Aletta Part 14

"So?" said Stepha.n.u.s, hugely delighted. "You think so, eh?"

"Think so? I'm sure of it," replied Colvin, whimsically thinking with what whole-heartedness he was now eulogising one who that time yesterday had existed in his mind as a plain, heavy-looking and absolutely uninteresting girl. So libellous can be the photographer's art.

"I am delighted to hear you say so, Colvin. You are from England and have seen a great deal of the world and ought to know. But I believe you are right. Yes, I am sure you are right. Well, now, my idea is that Adrian has remained behind to try his luck with Aletta."

"By Jove! Has he?" Then changing the quick tone of vivid interest into which he had been momentarily betrayed, he went on tranquilly: "And do you think he will succeed?"

"I cannot say. Aletta has seen a great many people, a great many men down at the Cape. She may not care to marry a farmer. But she might do worse than take Adrian. I have a great opinion of him. He is a fine fellow and no fool. But she must please herself."

"Yes, but--are they not--er--rather nearly related?"

"I had thought of that side of it, too. It is a disadvantage. Look out! There is a koorhaan running just on your left. He will be up in a second."

Hardly were the words out than the bird rose, shrilling forth his loud, alarmed cackle. Colvin dropped the bridle--his gun was at his shoulder.

Crack! and down came the noisy little bustard, shot fair and square through the head. Two more rose, but out of range, and the air for the next minute or two was noisy with their shoutings.

Colvin dismounted to pick up the bird, and as he did so up got another.

It was a long shot, but down came this bird also.

"Get there quick, man! He's running," cried Stepha.n.u.s.

The warning was not unneeded. The bird seemed only winged and had the gra.s.s been a little thicker would have escaped. As it was, it entailed upon its destroyer a considerable chase before he eventually knocked it out with a stone, and then only as it was about to disappear within an impenetrable patch of p.r.i.c.kly pear.

"Well, Stepha.n.u.s, I believe I'm going to score off you both to-day,"

said Colvin, as he tied the birds on to the D of his saddle with a bit of _riempje_. "Nothing like a shot-gun in this sort of veldt."

Boers, as a rule, seldom care for bird-shooting, looking upon it as sport for children and Englishmen. Birds in their opinion are hardly worth eating, guinea-fowl excepted. When these are required for table purposes they obtain them by the simple process of creeping stealthily up to their roost on a moonlight night, and raking the dark ma.s.s of sleeping birds--visible against the sky on the bare or scanty-leaved boughs--with a couple of charges of heavy shot Stepha.n.u.s laughed good-humouredly, and said they would find buck directly. Then they would see who had the better weapon.

They had got into another enclosure, where the ground was more open.

Colvin had already bagged another koorhaan and a brace of partridges, and so far was not ill-satisfied. Suddenly Cornelis was seen to dismount. A buck was running across the open some three hundred yards away. Bang! A great splash of dust nearly hid the animal for a moment.

A near thing, but yet not quite near enough. On it went, going like the wind, now behind a clump of bushes now out again. Cornelis had another cartridge in, and was kneeling down. A wire fence stretched across the line of the fleeing animal, which would have to slacken speed in order to get through this. Watching his moment, Cornelis let go.

The "klop" made by the bullet as it rushed through the poor little beast--through ribs and heart--was audible to them there at upwards of four hundred yards. It never moved afterwards.

"Oh, fine shot!" cried Colvin, with a grim afterthought to himself, viewing it by the light of the failure of the Bloemfontein Conference.

"It's a duiker ram, Pa," sang out the young Dutchman. Then he shouted to the Kafirs to bring it along, and the three moved onward. Soon Colvin got his chance. A blekbok, started by the tread of Stepha.n.u.s'

horse, raced right across him at about forty-five yards, broadside on.

Up went the gun, a second's aim, and the pretty little animal turned a most beautiful somersault, and lay kicking convulsively, struck well forward in the head.

"Well done, well done! _Maagtig kerel_! but you can do something with shot!" cried Stepha.n.u.s, approvingly.

Presently the metallic grating cackle of guinea-fowl was borne to their ears. They were near the banks of the Sneeuw River, where the mimosa cover and p.r.i.c.kly pear _klompjes_ were a favourite haunt of those splendid game birds. By dint of manoeuvring Colvin got right in among them, their attention being diverted by the other horseman. Up rose quite a number. Bang, bang! right and left, down they came. More rise.

Bang, bang! One miss, one more bird down. Then they get up, more and more of them, by twos and threes, and by the time there are no more of them, and Colvin has picked up eight birds and is beginning to search for three more that have run, he is conscious that life can hold no improvement on the sheer ecstasy of that moment.

