's throat, and as he tightened
them there was an ominous twitch round the corners of his mouth.
"Stop it, man, or you'll kill me," the Jew gasped out as he felt himself
choking. If he had been a good judge of expression, and had been in a
position to take stock of Darrell, he would not have been much reassured
at the effect his suggestion had. Brawnston didn't interfere; he was
contemplating in a dreamy way the two other men whom he had knocked
down. It looked as if a crisis had come in Joe Aarons' history, but
just then a cool hand clasped Darrell's wrist, and on looking round he
for the first time saw that there was a woman present at the not very
pretty scene that was taking place.
"Stay, leave him alone, you'll kill him!" she said, rescuing Darrell
from himself and his savageness as she had rescued him just before from
his enemies. He will never be likely to forget the little figure with
her glorious brown hair sweeping over her shoulders, and the
half-frightened, half-disgusted look on her face. He felt rather more
ashamed of himself than he had been for some time, so he let go his grip
on Aarons' throat, who fell back a limp mass upon the ground.
"I am sorry that you should have been disturbed by this sort of thing;
extremely sorry," he said to her as she disappeared through the door
again.
"What a brute she must think me, as bad as that cur," he said half to
himself, half to Brawnston, glancing at Aarons. "By Jove!" he added,
"he looks rather queer."
"He's all right; it will be a rope that will break his neck," said
Brawnston, as the man on the ground began to move. The other two men
began to pull themselves together, and after a good deal of bad language
from the defeated party, the incident came to an end, and every one
turned off to sleep; Darrell thinking to himself that his endeavour to
prevent the lady passenger's sleep from being disturbed had been
singularly unsuccessful.
The next morning when the coach started, several black eyes and damaged
faces bore witness to the disturbance of the night before. Aarons was
badly marked, and seemed by no means to have recovered the rough
handling he had received; for he was much less cheerful than he had
been, and his conversation for some time was confined to a few muttered
vows of vengeance against Darrell. Jim Brawnston, too, had the
satisfaction of being able to admire the colour he had put on to the
faces of Aarons' two friends. The treatment seemed to have been very
beneficial in taking the insolence and noise out of the patients who had
been subjected to it, and in consequence the journey became much
pleasanter; and after all it was not so bad as it had promised to be.
Brawnston had plenty of stories to tell of South African adventure.
After Darrell expressed his remorse at having been to a certain extent
the cause of the unseemly broil of the night before, and had been
forgiven by Kate, as he was soon enough, a sympathy that became stronger
every day grew up between them.
It was on the fourth day of their journey that the coach had outspanned
at a farm-house by the roadside, and Kate and Darrell were sitting under
some trees in the garden of the farm-house, by the edge of a cool shaded
pool of water. There is a certain charm about those South African farms
which most travellers in the country must have experienced. One seems
to have never before enjoyed seeing trees and the soft green of
vegetation until one has travelled for miles in the desert. The few
bright flowers and the patch of waving maize are more grateful than in a
country of fields and trees the most carefully tended garden could be.
One of the team of mules which had been inspanned at the last station
had turned sick, and the guard of the coach, careless of the
remonstrance of the other passengers, who were in a hurry to get to
their journey's end, had prolonged their outspan for some hours to give
the sick beast time to get round. Neither Darrell nor Kate were
indignant at the delay or were in a hurry to start. They had only known
each other for a few days, but already they felt as if they were old
friends. Those long days of travelling across the stretches of desert
veldt can be pleasant enough. There is something in the atmosphere and
surroundings of the country that makes one forget the past, and feel
careless of the future; it has the same effect upon one's mind as the
sea has. One gets the feeling of rest and distance, and begins to fancy
that one has little to do with oneself, as one was once in other lands
that seem so far away. There is nothing to be met with that reminds one
of the rest of the world. The strings of laden waggons slowly wending
their way over the veldt to the distant Diamond Fields, give an idea of
carelessness about time, and worry, and the world in general. The
sleepy looking farm-houses, where there is none of the thriving bustle
of other lands--and everything suggests progression only at ox-waggon
pace--help to carry out the idea.
In those days Darrell had learnt almost all that there was to learn
about this companion's history, but had in return told her very little
about himself, though she had gathered from what he said that he had
seen a good deal of life, had lived most of his life in good society,
was a gentleman, but for some reason or other, so she fancied, the
memory of his past life was painful to him, though she was sure that his
story had not been discreditable. As they sat in the shade looking at
the group of passengers collected round the sick mule, and listening
lazily to the voice of the member of the Legislative Assembly, who was
denouncing the guard for not inspanning at once, the same thought was in
both their minds--their journey would soon be at an end, and very likely
they would never see each other again; for the farm she was going to was
sixty miles from Kimberley, while he was going to the Vaal River
diggings. One thought had been for some time in his mind. Why should
his whole life be wrecked because of that act of folly in his youth?
Did not the thousands of miles that separated him from England break the
shameful tie he loathed? Who need ever know that George Darrell,
digger, of Red Shirt Rush, Vaal River, was the same man as Darrell of
the Lancers, who like a fool made his good old name shameful by giving
it to the woman he had married. He cursed his folly as he remembered
himself little more than a boy marrying a woman years older than
himself, who, wild as he was then, was as much his inferior morally as
she was socially. It was the life he had been leading which had left
him weak enough to become drunk with that woman's coarse beauty, he told
himself, as he cursed the folly of that one sin, for which fate never
forgives a man, which he had committed. She did not want anything more
from him. He had settled all he had on her before he left England for
ever; she had got all she married him for, and would not bother him any
more. Why should he not forget all about her and his old life?
"Yes," he said, partly answering something she had said and partly
continuing his own thoughts, "there is something in this country that
gets rid of old memories, hopes, and ambitions. Four or five
generations of it have turned the descendants of knightly French
Huguenots into the dull brutish Dutch Boers one meets here, who have not
two ideas in their heads beyond eating and sleeping, and are far less
civilised than the Kaffirs. Yes, it's a good country to forget in."
"I hope not," she answered; "I don't want to forget my past; I have
plenty of happy memories." As she spoke a sad look came into her eyes.
"You have a past you can look back on with pleasure; I can only curse my
folly when I look back," he said bitterly.
For a second or two he was silent, struggling with himself. Why should
he suppose that she would take any interest in hearing the shameful
secret of his life?--but something told him that he had better tell it.
Then without leading up to it, he told her the story of his marriage,
and about the woman in England who was his wife.
Very clumsily he told it, but he felt all the better when he had got it
out. At first when she heard his story she realised how much she had
begun to care for this man whom she had known only a few days; then she
felt angry with herself for feeling so much interested in his history,
and determined that he should never know that she had not listened to it
with perfect indifference.
"What a fool I was to think that she would care; I might have saved
myself the trouble of telling her my private affairs," Darrell said to
himself, when, having listened to him with ostentatious unconcern, she
made some excuse to leave him and go to the coach.
When he came up some ten minutes after he found that she had left the
party. The people to whose farm she was going had been to Kimberley,
and on their way back they had come round to meet the coach. She was to
go with them, and had got into their waggon. The horses were inspanned
to the coach; he had only time to say good-bye when they started off.
Would they ever meet again, he thought, as he looked back over the flat
at the waggon, until it became a white speck on the horizon.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chapter Two.
A year had passed since Kate said good-bye to George Darrell. Her life
seemed to her to be divided into three volumes--her early life, the
journey up to the Diamond Fields, and her present life at Jagger's
Drift. The last volume seemed likely to be dull enough. Day after day
passed without any strange face coming or any incident happening. The
family consisted of Mr Van Beers, a good-natured old Dutchman, who
slept a good deal, and had very little to say for himself when he was
awake; his wife, who had never time to attend to anything but the
children, of whom there were about a dozen, the eldest a boy of
fourteen, the youngest an infant in arms. Taking it altogether, Kate's
life was a fairly happy one, for though it was dull, there was very
little to trouble her, and it was free from many of the little vexations
which would be her lot at home. One drawback of it was, that she had
too much time for thinking, and her thoughts curiously often went back
to the incidents of the journey up, and she often in her mind's eye saw
the face of George Darrell as it looked when he blurted out the secret
of his life. From that day she had never heard of him; little news ever
came to Jagger's Drift, and none would be likely to come of such an
obscure person as George Darrell, digger, of Red Shirt Rush, Vaal River.
That digging she had heard was up the river some sixty miles off. Many
a time she had looked up stream and wondered how he was faring, and
whether he still ever thought of her. The Homestead at Jagger's Drift
was a large, one-storied house, with a garden running down to the river.
On the other side the house fronted a long flat, stretching far away to
a range of low hills in the distance. A dozen or so of wood waggons
would pass every day on their way to the Diamond Fields, but there was
little other traffic. Across the river was Gordon, a place which some
speculative people fondly believe is destined to be an important centre
in the future. It had for reasons known to the authorities at Capetown,
and to no one else, been chosen as the seat of the magistracy for a
large district, and there was a magistrate's house, a jail, and some
police tents; while a court-house was being built. There were also two
canteens, in one or the other of which in turn the spare population
collected and listened to the proprietor of the establishment as he
cursed his rival.
The new Government buildings were to be on a grand scale, quite up to
what Gordon was destined to become in the future, according to the
estimate of the most sanguine believers in it. "They mock us with their
damned buildings," was the opinion often expressed by Jack Johnstone,
the Civil Commissioner's clerk, as he looked at the new erections with a
malevolent eye, for he had applied persistently and in vain for an
increase of his salary, and he looked upon all other expenditure of
Government money as a personal insult.
"Blessed if they haven't brought a lot of white convicts over here to
muddle away at that cursed place," he said to McFlucker the
canteen-keeper one afternoon, as, with a pipe in his mouth, he stood
outside the latter's store, and looked towards the hated erection, where
some Kaffirs and white men were working listlessly as convicts do work.
"That's not a lag's face, I'd have bet; if I had seen it anywhere else
I'd have sworn that fellow was a gentleman and an honest man; he looks
it, though he has got a broad arrow stamped on his shirt," he said, as
he noticed one convict, a tall man, who looked very unlike his
companions. "But I dare say he is the biggest scoundrel of the lot," he
added.
Just then Kate Gray, who had come across the river with some of the
young Van Beers, walked past the building. Johnstone, as he watched her
with a good deal of admiration, noticed that she was also looking in the
direction of the tall convict who had attracted his attention. To his
surprise he felt almost certain that he saw their eyes meet with a
glance of recognition. She seemed to start and almost pause for a
second. The convict pushed his hat over his eyes, and stooped over his
work as if he did not wish to be recognised.
"By Jove, I'd have bet those two know each other, or have seen each
other before, but it must be only a fancy though--it isn't likely,"
Johnstone thought to himself, as he took off his hat and shook hands
with Miss Gray. After they had talked for some time about the few
subjects for conversation that their life at Gordon afforded--the health
of McFlucker the storekeeper's wife, the date of the return of the
magistrate at Gordon, who was away on leave, and the fact that the river
was rising--Miss Gray turned the conversation to the subject that had
interested them both.
"Who are those men working at the court-house,--the white men I mean?"
she asked, as Johnstone thought, with considerable interest.
"They are gentlemen who are working for her gracious Majesty without
pay, and receiving their board and lodging gratis."
"You mean they are convicts. What sort of offences do you suppose they
have committed, and where do they come from?"
"They have come from Kimberley, and they may have committed any offence,
but it's long odds that they have bought diamonds--that's their special
weakness on the fields."
"Bought diamonds!--why I should have thought that was just what
diamond-diggers wanted people to do."
"Bought diamonds that the Kaffirs have stolen from their masters'
claims, I mean; those men, however, have probably made a mistake, and
been caught by the police. When the police see that the wily illicit
diamond-buyer is well on the feed they throw one of their flies, and
send him a Kaffir with a diamond to sell. If the fish rises to the fly
and buys, they strike, find the diamond, and haul the I.D.B. up before
the court, when he gets five years. It's a pretty sport is trapping
I.D.B.'s, and these are most likely some of the many fish who have been
caught."
"What a wretched mean business it seems to be, but I'm sure he could not
have been trapped."
"Hallo, so you talk about him as `he,' do you?" thought Johnstone. "You
mean the tall convict; I was looking at him just now, and wondering what
his history was. Well, if he has a long sentence, if I were he, I'd
make a bolt for it. The convict-guards are always more or less asleep,
and I'd chance their shooting straight. I suppose it would not be much
good though, one could never get away across the veldt without a horse."
"If he had a horse do you think he would get off? Where could he get
to?"
"Sixty miles north he'd be out of the reach of the police, in
Stellaland, where there is a lot of rough work going on, and any one who
had plenty of pluck would find men who would welcome him as a comrade,
and care very little whether he had a broad arrow stamped on his shirt
or not."
"Ah, well, perhaps he is used to being a convict, and does not care to
escape," Kate said, for she felt that perhaps she was unwise in showing
so much interest in the convict's fate.
"Perhaps he is; don't know that it matters whether one is a convict or
not, if one has to live in this country. Certainly, being in their
infernal civil service is next door to it," Johnstone answered, as he
walked to the river-side with them. As he returned after seeing them
cross, he wondered where Kate could have seen the convict before. That
they had met he somehow felt certain. He was right; Kate had recognised
George Darrell, her fellow-traveller in the coach, in the convict. He
had had a run of bad luck since they had parted. First of all his old
partner, Jim Brawnston, had been obliged to leave him, as one of his
brothers had died, and he had been wanted on his father's farm in Natal.
Then for a long time he had found no diamonds.
After a bit, however, his luck seemed to have changed, and diamonds
began to turn up on his sorting-table. The queer thing about those
diamonds was, that they were unlike river stones, and much more of the
appearance of the stones found in the mines. The diamond-buyers to whom
he sold seemed, he thought, to look at them and him rather queerly when
he brought them out to sell. He did not, however, trouble himself much
about this. While he was working at his claim, not over rejoiced at the
slight turn of luck he was experiencing, as he had hardly any ambition
to make money, one day a conversation took place in the office of the
head of the police in Kimberley, which would have opened his eyes if he
had heard it. There had been a good deal of what is called illicit
buying down the river for some time. Persons who had bought stolen
diamonds, and wished to dispose of the diamonds advantageously, had
taken to get men who pretended to be river-diggers, to profess to have
found them in their claims, and sell them advantageously. Stolen
diamonds are rather awkward property to dispose of, as dealers have to
keep registers by which diamonds can be traced back to the diggers who
first found them; so it was an advantage to give a diamond that had been
stolen a fictitious history.
The head of the police had determined to put a stop to this practice,
and had sent a man down the river to see what was going on. The
information he had received had surprised him a good deal, and at first
he hardly believed it. "What, Darrell of Red Shirt Rush in this? Why,
I should have thought he was straight," he was saying to one of the
detectives, who had come in to see him with another man.
"It ain't the first time, sir, you've thought that about a party we have
found to be pretty deeply in the trade; now this man here sold Darrell
as many as half-a-dozen diamonds which we can swear to, and which we can
prove he has sold again; is not that so, Seers?" the detective said,
turning to the ill-looking, undersized man who had come in with him.
"Yes, sir, he has bought 'em off me; he has been buying for this last
twelve months to my knowledge, and working off illicit stuff from his
claims," the man answered, his eyes as he spoke wandering about
furtively, looking anywhere except into the face of the person he spoke
to.
"Well, I suppose there is no doubt about it. It's high time some one
was made an example of down the river; you and Sergeant Black had better
go down and trap Darrell, with this man Seers," the head of the police
said after he had talked for some time. "Look here," he added, calling
the detective on one side, "that fellow is an infernal scoundrel, and
are you sure he is not humbugging us?"
"Well, sir, white traps mostly are infernal scoundrels, but what he says
is right enough about Darrell. What object should he have in telling us
what was wrong?--besides, I don't think he would try and fool me," the
detective said with a grin, which expressed considerable satisfaction
with his own astuteness.
Two evenings after this conversation, the man Seers came into Darrell's
tent, pretending that a mate of his was ill, and he wanted to be given
some brandy. Darrell knew the man by sight, having seen him lately
hanging about the diggings, and had not been much prepossessed by his
appearance. He was civil enough to him, however, telling him he had got
no brandy, and listening to his description of his mate's illness.
The man talked away for a few minutes, and then went to the opening of
the tent, gave a shout, and then in a second, to Darrell's astonishment,
two men, one of whom he knew by sight as a Kimberley detective, made
their appearance. In a twinkling they had handcuffed him, searched him
and the tent, and found a diamond in a pannikin near his bed. Darrell's
protestations of his innocence went for very little, and in the course
of another twenty-four hours he found himself a prisoner in Kimberley
jail, awaiting a trial for buying a diamond illicitly.
