Aletta: A Tale of the Boer Invasion

Chapter Sixteen.

The Falling of the Scales

At the end of the prescribed time Frank Wenlock was marched before the Commandant. His demeanour was very different now to what it had been upon the last occasion. All the swagger and aggressiveness had disappeared. His manner was quiet without subserviency.

Schoeman read him a long lecture upon his former shameful conduct and the magnanimity of the burghers of the Republics. Did he wish to apologise for his behaviour and the insulting references he had made to the President?

“Certainly, Mynheer Commandant,” replied Frank. “I’m a rough and ready harum-scarum sort of a chap, and I must have said some rather beastly things about people you all think a lot of. Well, I am sorry.”

“That is good,” said Schoeman. “Mynheer De la Rey has been pleading for you, and some others who have known you at home. Their esteemed words, and remembering that you are little more than a foolish boy, and the only son of your widowed mother, have decided us to spare the life which you had forfeited. But there are two courses, one of which we must exact from you – to be sent to Bloemfontein as an ordinary prisoner of war, or to pledge yourself not to serve against the Republics or those in arms on their behalf. In which case you may go free. Which do you choose?”

Frank’s face clouded a moment, wherein is a paradox. A moment ago he was expecting immediate death – now he was disappointed because denied the opportunity of meeting it every day or so.

“Choose your freedom, man,” said Stephanus kindly. “Remember you have a mother to take care of.”

“Very well. I will give you the pledge, Mynheer Commandant,” Frank answered. “But of course you will not have Colvin shot?”

“Under the circumstances, no,” was the cold reply.

“Hooroosh! You are gentlemen, you are, all of you!” cried Frank, his exuberance getting the better of him. “Wait till we meet in Schalkburg again. We’ll drink old Pritchett’s bar dry. But, now for Colvin.”

The latter had not moved from the spot on which he had stood to meet his death, and Aletta had not moved from him. She still held the revolver in her right hand, keeping jealous watch on the possibility of a suspicious move towards them. But for the moment the attention of everybody was riveted in the other direction. Not until her father approached her alone did she begin to feel reassured.

“Aletta, my child, you may put away that plaything,” called out Stephanus. “Colvin is safe now. I have Schoeman’s word for that. Besides, I am able to ensure his safety myself.”

“Aletta has saved me, Stephanus,” answered Colvin as they exchanged a great handgrip. “Look at this child of yours. But for her you would have been here just ten minutes too late. They had actually levelled the rifles when Aletta deliberately shielded me with herself. It just turned on the merest hairsbreadth of a pressure on the trigger. Look at her, Stephanus, and you will be looking on the bravest, sweetest, truest woman that ever brightened God’s world, and be as proud, to your dying day, that she is your own daughter as I am that she is to be my wife.”

“Er – I say, Colvin, old chap – how are you? I don’t want to intrude – only just to wring your flipper.” And Frank Wenlock, looking from one to the other, edged in, and performed that somewhat syllogistically described feat with a will. “It wasn’t my fault, Miss De la Rey,” he exclaimed. “I hadn’t the ghost of an idea they’d dream of meaning to shoot him till I heard it – well, by accident. When he got me safe off the premises yonder, he swore again and again that he wasn’t running the slightest risk himself – that he stood too much in with them – and so on. Otherwise I wouldn’t have budged. I have my faults, but I wouldn’t have allowed another fellow to get shot instead of me, and that’s why I came back now.”

“Look here, Frank,” said Colvin, “would you mind explaining precisely what on earth you are talking about?”

“Oh, come, that’s rather too good. Ain’t I talking about the night before last, when I was going to be shot in a few hours, and you came in and turned me loose. Eh?”

“Then you are talking of what never took place. As sure as I stand here, the last time I saw you was when you were playing the fool there in front of Schoeman and the rest, simply committing suicide like the consummate ass you were, and always have been. As for turning you loose, I couldn’t have done so even if I’d wanted to. Old Schoeman took jolly good care of that by putting me under arrest myself.”

Frank stared, whistled, then shook his head.

“All I can say is then, that if it wasn’t you, it was your bally ghost. That’s all,” he said.

“Well, you’d better not talk about it any more, Frank,” said Stephanus. “Don’t you see, man? It’s a thing to forget now.”

“Oh – um – ah – of course, I see,” assented Frank readily.

“That may be, Stephanus,” said Colvin, “but I have assured the whole of this crowd upon my honour that I had no more to do with Frank’s escape than the man in the moon. And no more I had.”

“No – no – of course not, old chap,” cheerfully rejoined Frank, who didn’t believe a word of the other’s denial. “Well, after all, what’s the odds now? All’s well that ends well.”