And then, when they return to the homestead in the roseate afterglow of the pearly evening--and the spoils are spread out:

"Five bucks, and eighteen birds," cries Stepha.n.u.s, counting the bag.

"Not so bad for a mixed shoot--and only one bird gun among us. Aletta, this is an Englishman who can shoot."

Colvin is conscious of enjoying this small triumph, as the girl's bright face is turned towards him approvingly, and she utters a laughing, half-bantering congratulation.

"Where is Adrian?" he says, looking around.

"Adrian? Oh, he went long ago--soon after you did."

Keenly watching her face, while not appearing to, he does not fail to notice the tinge of colour which comes into it as she answers. So Adrian has been trying his luck then; but, has he succeeded? How shall he find out? But why should he find out? What on earth can it matter to him?

Yet throughout the evening the one question he is continually asking himself, and trying to deduce an answer to, is--

Has he succeeded?

CHAPTER TWELVE.

"THE ONLY ENGLISH GIRL."

May Wenlock was in a temper.

She had got up in one, and throughout the morning her mother and brother had had the full benefit of it. Why she was in it she could not have told, at least with any degree of definitiveness. She was sick of home, she declared; sick of the farm, sick of the very sight of everything to do with it; sick of the eternal veldt. The mountains in the background were depressing, the wide-spreading Karroo plains more depressing still, although, since the rain, they had taken on a beautiful carpeting of flower-spangled green. She wanted to go away--to Port Elizabeth, or Johannesburg; in both of which towns she had relatives; anywhere, it didn't matter--anywhere for a change. Life was too deadly monotonous for anything.

Well, life on a farm in the far Karroo is not precisely a state of existence bristling with excitement, especially for the ornamental s.e.x, debarred both by conventionality and inclination from the pleasures of the chase. But May was not really so hardly used as she chose to imagine. She was frequently away from home visiting, but of late, during almost the last year, she had not cared to go--had even refused invitations--wherein her brother saw another exemplification of feminine unreasonableness and caprice. Her mother, a woman and more worldly wise, was not so sure on that head.

"What's the row, anyhow?" said Frank, bluntly. "What do you want to scoot away for, and leave mother and me to entertain each other? Girls are always so beastly selfish."

"Girls selfish? Men, you mean," she flashed back. "Men are the most selfish creatures in existence. I hate them--hate them all."

"Why, only the other day you were saying that you had come round to the idea that it was much jollier in the country, and that you hated towns,"

went on Frank. "You've said it over and over again, and now--"

"Oh, go away, Frank, can't you, and leave her alone," said his mother.

"Why do you take such a delight in teasing her when you see she's out of sorts?"

"Out of sorts, eh? That's what women always say when they're in a beastly bad temper. Oh, well, thank goodness I've no time for that sort of thing." And cramming his pipe he went out.

Frank was right, if somewhat inconsiderate. May was in a bad temper--a very bad temper indeed. Hardly had he gone than she flung on her white _kapje_, the same we first saw her in, and which became her so well, and went out too, but not after him. She went round among her fowl-houses, then strolled along the quince hedges to see if any of the hens had been laying out and in irregular places for the benefit of the egg-loving _muishond_, or similar vermin, but her mind some how was not in it. She gazed out over the surrounding veldt. A little cloud of dust away in the distance caused her to start and her eyes to dilate. But it pa.s.sed away and was gone. It heralded the approach of n.o.body. The distant flying cackle of a c.o.c.k koorhaan alarmed had the same effect, but no sign of life, far or near, save the slow movement of black ostriches grazing, and the occasional triple boom as they lifted up their voices.

The sun, flaming down in the cloudless forenoon, caused the great expanse of plains to s.h.i.+mmer and glow with mirage-like effect, giving to each distant table-topped mountain an appearance of being suspended in mid-air.

Her eyes filled as she stood thus gazing, and two s.h.i.+ning tears rolled down.

"Oh, I must get away from here," she said to herself. "All this is weighing upon my nerves. I hate men--selfish, cruel, heartless wretches!"

She caught her voice, and was conscious that the pulsations of her heart had undergone an acceleration. Away in the distance a large dust-cloud was advancing, and with it the white tilt of a Cape cart.

"Only some tiresome Dutch people," she said to herself, with a weary sigh. "I hope to goodness they won't come here, that's all."

But her wish was doomed to non-fulfilment, for very soon the cart was seen to turn off the road that should have taken it by and to strike the branch track leading direct to the house. A flutter of feminine garments within it betokened the nature of the visit.