On his trial it was proved that Seers had been searched before he went
into the tent, and had no money upon him; when he came out he had ten
sovereigns in his possession. The detectives were able to swear to the
diamond found in Darrell's possession as the one they had given Seers
before he went into the tent. The case seemed to be exactly like the
ordinary cases of trapping that come before the courts at Kimberley
almost every week. The judge who tried it expressed his opinion that it
was one about which he had not the slightest doubt as to the prisoner's
guilt, and sentenced him to hard labour for five years.
The crime of buying stolen diamonds is considered on the Fields one of
the most heinous of offences, those who are convicted of it being seldom
allowed to escape without a severe punishment.
After Darrell had done some of his sentence in the Kimberley jail, he
had been sent with some other convicts to work at Gordon, so that was
how it came to pass that Kate recognised her travelling companion in the
tall convict.
When she got back to the Homestead she found that a young Van Beers, a
son of the old farmer, had arrived from Kimberley. Jappie Van Beers was
not a very pleasant type of the young Boer, but by no means an uncommon
one. He was a noisy braggart, who might be heard wherever he went,
shouting out in his broken English about himself and his belongings, and
bragging about his shooting and riding, his horses, dogs, and guns. He
sometimes would express violent anti-English sentiments, but for all
that he imitated the people he professed to hate, and it was not at all
difficult to see that he was half ashamed of being a Dutchman. He owned
some very good claims in the Kimberley mines, and had made a good deal
of money on the Fields. When he was at the Homestead he gave himself
great airs, for he did not think it necessary for him to show much
deference to the old people, since he was so much richer than they were,
while their homely Dutch ways of life afforded him opportunities for the
expression of considerable contempt. What made him more odious to Kate
was, that he had taken it into his head to pay her an amount of
attention that was very embarrassing to her. The truth was, that Jappie
Van Beers had fallen head over ears in love with the pretty governess at
his father's house. He had contrasted her very favourably with the
heavy, shapeless-looking Dutch young women whom his cousins and brothers
chose for their wives, and had determined that she should be Mrs
Jappie. On the occasion of his last visit to the Homestead she had
snubbed him most unmercifully, and she hoped that in future he would
keep at a distance. There was something in his manner as he shook hands
with her that told her he had got over any discomfiture he might have
been made to suffer before.
"Ah, Miss Gray, you're looking very well and pretty, though you seem to
be just as proud as ever. Well, I have a little bit of news for you. I
have met an old friend of yours on the Fields; a friend of mine who
knows you. He came up in the coach with you; he told me all about your
goings on when you came up in the coach," he said to her after they had
shaken hands. Kate looked extremely uncomfortable; the last subject she
wanted to talk about was that journey and its incidents. Jappie Van
Beers appeared to derive a considerable amount of satisfaction from her
embarrassment.
"Yes, Miss, my friend Aarons told me about you," he continued; a
malicious grin coming across his stupid heavy face.
"Is that person a friend of yours?" Kate asked; her expression showing
that she did not think any the better of Jappie for his choice of
friend. The other looked a little put out. The truth was, that when he
was in Kimberley he associated with a good many of the worst characters
in the place, not because he was one of them, but because it suited
their purpose to flatter him, and allow him to be as insolent and
boorish as he pleased.
"Well, I know him to speak to, and he told me about you, and he gave me
a message for you. `Tell her,' he said, `that she is likely to see her
old sweetheart again, if she looks amongst the men working on the roads
at Gordon.' Then he told me how you went on when you travelled with
this Darrell, the thief whom they trapped at Red Shirt Rush. Aarons
gave me a paper and said that perhaps you would like to read about the
trial, and see what he had done." Jappie was surprised to see how
little attention she paid to his chaff; but she took the paper from him
very eagerly and turned over the pages until she came to the report of
the trial. The report was short. Kate felt sure that Darrell was the
innocent victim of a conspiracy, and the idea came at once into her mind
that somehow that conspiracy had been carried out by the man who took
care that she should learn how successful it had been.
"Yes, this seems to be the same man I came up with in the coach, but I
don't know why your friend should take so much trouble to let me know
about it," she said, making an effort to speak as if she had read the
report with little interest.
Jappie, feeling that his chaff had fallen rather flat, became silent,
and contented himself with staring stupidly at her.
She read and re-read the report. Five years of that degrading slavery--
five years working with Kaffirs and white men who were more degraded
than Kaffirs!--it seemed to her that he never would be able to survive
his term of punishment.
"Well, Miss Gray, you're angry with me because I just chaffed you," said
Jappie, flicking his whip against his boots and looking half ashamed of
himself; "I will tell you something that will make you forgive me. I
have brought my little white horse, which you may ride. I know you like
riding; and you can ride down to the river in the mornings with me and
see the lines pulled up as you used to. I brought the little white
horse because I knew you liked to ride him, and I will take out Kedult;
he is the best horse in the Colony. I won a race with him the other day
at Cradock, and beat all the imported horses."
A morning ride with Jappie did not hold out a very pleasant prospect,
but as he spoke there flashed vividly upon Kate's memory a sight that
she had noticed day after day the year before, when she used to go out
in the morning with the children to see the lines pulled up. It was the
sight of a party of convicts and convict-guards on the other side of the
river; the former working, filling water-barrels, the latter listlessly
watching them. This recollection made her determined to go out for
those rides, however unpleasant they might be, and instead of refusing
Jappie's offer, she accepted it with an enthusiasm that flattered and
delighted him. The next afternoon Darrell was at his task at the
court-house, with two or three ill-looking white men and a gang of
Kaffirs, who appeared not to take their punishment much to heart.
Watching them were two white convict-guards armed with carbines, who
lounged about listlessly, finding their duty very tedious, and some Zulu
police armed with rifles and a collection of assagais, who looked as if
they would deal out death and destruction, if not to the fugitive,
certainly to some of the bystanders, should there be any attempt at an
escape.
Every now and then Darrell looked across the flat towards the river,
where he had seen Kate go the day before. She had recognised him, he
knew. What did she think of his disgraceful position?--but what should
she think? She had only known him for a few days, and in that time she
had learned more to his disadvantage than otherwise, he thought to
himself. For once the long weary afternoon's work had some interest;--
should he see her again, he kept wondering? At last he saw her coming
from the river-bank. He watched her, though he tried to look down so
that their eyes should not meet. As she passed she took a hurried
glance at the convict-guard, who were paying little attention to the
prisoners. The white men were thinking of the hard luck that gave to
them such a dreary dead-and-alive lot in life. The Zulus as they
clutched their weapons were back again in their imagination at some
scene of savage bloodshed, and were happy. Then she for a second
managed to catch his eye, and as she did so she threw a crumpled-up
piece of paper to him. He snatched it up, and half hiding behind part
of the building he unfolded it, and read the few words written on it.
"You have a friend; look out for a signal to escape when you are at the
river to-morrow. I know you are innocent." As he read this he felt a
new man. He had even in his miserable position felt depressed to think
that he had not a friend in the world. But here was some one who
believed in him. Then he remembered that she would be likely to get
into some trouble if she were mixed up in any plot to secure his
freedom. But he had no means of warning her; he could only wait and
wonder what the letter meant.
At seven o'clock next morning, Darrell was marched as usual to the
river-bank to carry water up to the magistrate's house and the public
works. Drearily and hopelessly he laboured at the wretched work of
filling the water-carts. What did that note mean, he kept asking
himself? How could that English girl in a strange country help him?
Perhaps she was acting for others, he thought, and the only part she
took was to give him notice. If so she might not run any great risk of
getting into trouble. But this theory had to be put on one side. Who
was there in the country, or for the matter of that in the world who
would take the trouble to help him? He looked at the distant range of
hills far away across the river; if he could only get there he would be
free and safe, for not only was it native territory, but it was in a
disturbed state, and there were bands of men collected together there,
one or two of whom he happened to know who would welcome him as a
comrade very heartily. The men worked at their tasks slowly enough; the
convict-guards thought that they might just as well hang about the
river-bank looking after convicts, as be anywhere else engaged in the
same dreary work, so they did not hurry them. After he had worked for
some minutes, Darrell saw two figures on horseback across the river; he
recognised one of them as Kate, the other was a young Dutchman he had
seen ride towards the farm a day or two before. He looked at their
horses, and he coveted the one the Dutchman was on. It was a good horse
anywhere, and looked as if it were just suited for the country. If he
were on it and had a fair start, he would save the Colony the cost of
his board and lodging, and show his enemies a clean pair of heels. Of
course he remembered the letter, but he felt sure the young Boer would
never be induced to help him. After they had ridden along the river to
a place about a hundred yards down stream from where he stood, he saw
the man dismount and leave his horse to be held by his companion.
Darrell began to feel a thrill of excitement as he watched him go down
to a boat, get into it, and drop some way down stream. He watched how
the stream of the river ran, and he guessed how it would carry any one
who jumped in from where he was, across to the point where Kate was with
the horses. The Dutchman had almost crossed the river, and was pulling
up a fish on a line he had rowed up to. Darrell took in the situation,
and his heart beat, and he felt a longing for liberty as he first looked
at the good horse on which he could secure it, and then at the
convict-guard near him who was yawning sleepily, as he sat with his
carbine in his hand. Just then he saw Kate hold her handkerchief above
her head and wave it. It was the signal, and he knew how good a chance
he would have if he obeyed it. There was no time for delay, and in a
second he had taken a header from the bank and was swimming for life and
liberty. For a minute or so there was some wild shooting, as the guard
aroused by the splash took a hurried shot at him, and the Zulus let off
their guns recklessly.
The sound of the shots startled Jappie, who had been intent on pulling
up his fish. For a second he stared stolidly, and then as the convict
came to the other side, hitting just upon the spot where the horses
were, he saw what his object was.
"Allah Macter, but he is going to take my horse. Hi! Miss Gray, gallop
the horse away; keep away from him, he's going to take the horse." The
guards on the other side had ceased firing, as they were afraid of
hitting Kate and the horses. Kate did not make any attempt to get away
from the convict; in fact Jappie felt certain that she was doing her
best to help the fugitive. Jappie yelled and gesticulated, but it was
no use. To his disgust he saw the convict come up the river-bank, jump
into the saddle, and give a shout of triumph, and then go off across the
veldt. Above all things, Jappie valued and swaggered about his horse.
He had won one or two races with him already, and hoped to win more, and
he was never tired of boasting and bragging about what he hoped to do
with him.
"O the skellum!--O the scoundrel!--there is not a horse in the province
that can catch him, and there is no one ready to follow him," he shouted
out to no one in particular as he splashed clumsily across the river
against the stream. For once he thought of Kedult's pace and staying
powers without much satisfaction. When he had got to the other side he
stood shouting and yelling to the convict-guards, and watching Darrell
growing smaller in the distance. It was something of a relief to him
when he saw two troopers of the border police cross the drift. They had
saddled up when they heard the alarm of the escape, and were starting in
pursuit. Jappie ran after them, and shouted out some directions to
which they paid very little heed.
"Ah, they will never catch him on Kedult; he will ride the horse to
death first," he despondently said as he watched the troopers ride
across the flat. Kate began to realise that she had probably got
herself into a good deal of trouble, for the part she had taken in the
escape was pretty evident. She did not know what offences she might not
have committed, still she felt that she would gladly do it again, and
chance whatever punishment she might have to suffer, rather than have to
see Darrell suffering his degrading punishment. Certainly he would be a
fugitive and an outlaw, but that would not be so bad for him, and he
would have a better chance of proving his innocence than if he were a
prisoner; so she hoped.
"Well, Miss Gray, so you have played me a nice little trick, letting
that skellum steal my horse. That was your doing. You think yourself
very slim to be able to fool me into leaving you with my horse, so that
you could let your sweetheart have it to get away on; but you have made
a mistake--I am going to go to the magistrate, and he shall know what
you have done. You will find yourself in prison very soon for stealing
my horse and helping a prisoner to escape," said the young Boer to Kate,
when he met her at the door of the farm-house as she rode back. He was
half crying about the loss of his horse, and desperately angry; and yet,
as he looked into the pretty English girl's face, a very different idea
to that of revenge suggested itself to him. There was something he
cared for even more than his horse.
"Look here, miss, you have lost me the best horse in the country, but I
forgive you, because you're such a pretty girl. No Dutch girl would do
what you have done; they would be ashamed to; but I like girls who have
plenty of pluck. Be my sweetheart instead of that skellum's, whom you
will never see again, and I will say no more about what I saw. Look, I
am rich; I have some of the best claims in the mine, and have ten good
farms. I think there is no girl in the Colony who would not marry me,
and I offer to make you my wife--a poor little English girl, whom I
could send to prison if I thought right. Come, I have lost my horse and
won a frow, for you must marry me or go to prison--which will you do?"
To emphasise his declaration he threw one of his clumsy arms round her
neck and tried to kiss her. Her answer came in a way that surprised
him. She dodged away from his grasp, and as he came forward again she
slashed him twice across his face with her whip, and then ran away into
the house, leaving him standing in the yard listening to the laugh of a
Kaffir servant who had witnessed the scene.
"All the worse for you, missy," he cried, almost blubbering from the
pain and from his anger. "You shall suffer for this, and for stealing
my horse." Then catching sight of the Kaffir's grinning face he
relieved his feelings by cutting that unfortunate son of Ham across the
back with his ox-hide whip till he yelled with pain. Somewhat calmed by
this he walked down to the boat and went over to Gordon, determined to
let the law of the land revenge his wrongs.
It turned out that his threat was not an idle one. Already the
inhabitants of Gordon were discussing the part she had taken in the
escape of the convict. One of the guards noticed her give the signal,
and his evidence was confirmed by Jappie.
Johnstone, who had been acting as magistrate, cursed his fate which
obliged him to commit Kate to take her trial at Kimberley. But the
affair was a serious one, and became more serious when the next day the
border police came back without having found their man.
"It's a beastly duty to have to discharge, particularly for such a
pitiful screw as one gets from this cursed Colonial Government. But I
had to do it on the evidence," he said to her when the inquiry was
ended, and she was duly committed to take her trial, and circumstances
allowed him to resume his non-official way of looking at things. "You
need not be nervous, however; jury won't bring themselves to convict
you," he added, to reassure her.
The case created immense excitement at Kimberley. From the first public
feeling was with the prisoner. Jappie was considered to show great
vindictiveness, and the story of his having been an unsuccessful suitor
to the prisoner somehow got abroad. He had got his horse back too, it
having been sent to him from Stellaland, and this, in the opinion of the
public, made the animus he showed all the more vindictive. When the day
of the trial came on, and the prisoner was seen in the dock, public
opinion expressed itself most unanimously in her favour.
The Crown prosecutor's arguments were very cogent, and the judge's
summing up dead against the prisoner; but the jury gave their verdict
without ever turning round in the box. It was _not guilty_.
"There ain't such a crowd of pretty girls in this camp that we can
afford to shut 'em up in prison," was the opinion expressed by the
foreman as he partook of champagne at the expense of a sympathiser with
beauty in distress.
In the mean time George Darrell found himself secure in Stellaland.
After riding all day he had pulled up with his horse dead beat, at a
house which had once been used as a store some miles on the other side
of the river which marked the border of Griqualand West. The house was
inhabited by some white men, who constituted themselves into a body
which somewhat resembled the free companies some centuries back--
nominally fighting for the Kaffir chief, but really pretty much for
their own hand.
"Hullo, who the devil is this?" exclaimed one of these warriors, who was
sitting on the bench outside the house as Darrell came up.
"Hullo, he has got 'em on--he has got 'em all on," said another of the
company--a gentleman who in the course of his varied career had been a
singer in a London East End music-hall, and now sang the songs of
Houndsditch in a strange land--as he saw the fashion of Darrell's garb.
"Look here, it won't do; it will bring the peelers on us."
"He's a good fellow; I know him--worth a dozen of you," said a
black-haired, handsome, devil-may-care-looking young fellow, known as
Black Jamie, who acted as the leader of the company. "It's Darrell, who
used to be working down the river. I heard he was `run in' some time
ago,"--and getting up, he came forward and shook the new arrival
heartily by the hand.
It was lucky for Jappie that Black Jamie had a high opinion of Darrell;
for it was on that account he was induced to give in to the other's wish
that the horse should be sent back by a Kaffir to his owner--a
proceeding which was thoroughly repugnant to the feelings of himself and
the honourable company he commanded. He let Darrell have his way,
however, and then sent him on with some Kaffirs to their huts, where the
police, even if they crossed the border, would not care to follow him.
A day or two afterwards, when danger of pursuit was over, Darrell was
enlisted as one of Black Jamie's troop in the service of Mankoran, the
chief of the Bechuanas.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chapter Three.
"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.
Story 2.
KITTY OF "THE FROZEN BAR."