“There’s some mystery behind all this,” said Colvin in a low tone to himself. But Aletta heard it. And then her own doubts came back to her. What if they had all been mistaken? There was evidently someone about who bore an extraordinary likeness to Colvin. Her own eyes had deceived her once. Yes, it was extraordinary.

“Mijn Baas! Mijn lieve Baas!”

Just outside the group stood Gert Bondelzwart. He had watched his opportunity to sidle up, for in a Boer laager native servants were not wont to move about with the same free and independent swagger as, say, in the suburbs of Cape Town. Colvin turned:

“Hullo, Gert, how did you get here?”

“Ah!” cried Stephanus, “you have to thank this rascal that I am here at all, Colvin. He it was who brought Aletta’s note telling me of the fix you were in, and killed one of my best horses in doing so, but that’s nothing. The wonder to me is he got through at all.”

“Ja, Baas. It was a wonder,” put in the Griqua. “Twice I had a volley fired at me, but I knew what delay would mean, so I wouldn’t stop. Ah, well, we came in time – we came in time. And the klein missis told me it didn’t matter if I killed the horse if only we did that.”

“Gert, you are a fine fellow, and I won’t forget in a hurry,” said Colvin, turning a very kindly glance upon his faithful servitor. “Why, what is all this about?”

For a new diversion had occurred. Was there to be no end to the events of that day? A party of burghers were riding up, but – Great Heaven! what was this? What did it mean? Who was that in their midst? Colvin Kershaw? Yet, there stood Colvin Kershaw. But – here he was too! Not a face in that crowd but was agape with wild amaze. What on earth did it mean? Was this man the devil in disguise, they asked, that he could be present in two bodies at the same time? Even the stolid philosophical Dutch nature was stirred to the core, as in breathless excitement the burghers awaited the explanation of the new arrivals with this exact replica of Colvin Kershaw in their midst.

The latter had dismounted with the rest, and, pulling out his pipe, began to fill it. Those looking on could not fail to note that in manner, in every movement, the resemblance between the two men was faultless. He, for his part, not yet having descried his duplicate, was lazily wondering what the deuce all these Dutchmen were looking so scared about.

Aletta, from where she stood, could see the stranger, and a perfect maze of bewilderment flitted across her countenance as she gazed at him. Then a sudden light leaped into her eyes.

“Colvin,” she murmured. “Is that your twin brother?”

“N-no. I have a half-brother somewhere in the world, last heard of in Vancouver. I haven’t seen him for years, but he wasn’t like me then. But brother or not, Aletta, I have an idea we have run my ‘double’ to earth at last.”

“I think so too – darling,” she whispered.

The stranger’s glance had now swept round to where they stood. He gave a start and a whistle of surprise; then approached them.

“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. Nobody else could, however.

“Yes, that is my name,” replied Colvin. “But – you are not Kenneth, surely?”

“I am, though. Look here,” fishing 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 partnership 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 circumstances.”

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 title 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 title. 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 gratitude 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 circumstances, 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 coarse grass 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.

He has heard of the well-nigh miraculous escape of that rival, and the inopportune appearance of his own accomplice; has heard of it, not witnessed it, because he had sought to be despatched on outpost duty in the early hours of that morning which was to have brought his rival’s death. Well, he would console himself with the thought that at any rate he had won Aletta. She had given him her promise, and he knew her well enough to be sure she would keep it. But what of his side of the bargain unfulfilled? He had thought of that. He would persuade her that the firing was to be a sham, and that the firing party were using blank cartridge. He could easily induce Roux and Delport to swear to this. Yet, it was inconvenient that Aletta had mustered up the courage to act as she had done. He ought not to have overlooked such a contingency. Still, she could not go back upon her promise.

Then, in the darkness, those words return to him – words spoken by his victim on the very threshold of the tomb. “Within three days will death find you.” Words and tone alike appealed to the superstitious side of his nature then, and the effect remains now. Perhaps, however, the fact of his intended victim having escaped death might have robbed the forecast of its prophetic nature.

A barely audible whisper from his next door neighbour, and then but one thought alone can find place in Adrian’s mind. The moment has come. Gripping his Mauser in fierce, eager delight, he brings it forward on to the rest which he has already arranged for it. Pitch dark as it is, he knows to a yard where the first bullet will strike. At the same time, ever so faint a spark away in the blackness catches his glance and the glance of many another. It might be the friction of metal – momentary and accidental – upon a stone lying on the slope, or it might be a signal.

Soon a stealthy sound reaches each listening ear – the sound of footsteps drawing near in the darkness.

