Chapter XIV

We had some trouble about horses before we could get away. Those we had left, being good, had disappeared, Paul having sold or exchanged them for food and clothes. Although there were plenty of spare horses in the laager, they had cost us nearly five pounds apiece before we could persuade the oprecht Burghers to forgo their right to the next call on them. The money we had divided into three equal parcels, which we carried in our saddle-bags and haversacks; our other things, with Charlotte’s now numerous wardrobe, being put on a pack-horse, led by a Kafir.

We reached the laager after six hours’ easy riding, during which I talked very little, not feeling in the proper spirit to speak with either Charlotte or the captain, for I had a special grievance against both. Those two kept together as much as the path would permit; but when they began to talk, I generally silenced them by pointing out that scouting parties of either side might be within hearing, and it would not be well for us to meet them with so much money upon us, for war-time made men very keen on gold, and ready to suspect it everywhere.

When the laager came in sight, I thought it was deserted. The tents and covered places were nearly all gone, no Burghers or horses were in sight, and a broken cart lay where the waggon full of stores had been.

As we rode up to the large tent, Paul and two or three of the oldest Burghers came towards us.

“What is this, Paul?” I asked with authority. “Where are the Burghers?”

“Sarel, you now see an abode of peace: only godly men are here now. The sinners and strife-makers have betaken themselves to the worship of the golden calf.”

“Stop this Bible language, and tell me in the plain Taal where are the Burghers.”

Paul made no answer, but, having helped Charlotte out of the saddle, was beginning to strip the horses.

“Call a Kafir and come and answer my questions,” said I angrily.

“There are no Kafirs, Sarel; all have gone.”

I began to get really angry, for Paul spoke as if he were pleased that the commando had gone, while Charlotte stood, with laughter in her eyes, watching the old man as if she too enjoyed the disaster.

“Come into the tent,” said he, “while I tell you all the story.”

We all went in, and over some jam and sardines— all the food left in the laager—Paul told how, when he returned to the laager, after having made great trouble with the predikant, with whom we had left him outside Ladysmith, he brought with him a waggon-load of stores, which he had not time to examine before starting on the journey. When the cases were opened, it was found that they were mainly full of women’s clothes and things bought by the Rooineks in Johannesburg,—such as soap, blue, clothes-pegs, and other useless things, the cases being loot from the Johannesburg stores, and sent down without examination. The only thing of use to the Burghers was ten or twelve cases of whisky, which had somehow not been seen by the Hollanders at head laager; and in a very short time the Burghers were all in a bad way, and for several days did nothing but drink and play cards. They had no money, but used the buttons of their clothes for counters, meaning to redeem them with the money I was to bring back. But on the fourth day came a Burgher from head laager saying I had been sent as prisoner to Pretoria to be tried by court-martial. Then the Burghers revolted, for they would have no one for commandant in my place; and the food being all gone, they broke up into small parties and went off to plunder farms that the Kafirs reported were unoccupied, while some went over to a Free State commando that was said to be making much loot. Within a week, the only Burghers left were Paul and seven old men who had internal complaints, and large families at home, and were therefore not wanting to fight.

“But how have you lived?” I asked, when Paul had finished, which was very long.

“Like Elijah in the desert, we have been fed by the ravens.”

“Who were the ravens?”

“The Kafirs living in a few kraals down by the river. They used to bring us a little mealie-meal and Kafir beer, so that we might not burn their kraals. We also found a cow, but the Burghers used to quarrel as to who should milk her; so she wandered away, and often we had no food for a day or two.”

I asked why they all stayed if they had no food.

“But don’t you see, Sarel, it is great to have Burghers who will listen while you read and preach, and are too weak from hunger or too well filled when food comes, to dispute your interpretation of Scripture? If I were only sure of the ravens, I should like to be always on commando.”

“But why do not the other Burghers leave?”

“They like being on commando where they can be at peace, and pray for the strengthening of the arms of those that do the fighting.”