Some years ago there was at Kimberley a very popular house of
entertainment, called `The Frozen Bar,' which had been in existence
since the early days of diamond-digging, and had become one of the
institutions of the Fields. From a mere bar it had grown into a hotel--
bedrooms having been put up in the compound behind it, and a dining-room
opened for the use of its boarders. Still the old name--which had been
a happy thought in the old days when ice was unknown and yearned for on
the Fields--was retained. So far as it was possible for an iron house
under a blazing South African sun to be kept cool, it justified its
name. Ice, when the ice-machines had not broken down or the
ice-manufacturers gone on the spree, was very plentiful there. Hot
brandies and sodas were never served out. And it was always refreshing
to see its proprietress, pretty little Kitty Clay, who was always cheery
and bright, however trying the times or the weather might be, and would
look fresh, clean, and cool even in the misery of a Diamond Field
dust-storm.
`The Frozen Bar' was used by men who as a rule did not care to frequent
common canteens and rub shoulders with the people who were to be met
with in such places. Bad characters fought rather shy of it. For
instance, Jim Paliter, the gambler and sharper, who was always lurking
about to look for some unwary one who would first shake the dice for
drinks, and afterwards to while away the time throw for sovereigns,
never made it his hunting-ground. His self-assurance was proof against
a good deal, but Kitty's quiet way of letting him know that his room was
preferred to his company was too much for him. I.D.B.'s, as that
section of the Kimberley public who live by buying stolen diamonds are
called, did not care to use it, unless they were prosperous and in the
higher walks of their trade. It was situated near the Kimberley mine
and the diamond market, and all day long it did a roaring trade. The
crowd who thronged its doors was representative of Kimberley, for it
contained men of many different races and types. Men came there dressed
in every description of costume, from moleskins, flannel shirts, and
slouch hats, to suits of London-made clothes sent out from home by West
End tailors. You would see the rugged, weather-worn faces of men who
had been diggers all over the world wherever the earth had yielded gold
or precious stones, and the dark, hungry-eyed, bird-of-prey-like faces
of Jews who are drawn to the spot where men find precious stones as
vultures are drawn to a corpse. It was in the afternoon, just after
luncheon, that the place would be most crowded. Then Kitty would be in
her element, taking money, though more often `good-fors,' answering
questions, chaffing, and laughing over the news of the day--the latest
scandal or the best joke against some one--and making comments upon it,
very often more humorous than polite. Poor, cheery, big-hearted little
Kitty, the best woman in the world--so many a man said, and with some
reason. Maybe she used to laugh merrily enough at stories she ought not
to have listened to, and the remarks she made were perhaps not over
womanly, still no one could deny that she had a tender woman's heart.
In the early days of the Fields, when hardships were greater, and the
ups and downs of life were more marked, there were many who had good
reason to be grateful to her. She had been a friend in need to many a
man who from illness or accident had been pushed down and was likely to
be trampled upon in the fierce struggle for existence in the first days
of the rush to the new diggings. There were generally boarding at the
`Frozen Bar' one or two men for whose custom the other licensed
victuallers did not yearn--men whom Kitty had known in their brighter
days, and whom she would not go back upon because they were down on
their luck and out of a billet.
She was nearer thirty than twenty, and her life had been rather a hard
one, though it had left very few traces on her bright little face, and
her troubles had not made her laugh less cheery or her smile less kind,
though perhaps they had caused that dash of cynicism which sometimes
showed itself in her talk. She had begun life as a ballet-girl in a
London theatre, had travelled half over the world with a theatrical
company, and at Cape Town had married a Diamond field man who had taken
her up to Kimberley.
Her husband, whom she had never cared for much, turned out anything but
a satisfactory one. But her married life did not last very long. Less
than a year after her marriage, a middle-aged female arrived on the
Diamond Fields and laid claim to her husband, and as she was a person of
great determination, and was able to prove that she had married him some
years before in London, she carried him off in triumph, leaving Kitty to
find out whether or no a bad husband was better than none at all. Kitty
would probably have answered this in the negative, for she was very well
able to take care of herself. She started `The Frozen Bar' and
prospered there, and if she had only been good at saving money would
have become quite a rich woman.
One evening there were several men lounging in the bar listening to
Kitty's chaff and stories, when some one started a subject which made
her look a good deal graver than usual. "So your friend Jack is back
again in the camp," one of her customers had said.
"Jack--which Jack? there are a good many Jacks on the Fields, you know,"
Kitty answered; but with a note of trouble in her voice which suggested
that the other's words had conveyed some news to her that she was sorry
to hear.
"Jack Douglas, I mean. He has let his prospecting job down the river
slide, and he is back in the camp again, and he has been back for a
week, and been on the spree all the time."
"How that chap has gone to the bad! I remember him when he was quite a
decent fellow, and to-day I saw him with some of the biggest thieves in
the camp--Jim Paliter, Ike Sloeman, and all that gang."
"Mark my words, we shall see Jack Douglas run in for I.D.B. some of
these fine days; he is going that way pretty quick," another man said;
and there was something in his tone and expression as he spoke which
irritated Kitty into showing a good deal of feeling.
"Why do you talk about my friend Jack? I don't have friends, only
customers, and when they have spent their money and gone to grief there
is an end of them so far as I am concerned. But he used to be your
friend Jack once upon a time; why don't some of you fellows try and give
him a help instead of pointing at him, and saying he has gone to the
bad?" she said.
"Oh, he is no good; he has gone too far to be helped,"--"It's all his
own fault,"--"He will never do any good here, he ought to clear out,"
were the answers to Kitty's suggestion. The men, though they talked
slightingly enough of Jack, looked, one or two of them, half ashamed,
for Jack had been a popular man on the Fields in the old days when he
owned claims and was not badly off, and the men who discussed his fate
so coolly had once been glad enough to be his friends.
"Clear out indeed! Where to? To the devil for all you care. That is
so like you men; that is how you stick to a friend."
"Listen to Kitty; why, she seems to be quite sweet on Jack Douglas.
Look out, Kitty, he would not be a good partner in the business; why,
he'd precious soon drink up the profits," said a little Jew who had been
listening to the conversation though no one had been speaking to him.
An angry flush came across Kitty's face. For once, she could not think
of a neat retort, and she answered, showing that she was hurt. "Look
here, Mr Moses or Abrams, or whatever your name is, suppose you keep
your advice till it's asked for. I never spoke to you when I talked
about people helping Jack; no one expects one of your sort to help a
man, and Jack would not care to take any help from you."
"Don't know about not wanting my help; he is glad enough to be helped by
some very queer people," said the little Jew as he walked out of the
place, grumbling out something about never coming in again.
"Douglas may be a fool, and he may have gone to the bad, but I hate to
hear a little cad like that sneering at him," said Kitty; and then
feeling that she had perhaps made rather a fool of herself she changed
the conversation, and in a minute was laughing at some rather pointless
story, chaffing another man about some joke there was against him, and
seeming to be in the wildest spirits.
"What good fun that woman is; such a lot of `go' in her," said one of
the men who had left the place to another as they walked home together.
"I don't like to hear her," said the other, a man whose ideals were
somewhat higher, though his habits of life were even more irregular than
those of most men on the Diamond Fields. "She is such a good little
woman--a deal too good to talk as she does."
These men would have been surprised if they had seen the woman they were
talking about whom they had left in such high spirits. The place was
empty, she was leaning with her elbows on the bar and her shapely hands
covering her face, sobbing as if her heart would break. Yes, she
thought, she was a fool to have cared anything for him or any other man.
Were they not all either hard, selfish, and heartless, or reckless,
prodigal, and hopeless?
With all her knowledge of the world she lived in, she had made what her
experience told her was the most hopeless of mistakes a woman can
commit, for she had let herself care a great deal too much for Jack, the
ne'er-do-well and loafer, whose fate his old friends had been
discussing. What they had said was probably true, she thought; it was
no use doing anything for him. She had tried to help him. She had
found some money to send him on a prospecting trip down the Vaal--not
because she believed in the new mine he was prospecting, but because she
thought it would be a good thing for him to get away from Kimberley--but
here he was, having left his work to look after itself, back again in
the camp at Kimberley, enjoying its pleasures such as they were. Yes,
they were right, there was not much chance for him: his associates were
about the worst lot in the camp. He seemed to be going the road which
has taken so many a Kimberley man to the prison, yet she couldn't leave
him to travel it. Ah, what a fool she was, she thought. She had
forgotten to call her boy to shut the place up though it was late, and
she hears a step at the door. At once she wipes her eyes and looks
herself again.
He was a man of about five-and-twenty. Once he must have been very
good-looking, and even then his face had some of its old grace about it.
Now, however, it told a very ugly story plainly enough. It was haggard
and worn with drink and dissipation, and he had a reckless, defiant
expression as if he refused to show a shame he felt. Even for the
Diamond Fields his dress was rather careless. One of his eyes was
discoloured, while on his cheek he had marks of a more recent cut. Any
one who knew colonial life could sum him up. An Englishman well-born,
who has gone to the bad; a type of man to be met with all over the
colonies, the man who has been sent abroad so that he should not
disgrace his people at home. There are openings for such men abroad, so
their kind friends at home say, and so there are;--canteen-doors, the
gates of divers colonial jails, and then one six feet by two, not made
too deep, the job being badly paid for.
Staggering up to the bar he asked Kitty how she was, and called for a
drink. There was rather a sharper tone than usual in her voice as she
told him that it was too late and that she was going to close. "You had
better go back to the `Corner Bar,' that is more in your line than this
place, isn't it?" she added.
"All right," he said, "I will clear out. I suppose I am not good enough
for this shanty. So good night."
"Stop," she said, changing her mind as he turned to go away; "you
needn't be in such a hurry; I want to ask you something. What are you
doing--where are you staying now?"
"Staying? Oh, anywhere. I slept on the veldt last night; I am going to
sleep at old Sloeman's place to-night. He is a good sort, is old
Sloeman--don't turn his back on a man because he is down on his luck. I
am going to work with him."
Mr Sloeman was the owner of some claims in one of the mines which
nobody else had ever made pay, but in which, without doing much work, he
professed to have found a great many diamonds. He also was the
proprietor of a canteen of more than shady reputation, and had an
interest in one or two Kaffir stores. Some people were unkind enough to
suggest that the diamonds he professed to find in his claims were bought
at his canteen, or at his stores, from Kaffirs who had stolen them from
their masters' claims. Mr Sloeman was notorious for the kindly
interest he took in likely young men who were out of work. He gave them
a billet in one of his stores, or in his canteen, or as an overseer to
work in those wonderful claims. Curiously enough a large proportion of
those young men had attracted the attention of the detective police, and
had found their way to the prison charged with buying stolen diamonds;
but Mr Sloeman himself prospered.
"Stop, Jack, you are not going up there to-ight. One of my rooms is
empty, you can have that. I wouldn't go up there to-night," said Kitty.
Jack said he would go--he was expected there.
"Stop, Jack, you're not so bad that you can't talk sense. You know what
old Sloeman means, and what his game is. You have always been straight,
whatever they can say of you. Don't have anything to do with that old
thief!"
"Yes, and a lot of good being straight has done me. Old Sloeman is a
good deal better than the lot who turn their backs on me, and, thief or
not, I am going to work with him?" Jack said as he turned to leave the
place.
Kitty gave a look at him as he lurched to the door, and then determined
that she would have her way.
"Well, Jack, have a drink before you go. I am sorry for what I said
just now. We will have a drink together," said Kitty, as she took down
a bottle of whiskey and some soda-water. Jack did not refuse--he seldom
did refuse such an offer.
"Well, that will about finish him. It seems a shame, but he shan't go
up there to-night, and that will settle it," she thought to herself as
she more than half filled a tumbler with whiskey.
"That is rather a stiffish drink," he said as he finished it. Then he
had another, and forgot all about going up to Sloeman's, and Kitty
called her Kaffir boy to shut up the place and put Jack to bed in the
spare room.
The next morning, when she was at her breakfast, her Kaffir servant came
running and showing his white teeth. "The _baas_ I put to bed last
night, him plenty bad this morning, Missis."
"Take him this, he will get all right," said Kitty, giving him some
brandy in a glass and a bottle of soda-water. "That won't hurt him,
though he will have to knock it off and pull himself together, for this
child is going to look after him," she added to herself.
Very soon the Kaffir came back. "The _baas_ he drink the brandy and
throw de soda at me. I think him going mad," he said, rubbing his head.
Kitty was not much alarmed; she had seen a good deal of that sort of
thing. She wondered whether it would be any good, if it were possible
to persuade Jack to become a Good Templar. She felt afraid that it
would not be very easy, and that he would shun the rejoicing there would
be over him. He wanted some one to keep him straight, she thought, and
woman-like, she began to believe that one of her sex could do it. After
some time Jack came out of his room. He had a blank stare on his face
and said nothing, but walked into the street without his hat on. He was
evidently queer, very queer, Kitty thought, as she led him back to his
room and then sent her boy for the doctor.
"He is in for a bad go of fever; rather a nasty case--typhoid symptoms;
knocked his constitution to bits with drink," said the doctor. "He will
want a lot of looking after. He had better go to the hospital--the free
ward--the paying wards are full; not that they would be much in his line
if they were not," he added.
"I think he had better stay here, doctor," answered Kitty. "I will see
after nursing him; you know, doctor, nursing is rather my forte."
"No one can see after him better than you, my dear," said the doctor,
who knew Kitty well. "I fancy, however, he won't be a very profitable
boarder for you; but that's your look out."
"Oh, that is all right," said Kitty. "Come and see him again soon,
doctor; remember I sent for you."
The doctor said he would come round again soon, and drove off--thinking
what a good little woman Kitty was, and wondering whether there was
anything more than pity in her feeling for that ne'er-do-weel Jack
Douglas.
"I trust she don't care for him, for I am afraid there would be only
trouble in it for her, however it turned out," he thought to himself.
The doctor was right; it turned out a very nasty case of fever, and for
weeks it looked very black. For a time `The Frozen Bar' lost its
popularity. Kitty was always afraid that her customers were making too
much noise, and in fact she showed that she would be more pleased if
they had kept away from her establishment altogether. She was very
seldom to be seen behind the bar, and when she was, there was none of
her old brightness and fun about her. The old merry, almost reckless,
look had left her, and there was a more tender and soft expression in
her face. She spent most of her time in a room behind the house--the
coolest and best bedroom she had. Its late tenant, one of her most
solvent boarders, had been somewhat disturbed and a good deal affronted
at being moved out of it, but Kitty was determined to have it for the
sick man, who for weeks was tossing on the bed in delirium. For a long
time he did not recognise her or know where he was; he was a boy at
school or a cadet at Sandhurst again. Then the delirium left him and he
knew her, though he hardly seemed to ask himself where he was or how she
came to be looking after him. Perhaps the hours that poor little Kitty
spent nursing him as he got better were some of the happiest in her
life. Then he was never happy when she was away from him, and he used
to watch her as a sick dog watches its master. He seemed so different,
so much more like what he had been once, and so unlike what he had
become on the Diamond Fields. When he grew stronger and able to talk
about how he became ill, tears came into his eyes when he thanked her
for her kindness. "If it had not been for you I should have gone up to
old Sloeman's place at the West End, and if I had not died there should
have become one of his lot," he said. "How good you have been to me!"
As he grew stronger she began to think that he knew her secret, and
there was something in his face which seemed to tell her that he felt
something more than gratitude for her. Then she hardly ever came near
him. He did not want any more nursing, she thought. It was the first
day he had got out of bed; she had been talking to him about himself in
her old cheery manner, telling him that if he choose to pull himself
together there was no reason why he should not succeed and do as well as
any one else, when what she had been half expecting for some time came.
"Hers was the only influence," he said, "which could keep him straight.
He knew she cared for him. If she would marry him he would be able to
keep away from drink."
Then she told him the truth. Yes, she did care for him, and would marry
if he wished it. But first of all he must show her that he could
reform; he must swear off drink, and what was more to the point, keep
off it too. She wasn't any great shakes, she knew, but she wasn't going
to marry a man who was always on the drink. She knew too much to do
that, she said.
He promised that he would reform, and it was agreed that they were to
wait for a year and then they were to be married and leave the Diamond
Fields, and go to some other colony. He was no great prize, this
shattered invalid, who was far more likely than not to return to his old
ways. But Kitty, for all that, had a hard struggle with herself not to
take him as he was, instead of waiting and perhaps losing him
altogether. "No, she would not marry him there, it wouldn't be fair to
him," she said; "she would wait till he was the man he was before he
ever took to drink, and then if he cared to marry her she would be the
proudest woman in the world."
Then she talked over a plan she had for him. She had bought some claims
in the Dutoitspan mine, and he must work them for her. She said she was
sure the ground would turn out well, and they would make lots of money.
He promised that he would turn over a new leaf, and he said and thought
too that she was the kindest-hearted and dearest little woman in the
world; and he felt eager to begin work, and show her what a splendid
specimen of the reformed character he was going to become.
That is how Jack Douglas, who had utterly gone to the bad in the opinion
of most men who knew him, got a start again.
