post from the gate away yonder were an Englishman how long it would be standing there,” and he levelled his long Martini as though to put the matter to the test. But the reply which this demonstration elicited from their habitually easy-going and indulgent father both surprised and startled the two youths, and that mightily.
“Are you not ashamed of yourself, Jan, to stand there before me and talk such wicked nonsense? Is that the sort of Christianity the teaching of Mynheer, as well as of your own parents, has implanted in you, that you can talk about shooting men – Christian men like ourselves, remember – as you would talk of shooting buck? I have nothing to do with Adrian’s movements or ideas, although he is my nephew, but I have with yours; so listen to me. There is a great deal of wild talk being flung around just now, but I wish you to have nothing to do with it. Of course you cannot help hearing it from time to time, there is too much of it everywhere unfortunately; but I enjoin you not to take part in it. It is shameful the light way in which such weighty and serious subjects are discussed. When our fathers took up arms to defend their rights and liberties and their lives they did so prayerfully and with the full weight of their solemn responsibilities, and that is why they were victorious. But now such matters are bragged and chattered about by a herd of thoughtless boys. Leave them alone. The times are quite troublous enough, and things may come right or may not, but the only way in which we can help is to be quiet and to attend to our own business.”
“Oh, goeije! What are you giving those children such a scolding about, father?” chimed in a cheery voice, whose owner came bustling out on to the stoep.
Stephanus De la Rey turned his head, with a smile.
“I am giving them a little good advice,” he said, relighting his pipe. “And I don’t think I’ve ever given them any bad. Have I, boys?”
“No, Pa,” they answered, meaning it, too, but not sorry that their mother had come to the rescue: yet profoundly impressed by the stern earnestness of the paternal expostulation.
“Here come people,” said Stephanus, gliding easily from the subject, which he had no wish to prolong. “Can you make them out, Cornelis?”
“I think so,” replied the youth, shading his eyes, and gazing at two distant but rapidly approaching horsemen. “One is Adrian, and the other – I believe it’s an Englishman from the way he holds his feet in the stirrups. Ja– it is. It must be Colvin Kershaw.”
“Is it?”
“Where?”
And the utterers of both queries came forth on to the stoep, causing their brothers to break into a splutter of mirth. The younger of the two girls took after her mother. She was short and dark, and rather too squat for her seventeen years, but had fine eyes. The other, who was a year older, was taller, fair and blue-eyed, and rather pretty.
“Which is it, Andrina?” whispered Jan to this one mischievously. “The Englishman, of course! You all go mad over him.”
“Do we? Who’s ‘we,’ and who is ‘all,’ I should like to know?” retorted Andrina, with a toss of her golden head.
“I know I don’t,” said the other girl. “Why, we fight too much for that. But I like fighting him. I wish all Englishmen were like him though. He is so full of fun.”
Stephanus welcomed both arrivals with his usual geniality, not allowing the fact that he disapproved of his nephew politically to make the slightest difference in his manner. The young Boer, however, whose self-confidence was lacking in the presence of one to whom he looked up so much, felt somewhat constrained. However, his message had to be delivered, so he jerked out:
“The Patriot will be here at sundown, Oom Stephanus.”
“So?”
“He addressed us for nearly three hours at Jan Grobbelaar’s two nights ago. Ja, it was magnificent to hear him,” went on the speaker, losing himself in his enthusiasm for The Cause. “I wish you would hear him, Oom Stephanus. He would soon convince you.”
“Make a ‘patriot’ of me, you mean, Adrian. I am that already in the real meaning of the word. Well, Colvin, what have you been doing lately? It’s a long time since I’ve seen you.”
“That so, Stephanus? Oh, all sorts of things – farming, and hunting, and taking it easy generally.”
“And making love to that pretty Miss Wenlock,” said Condaas, the younger girl, in a sly undertone.
Colvin turned, with a laugh. He and this household were upon quite intimate terms, and he had been exchanging greetings all-round during the colloquy between uncle and nephew.
“There would be every excuse, wouldn’t there?” he answered, entering into the joke, and, moreover, hugely amused, remembering that almost the last words May had spoken to him had been to chaff him about these very girls, and now almost their first words had been to chaff him about her.
“You ought not to say that in our presence,” said Andrina, with a mimic pout.
“Of course not. But if you had not interrupted me I was going to add – ‘but for the fact of the propinquity of Ratels Hoek and the entrancing but utterly perplexing choice of counter-attractions it affords.’”
“Why will you make those girls talk such a lot of nonsense, Mr Kershaw?” laughed Mrs De la Rey. “They always do whenever you come here. I declare you are making them very dreadful.”
“Didn’t know I exercised such influence over the young and tender mind. It isn’t I who do it, Mrs De la Rey. It’s Adrian there. Depend upon it, he is the delinquent.”
Now Adrian was a good-looking, well-set-up young fellow, who, his fiery “patriotism” notwithstanding, had his clothes built by an English tailor and talked English fluently. Indeed, in the De la Rey household it was spoken almost as frequently as the mother tongue, and the above conversation had been carried on about equally in both languages, gliding imperceptibly from one to the other and back again.
“Adrian? Why, there isn’t a grain of fun left in Adrian these days,” said Condaas, mischievously. “See how solemn he looks. I believe he thinks about nothing but fighting the English.”
“Well, we have just ridden two solid hours together, and he didn’t want to fight me,” said Colvin.
But the young “patriot” was not enjoying this form of chaff, for he turned away, indignantly muttering to the effect that some matters were too high and too great to be made fun of by a pair of giggling girls.
“Now we have made him kwaatj,” said Andrina. “See now, I’ll get him to laugh again.” Then, raising her voice, “Adrian! Adrian! wait. I want to stroll round the garden with you and hear about The Cause.”
“That has made him more kwaat than ever,” whispered Condaas; for the badgered one, who had hesitated, turned away again with an angry jerk, scenting more chaff on his sacred subject. Andrina looked knowing.
“Adrian!” she hailed again – “Wait. I want to tell you about Aletta. Really. You know, I heard from her yesterday.”
The effect was magical, also comical. The affronted “patriot” stopped short. There was no irresolution now about his change of front.
“Come, then,” he said.
With a comical look at the other two, Andrina tripped off, and
