Aletta Part 38

"I believe I must have struck the real Colvin at last," he began, without ceremony. Here, again, standing together as they were, the height, the features, even the voices of the two men, were inimitably alike. Yet Aletta, with the eyes of love, and hearing sharpened by its spell, could detect a difference. n.o.body else could, however.

"Yes, that is my name," replied Colvin. "But--you are not Kenneth, surely?"

"I am, though. Look here," fis.h.i.+ng out two or three directed envelopes.

"But--I'm rather glad to run into you at last. People are always hailing me as 'Colvin,' and abusing me for not wanting to know them again--you know--when I tell them I'm somebody else. It's becoming a bore."

"Well, Kenneth. I'm glad to see you, too, after all these years. You shall tell me about yourself by-and-by. But, first of all, would you mind telling me one thing. Have you been staying in Johannesburg some little while of late?"

"Rather--only just left it. Why? Oh, I suppose people have been mistaking me for you, is that it? Has its awkward sides sometimes, hasn't it?"

"It easily may have," replied Colvin, with a meaning in his tone, which one, at any rate, standing beside him thoroughly grasped.

"The Commandant wants you. Come!"

Kenneth Kershaw turned leisurely. Two armed burghers stood waiting.

"Oh, all right, I was forgetting. So-long, Colvin. We'll have a great pow-pow by-and-by."

They watched his retreating form.

"I think the mystery is for ever clear now, sweetheart," said Colvin.

But Aletta could not speak. She could only press his arm in silence.

All the agony she had suffered came back to her, as in a wave.

"I know what you are thinking, my darling one," he went on softly. "But I don't wonder you were taken in by the likeness. It is quite the most remarkable thing I ever saw."

"Yet, I doubted you. _You_!"

"Love, think no more of that. Have you not really and truly drawn me out of the very jaws of death this morning? Ah! but our sky is indeed clear--dazzlingly clear now."

"Tell me about this half-brother of yours, Colvin," said Aletta presently. "Had you no idea he was in this country?"

"None whatever. For years we had lost sight of each other. The fact is, Aletta, I may as well tell you--though I wouldn't anybody else--but the chap was rather a bad bargain--on two occasions, indeed, only escaped by the skin of his teeth from coming to mortal grief. I would even bet something he'll come down on me to help him now, and if it'll do him any good I will. But he may have improved by now. Some of us do with time, you know."

It turned out even as Colvin had said. When Kenneth rejoined him for a little talk apart--after his interview with the Commandant--he spoke of his own affairs. He had been very much of a rolling stone, he explained, and now he wanted to settle down. He was going to turn over a new leaf entirely. Would Colvin help him a little?

The latter laughed drily.

"Whom are you going to settle down _with_, Kenneth?" he asked.

"The sweetest, prettiest, dearest little girl in the world." ("That of course," murmured the listener). "You know her, Colvin. It was thanks to my likeness to you that I did."

"Name?"

"May Wenlock."

"So? Do you know, Kenneth, this infernal likeness has put me to very serious inconvenience, and came within an ace of costing me my life? I suppose it was you who let out Frank Wenlock."

"Of course it was. But don't give it away."

"No--no. But how did you manage to get here at all to do it without being spotted?"

"Oh, Adrian De la Rey fixed up all that. Of course I had no notion you were anywhere around."

"I see," said Colvin, on whom the whole ingenuity of the plot now flashed. All these witnesses against him were not perjured, then. They had been genuinely deceived. The other, watching him, had no intention of giving away his own share, direct or indirect, in the transaction, or his partners.h.i.+p with Adrian in that other matter. In the course of his somewhat eventful and very wandering life Kenneth Kershaw had never found overmuch scruple a paying commodity.

"Well, Kenneth, I'll do what I can for you," went on Colvin, "but I'm afraid it won't be much. And the feet is I'm just taking on an 'unlimited liability' myself."

"Yes, so I concluded just now, from appearances. Well, Colvin, I congratulate you heartily."