Of course their claims ought to have turned out well, and they ought to
have found a big diamond which would have made their fortune all at
once. But Kitty's belief in the claims proved to be rather unfounded:
some weeks they paid expenses, some they did not. Jack Douglas ought at
once to have become a reformed character, but he did not. More than
once work was at a standstill in their claims for days, and he had to
come to Kitty, shamefaced and haggard, with a sad story of transgression
to tell. But she persuaded him to try again, and did her best to keep
him straight, and at last he became stronger and better. Men began to
think that he had some chance, he had been steady for a long time.
Kitty was going to succeed in making something of him. He began to take
some pride in himself, and at the end of twelve months he was a better
man than he had been for years.
At that time there was an outbreak of Kaffirs and Griquas on the border
of the province, and troops were raised on the Diamond Fields. There
was plenty of military enthusiasm. Times were bad, and the Diamond
Fields answered to the call for men to serve their country at five
shillings a day. Store-keepers who could supply uniforms, and
transport-riders who had waggons and oxen, came forward to help their
country in its hour of need at a considerable profit to themselves. For
Douglas, the chance was just what he longed for.
Kitty did not try to prevent him from going out, for she thought it was
the best thing he could do. She knew all his history now. How he had
got into some trouble at Sandhurst, and had been sent abroad by his
stern old uncle, who had determined not to leave the family acres to one
who, he thought, was certain only to bring disgrace upon his family.
She thought it only natural that he should wish to volunteer and take
the chance of showing that there was something in him. When the Diamond
Field Horse left the camp she went out to see them off, and felt proud
of her lover, as she saw him ride away in his troop. "He won't come
back a trooper," she said to herself, "if there is much fighting to be
done."
She was right about his not coming back a trooper. When there was any
work to be done, he was in the thick of it, and he had some
opportunities of showing that soldiering was a trade he was fit for.
Promotion, such as it is, comes quickly in a colonial corps, and when he
came back he had a commission. He came back a new man, proud of and
confident in himself. For years his life had been all down the hill,
and until Kitty had stretched out her kind little hand to help him,
every one had been content to speculate as to how long it would take him
to get to the bottom. Perhaps he would have hardly cared to think how
much she had done for him. She was so fond of him and proud of him, it
was only natural, he thought, but still it was gratifying. He was very
pleased to see her again, and her bright little face and cheery manner
were very charming to him.
He, of course, was conscious that he was going to marry beneath him.
Still he had a notion that he would get on better with Kitty than any
one else he had ever met. Though he was a gentleman of very excellent
family, he was not a very refined person, and Kitty's peculiarities of
manner were not drawbacks in his opinion.
The day for the wedding had been almost settled when the troubles in
Zululand began. Jack must needs go to it. It was too good a chance to
miss, and Kitty had to make up her mind to wait. So she said good-bye
to him, and he went off to join a corps of Irregular Colonial Horse as a
Captain. She stopped at Kimberley and looked after the `Frozen Bar.'
She was terribly anxious when the first bad news came from Zululand, and
until she heard that he was all right. But she tried to be brave and be
thankful that he was having a chance of distinguishing himself.
She prospered fairly well, though she began to encourage a class of
custom which was not very remunerative. The warriors who had served
with Jack in the Diamond Field Horse took to frequenting the bar. They
found that if they only talked enough about Jack, and told stories that
redounded to his credit, Kitty would take the cards they signed for
drinks in lieu of ready money without murmuring, and she would listen to
these stories, somewhat to the neglect of gentlemen of the diamond
market who, if their lives were less romantic, paid with greater
regularity for what they had to drink.
There was a good deal to do in Zululand for the Irregular Horse, and
when there was anything to be done, Jack was in his right place. He was
on the Zlobani Hill on that fatal day on which so many of the Light
Horse were killed. There were a good many brave deeds done that day,
comrade risking life to save comrade in that wild rush from the Kaffirs
who had again out-manoeuvred their white foes. Jack was cool and
collected on that day, as he usually was in danger. As he rode down the
hill for his life he heard a shout behind him. A young Guardsman, who
had come out on special service, had come to grief; his horse had been
killed and the Kaffirs were almost upon him. How Jack got through the
Kaffirs and managed to get away with the man he took up he hardly knows,
but he did, and he brought him back to safety.
It happened that the youngster whom Jack saved was the son of a great
English statesman, and heir to half a county; and this was all the
better for him, for nothing now-a-days gets much of a price unless it is
well advertised: and the brave deeds of soldiers (as some men have
learnt to their profit) are no exceptions to this rule.
As it was, Jack's deed was much written about by special correspondents,
and when the news came home, much talked about in London drawing-rooms;
and in time the news came out to South Africa, that Jack was to be made
a V.C.
When the news came to Kimberley, some one lent Kitty a packet of English
papers so that she could read what they were saying about Jack at home.
She had taken them and one of Jack's letters and had gone up the Garden,
as a desolate bit of land was called where some trees had been planted,
and some feeble attempt at gardening had been made; she wanted to be by
herself to think it all over.
She read all about Jack in the papers, and learnt that he was the nephew
of the General Douglas, who was a distinguished officer in the Crimea.
The report said he had been at Harrow, but was silent about his career
at Sandhurst.
The papers were full of him, and every one at home seemed to be proud of
the brave young colonial soldier, who at the peril of his life had saved
the high-born boy, about whom everybody was glad to have an excuse for
talking and writing. His picture was in two of the illustrated papers.
There was a leader about him in one of the dailies. Of course Kitty
thought the latter a very beautiful piece of writing, and wondered what
all the classical quotations meant, and who the long-named persons to
whom Jack was compared were. And this was the man who loved her--this
hero, this brave soldier. How she wished she was different from what
she was!--a lady who would be fit for him, not a poor half-taught woman,
who had lived a hard life amongst rough, coarse people, and had got the
little education she had from the bits of plays she had learnt and the
novels she had read, and the queer side of society which she had seen.
Well, if she was the finest lady in the world, she thought, she would
not be worthy of him. Cynical little Kitty, who was so well able to sum
any one up at their right value, and whose estimates were seldom too
favourable, had at last set up an idol which she bowed down before and
worshipped none the less reverently because her experience ought to have
taught her that it was made of rather poor clay. She had been sitting
some time thinking over her past, and wondering what her future would
be, torturing herself by doubting whether he really did care for her, or
could care for her, and reading over his letter again and again, when
she heard Jack Douglas's name spoken by some one. She was sitting on a
bench by a cactus hedge; there were two men on the other side who were
talking about him, as a good many people in Kimberley were. "I know all
about him," one man said; "he comes from the same part of the country
that I do. He would have had his uncle, General Douglas's property,
only he got into some row at Sandhurst, and his uncle said he had
disgraced himself, and turned him adrift. My people tell me that the
General intends to have him back again and forgive him, he is so pleased
at his getting the V.C. So he'd be all right, only he has been fool
enough to have got engaged to some woman out here. What's her name?
That woman who keeps `The Frozen Bar.'
"By George, what a fool! Not that she isn't a jolly little woman in her
way, but one wouldn't care to introduce her to one's people at home as
one's wife," said the other.
"Yes; I spoke to him about it when he was here last, but he didn't take
what I said over well. I fancy he knew he was making a fool of himself
and was sick of it, though it didn't matter then, as there wasn't much
chance of his uncle ever making it up with him," the other man said, and
then they began talking about something else, little knowing who had
overheard, and what a nasty wound their words had made.
Kitty sat still where she was, listening to the two men's voices. For
some minutes she felt numb and stupid, knowing that she was wounded
terribly, without knowing how or why. Then she began to realise what
the scrap of conversation she had overheard meant. "He was making a
fool of himself, he could not get out of it," that is what his friends
were saying about him, she thought to herself, and it was true enough
too, at least the first proposition was, she told herself. He had
talked of his early life to her once or twice, but always as something
that was past and gone, and which had nothing to do with him as he was
then. Now, however, she knew that he could go back to it if it were not
for her. He had got to choose between giving up his chance of returning
to it and giving her up; that was all. She could remember something in
his manner when she last saw him which she did not quite understand
then; now she knew what it meant--he knew he was making a fool of
himself.
Now, when he had distinguished himself he would feel this all the more.
She alone was keeping him from the life he was born for. Now when he
knew what he was giving up, what would he do? Would he come back to her
out of pity or duty or a sense of honour, or would he desert her? No,
he never should do that; she would never give him the chance. If he
married her how often he would repent it!--how often he would think of
what he had given up for her! "Yes," she thought to herself, as she
walked back to her house with all the gaiety and happiness taken out of
her life, "she saw her way."
Some weeks after Ulundi had been fought and the war was over, Jack
Douglas was sitting in an arm-chair at the Crown Hotel at Maritzburg,
reading a letter from England. It was from his uncle, the General, and
was to the point, as the old gentleman's letters usually were. He had
heard of Jack's gallant conduct, and was very pleased. He was content
to let bygones be bygones and receive him again. He was to come back
and live at the Hall, and he would have the place eventually. The
General went on to say that he had met with some one who knew of Jack at
Kimberley, and had heard an absurd story of his intending to make a
disgraceful marriage with a barmaid. If he intended to do that he need
not answer the letter; otherwise he had better come home as soon as the
war was over. Jack read the letter over and over again with a troubled
expression on his face. He did not like to give Kitty up. He was bound
not to. He remembered, and it was not a very pleasant memory, all she
had done for him, and what he probably would have been if she had not
again and again helped him up after he had slipped down. If it had not
been for her a broad arrow would as likely as not have been the
decoration which he would have gained. Then what a jolly, cheery,
bright little woman she was, and how devoted she was to him! He
wouldn't give her up, be hanged if he would; he had plenty of money in
his pocket, was thoroughly pleased with himself, and every one thought
him a very fine fellow, so he would do what he liked. He would write
the General a fine, manly letter, full of generous feeling, telling him
that he would not give up the woman who had done so much for him.
He sat down and wrote away, and then read his letter over. There was a
little too much tall talk in it; it was the sort of thing that would
make his uncle very angry. Jack tore it up. Then as he began to write
another letter he seemed to see the other side of the question. How
much he was giving up--a fine old place, as good a position as a man
could want, and instead of that he was to end his days in South Africa
or in some other colony. His V.C. would not be much good to him unless
he stuck to colonial soldiering, which was a poor life. No; he would
put off writing the letter. Then he remembered that he had not heard
from Kitty for some time. She used to send him every week a funny,
ill-spelt letter, in which all the gossip and news of Kimberley which
found its way to `The Frozen Bar'--and there was very little that did
not--was told very humorously. He would walk to the Post Office. On
his way he met several men he knew who were in high spirits because they
were going home. "Wasn't Jack going home too?" they asked. "What,
going to stop in that forsaken country! By Jove it seemed a pity too,
after he had scored so." However, they were too full of their own
affairs and the good time they intended to have, to trouble themselves
much about him. Jack, as he parted with them, felt he wished he was
going with them. It was useless to try not to regret it. He was giving
up a great deal for Kitty. He was a fine fellow, and as an honourable
man there was no other course for him to take, but it was a thousand
pities things did not arrange themselves better. There was a letter
from Kitty: but curiously enough it was dated from Capetown. At first,
as he read it, he hardly could understand it.
"Dear Jack,--
"It is all a mistake there being anything between you and me. We
don't suit. Your people would have nothing to do with me, and you had
better go home to them, now that every one must be proud of you. You
would break down as a returned prodigal if you had to answer for me as
well as yourself. Don't answer this letter, for I am sick of the
country, and before you get this shall have cleared. Kitty."
It would be difficult to describe Jack's feelings as he read this letter
again and again. At first he felt mortified to think that Kitty could
have persuaded herself to give him up. Then through the matter-of-fact
wording of the letter he saw the real state of the case, and knew that
she was giving him up, as she thought, for his good. He would follow
her, and tell her that he refused to be released from their engagement,
and tell her that after all she had done he cared more for her than he
did for England, or position, or anything else. Yes, that would be the
right thing to do, he told himself, only he remembered that he did not
know where she was, so he could not answer her letter or go to her.
Well, it was not his fault; if she would give him up he could not help
it. After all, the strongest feeling he experienced was one of relief.
He had got out of it. He would answer his uncle's letter and say
nothing about Kitty. What a lucky thing it was that he had put off
writing!
He did not, however, write by that mail. He went home by it himself,
instead. When he got home he was welcomed most cordially. His uncle
considered that he had atoned for the disgrace he had got into, and felt
that he could once more take a pride in his nephew, and think with
pleasure of his representing their family, and owning the old place when
he was gone.
Every one in the county agreed with the old General, and Jack was made
much of and looked upon as a hero. His uncle gave him some horses, and
he had plenty of hunting and shooting, and generally had a good time of
it. Of course he sometimes thought about Kitty, but when he did he half
confessed to himself that not for her or any one else would he give up
the life he was enjoying so much, and go back to South Africa. Besides,
he did not know where she was. He might have found out, however, for
she was at Kimberley, and was still the proprietress of `The Frozen
Bar.' She had never gone farther than Capetown; something told her that
she would not have much difficulty in defeating any attempt Jack might
make to find out where she had gone to. A list of passengers of a
steamer bound for home told her that she need not take any more trouble
on that score. He had taken her at her word, and had wasted very little
time in making up his mind to do so. Then she went back to `The Frozen
Bar,' for the treaty she was making for its sale was not concluded--and
she is there still. She has made a good deal of money, and lost the
greater part of it speculating in shares. And it is to her bad luck
that some people on the Diamond Fields attribute her being a little more
hard and bitter than she was. Still, she is good-natured and
kind-hearted, and ready to help people who are in trouble, though she is
not likely to have a more tender feeling than pity for any one. The
other day she saw Jack's wedding in an English paper. He married a lady
of good family and some property, who was fascinated by his good looks
and his reputation as a hero. He is prosperous and respected, and he
has almost forgotten all about the days when he seemed to be such a
hopeless ne'er-do-well.
Story 3.
DIAMOND CUT DIAMOND.
It was a delightfully cool evening, after a hot dusty day on the Diamond
Fields, and Mr Moses Moss, attorney-at-law of Kimberley, South Africa,
was sitting under the verandah of his house, smoking a cigar, and
sipping a cool drink as it was his custom to do before turning in for
the night. As he smoked his thoughts turned to his prospects and his
position, and on the whole they were of a somewhat cheerful and
self-satisfied character. It was only a few years since he had hurried
away from England a broken man. He had found the temptations to
overstep the boundary which separates sharp from malpractice too much
for him, and his conduct had attracted the meddlesome attentions of the
Incorporated Law Society, who had made itself very disagreeable indeed
to him. The time he had spent on the Diamond Fields, however, had done
wonders. He was worth a nice little sum of money; and as an attorney
and money-lender he had got together a very lucrative connection.
On the Diamond Fields he had remembered his English experiences. They
had taught him the good old maxim, that honesty was the best policy, and
this had been the golden rule of his life, which he had always acted
upon so far as compatible with the practice of an attorney whose clients
happen, as a matter of fact, to be men of somewhat shady characters.
However, he kept always on the windy side of the law, although the
temptations to go just a little crooked were very strong. There were at
that time many diamonds to be bought, for very reasonable prices, by
persons who were content to buy under circumstances which the law
punished with great severity. Mr Moss had come to the conclusion,
however, that dealing in stolen diamonds was too risky a business to
follow. He used to make it his boast that he hardly knew a rough
diamond when he saw one, and he said that he never wished to have any
dealings in them. Indirectly, of course, he--like every one else on the
Diamond Fields--lived by diamonds. His clients as a rule were in what
was called the illicit. But he could not help that, he said. Of course
he was happy enough to defend any one who had got into trouble for
buying stolen diamonds. Then if any one came to him to borrow money it
was not his business to ask questions as to what the money was wanted
for. The money was generally wanted at once, and gold rather than notes
or cheques was in request. But those circumstances did not suggest
anything to Mr Moss, or if they did, he kept his thoughts to himself.
He was too busy in considering the large percentage he could charge and
the security he could get to bother himself about matters that did not
concern him. He did not wish to be told anything about what his clients
thought of doing with the money they came to him hurriedly to borrow.
When on one occasion a man who wanted a hundred pounds in gold at once
was indiscreet enough to blurt out something about having a chance to
get hold of a `big un' for that sum which was worth ten times the money,
Mr Moss was very much hurt at being asked to share any such guilty
knowledge. He certainly did not go so far as to refuse to entertain the
loan, but he took care to ease his conscience by charging an extra
twenty per cent.
Some people said that Mr Moss in a way avenged the claimholders who
suffered from the depredations of the illicit diamond-buyers, and that
he preyed upon them as they preyed on the mining interest, and there is
no doubt a good share of the price of many a stolen diamond got into his
clutches. It was characteristic of the sources from which he acquired
his money, that the very house in which he lived should have once
belonged to one Ike Hart, who in his day had been a very notorious buyer
of stolen diamonds, and had flourished wonderfully until he bought one
diamond too many, which happened to have been sent him by the police.