While Paul went to find something to make a bed for Charlotte, the captain began to talk seriously.

“I must be going on,” said he; “but before I go I want to know whether I have to carry this money with me. When can you find Vorster?”

The strange change in the affairs of my laager had quite upset my plans, and, as usual when in trouble, I wanted time to think what I should say; for I always did my thinking and plan-making in the Taal, which is not so quick a language as English, which I used only for speaking. So I said I would go on to the next commando and bring Vorster back with me, and would start to-morrow. This appeared to satisfy the captain, and we prepared to spend what proved a very happy evening.

I have said that a piano was in the tent; and Charlotte found that it could be played if she were careful not to touch certain notes. The captain also played and sang English songs about love, and he and Charlotte sang together, till the Burghers came and sat outside the tent, and smoked without talking, except to say that it was so beautiful that it made them think they were at home in the farm sitting-room singing psalms, they felt so good. I also felt very happy, yet miserable; for I could not help thinking that all this loveliness was for the captain, and not for me. I had not heard Charlotte sing before; and if it were not that Paul had almost converted me to his belief that there were no girl angels, I should have thought that Charlotte was singing in heaven. But the wickedness of Paul had deprived me of feeling such happiness.

We sat listening to the music till very late, and Paul began to get angry, for he cared only for slow, drony singing such as they have in the Dopper church. But what made him most impatient was that the only candle was getting short, and could not last more than a quarter of an hour, which was not half the time he would require to read the Bible to the Burghers and make his night’s prayer. As the two at the piano made no sign of ceasing, and I would not do as Paul wished—ask them to leave off—he did it himself, and not very politely.

Charlotte was for going on with the music, but the captain got up and left the tent, making an excuse that he could not understand Dutch prayers.

“You had better stay, captain. I will translate as I go on, though it will be slow work, and I fear the candle will not hold. I would pray in English too; but I fear it would not be respectful to the Lord, as my language is not good and prayerful in that tongue.”

The captain made a polite excuse once more and went away, but I could see that Paul was angry, for when he came to his prayer, he made special supplication for Rooineks, setting forth all their wickedness as the reason,

Charlotte had once warned Paul by saying, ‘If you go on like that I shall tell the captain what you say;” but he took no notice, and was going on, when Charlotte got up off her knees, blew out the candle, and walked out of the tent.

Paul, who never prayed with his eyes closed, saw what had been done, and immediately began to use language against women that made it improper for him to continue to pray.

So he got up and went out to find Charlotte; but she was away in the veld, talking with the captain, nor did they return till long after we had been lying under our blankets in the shelter of the thorn-bushes.

Next morning we had nothing for breakfast but coffee without sugar, and sardines without bread or biscuit; and Paul made a longer prayer and Bible-reading, to make up for it and the profane interruption of the previous night.

When it was over, Charlotte came to me and whispered—

“You must go to-day to find Vorster. Of course I know you will not find him; but while you are away I will make plans and all shall come right. Take old Paul with you.”

This fitted in with my own half-formed plan; so I hurried up Paul, and, telling him I would explain everything while we rode, we went off.

When we were well out of sight of the laager we halted the horses in a kloof, and as we sat and smoked in the shade of the trees, I told Paul the whole story of my affairs with Charlotte, from the time we left the laager to the return from Pretoria. I told him everything, keeping back not even my love for her.

The old man listened without a word, and never before had I so long a talk without being interrupted or preached at by him.

“And what think you, Paul?” I asked, when I had made a finish.

“Sarel,” said he solemnly, “you have had a great and awful escape from danger. Suppose you had been foolish enough to marry a girl who would blow out the candle while you were praying! Man, but it is worse than President Burgers going to fight Kafirs before and without a Bible-reading. Nothing but trouble would have come of it, Sarel. When she did that my anger was great; but now I am glad, for it has revealed her character to you and to me, and proves that all the unchristian thinkings I had of her were just. Better have twenty fat Katrinas than one Charlotte, Sarel.”