They talked a little about money matters, and then Kenneth broke out:

"Hang it, Colvin; you are a good chap after all. I had always somehow figured you as a priggish and cautious and miserly sort, which was the secret of your luck; but I don't believe there's a man jack on earth who would have been as splendid and as generous under the circ.u.mstances."

Colvin's face softened. "Oh, it's all right, old man. Don't get making a speech," he said. "I wish I could do more, but, as you see, I can't."

"See! Rather. And now, look here. I believe I am the bearer of some pretty good news. I didn't tell you at first, because I wanted to see what sort of chap you were. Not, mind you," he added, somewhat vehemently, "that I have any interested motive now, not a bit of it.

Well--read that--and that."

Fumbling in his pocket-book, he got out some slips of paper. They were press cuttings from English newspapers, and bore dates of about six weeks previously:

"By the death of Sir Charles Kershaw, Bart, of Slatterton Regis, Dorset, and Terracombe, Devon, which took place suddenly the day before yesterday, the t.i.tle and both properties, together with considerable sums in personalty, devolve upon his next-of-kin, Mr Colvin Kershaw, at present believed to be in the Transvaal."

In substance the notices were alike, albeit somewhat different in wording. Colvin reflected for a moment. Then he said:

"I suppose there's no mistake. It's rather sooner than I expected, Kenneth, but of course I did expect it sooner or later. I am glad enough for its emoluments, but personally I don't care about the t.i.tle.

I fancy I shall grow awfully sick of hearing every cad call me by my Christian name. I say, though, Kenneth, we shall be able now to make a bigger thing of that scheme of ours, eh?"

"By Jove, you are a good chap, Colvin," burst forth the other, understanding his meaning. But he did not let candour carry him far enough to own to the daring scheme he had formed for personating Colvin in the event of the fortune of war going against the latter, as it had so nearly and fatally done. Like scruple, candour was not always a paying commodity.

Colvin, for his part, was thinking with heartfelt grat.i.tude and love, what a bright future he had to lay before Aletta. Kenneth, for his, was thinking, with a glow of satisfaction, that he was going to be very happy with May Wenlock, under vastly improved circ.u.mstances, and that such a state of things was, after all, much more satisfactory than life on a far larger scale, but hampered with the recollection of a great deed of villainy, and the daily chances of detection as a fraud and impostor liable to the tender mercies of the criminal law.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

CONCLUSION.

Midnight.

The wind, singing in fitful puffs athwart the coa.r.s.e gra.s.s belts which spring from the stony side of ridge or kopje, alone breaks the dead eerie silence, for the ordinary voices of the night, the cry of bird and beast, are stilled. Wild animate Nature has no place here now. The iron roar of the strife of man, the bellowing, crackling death message from man to man, spouting from steel throats, has driven away all such.

Silent enough now are the bleak, stony hillsides, albeit the day through they have been speaking, and their voice has been winged with death.

Silent enough, too, are the men crouching here in long rows, cool, patient, alert; for on the success or failure of their strategy depends triumph or disaster and death. Silent as they are, every faculty is awake, ears open for the smallest sound, eyes strained through the far gloom where lies the British camp.

Hour upon hour has gone by like this, but most of these are men who live the life of the veldt, whose trained eyesight is well-nigh cat-like on such a night as this. They have measured the ground, too, and so disposed matters that they know within a yard and to a minute exactly where and when to open fire upon the advancing British whom their trustworthy emissaries shall guide into sure and wholesale destruction.

Adrian De la Rey, lying there in the darkness, is waiting and longing, as no other, for the deadly work to begin. How he will pour lead into these hated English, how every life taken shall be as the life of his hated English rival! No quarter shall any receive from his hand when the slaughter begins. In the darkness and wild confusion none will see, and if they do, what matter? He will shoot down these cursed _rooineks_ like springbuck, he tells himself, even though they should bellow for mercy.