He had had the advantage of Mr Moss's professional assistance at his
trial and advice about his private affairs. Mr Hart had been
convicted, and had been sent to do a sentence of hard labour on the
Capetown Breakwater, and Mr Moss had become possessed of his house.
Ike Hart was said to have sworn that he would be even with Moss, and to
have declared that he had been robbed. However, Mr Moss felt
satisfied, as he reviewed his career, that he had never done anything
that the law could take hold of. If in one or two cases he had grabbed
somewhat greedily at his clients' property, those clients were out of
the way of harming him, and there was not the slightest chance of his
being made to disgorge any of the plunder he had got together.
Mr Moss's house stood back from the road in a good-sized garden--if you
could call a place a garden in which nothing grew but a few cacti and a
mass of straggling tobacco-trees--which was separated from the road by a
high, corrugated-iron fence.
As Mr Moss smoked in his verandah, he began to think that amongst the
bushes at the end of the garden he could distinguish a form of a man
stooping over the ground. At first he felt nervous; then he became
curious, as he made the figure out more clearly. It certainly was the
figure of a man, and he seemed to be digging for something. "What was
he after? What could he hope to find?" Mr Moss asked himself.
He would find out that for himself, he determined. So he got up, and
slinking along very quietly in the shade of the fence, he crept up close
to the man who, for reasons best known to himself, had visited his
compound at night. The man went on working without noticing him. He
was digging into the ground with a broken bit of spade, and seemed to be
very intent upon what he was about.
Close to where the man was digging there was a water-barrel, and Mr
Moss got behind it, and watched his visitor with considerable interest.
When Mr Moss called to mind who the former owner of the premises was,
he began to have a suspicion of what his visitor was looking for. He
remembered that there had been some talk of Ike Hart's having several
big diamonds hidden away when he was arrested. The man dug for some
time, then scratched about with his hands in the hole, then measured
from the wall with a tape-measure, and then set to work again. All of a
sudden he threw down the spade and picked something up.
Mr Moss's heart gave a jump when he saw this. The man had picked up a
bundle of rag in which something seemed to be wrapped. The stranger
unfolded it, and as he did so Mr Moss sprang from behind the
water-barrel, and placed his hand on his shoulder.
"Who are you? and what's that you have found in my garden? Come, drop
it, or I will call the police," Mr Moss said, for the other was an
undersized, slight man, and he did not feel very much afraid of him.
"Leave me alone! keep your hands off, or I will make a hole in yer!" the
man answered. As he spoke the attorney saw that he had something in his
hand which glistened rather nastily in the moonlight.
"Put up that knife, or I will shout out; there is a policeman at the
corner of the road, most likely, and they can hear me at the house
across the road," he said.
"Leave me alone, then, and I will clear out. I don't want to have
nothing to do with you," the man said; and he gave a wriggle away.
"Give me what you have just taken from my garden, then," said Mr Moss;
"it belongs to me--I saw you pick up the--"
"Hush! you fool!" the man said, interrupting him. "Maybe there is a
peeler outside in the road, and they would hear that word if they were
within half a mile of us."
"Look here, my man, you don't think I'm going to let you take away what
you have just found--you haven't got a prospecting licence to look for
diamonds in my garden, so just give it up, and I will say nothing about
what I caught you at."
"You bet you won't, but it happens the diamond is mine. The party who
planted it there left it me; that party was poor Ike Hart, who died the
other day in Capetown jail, that's where I've just come from. When poor
old Ike saw he weren't going to live to get out, he manages to tell me
about this. He was a pal of mine, was Ike, and he thought he'd do me a
good turn. I've tramped up here from Capetown to get this big 'un."
"See here, my man," said Mr Moss, "I don't want to be hard on you. You
say you have a right to the diamond because Ike Hart gave it you--I say
it's mine because it's in my garden. Suppose we compromise the matter;
come into my house, and we will talk it quietly over."
"I don't mind going into your house, gov'ner, but keep your hands off
me, or you'll have more than you like," the little man said, emphasising
his remarks with a gesture with the knife, which made the attorney feel
uncomfortable.
"Now, gov'ner, what's yer game? If you won't speak first, I will.
Come, you've got into this by seeing what you have seen, and I don't
mind speaking out fair. What do you say to halves?" the man said, after
he had sat down in a chair in Mr Moss's sitting-room. "There's enough
for us both, seems to me. Ike Hart told me he could easily have got
eight thou, for it, and he intended to have taken it home if he hadn't
been run in."
"Eight thousand! You're talking nonsense. Hart was not such a fool as
to think that; but let's have a look at it," Mr Moss said, as he got a
glance at the stone which the other held in his hand.
"No, you don't, gov'ner," the man said, as Mr Moss stretched out his
hand for the diamond.
The attorney thought for a minute or two. For a second the idea flashed
across his mind that it might be a police trap. He had never bought a
diamond illegally before, and the laws against having rough diamonds in
your possession unless you could account for them, and were either a
licensed dealer or buyer, were very strict. If he kept the diamond in
his possession, instead of giving it up to the Crown, he would be
committing a criminal offence, for which he would be liable to a severe
punishment. He did not believe that the police would try to trap him.
Besides, he was impressed with his visitor's manner, and thought that he
seemed to be anxious to keep the diamond. Moss looked at the diamond,
and thought that it was the biggest stone he had ever seen, and he began
to long to get it into his possession. He did not, as he said, know
much about diamonds, but no one could have lived a few months on the
Diamond Fields without knowing that such a stone as the one he saw was
worth a great deal of money. Ike Hart was probably right; it was likely
enough that he could have got eight thousand for it, and that it was
really worth much more. As Mr Moss looked at it, a reckless greed came
over him, and he determined that he would have it.
"Well, I suppose we needn't quarrel; your offer is a fair one, we will
go halves; and as you know me and I don't know you, I will have the
diamond and will give you your share when I sell it; I dare say I can
dispose of it more advantageously than you can," he said, smiling
blandly at his visitor.
"Dare say you can, gov'ner; but I sticks to it till I get the pieces for
it," was the answer. And nothing that the attorney could urge would
shake his determination.
Mr Moss generally had in a safe in his house a large sum of money in
notes and gold. The people who came to borrow from him often preferred
money to cheques on bankers, and they would often pay well for change.
At that time it happened that he had a thousand sovereigns tied up in
canvas bags in his safe, which he had procured for a customer whom he
had reason to believe would come to him the next day. So after he had
in vain tried to persuade the other to trust him with the diamond, he
determined that he would then and there buy him out; and he hoped that
the sight of the gold would be more than the other could stand, and that
he would be induced to sell very cheap.
Mr Moss opened the safe, eyeing his visitor somewhat mistrustfully as
he did so.
"Well, it happens I can buy the stone from you at once. I happen to
have a hundred pounds--it's a good bit of money to pay for one's own
property, for that diamond is my property; but there, it's your luck.
Now hand it over, and let's have a look," Moss said, as he held out his
hand for the stone.
The little man put the stone down on a piece of white paper on the
table. "Hands off, gov'ner," he said, emphasising his words with a
motion with the knife; "put down the pieces alongside, and we will say
if it's a deal."
Moss got out a bag containing a hundred sovereigns, and opening it he
put it down on the table.
"It ain't a deal, gov'ner, it wants a lot more than that lot to buy my
diamond. Bless yer, Ike Hart told me what it was worth. It's worth
twenty times that to me, and a lot more to a gent like you," the little
man said, but Moss noticed that his eyes glistened at the sight of the
gold, and he looked at it hungrily. However, when Moss declared he had
no more money, the man put the diamond back in his pocket and made as if
he intended to go away. Moss determined that he would get hold of the
diamond. What did a hundred pounds more or less matter? that stone was
worth a fortune. He determined he would not miss it. If he could only
summon up courage to snatch up a revolver that was on the top of his
safe, he might get hold of the diamond without paying for it.
The little man's eyes followed his. "Look 'ere, gov'ner, don't yer try
that game on. If yer was to reach, I shall have to stick this into yer,
and may be we would be both sorry when it was too late," he said.
Moss knew that he daren't carry out the little idea that had come into
his mind. If he got the diamond he would have to pay for it, so he took
down another bag; then he shut up the safe to show that no more money
was forthcoming. But it was no good.
"Four thousand sovereigns Ike said any of the big illicit buyers would
give me for it," the little man said.
Moss began to think that they probably would, and he began to feel
afraid that the prize was going to slip away from him. Then he took
down another bag, and after that another, and another, until he had
offered all the money he had. Then at last the man seemed to be unable
to stand the sight of so much money.
"Well, it's cruel to let a stone like this go for that lot; but there,
if you've no more pieces, and 'olds to your claim to the diamond,
anythink for a quiet life. It's a bargain--lend me something to put the
stuff in." There was a black travelling-bag in the room, and into this
the contents of the canvas bags were poured. The cheerful clinking of
the sovereigns was anything but grateful music to Mr Moss; it seemed
like giving away the money, for if he had only chanced to find the
diamond first it would have been his for nothing. His visitor, however,
listened as if the sound was a pleasing novelty to him. For all that,
as he slouched out with the bag in his hand, he grumbled out something
about having thrown away a fortune, and it was enough to make Ike Hart
turn in his grave for him to have let the stone go so cheap.
When he was left alone Mr Moss thought that under the circumstances he
might indulge in the luxury of another cigar, and another glass of
Hollands. As he smoked he thought of the wonderful diamond he had
bought, and what he could do with it. It was a wonderful stone indeed,
he had never seen a bigger, and the colour seemed good enough. A
thousand pounds was a good lot of money to venture in a business a man
knew so little about as Mess did about diamonds; still he felt very
confident that there was a good deal more to be made out of it. The
worst of it was that the law would prove a terrible stumbling-block to
him. He began to feel quite nervous when he thought that if the police
only knew of his having the diamond in his possession, they could seize
it, and haul him off to the jail. For the first time he had gone wrong
about a diamond, and laid himself open to the very stringent penalties
which are imposed upon the unlawful possession of diamonds. He knew
that by the ordinance he would be bound to give up to the police the
diamond that had been found in his garden. However, he thought he knew
a trick worth two of that. After he had smoked for some time a plan
came into his head, which, as he thought over it, seemed to be
excellent. He invented a history for the diamond that had come into his
possession, which would enable him to deal with it boldly and openly.
It should make him famous as the man who found the great Moss Diamond.
The newspapers should all write about him, and he would show his
wonderful gem at Windsor Castle.
Then the money that he would sell it for--that was the pleasantest
thought of all, and Mr Moss wove all sorts of blissful visions of the
future as he looked into the smoke of his cigar.
Jobling's Sell is a not over prosperous digging on the banks of the Vaal
River. Who Jobling was, and what his Sell might have been, are now
rather matters of legend than history, so long ago do the days seem when
the place was first rushed, though, as a matter of fact, it is
considerably less than twenty years ago. The story goes that Jobling
was a wily speculator in strong drinks, and other necessaries, who,
having laid in a stock of brandy and groceries, repaired to the spot
afterwards named after him, and managed to promote a rush to it by
spreading false news of many diamonds having been found there. It is
said that Jobling got into rather hot water for this, and was sentenced
by a jury of diggers to be dragged through the river as a punishment for
having created a bogus rush. But just at the critical moment when the
sentence was going to be executed some one found a diamond. Then
several other good diamonds were found, and it turned out that Jobling,
whatever his intentions might have been, really had been a great
benefactor. It is certainly a matter of history that Jobling's Sell was
a wonderfully paying place in its palmy day, before it was more or less
worked out. Old Hawkins, who had wandered all over the world as a
gold-digger, but had for some reason or other taken root at Jobling's,
was the only digger who remained on there from the old days.
The rest of its population were men who went there for a spell, after
having tried other digging on the river, and soon gave it up. Hawkins
liked to talk of the big diamonds he had seen found there. Or he would
walk along the banks and point out where the big hotel used to be, and
where the gambling saloons stood in the days when Jobling's Sell boasted
of all the properties of a prosperous mining camp. Those days were
over, and the thirty or so diggers who formed the camp only made enough
to live on. One Saturday afternoon a knot of them were collected at the
solitary canteen which supplied the wants of Jobling's Sell. They were
not drinking more than was good for them, for money was scarce, and the
host, though he swaggered to strangers much about the future in store
for `Jobling's,' did not back up his faith by showing any willingness to
score up drinks to its present population.
"Say, boys, have you heard about old Mick Hawkins's luck?" said a big
man with a black beard, Jack Austin by name, who was lounging at the
bar.
"No,--what? Has he found anything big?" asked another man.
"Well, he has found a man who is flat enough to give him a ten-pound
note for his claim. It is a Kimberley Jew who has made that
investment," answered Austin.
"Never met with that sort of Jew, and I have seen a good bit of them in
one country or another," said another man, who was believed to have had
a very varied experience of life, before he found himself digging on the
banks of the Vaal River.
"Well, it's a solid fact; Hawkins showed me the ten-pound note, and he
would be here now spending it, only the new proprietor of that claim of
his has promised him five pounds a week to work for him."
"Things are looking up at last, boys," said the proprietor of the
canteen. "I told you they would soon recognise the splendid openings
for investment there are down the river. What will you take, boys?
Have a drink with me just for luck."
No one refused the offer, though the enthusiasm the landlord expressed
was not shared by the others.
After they had emptied their glasses, some one suggested that they
should go round to Hawkins's claim, and with that intention they lounged
out of the canteen, and strolled along the bank in that direction.
"Stop, boys, and watch 'em; why it makes quite a picture. Did you ever
see such a fool?" said Austin, holding up his hand and pointing to an
opening in the thorn trees and underwood, through which they could get a
view of the Hawkins's claim.
The claim was one which had been almost worked out in the days when the
place was first rushed. Hawkins, a grizzled old fellow, was seated with
a pipe in his mouth, watching two Kaffirs picking away at the side of
the claim, filling buckets with the gravel, which another Kaffir was
carrying across to the sorting-table, at which the new proprietor of the
claim was seated. That person was no other than our old friend, Mr
Moses Moss. He was got up as a digger, wearing a red flannel shirt, and
a very broad-brimmed hat, and he had put on, though there was no
particular use for them, a pair of long boots.
"Looks as though he was going to find a diamond every minute; he will
tire a bit of the game before long," Jack Austin said, as he watched the
new arrival on the river. "The doctor ordered him an open-air life, so
he gave up his practice. He was a lawyer in Kimberley, and down he
comes here to dig. Did any one ever hear of such a thing?"
"Hullo, by God, what's his game now? What's he up to? Blessed if I
don't believe he has found!" another digger said, as to their surprise
Moss suddenly threw his hat into the air with a tremendous shout of
triumph.
"Hullo, mate, what are you up to now? what do yer think you have got
hold of?" growled out old Hawkins, as he came up with his pipe in his
mouth.
"A diamond!--a wopping big diamond! Oh, hurrah! hurrah!" Mr Moss
cried, executing a dance of triumph.
The other men crowded round Moss, eager to see what he had found.
Hawkins looked rather mortified. It was somewhat annoying that a
diamond should have been found in his claim the day after he sold it.
His expression, however, changed a good deal when the other handed him
the diamond.
"Say, did you find this just now; it's a mighty rum thing to find in a
claim; why--" Hawkins was grumbling out, when Austin gave him a kick,
and motioned to him to keep quiet.
"Magnificent diamond, sir; the finest stone that ever has been found.
Did ever man see such luck? Here you come down just for a lark, and
find a fortune; but there, luck is one of the queerest things out!"
Jack Austin said.
"Well, I _am_ lucky, I don't mind owning it; but there, boys, come and
have a drink, every blessed one of you, to celebrate the biggest diamond
that ever has been found down the river, which you just saw me find,"
Mr Moss said, and the diggers seemed to fall in with his humour
willingly enough, following him without any more pressing to the
canteen.
Jack Austin might have been noticed to wink slightly at the proprietor
of the canteen, before the diamond was shown to the latter. His
enthusiasm when he saw it was unbounded.
"Knocks the Komnoor into a cocked hat. I always said we would show 'em
all the way, some day. What's it to be, sir, champagne--I've got a case
in stock?" he said, and in a few second she was opening a case, and
getting out some bottles.
The wine was some which the canteen-keeper had bought at a sale in
Kimberley. It was a remnant which had failed to please the not over
critical taste of the Fields. He had bought it very cheap, and had kept
it by him, knowing that on any extraordinary occasion, when a demand
arose for it on the river, its want of quality would not matter. As the
wine was being got out, Jack Austin touched the lucky digger on the
shoulder.
"Beg pardon, sir, but about old Hawkins; what are you going to do for
him? It's a bit hard on him, seeing a stone like this found after he
has just sold his claim."
"Hard! bless me no--a bargain is a bargain. I bought the claim for good
or bad."
"Well, that's true enough; but he might make himself a bit nasty about
it. You see it's rather a rum start your finding a stone like that in
the ground you were working, and Hawkins might get talking, and people
are apt to be a bit uncharitable."