“But what about the money, Paul?”

“It was wrong, perhaps, of Charlotte in taking it; but having taken so much trouble over it, and had so many schricks, I think it is but right that you should have all you can of it. Besides, I know that Oom Vorster made it by selling his land to Rooineks, and it is but just punishment that he should make no profit out of bringing the stranger into the land. We must get back and get that money, Sarel.”

“But Charlotte may have made a plan,” said I, remembering her parting words.

“Whatever plan may be made by a sinful woman like Charlotte must come to naught, Sarel. We are nine to one. Let us go back and tell the captain plainly that we want the money, and that if he does not give it up peacefully—well, as I have said, we are nine to one, unless the other Burghers are afraid to fight.”

I did not like this plan at all, but having told Paul everything, I was helpless if he got the other Burghers to side against me; so I could do nothing but agree. After a good sleep, to kill the time and make it appear that we had been long looking for the commando that held old Vorster, we cantered as fast as we could back to laager, to make our horses look done up.

We had been away but four hours, yet in that time there had been great happenings. First there was no sign of Charlotte and the captain; but knowing how fond they were of walking away together, I took no note of that. I did, however, expect to find the Burghers lying asleep within the tent, but they were not.

Pinned on to the tent-pole was a piece of foolscap paper with my name written on plainly in pencil, and underneath it a small carefully folded note addressed in the handwriting of Charlotte to her father. I opened the folded sheet addressed to me, my heart thumping hard, and something telling me that strange news was coming. It was a letter from the khaki captain, and being in what is called in English an educated hand, I found it very hard to read, but in time I made it out to run thus:—

“Dear Sir,—By the time you get this, Charlotte and I will have left the laager and be on our way to the English lines. I am writing you thus fully because I feel that the apology and explanation I have to make ought to be put into a more lasting form than spoken words. During your absence Charlotte has told me the whole of her story, which includes her connection with Andries Brink, who is her stepfather; how she has been used by him as a decoy to procure information from both sides, and the whole of the truth about the money. I have forgiven her because of the motive which prompted her to take what did not belong to her, for I can see that she looks at these things very differently to an English girl; and, for the same reason, I forgive her the peculiar and complicated deceit she has practised to secure my release. It is all so new and unexpected that I can hardly yet make up my mind as to how far I am justified in allowing myself to be a party to the business, for as an English officer I naturally object to have my liberty secured for me by my friends promising that I shall help the enemy. But that is a matter on which I shall be guided by my superior officers. I also hesitate to blame either you or Charlotte, for, as I have said, you appear to look at everything from a standpoint so different to that of myself and my countrymen that I cannot hope to make my meaning clear. I therefore express my sincere regret for anything I may have said to hurt your feelings, believing now that your motives were entirely friendly. I also regret that Charlotte should have found it necessary to make a tool of you by playing upon your affection for her; but I am satisfied that she would have done the same to me had our positions been reversed, and I suppose her conduct is condoned by the proverb, ‘All’s fair in love and war.’ Of course it is impossible for me to allow her to take any of Vorster’s money. I therefore have hidden it in the piano, and I trust to your honour to take the necessary steps to see that it is restored to its owner. Charlotte joins me in asking your forgiveness for the deceit played upon you, and hopes that you will have nothing more to do with Andries Brink, who is a dangerous and unscrupulous man, and only using you for enriching himself. He is not in the service of either side, and your connection with him can only lead to disaster. Charlotte asks that you will somehow deliver to him the accompanying letter, which is to tell him that she is going to Durban, where she will remain with her aunt until we are married.”