Nearer – nearer – and then – The whole ridge bursts into a line of flame and a deafening crackle as of a mighty hailstorm upon myriad iron roofs. Yet, great in volume as it is, not so great as to drown the wild, ringing British cheer as the khaki-clad figures, dimly visible in the unceasing flash of musketry, come surging up the slope, leaping, stumbling, falling, dropping down suddenly, only to spring up again and press on, the dreaded bayonet fixed, for the world-renowned charge before which nothing can stand. But the grim dwellers in these wild wastes are not to be turned so easily. A kopje hard by, silent hitherto, is now ringed with flame, and, caught in this terrible crossfire, the intrepid assailants are literally mown down, and for a few moments the slaughter is terrific.

Adrian De la Rey, lying in his shelter, is pouring in his shots – cool, well-directed and telling. The expression of hate and blood-lust upon his set features is well-nigh devilish; yet his mind preserves a murderous coolness, as he watches every chance, and never fails to take it. But he is in the very forefront of the fray, and in the wild confusion a knot of desperate British, not hearing, or disregarding, the “retire,” have charged with irresistible dash headlong on to his position. Their wild slogan is in his ears, and in the ears of those beside him. The points of the deadly bayonets gleam in the sheeting flashes, and then – and then – with the hard sickening pang which wrenches his very life away – he discharges his Mauser full in the face of the tall soldier, who topples heavily back with a hole through his brain – and Briton and Boer lie feet to feet – facing each other as they fell.

Morning light – a truce – white flags here and there – the Red Cross symbol everywhere. The hillsides strewn with dead and dying and wounded, and up yonder, in their strongly entrenched laager in the background, Commandant Schoeman and the grim Republican leaders are viewing their many prisoners, impassive, laconic, and manifesting neither surprise nor elation over the efficiency of the trap so carefully laid for the discomfiture of a respected and brave enemy.

Below, on the ridge, Adrian De la Rey is lying – lying where he fell, the bayonet which had let out his life in a great gaping gash resting across his body as it had fallen from the dying grip of the soldier – his dead, rigid face staring upward to the sky.

Ratels Hoek again, peaceful and prosperous – the blue smoke curling up from its chimneys, the flocks and herds scattered over their grazing grounds in the broad valley, black ostriches, with snowy wing-plumes, stalking truculently along the wire fences in the “camps” – Ratels Hoek peaceful and prosperous, as though no stern fratricidal war were going on not so very many miles away.

Down by the river bank two persons are wandering in easy restful happiness, and these two we should recognise, for they have borne their part throughout the time of trial and of storm, which for them, at any rate, has come to an end – has found its climax in the dawn of a lifelong joy and peace.

Around, the sunlight bathes, in a misty shimmer, the roll of veldt, and the slope of mountain and iron-faced cliff. The air, clear and fragrant and balmy, is redolent of the very breath of a new life, and the sky, arching above in unbroken and cloudless blue, is even as their own clear and dazzling horizon. They are talking of many things, these two – of the dark days of doubt and trial, and peril – all of which have but served to refine and cement their great and mutual love – of the wedding which took place but a few days ago in Schalkburg, on such a scale never before witnessed in that somnolent dorp. “One would have thought it Nachtmaal time” had been the comment of more than one of the guests, so extensive was the gathering assembled to do honour to that most substantial and respected burgher, Stephanus De la Rey; and indeed the gathering had been as homogeneous as extensive – for every conceivable relative of the bride, whether on the paternal or maternal side, and every casual acquaintance or even stranger, had flocked into Schalkburg to witness it. The church, tightly packed as it was, would not hold them all, nor yet would Ratels Hoek, whither all who could, subsequently repaired to spend the next two days and nights in uninterrupted festivity.

Of all this they were talking now, these two – and of the hundred and one droll and ludicrous incidents which had so appealed to the humorous side of both of them – the outspoken comments of the blunt old farmers and their vrouws as to Stephanus De la Rey marrying his eldest girl to an Englishman, under the palliative circumstances, however, that perhaps a rich Englishman was a better match than an impoverished Boer, after all; of the hopeless efforts to convince many of them that Colvin was not the Governor, merely because he had the right to prefix his name with “Sir”; of old Tant’ Plessis and her conviction that the great Calvinus was a greater man than even she had thought, since he had been able to leave his grandson so much money; of Kenneth Kershaw, who while making a most efficient “best man,” had given rise to endless chaff to the effect that he ought to be branded and ear-marked, lest at the last moment Mynheer should marry him to Aletta by mistake; of Frank Wenlock, who waxed so exuberant amid all the festivities, that he came near starting a little war of his own right in the midst of the convivialities; of Mynheer Albertyn himself, who while congratulating the pair, and fingering gratefully by far the biggest fee he had ever seen in the whole of his professional career, had remarked drily, and not altogether jocosely, that he vastly preferred starting a man on fresh terms in this life to seeing him off into another; of the exceeding attractiveness in their array of bridesmaids of Andrina and Condaas, and a bevy of girl relatives pressed into the service for the occasion; of the absence of May Wenlock, and the future before her and Kenneth.