Mr Moss looked a little uncomfortable. The man was right. Hawkins
ought to be put into a good temper, and after some little talk he took
out a cheque-book and wrote out a cheque for fifty pounds, for Austin
had suggested that it would be as well to give it to Hawkins at once,
before he began to talk.
Hawkins took the cheque, looking very stolid. Soon after he got it he
hurried away, and might have been seen tramping across the veldt towards
Kimberley, where he changed it.
When the glasses were filled, Jack Austin called to the company to drink
to the health of Mr Moss, the lucky digger, who had just found the big
diamond.
"He has just given our friend Hawkins another fifty, on account of the
claim in which it was found. So you see he is a generous man, besides
being an honest digger, and a jolly good chap," Jack said.
Mr Moss was much struck with the thirstiness of the river-diggers. The
news of the find had very quickly travelled down the banks of the Vaal,
and men from various other camps looked into the canteen. When they
finished the champagne they set to work at the brandy, and then at the
square gin, and the Cape smoke. Nothing seemed to come amiss to them.
There was one peculiarity in their manners, which somewhat amazed Mr
Moss. They had a curious way of bursting into laughter about nothing at
all, as far as he could see. They did not show any envy, but to a man
were full of a generous wish to drink with the fortunate finder. Their
estimate of the value of the diamond was somewhat vague. One said fifty
thou, another laughed at the idea of fifty thousand buying it, and
seemed to have quite a contempt for such a paltry sum of money; though
he would have had to have searched a long time in the pockets of his
trousers before he could find sixpence. "A hundred thou, more like,
that's what it's worth," he said, pretty confidently.
"Nice chap he is, to talk about a hundred thou. I think I have spent
about enough money on that lot," Moss thought to himself. He hated
spending money, but still he thought that the more delighted he appeared
to be about his find, the more genuine the find would seem to be. When
the stock-in-trade of the canteen was just giving out, a man from
Kimberley, whom Moss knew, came into the canteen. He was a
diamond-buyer, of the name of Jacobs, and Moss rejoiced to think that at
last he would be able to get a good opinion as to the value of his find.
"Well, Moss, what's this I hear about your having turned digger, and
found all at once? You have wonderful luck; show us the stone," the
new-comer said.
"Well, you can have a look at it, though I don't suppose it is much in
your way," Moss said, as he gave it him.
"My eye, it's a big 'un!" said the diamond-buyer, and then his
expression changed. "What on earth is your game?" he asked. "Who are
you trying to get at?"
"What's my game? why I want to know how much that is worth. You won't
buy it yourself, I know, because you're only a small man; but what do
you put its price down as?"
"Well, about half-a-crown, may be more, may be less; it's a pretty
clever sell too," was to the astonishment of Moss the answer he
received. "Why, Moss, you don't mean to say any one has been fooling
you with this."
"Fooling me! What do you mean? Don't play any tricks with me, for I
can't stand it. Do you mean to tell me that ain't a diamond?"
"Diamond, of course it ain't a diamond!--not a real one, that's to say,
it's a sham 'un. I have never seen one before, but I have heard of 'em
before. Joe Aavons, who you know of, got them made for him at home
somewhere, and he has sold one or two of 'em at night to illicit
diamond-buyers."
The man's face told Moss that he was in earnest, and a roar of laughter
from the diggers confirmed him.
"Well, mate, how about the big diamond; is it fifty or a hundred thou,
that it's worth?" Jack Austin said, and the others gave vent to the
suppressed merriment of the last few hours in a yell of laughter. It
was too bad, Moss thought, to treat him like that, after they had got
him to pay for their liquor. It was terrible for him to think of the
money he had lost, if his purchase turned out to be worthless.
"Yes, that is one of Joe Aavons' diamonds. I'll bet little Dick Starks
has been working 'em off for Joe, and they say they have made a lot of
money out of them."
"Look here, what is Dick Stark like?" Moss asked, rather eagerly.
"He is a little chap, with a cast in one eye, and red hair. He is a
pretty sharp customer, is Dick."
Moss recognised the description only too well as that of the man whom he
had seen find the diamond. Without saying another word he left the
canteen. The next day old Hawkins took possession again of his claim;
for Mr Moss was never seen more at Jobling's Sell.
The story, however, very soon followed him back to Kimberley, and the
circumstances under which he was persuaded to pay a thousand pounds for
the diamond became well-known; for Messrs. Aavons and Stark, who were
much elated at their success, told their particular friends, who
repeated the story. Mr Moss never quite got over it; and though he
never had any more transactions in diamonds he ceased to boast about his
honesty, or even make any allusion to his knowledge of precious stones.
Story 4.
THE FARM BOSCHFONTEIN.
Chapter One.
"If we could get hold of one of these mines between us, we would show
them how to work it, I guess. We wouldn't fool around the camp trying
to float a company and let a lot of local men into the thing. We'd go
straight home and give the British public a turn. Couldn't you fancy
yourself as the South African millionnaire chairman of the Great Diamond
Mining Company, with a house in Belgrave Square, a country house with a
blessed big park round it, the favourite for the Derby in training at
Newmarket, and the best of everything that money could buy, eh, Timson?"
"Don't, Hardman, don't! I can't bear to think of it. The chances some
of 'em here have had and the way they have thrown 'em away! If I had
only been in their place I'd have done something for myself, but I came
here too late."
"Too late be blowed! there are as good fish in the sea as ever came out,
and there are as rich mines lying unworked and undisturbed as any that
have been found, that's my opinion. How do we know that there is not
another mine as rich as Kimberley on which the grass and bush are
growing, and the spring bucks are playing? We may be sitting on just
such a mine now, for all you know."
"By Jove! it's enough to make a fellow wild when he thinks of the
fortune that may be waiting for him to be picked up; but what's the good
of thinking of it? No one has found a diamond mine that would pay to
work since Kimberley was opened."
"What of that? They have found a dozen places such as we have seen
to-day, where there are diamonds in small quantities. Mark my words:
sooner or later they will drop on to a place which will make the
Kimberley mine pretty sick, and if we could only get hold of such a
mine, you with your knowledge of business and the City of London, and
me--well, I know my way about--what couldn't we do with it?"
As he spoke, Mr Bill Hardman glanced at his companion, and an ominous
smile played across his swarthy face. His words had evidently told with
a good deal of effect.
The two men were on their way home from an expedition from Kimberley, to
a mining camp in the Orange Free State. So it was not surprising that
as they smoked their pipes under the shade of their Cape cart, after an
excellent luncheon, their conversation should turn to the topic which in
Griqualand West exercised men's minds most, diamonds and diamond mining.
Bill Hardman was about forty-five, and there was something about him
which suggested that he had knocked about the world a good deal. He was
not a bad-looking man, but every now and then an expression came into
his face which gave one an unpleasant impression, and suggested that he
might be rather dangerous, either as a friend or an enemy. For years he
had been a well-known character on the Diamond Fields, and there were
many stories told about him which bore witness rather to his astuteness,
than to his integrity. He called himself a digger, but no one could
remember his owning a claim or doing any work. The calling to which he
devoted himself in the early days of the Fields was that of an exponent
of faro, roulette, poker, and other games, more or less of chance.
Afterwards, when what was called the company mania broke out, rotten
scrip and a rigged share market gave him more scope for speculation, and
he became a comparatively respectable member of society. But
notwithstanding his respectability, many of those who knew most about
him would have considered that Mr Timson was not very prudent in
choosing him for a companion.
The latter was a young man of about twenty-five; his get-up, sleek,
fresh-complexioned face and plump figure had a very English look, and he
seemed as if he would be far more at home eating at a luncheon bar in
the City, than picnicking on the South African veldt. Though he had not
been very long in South Africa and knew little of the country, he
believed very much in himself and in his business knowledge, and had a
very great contempt for the people he found himself amongst. He had
brought out a few thousand pounds with him and had done very well in his
speculations, doubling his capital again and again, which was not
difficult in those days of wild speculation, when every investment was
going up. About that time people on the Diamond Fields had gone mad on
the subject of new mines, even old hands who had seen place after place
reported to be very rich turn out a failure, were again taking the fever
for prospecting, while men who had just come out from home were simply
delirious with it. To a new hand there is a singular charm in the idea
of a new mine, and Mr Timson found the fascination of this form of
speculation simply irresistible. Mr Hardman also had turned his
attention to prospecting, and on this common interest the two men had
struck up a very intimate acquaintanceship.
"Yes," said Hardman, after they had smoked in silence for some time,
"the place we saw to-day may be payable, but there ain't much to be done
with it. What one wants is to get on to a mine on private property,
with no reservation of minerals to the Crown, so that one could get the
whole mine into one's hands."
"Fancy that, now, buying a farm for a few hundreds on which there might
be a mine worth millions and millions. But we have got to find it, and
without the owner or any one else knowing anything about it!" said Mr
Timson, as much to himself as to his companion.
"Right you are, Smarty! we have got to do that. It's well enough to
talk as one smokes one's pipe; but it's a hundred to one, one never gets
such a chance. For all that, mind you, the chance may come; that's what
living in a mining country means. There is always the hope of a big
fortune for the man who knows how to make the most of his luck."
Mr Timson listened to the other, and began to indulge in a delicious
day-dream of what he would do, and how he would live if he were the
owner of a diamond mine, with hundreds of pounds a day to spend. If it
were only possible, he thought--possible! it was possible, he declared
to himself, as he thought how fortunate he had been already. He was
half asleep and half awake when he was woke up by hearing a strange
voice inquiring the way to Pneil, a digging on the Vaal River some
twenty-five miles off. The new-comer, who was on foot, was a tall man
with a long beard; he was dressed in tattered clothes, and had on an old
hat which had seen many years' service. He looked travel-worn and
tired; as Timson looked at him, he noticed a peculiar scar on his face
and a curious droop in one eyelid.
Hardman told him the distance. "It's a long stretch and a sandy road;
you had better sit down and take a drink," he added, pouring some beer
out into a glass as he spoke.
"It's a long time since I had a glass of beer," the stranger said as he
emptied the glass.
"How's that? been sworn off?" asked Hardman.
"No, nor much need to. I've been living where you don't get many
chances of taking too much to drink; a hundred miles beyond the Tati
Gold-Fields. I've tramped it down and had a pretty hard time of it."
"Well, you'd better take a rest and have something to eat," said
Hardman, as he pushed a plate and some cold meat towards the stranger,
who, without any more pressing, accepted the other's hospitality, and
after he had made a good meal, filled his pipe and smoked for some time
without joining in the conversation, the other two going on talking
about diamonds and new mines.
At last he broke in: "Have they worked out the New Rush, the Colesberg
Kopje, as they called it?"
"Colesberg Kopje, did you say? Why, that's the Kimberley mine. No,
it's not worked out and won't be in our time," answered Hardman.
"You mean they have abandoned it 'cause they have found a richer place?"
"Abandoned it! Not they; there is no place one third as rich as
Kimberley mine!"
"Ain't there though, mate; you mean they haven't found one yet," said
the stranger. "Well, I'd have thought some one would have tumbled on to
it by this time!" he added, more to himself than to the others, though
Mr Timson heard him and pricked up his ears.
"I suppose they don't go prospecting much now-a-days?" the stranger
asked after a second or two.
"There is a bit of it being done just now," replied Hardman; "but they
haven't come across a second Kimberley yet."
"So they go out prospecting still. Well, I suppose men will always keep
on at that game. I have done a good lot of it in my time. I'd have
been a happy man with a home of my own instead of the miserable devil I
am now if I had only let it alone."
"So you broke yourself and lost your money prospecting! Well, others
have done pretty much the same," said Hardman.
"Lost my money! No, I found as rich a place as you want to come across
and got plenty of diamonds, but they cost me dear."
"You found as rich a place as one wants to come across, did you?" said
Mr Timson, who was all attention. "Whereabouts was that, now?"
The stranger did not answer his question, and for some time sat wrapped
in his thoughts, which seemed to be gloomy enough. Then, with the air
of one who could only get relief by telling his story, he spoke: "I say
that prospecting trip cost me dear, and so you will say when you have
heard my story. I must tell it, though it's not the sort of tale most
men would pan out to two strangers; but I must speak out, for I have
done nothing but think over this for eight years, and feel that I should
be easier in my mind for making a clean breast of it to some one or the
other before I die. Prospecting! well, I've done about as much of
prospecting as any man. They called me the Demon Prospector in
Australia and New Zealand, and well they might, for I have found three
payable gold-fields in my time. I did more good to others than to
myself, though, for I could never stop in one place long, and would
often turn my back upon a certainty to wander away after that
wonderfully rich gold field I was always dreaming of. Still I did not
do so badly, and before I came over to this country I had made a little
money. And I had what was better than money--a home of my own and a
wife, not the sort of wife many a digger with his belt full of gold-dust
picked up in those days, but an English girl who had not been long out
from home. She had come out with her father, who had collected the
little money he had, and gone to try for a fortune in the land of gold.
He lost his money, as a new chum will lose his money, and died leaving
her alone. I don't believe she only married me for a home; once she
really cared for me--but you find this yarn a bit long, don't you?" he
said, looking at Mr Timson, who was not in the slightest degree
interested in his domestic history.
"About the place where you found all those diamonds, where was that?"
said the latter.
"Let him _rip_ and he will come round to it; don't pump him too much or
you'll spoil a good thing," whispered Hardman. "Go on, mate," he added,
"I like to hear you."
"Well, we were married in Sydney a few months after her father died, and
we lived there for a bit, when I heard of the Diamond Fields breaking
out in this country, and nothing would do for me but I must come over
here. We got up here some months before the dry diggings were found,
and I tried my luck at the river where all the diggers were then. I
chose Pneil, where there were a good many men doing fairly well. I put
up a stone shanty amongst the trees near the river, and we were fairly
comfortable and happy enough. I found pretty well, and began to believe
that my old restless spirit had left me, for I didn't seem to want to go
prospecting, but was willing enough to stop on there. After a bit the
dry diggings were found and many of the diggers left the river for them,
but still I stayed on at Pneil. Then I heard of the New Rush being
opened, and how men were finding sackfuls of diamonds. I went over and
saw the new diggings, and after that I could not be contented at the
river. I had noticed the lay of the ground of the dry diggings, and I
felt sure that there must be lots of spots where diamonds were to be
found in quantities. Then the old instinct came over me and I longed to
go off prospecting. At last I felt I could stay where I was no longer.
My wife didn't like my leaving her by herself, for the other women at
Pneil were not much company for her, and she had very few friends.
About the only person she seemed to care to speak to was a man who had
come over with us from Australia, who was staying at the other side of
the river helping to keep a canteen. He was an educated man, one of the
broken-down gentleman kind, and could make himself agreeable enough, but
I never liked him very much. He was no good and would never do any
honest work. He had come to grief in the old country by gambling, and
was just turning from a pigeon into a rook, but there was something
about him that women found very fascinating. Well, to cut my story
short, I went off prospecting. I would stay away a week or so at a
time. Looking back now it seems to me that after the first time my wife
didn't seem to mind my going so much. At last, after trying in one
place and then another, I did find the sort of place I was looking for.
It was out yonder," said the prospector, as he stretched out his brown
hand and pointed in the direction of a ridge of hills in the far
distance. Mr Timson's eyes glistened with excitement. He had never
heard of any diamond mine being found in that direction.
"Yes, sir," continued the stranger, "if the New Rush is as rich as the
place I found, it is a deal better than I ever heard it was. I was
working out yonder myself, but I found diamonds every day. I kept
putting off going back to get Kaffirs to work for me, for I didn't like
the idea of the secret of the place being let out, and half thought I
might keep it all to myself. After about a month I had over two hundred
carats of smaller diamonds, besides a thirty, a fifty, and a sixty carat
stone. Then I thought it was about time to go back and see the missis
again and tell her my luck, sell my diamonds and get some Kaffirs to
work for me. I cannot tell how I felt as I tramped back to the river.
At last I had struck something really rich and made my fortune. How the
boys would wake up when they heard, as they sooner or later would, I
suppose, that I had found a place twice as rich as the famous New Rush.
But diamonds would be down to nothing at all when my secret was known
and people knew how plentiful they were if you only looked for them in
the right place, so I determined to keep it quiet until I had made my
fortune, which would not take me long, I thought. Then I would be able
to take my missis home to England, and she would live the life she was
fit for and be as fine a lady as any of 'em at home.
"As soon as I got to Klip Drift I sold my diamonds. I got about five
thousand pounds for them. Then I went into a canteen to get a drink.
There were one or two men there who knew me, and I thought that they
stared at me rather oddly. `Where's the Count?' I asked the man behind
the bar, for that was the name they called the broken-down gentleman
chap I told you of, and it was the bar he kept.
"`Don't you know about it then?' asked one man, and the others stared at
me very queerly.
"`Know about it? about what?' I asked.
"`Oh nothing; only he has cleared,' the men answered.