When I came to this, I could read no more aloud, but did what any man who has a heart and true feelings of affection would,—I sat down and wept bitterly; for although I had felt ever since the captain came out of tronk that it was him and not me Charlotte wanted, yet I was kept up by a secret hope that in the end she, being an Afrikander girl, would come to her duty, and choose me rather than a stranger. But I had not reckoned on her English education carrying her so far away from true justice and patriotism. Now that the truth had come, and the hope I had clung to was broken, I was a finished man; and the pain was the more because the thought that she was with the khaki made me want to love her harder.

Paul sat on the ground smoking and watching me cry, saying no word, which made me angry, for I wanted him to preach at me, to give me something else to think of; for when a man has pain in any part of his body he will not feel it if he be hurt somewhere else. At last his hard looking at me made me speak.

“What think you, Paul?” I asked.

“I am thinking what awful rinderpest and other new diseases a young ox may get through mixing with strange cattle,” said he.

“What do you mean, Paul?”

“I mean that before the Rooinek women came, a young kerel never cried because he could not marry the girl he wanted. When she threw dirty water at him, he saddled up and rode to another farm where there were daughters. I suppose Charlotte wants a man with a nicer farm and more cattle than you have. Ach, Sarel, but you should have stayed when you took the Government money, and not run away. If every official who took money did as you, we should have all the Hollanders from Holland in the Transvaal. If you had but been brave and kept in the country, you might have married Katrina long ago. She is a real Boer girl, and not half British like this Brink missie; and then she is big and fat, while Charlotte is only a child.”

“Paul, a man does not now take a wife as butchers buy oxen, by weight, unless he wants a vrouw too heavy to move off the farm.”

I said this because I had heard that Paul’s first wife was too heavy to move off her chair, and never left the house from the day she was married till the day she was buried on the farm.

“It’s a great thing, sometimes, to have a wife too big to travel, Sarel; but bigness does not always keep a vrouw from running after a man when he does not want her. Katrina weighs two hundred pounds, but she moves about.”

I again cried, not at the sharp and cutting answer, but because it reminded me of the wondrous difference between Katrina and Charlotte.

The old man went on praising Katrina, her fatness, her cleverness at mixing physic, and her people.

“She will have one of her father’s farms,” said he, “and a hundred head of cattle, and what more can a man want?”

“Paul,” said I in anger, “you are a fool to think that men have not feelings in these matters. Have you never liked any one so much that you cried when you lost them?”

“Certainly; I liked all my wives and my children, especially the girls, and my fine after-oxen. Man, but when they died from rinderpest I cried hard as you do now, for they were worth twenty pounds apiece, and I could not get two like them for less than thirty, for the price of cattle was up. But you can get another girl, and one with more cattle; for you see, Sarel, you don’t now know who Charlotte’s father may be, and certainly you would get no cattle from Andries Brink, for does not the captain say what I told you, that he is a schelm.”

“Don’t you know, Paul, that a man can love a girl so much that he will take her without cattle?” said I.

“There is such foolishness; but the father of one of the two has to keep them. Look at Dantzie Vook and Jappie du Preez”—and the old man gave me the long stories of a dozen cases where the sons had married girls without cattle, and had come to sorrow. “All this,” he went on, “has come about since the Rooineks have set the example of marrying a girl because they like her looks better than those of any other girl. But, Sarel, it is foolishness, and in the old

s days a kerel who did it would be tossed on a wet bullock-hide.”

“That may be right in some cases, Paul; but when a man likes a woman, it is her he wants, not the cattle: they can come afterwards. It is Charlotte I want, not cattle.”

“But if you have lost the girl, that is no reason why you should lose the money, Sarel,” said the foolish old man, when I had given up trying to explain to him that love was above oxen.

He went to the piano, where the captain said he had hidden it, and for the first time I noticed that the piano was loose, having been taken to pieces. There was no sign of the money. Paul and I pulled the piano to small bits, and looked everywhere besides, but there was nothing but some of the paper and rags it had been wrapped in.

“The captain is false. He has taken the money in spite of his fine words,” said Paul at last, when we had looked in every likely and unlikely place.