"The men looked at me, I thought, as if they expected me to break my
heart about the Count's having cleared, and I couldn't make out their
manner at all. I said I was off across the river to see the missis, and
left the place. A man I knew pretty well followed me and put his hand
on my shoulder. `It's no good going across, for you won't find the
missis there,' he said. `Where is she?' I asked. `She has cleared,
too; gone off with the Count,' was his answer. I turned round on him,
half inclined to knock him down to show him I didn't like that kind of
joke, but there was something in his face which told me that he wasn't
joking; then he told me that it had been going on for a long time, and
that every one had been talking about it, and about a week ago two or
three saw them start off together, `and a good job for me, he told me,
was what most of them said.' At first I wouldn't believe it, but it was
true, though: she was gone, and I began to see how I had fooled away my
happiness by leaving my wife to go prospecting and letting that damned
scoundrel steal her from me. It wasn't many hours after I heard the
news that I was off on their track. They had gone up north to some
gold-fields which broke out about then. It was some time before I came
up with them, for they kept dodging about, first living in one place and
then in another, and once or twice I was at fault and could hear nothing
of them. At last I got to a new camp on the gold-fields where I heard
the Count was; he had started in at his old trade, gambling, and was
keeping a faro bank. I had not been many minutes at the hotel before I
heard all the boys talking about him and the run of luck he had struck.
Then they began to talk of the pretty woman he had with him; you can
guess that made me feel wild. I don't know how I behaved that night,
but I stopped in the bar of the hotel drinking and longing for the time
to come when I had planned to have my revenge.
"I was the last to go to bed, and then I did not sleep, but waited till
about three o'clock, when I knew the camp would be asleep. Then I stole
out and walked along the creek to a canvas house which had been pointed
out to me as the one they lived in. The place was quiet enough; I can
remember now how a dog tied up to a waggon barked at me and how savage I
felt with it, and how I laughed to myself as I knocked it over with a
stone I hurled at it. When I got to the house I looked through the
window. I saw them, they were asleep. I had a bowie knife on me, and I
cut the rope with which the door was tied. No--I can't tell you the
rest."
"Well, you killed him; he's injured you, but it's rough killing a man
when he's asleep," said Bill Hardman.
"Him! I killed them," said the prospector. "When she woke up and saw
what I had done to him, she screamed and cursed at me; the devil came
into me, and I stabbed her again and again. It would have been better
for me if I had been caught red-handed, and strung up, as I should have
been then and there; but I got away. Since then I have never got the
sight I saw before I rushed out of their place into the open out of my
head. I have hardly seen a white man to speak to since that day, for I
wandered away up country and have lived amongst Kaffirs; but now I feel
I must tell it to some one."
"Well, and now what are you going to do? Go back and work at the place
you prospected?" asked Hardman.
"Work at the place! What good are diamonds and money to me? No, I have
not come back for that. I have come back to see the place where we were
happy together once before I got the prospecting fever and left her, and
then--well, what should a man do who has no hope and is sick of life and
not afraid of finishing it? There, I have told you my story, and now I
will say good-day, and good luck to you. If it goes against your
conscience not to tell the police that a man has confessed murder to
you, for I suppose there are police on the fields now, tell on, and make
a clean breast of it."
Having finished speaking he got up to walk away. "Stop, don't go yet,
sit down and have a talk; tell us more about the place where you found
those diamonds. Can you tell us exactly where it was?" said Timson, his
voice quavering with excitement, for all the time the prospector had
been telling the conclusion of his story he had been thinking of the
wonderful diamond mine the other had spoken of.
"Where is the place you said you found so well at?" he added as the
stranger sat down and lit his pipe again.
"What! you want to strike my luck, do you? I wouldn't put a pick in
there again for all the diamonds there are in the coast of the earth."
"Well, if you don't like to work the place yourself, it seems a pity
that no one else should," said Timson, who, though he had some other
weaknesses, was not superstitious. "You see, I don't believe much in
luck, except the luck of getting hold of a good thing when you know how
to work it."
"Look here, mate, I am an old digger, and it goes agin' my ideas of
right to try and worm out another digger's secret; but if you let us
into this thing, we will work it with you fair and square," said
Hardman.
"I don't want you to work it with me or for me, but I don't mind telling
you where it is. See here," said the prospector, pointing in the
direction of a distant range of mountains towards which he had been
gazing for some time, "do you see that little hump-backed hill standing
out by itself? Well, it's about four hundred yards to the north of it.
You will see my old working still, I should say. Now, mates, I am off
to Pneil, for I want to see the old place again, and then--"
"Stop, let us talk it over. You had better work the place with us,"
said Hardman; "we will forget all about what you have told us, or try
to."
The stranger's only answer was to wish them good luck at their
prospecting, and refusing to listen to Hardman's persuasions, he started
off on his lonely walk.
"I don't like letting him go off in that state of mind; he means
finishing himself, I saw it in his face, I have seen men look like that
before," said Hardman as he watched the tall figure striding over the
long flat into the distance.
"Certainly one pities him; but if what he has told us is true, life
can't be much comfort to him, and it's just as well, if he is going to
do it, that he should kill himself before he lets out to any one about
that place. What do you think of that part of the story; do you believe
it?" answered Mr Timson.
"Believe it! well, I don't know. It's a queer story, but I ain't one of
those sharps who always disbelieve any story that's a bit out of the
common. I believe it well enough to mean finding out whether or no it's
true. What do you say?"
"Ah! that's just what I think. It may be true, and if it is true--"
"If it is true, or near true, we are in a pretty big thing, for the
farms out there ain't on Crown land, and there is no reservation of
minerals. Of course we must keep what we have heard quiet and try and
learn a bit more. There's millions who wouldn't believe the yarn we
have heard, but I ain't one of 'em. If you ask me what I think, well, I
think it's true," said Hardman, and then he shouted to his Kaffir to
outspan the horses so that they could continue their journey to
Kimberley. All the way they talked of the strange story they had heard,
and the more they talked of it the more hopeful Mr Timson began to
grow, and the more splendid were the castles in the air which he built
on the foundation of the wonderful diamond mine he was to acquire a part
possession of.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chapter Two.
A few days after their conversation with the prospector, Messrs. Hardman
and Timson were again on a prospecting expedition. This time they had
sought the prospector's hump-backed hill, and they had come to it after
a journey of about forty miles. Sure enough, about two hundred yards
north of it, they found marks of old working and a hole which was almost
filled up by sand. Mr Timson's excitement before he reached the spot
had begun to cool a good deal. Perhaps there was nothing in the tale he
had heard. The man might have been mad, or have been hoaxing him, or
exaggerating, he kept thinking to himself. Bill Hardman had not taken
much trouble to reassure him. All he said was that it was good enough
to look into, though it was long odds against its being as good as they
hoped, and he professed to be quite prepared to find their trip turn out
to be waste of time, though at the same time something seemed to tell
him to try the place. They had come out in an ox waggon, professedly on
a shooting trip, and had brought with them a small washing machine,
picks, shovels and other tools for digging and prospecting; they had
also taken out two or three Kaffirs who were accustomed to work in the
mine.
The sight of the old workings had a considerable effect in raising the
hopes of Mr Timson.
"That bears him out, anyhow!" said Hardman; "it seems to be the sort of
hole a man working by himself could make in a month."
"How soon shall we know whether it is any good?" asked Timson.
"Working on the small scale as we shall, it may take us days before we
find a diamond, however rich it may be. We will first get some twenty
loads of ground out and then we will wash. There is no house near here,
and we might work for six months without being disturbed, so we needn't
fear that, though if the man who owns the farm found we were
prospecting, he'd pretty quick get an interdict, as those cursed lawyers
call it, from the High Court and clear us off," answered the other.
In a very short time work began, Bill Hardman opening a bottle of
champagne to drink `luck' to the venture, as the first pick was put into
the ground. There is a strange excitement in working in new ground
which is very fascinating to any one of a speculative turn. Mr Timson
thought of the Scripture story of the man who knew of treasure hid in a
field, and sold all he had to purchase that field. Let him but once
satisfy himself that there was a diamond mine under his feet and he
would show no want of enterprise in making the best use of his
knowledge. Hardman said very little. When a few days' work would tell
them what they wanted to know, it was no good prophesying. He professed
to like the look of the ground, it reminded him of the top stuff in the
Kimberley mine, and Mr Timson was a good deal impressed with his
favourable opinion. But the hours passed very slowly, and Mr Timson
kept fidgeting about, looking into the shaft the boys were digging, and
sorting handfuls of the earth they had thrown out, as if he expected
that diamonds ought to be found every minute, much to the amusement of
his companion, who pointed out that, however rich the place might be,
they were likely enough to find nothing before they washed the ground.
Hour after hour the Kaffirs worked on stolidly, though lazily, and as
the shaft that they were sinking deepened, Timson's spirits began to
sink. He was breaking up a lump of ground when he heard a shout from
Hardman--
"We've found here a diamond! look at it! It's true--that yarn we heard
was true. It's a ten-carat stone! I saw it glisten as Tom picked down
some ground. Tom would have jumped it if I had not been too quick.
Wouldn't you, you black thief?"
"Nay, boss," said the Kaffir, grinning and showing his white teeth, "the
boss is a good boss and I'd no jump his diamond."
Timson looked at the diamond, a white stone of about ten carats in
weight, and he felt that his fortune was made. The Kaffirs talked to
each other in their own language about the diamond. "They think it is a
rich place and there will be lots of diamonds for them to steal," said
Hardman.
The next day another diamond was found in the picking, and Mr Timson
began to feel most hopeful as to what the result of washing the stuff
would be.
"If what we know is found out, we shall never be able to buy at a
reasonable price," he said, as they smoked their pipes after supper on
the night before the day on which they intended to wash.
"Nobody does as yet, and even we don't know much," said Hardman; "wait
till we have washed."
Their washing machine was a small one, only able to get through about
thirty loads of ground a day. In the afternoon they began to take out
of the machine the heavy deposit which had been left after the earth and
lighter gravel had been washed away. Hardman filled a sieve with this
stuff, and worked it up and down in a tub of water so that the action of
the water should work the diamonds to the bottom of the sieve.
"Now, what luck?" he said, as he turned the sieve upside down on the
sorting-table, at which Timson had taken his position. It was an
exciting moment, for the stuff on the table was the result of a good
many loads of ground, and if the place was any good, they might hope to
find several diamonds in it. Mr Timson trembled with excitement.
There was a second or two of suspense. Then he saw one diamond, then
another, and another, and Hardman, who was looking over his shoulder,
found two or three more. The next sieveful was equally good, and the
result of the wash up was that the ground was proved to be marvellously
rich. After that Timson suggested that they had better sink in some
other place and find out how large the mine was, but Hardman did not
agree to this. They had found out enough to know that whoever owned the
farm owned a fortune, and they had better make the best use of their
information and try to purchase the farm from its present owner before
any one else found out what they knew. So the machinery and tools were
packed up in their waggon, and the party started back again to
Kimberley.
Hardman undertook to find out about the land where the mine was
situated, and until he could obtain that information, Mr Timson was to
take care not to breathe one word of their secret. It was an exciting
time for the latter gentleman. He thought to himself that perhaps they
had been watched by some one who would claim a share in their prize, or
give information to others who might bid against them for the land, or
perhaps the man who owned it might come across the traces of the fresh
working and that might arouse his suspicions. Come what might, thought
Mr Timson, he would become the part owner of that wonderful mine. So
far as they could judge, it was of greater extent than the Kimberley
mine, and the work they had done made it appear to be three times as
rich. If he could purchase the farm for a small sum, all the better,
but he would not be afraid of risking all he had to get possession of
it. Of the prospector, he could hear no more. He had probably wandered
away into the veldt and destroyed himself. Mr Timson did not care much
what might have happened to him so long as he did not tell his story, or
rather, so much of it as related to the diamond mine, to any one else.
It took Hardman about two days to obtain the information he required.
It was fairly satisfactory, and he came to his friend in very good
spirits. "It's the Farm Boschfontein, there is no doubt about that, and
it belongs to a Dutchman, by name Ziederman; and it's the worst farm in
the province, I am told," he said, coming up to Timson, who was standing
on the stoep of the hotel, and taking him on one side.
"Ziederman! where does he live, and what kind of a man is he?"
"Well, he is a pretty crude sort of a Dutchman, and his house is on the
farm, about an hour's drive from the mine. If we go over and see him,
and tell him that we think of keeping a store where the road runs past
it, and want to stock the farm, he will think he has got hold of two
fools, and be glad to sell," was the other's answer.
The next day Messrs. Hardman and Timson started off to interview Mr
Ziederman, the unconscious owner (they hoped) of the mine. The
Boschfontein homestead where he lived was one of those low, whitewashed
mud houses with which travellers in South Africa are so familiar. Mr
Timson could see it miles away across the long flat over which they were
driving. It was a poverty-stricken looking place, and as they neared
the house there was no sign of any stock about.
"Looks as if Boschfontein had about broke him," said Hardman; "he'll be
glad to sell, you bet!"
Mr Timson felt that in an hour or so he would know his fate, and as he
gazed at the mean-looking Dutch farm-house, visions came before him of
the house in London and the country place he would soon be the owner of.
"Wonder how Hardman will do as a man of property? He's a smart chip,
but not quite one of us," he thought to himself. As they came near to
the house they saw Mr Ziederman sitting on a chair on the stoep of the
house, staring after the manner of a Dutch boer into the far distance at
nothing at all. When their cart drove up he turned round and stared at
it, but no gleam of intelligence came into his face; he evidently was,
so Mr Timson thought, a very crude specimen of the Dutchman. It would
be very tedious to narrate all the conversation which took place after
the two had got out of their cart, and had shaken the grimy, flabby hand
which Mr Ziederman held out to them. Gradually, and with very much
caution, Mr Hardman approached the subject of the purchase of the farm.
Would Mr Ziederman care to sell it? they wished to set up a store and
canteen, and would like to have the farm for keeping stock on, was the
question which, after much fencing, he asked.
"Yes, I will sell the farm. Ten thousand pounds, and you may have
Boschfontein, but for not one dollar less," answered Mr Ziederman,
looking as stolid as ever.
"Ten thousand pounds, mein herr! you are joking. The farm is not worth
one twentieth part of that," said Hardman.
Mr Timson tried to look as if he were more surprised than disappointed.
"Never mind, the farm is worth more than that. I know something that
you perhaps know and perhaps don't know. There are diamonds on my
farm."
Mr Timson began to feel that all his hopes were going to be dashed to
the ground.
"Diamonds, mein herr! there are no diamonds out in this direction, and
me and my partner don't want to have anything to do with diamonds, they
ain't in our line; we want to keep a store and raise stock."
"Then you don't want to buy the Farm Boschfontein, because the Farm
Boschfontein has diamonds," answered Ziederman. "See here, I will show
you something," he added, as he went into his house and came out with
something in his hand; "see what my herd boy found near the _kopje_
yonder," he said as he pointed in the direction of the mine. It was a
ten-carat white diamond he had in his hand, and one of the partners felt
something out of heart when he saw it. It was useless to try and
persuade Ziederman that the stone was not a diamond.
"Yes, I always knew there were some diamonds on my farm, but I would not
say anything about them, for I knew diamonds bring English diggers on
one's farm; but I said to myself, `If I ever sell Boschfontein I will
get plenty of money for it.' I want ten thousand pounds!" he said as he
lit his pipe again, looking as if he did not care whether he sold the
farm or no. "If you like to buy it for the money, well; if not, I will
have it prospected, and then I will sell it for what it will bring."
Hardman touched Timson on the shoulder and they walked away from the
house together. "See here," he said, when they were out of hearing of
Ziederman, who sat smoking with a placid expression on his face, "what
can we do? I can only raise two thousand pounds. I don't like to let
the thing slip from me, though, and once let him have the farm
prospected and find out how rich it is, what we know is worth nothing to
us."
"Maybe he will take less," said Mr Timson.
Very little could be got out of the boer. Somehow or the other he
seemed to have hit upon ten thousand pounds as the price the farm was
worth, and he would take no less.
Then the two had another conversation. Curiously enough Timson could
just raise eight thousand pounds, Mr Hardman had two. After all,
thought Mr Timson to himself, he would have four-fifths of the mine
instead of only one-half, so perhaps it would be all the better for him
that Ziederman had stuck out for his price. At last, after much
conversation, the bargain was struck and they drove home, it having been
agreed that Ziederman should come into Kimberley a few days afterwards,
and having given transfer of the farm, receive the ten thousand pounds.
"Well, we are going our piles on it, eh, partner?" said Hardman as they
drove back to Kimberley; "but I don't mind owning that I feel pretty
confident. Lord! I am sorry for the Kimberley people; it will just
about bust up their mine when we open ours."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chapter Three.
Mr Ziederman arrived at Kimberley on the appointed day. Transfer was
duly given, and the ten thousand pounds were paid over to him. Timson
could not help feeling rather a twinge as he parted with his money. It
did not leave him more than a few hundred pounds, still he was very
pleased with his bargain; he had bought the farm, he hoped, for very
much less than one hundredth of its value, and had got the best of Mr
Hardman, who would only have a fifth share. The next day the news was
all over the camp. It created a good deal of excitement, and at eleven
in the forenoon, an hour when splits and other drinks, long and short,
are in much request, quite a crowd of the leading citizens of Kimberley
dropped into the bar of the Queen's Hotel, where Mr Timson was to be
found at that hour, reading the local morning paper and criticising the
manners and customs of the place. On this occasion there was a look of
unusual importance about him, and he was laying down the law more
authoritatively than he generally did. He had just been discussing the
value of claims in the Kimberley mine, and chuckling to himself as he
thought how startled the claimholders would be when they heard of his
discovery.
"Well, Mr Timson, so I hear you have been speculating in farms," said a
man who was standing at the bar.
"I don't know why people should interest themselves in my affairs so
much," answered Timson; "but I don't mind owning that I have bought a
farm called Boschfontein."
"You're going to make your fortune farming?" said the first speaker, a
digger who had dropped in on his way from the mine to get a drink and to
interview Timson.
"I don't know about farming, but I don't think I shall do so badly with
Boschfontein," answered Timson, who, now that he owned the property,
thought there was no reason why he should not have the pleasure of
bragging about his wonderfully good bargain. He noticed that his
listeners were not impressed, there was something like a smile on their
faces.
"How much did you give Bill Hardman for Boschfontein?" asked the first
speaker.
"Bill Hardman! I never bought from Bill Hardman, I bought with him, he
has a small share in the speculation. So he has been telling you about
it, has he? Well, I suppose he won't make less than four or five
hundred thousand pounds, though he only has one-fifth of it. Yes, you
may laugh, but you won't laugh when the place up there is shut up, as it
will be when I work the diamond mine on Boschfontein."
"Here, barman, drinks; open some champagne for Mr Timson; he has gone
in for a spec with Bill Hardman, and they have got a diamond mine on
Boschfontein which will shut the Kimberley mine," cried the first
speaker.
Mr Timson was no admirer of the prevailing custom, a survival from the
early days of the diamond-digging, which demanded that good fortune of
any sort should be celebrated by a reckless expenditure in champagne.
Still he felt that the occasion was a special one, and after having in
vain tried to catch the barman's eye, and prevent him opening more than
one bottle, he made no remonstrance. "Well, gentlemen, we will drink to
the health of the Boschfontein mine," he said, "though I am afraid it
will prove rather a bad business for some of my friends here. Three
carats of diamonds to a load is a pretty good average, and the mine is
as big as Kimberley; it will revolutionise diamond mining, our mine
will."
"Bill Hardman found that mine, I'd bet," said another man who had just
come in and stood listening to Timson. "Why, Boschfontein's looking up.
It wasn't as rich as that last time."
"Look here," said the digger, taking up a dice-box which lay on the bar,
"we will throw for this wine, and Mr Timson shall stand out. No, it's
a shame letting him in, he has been let in enough. How much did you pay
for Boschfontein?"
"What do you mean?" asked Timson, who began to feel nervous and
uncomfortable. "Let in! some of you will only wish that you had been
let in in the same way when we begin to work the new mine. Bill Hardman
ain't the sort of man to be taken in so easy." Then he told them how he
had learnt the secret about the mine and became possessed of the Farm
Boschfontein.
The others listened to every word of his narrative, no one ordered
drinks nor even lifted their glasses to their mouths while he spoke.
When he had told them all, and described the finding of the diamonds and
the subsequent purchase of the farm Boschfontein, there was a burst of
noise, every one beginning to shout or laugh, expressing with much
vigour of language their admiration for the smartness of Bill.
"Look here, what was the prospector like? wasn't he a tall man with a
long beard, and a scar across the left side of his face, and a droop in
one eye?" asked the digger.
"Yes, that's the man," answered Timson.
"I'd have sworn it; it's Tom Raven; he was in camp the other day. Now,
look here, young man, you'd better try and find your friend, Bill
Hardman, not that there's much chance of your coming across him; now
that they have got your money they'd be off. I dare say you never heard
of Raven's Rush, that was on Boschfontein. There isn't a show of a mine
there; but Tom Raven and Bill Hardman, who have always been more or less
partners, won it at cards off a Dutchman. It's about as bad a farm as
there is in the country; but they meant working it off somehow, so they
started a mine there, any one to have a claim for two pounds down. It
took for a bit; but as no one could find diamonds there except Bill and
Tom Raven, people cooled off it, and there was some talk of starting a
prosecution for fraud, as some one split as to where they got the
diamonds from they found there, and that's why Raven, against whom there
was most of a case, cleared off. Ziederman is a long, stolid-looking
Dutchman; he is not such a fool as he looks, is that Dutchman--`Slim
Pete' they call him--he has always been more or less in with the firm of
Hardman and Raven."
"Look here, you're trying to fool me, ain't you? You don't mean to tell
me that the man who told me how his wife ran away and how he killed her
wasn't genuine!" said Timson.
"Genuine! it was a pretty bit of play-acting, made up by the two of 'em.
Tom was always clever at a yarn."
Mr Timson did not say another word. Something seemed to tell him that
the suspicions of the others were well founded; anyhow he would
interview his partner and do his best to get back some of his money.
However, Hardman was not so easily to be found. He was not at the hotel
where he boarded, nor at the billiard-room he usually patronised, nor at
any of his other haunts, and none of his associates had seen him. All
day long Mr Timson was making fruitless inquiries; but though he could
hear nothing about Hardman, every one could tell him a good deal about
the Farm Boschfontein. Every one laughed when they heard his story, and
with the exception of one or two men who had formed little plans for the
disposal of his fortune, no one sympathised very much with him. There
was no doubt about it that he had a case against Mr Hardman and the men
who helped to swindle him; but he might just as well have had a case
against the man in the moon. For some time Mr Timson cherished a faint
hope that the mine might be a genuine one, so he spent a little more
money in having it well tested. But the charm was gone when Mr Hardman
had vanished. There was no appearance of diamond bearing ground on the
Farm Boschfontein, so experts declared; and what was more to the point,
there was no appearance of diamonds.
Mr Timson is still the owner of the property, and has not found it very
remunerative. The only consolation he has is, that many of the men who
laughed at him when he made his unfortunate purchase, invested their
money in speculations which seemed at the time very hopeful, but
resulted in their becoming the owners of nicely-engraved diamond-mining
scrip which, though useful for papering a spare room with, is now even
less marketable than that desirable property, the Farm Boschfontein.
Story 5.
LUCK--AN EPISODE IN A DIGGER'S LIFE.
There are few more hideous parts of the world than the country known as
Griqualand West, celebrated, as the school books have it, for its
diamonds. In that weary land the traveller may go on day by day
outspanning at evening in just the same dreary waste of veldt in which
he inspanned at morning, until he almost forgets that the world is not
one endless series of rolling, burnt-up flats with ridges of
table-topped hills in the distance, the last just like the one before
it. Still there are spots on the banks of the Vaal River which runs
through this territory that have a soft beauty of their own, all the
more fascinating because of their contrast with the desert ugliness of
the country--places where the traveller longs to settle down and live
the rest of his days doing some slight work well paid by kind nature,
forgetting the troublesome, distant world. Moonlight Rush is perhaps
the fairest of these silent river nooks. There a wooded gulley, gay
with flowering bushes, and shadowed by wide-spreading trees, runs down
to the waters of the Vaal River. One can rest under the shade of those
trees and forget how cruelly the sun beats down on the veldt, and as one
looks at the Vaal, which flows at one's feet in a noble reach, one no
longer thinks of the arid discomfort of the plains. The place is quiet
enough now, but once it had its day. The night it was rushed will be
always remembered by those who came to seek their fortunes on the banks
of the Vaal in the early days of diamond-digging. To this day men talk
of how the news about the quantities of diamonds that had been found at
a new place spread like wild-fire around the river camps, and how
diggers, as soon as they heard it, snatched up their picks and shovels
and rough provision for a meal or two, and left their camp fires, eager
to get a claim in the new diggings, where they were at last to strike a
fortune. Its history was like that of other river camps, only the
diamonds found there at first were more plentiful, and are said to have
been of better average quality; but they became fewer and fewer, and the
diggers, party by party, either left for the new dry digging, which
afterwards became the wonderful diamond mines of South Africa, or
wandered away to other river camps. And at last the place was quite
deserted, and the rock hares sported over the grass-grown claims, and
the snakes, who had found the place too lively for them, sneaked back to
make their homes in the ruined hovels put up by sanguine diggers who had
believed in the future of Moonlight, and had shown their faith by
plunging into building to the extent of houses built with boulders and
thatched with rushes. Still, from time to time diggers, who had found
well at Moonlight in its palmy days, or had heard of the wonderful
stones which had been found there, came back to try their luck either in
sorting the _debris_ for the gems which the greedy diggers in those good
flush times threw away in their haste, or in working the less promising
ground which was left untouched. But since those old days no one had
done much. Diggers had lingered on there, and persuaded themselves into
believing in it because they liked the place; for the charm of nature
has a strange influence over many a rough mind which knows little of
culture or art jargon. But most of them, after working for months, had
to tell the diggers' oft-told tale of "we are not making tucker, let
alone wages," and had to drag their small stock-in-trade of tools off to
some other digging, or had given up the river as a bad game, and had
gone to work as overseers for wages in the mines.
One night, a year or two ago, there were only two tents there--almost
hidden in the bushes by the river-bank. Though it was long past the
time when men who have to work hard all day and to be up betimes are
usually asleep, it was lit up. Its tenant was stretched across the tent
on a mattress. By his side there were several tattered, well-read
volumes--`Vanity Fair,' `Elia,' some of Bret Harte's books; and Whyte
Melville's `Bones and I,' and in his hand he had a crumpled home letter.
His name was Charlie Lumsden, and he was about thirty years old. For
the last ten years, more or less, he had belonged to the noble army of
diggers who are recruited from all classes of society, and form a
distinct class of their own. He was also an English gentleman of good
birth and gentle breeding, as any one would guess from a first glance at
him, and be sure of after a few minutes' conversation. He was not
reading, though it was so late, but thinking, and had been thinking for
some time, far more seriously than he often did. It was perhaps an
orthodox occasion for a little self-retrospection, for it happened to be
the last night of the old year. Charlie, by chance, for he had been
living a solitary life in which men are apt to forget dates, had
remembered this, and he was seeing the New Year in, as many a man may
well do, thinking over the years of his life he had lived, and what he
had managed to do with them. He has not much reason to be satisfied
with the past, or to be over sanguine about the future. Where will he
be this time next year, and what sort of a year will it be for him? he
wonders. Well, pretty much the same as the last year or two. Last year
he was at `Bad Hope,' digging with his old chum, Jack Heathcote, who has
just left him, and given up the off-chance of the river for the
certainty of some pay in the Mounted Police. They were finding fairly
well, but their finds melted away before the claim was worked out, at
least most of them did, though there would have been something left if
they had not been fools and had that spree at Kimberley Races. Last New
Year's Day he was up-country hunting for gold near the Crocodile River.
He found pretty well too, and would not have done so badly if his mates
had not gone down with fever. Maybe he will have another turn at it.
After all, it wouldn't much matter, he thinks, if next time he is
tempted to trespass on Tom Tiddler's ground fever should catch him, and
keep him as it caught his chums. Yes, now he sees what a mess he has
made of his life. Ten years before he had just left school, and was
going up to Cambridge, where it was hoped that he would do wonders in
the way of taking honours and getting fellowships. Now he was a digger,
just like old David Miller who worked near him, though he was not half
as good with a pick and shovel as the old man who could hardly read and
write.
Then he remembered the year he had spent at Cambridge. Well, he had a
jolly time enough there; but what a young fool he was to have run up all
those ticks, and to have got into those scrapes, which when he looks
back to them seem so childish. What a mistake he had made in living
with the fast, noisy lot instead of the steady-going set, who were just
as good fellows after all. How well he remembers that supper party
which was so fatal to him. It had been in a rich fellow-commoner's
room, and a good many bottles had been emptied, and they were just ripe
for mischief, when one of the party suggested the brilliant idea of
having songs, and a camp fire on the college grass plot.
They had proceeded at once to carry out the suggestion; their host, who
was placidly intoxicated, blandly approving, at the sacrifice of his
household gods in defiance of college discipline, when it was proposed
that his chairs should be used for firewood. The fire was lit, and the
fun round it was fast and furious until the college tutor made his
appearance, as he naturally did.
The dons were only too glad to make a clean sweep of the rowdy lot in
the college, and about ten of them were sent down the next morning.
Some of them got over their misfortune very easily. The man who
suggested the bonfire is a popular preacher, and the giver of the supper
party is a county member. Poor Charlie unfortunately was the earthern
pot between the brazen ones, and that college row ended in his leaving
England for South Africa, with his passage paid and fifty pounds in his
pocket. Well, and he would have had a good chance on the fields if he
had only been wise. What a lot of diamonds he used to get in that
half-claim of his, in number five road. The other day it was sold for
over ten thousand; but he had been sold up and had to let it go for a
few hundreds after he struck a bad layer. He would have been able to
have worked through the bad layer though if he had saved the money he
made first, instead of throwing it away playing faro in those gambling
saloons that were so fatal to many a digger's fortunes.
After he sold his claim in the mine he lived the roving hand-to-mouth
life of a river-digger, with very little capital beyond his pick and
shovel, and his reputation with the store-keepers of being a straight
man, who would always pay when he found. Not a bad life either he would
think at any other time, for the Bohemianism of a digger is ingrained in
him. He liked the free and easy life, the absence from restraint or
dependence on any one else. But he was out of spirits. He had not
found for months; he missed his old partner, and he had no boys working
for him. In fact he would find it very difficult to pay them any wages
if he had, so he can get through but very little work. That night,
memories of the old days and his old life came crowding into his mind,
and he longed to be in England again, and to see well-remembered places
and faces.
The crumpled letter by his side was from home--from his sister in
England. She told him that she had been staying at the little village
in Somersetshire, where he once went with a reading party, and that she
had met the parson's daughter there, who had asked so much after him.
How well he remembered that reading party. Does the message in his
sister's letter mean that she still cares for him? She has not married
yet then. That boy and girl engagement was perfectly absurd of course,
but he knows that they were quite in earnest while it lasted, and after
all if he had taken his degree instead of being sent down in disgrace,
they probably would have been married. For a minute or two he pictures
himself as a staid curate or vicar dressed in decent black garment,
instead of in moleskin and a flannel shirt--with a vicarage house to
live in, instead of a tent.
Probably she got over it as easily as he did. He was broken-hearted
when he got her sad little letter, saying that it must all come to an
end, and that her father would not hear of it. He got over it
wonderfully soon though. With his sea-sickness his love-trouble left
him in the bay. She probably had got over it too, and could laugh at it
as he did. But as he smokes and thinks, he realises how much happier
his life might have been. How wanting it is in real happiness; why how
long is it since he has spoken to any woman more refined than the
barmaid of the Vaal Hotel? Should he ever shake the dust of Africa off
his boots and go home, or should he be buried there as many a chum of
his had been. It is no good going home dead beat to loaf on his
relations; no, it would be better to stay in the country for ever, or to
land without a sixpence in some other colony. What bad luck he has
always had. The men who make money may say what they like, but it is
almost all luck after all, he thinks, as he contrasts his position with
that of many another man, just as thoughtless and reckless as he, who
has made a fortune and gone home with it. Maybe the very next shovel
full of gravel he washes may turn his luck, and he thinks of all the big
diamonds that have at one time or the other been found down the river.
"Bosh, what's the use of thinking," he said to himself as the end of the
candle, which has been growing shorter and shorter, fell down to the
bottom of the bottle into which he had stuck it, and he was left in the
dark to knock out the ashes of his pipe and to curl himself up in his
blanket.
It was still enough at Moonlight Rush, and in a few minutes he was
asleep and dreaming a queer medley of English and Diamond-Field scenes.
As he slept and dreamt he heard a cry for help, repeated again and
again. At first it seemed to fit in with what he was dreaming about.
But he heard it again after he woke up, and then he formed a pretty
notion as to what it meant. "It's poor old David come to grief," he
said to himself, as he sprang up and ran out of his tent.
Old David Miller, who lived in the other tent at Moonlight Rush, was a
taciturn old fellow, who always worked by himself and seemed to look
upon the world in general with surly indifference. He had been digging
all over the world since gold was first discovered in Australia, and had
spent a good many years on the banks of the Vaal. He dug by himself
without employing Kaffirs, but he got through a fair amount of work, as
the high bank of boulders which he had broken up and dragged out of
claim at Moonlight bore witness to.
So far as Charlie knew he had found little enough to recompense him for
his toil. He was not, however,
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