“Nay, it is those godly Burghers of yours,” said I; and I was right, for never again did we see them or the money. They must have seen the captain hiding it, and have gone off with it directly he was away.

“Sarel,” said Paul, “you see what comes of making a child of yourself over a woman. She has fooled you and made you think there are no other girls in the world fit to marry, and robbed you.”

“It’s false, Paul. It’s your thieving Burghers. I expect they have taken it to build you a kerk that you may preach to them—with my money, Paul.”

“Ja, Sarel; it is your money, for now you will have to account for it to Oom Vorster.”

I broke down again and cried, for I saw there was truth in the old man’s words.

“You are very unfortunate with money, Sarel. First you speculate unwisely with the thousand pounds you borrowed from Katrina; next you lose two thousand of the Government money at Prinsloosdorp; then you are verneuked out of your fair share of loot-money by Andries Brink, and his girl runs away with the money you honestly earned by robbery; and the worst of it is, that though you have never had any of it, you will have to give it all back. The captain will see to that.”

This was so true that I could not answer, but hastened to defend Charlotte, for I did not like to hear Paul speak of her as a thief.

“If she was clever enough to get money and verneuk me out of my share, is not she the sort of girl I should have for a wife?”

This argument, I thought, would confute Paul on his own ground.

“Ja, Sarel; but what is the good of a vrouw who can get money, but runs away with it? Katrina lent you a thousand pounds; Charlotte robbed you of two.”

Then he went on to point out that Charlotte was a strange woman according to Bible ideas, and that the Bible was always against such, as they were the cause of the undoing of many men. He told me about Jezebel and Jael, and other Bible women who were not good, but said nothing about those that were, they being mostly in the New Testament, which Doppers pay small regard to, using only the old. He of course got on to his great quarrel with the people of the Dutch Reformed Church at Rustenburg, where he had been put away from his deaconship for making trouble with the vrouws by saying there were no female angels. “If there were,” said he, “you would be sure to read of them in the Bible,” and on this he badly refuted a young predikant who had not been taught this, but relied on a picture in a family Bible, wherein Adam and Eve were being turned out of the Garden of Eden by female angels. But Paul had made a great study of this subject, and was victorious over the young predikant.

Then the women got tar and feathers, and waited for Paul to make a feathered angel of him; but the predikant interfered and stopped them. So, instead, they waited on the road by which Paul rode to kerk, each woman having a water tortoise under her apron; and as no horse can bear the smell of this creature, and Paul’s was no different, he bolted the moment he smelt the tortoise, and threw Paul, breaking his leg, which was why he left that church and went back to the Doppers, where all the congregation are predikants and the vrouws are not so particular whether they will be angels or not.

I got a little comfort from this long discourse, although Paul did not mean it. He was enlarging on the harm women can do to men, particularly when they are young and educated at Rooinek schools, like Charlotte.

“See how doubly she has harmed and hurt you, Sarel. First she fools you into believing that you may have her for wife; then she not only throws you away, but makes it that you cannot go back to the woman who does want you.”

“How so?” I asked joyfully.

“If you ran away because you had Government money, how much more will you run now that you have the money of an oprecht Burgher like Oom Vorster; for it is nothing to take Government money, but foolish and wicked to take the money of a Burgher.”

Instead of making me unhappy, this did just the opposite; for now I saw that if Katrina wanted me she would first have to pay the three thousand four hundred pounds, and as I could not live with her till she had done that, and made me safe from having to go to prison, I should have to live out of the Transvaal, and Katrina was too patriotic to do that.

These thoughts cheered me a little, and helped to resign me to the loss of Charlotte; and when Paul suggested that we should go to Andries Brink’s place with Charlotte’s letter and try to get the nine hundred pounds he owed me, I quite agreed, for there was no food in the laager.

We waited all that day to give the seven Burghers a chance to come back, as Paul foolishly maintained they would, though I knew better, and next morning we left the laager, as it proved, for ever.