CHAPTER III

THE RIVALS

"But as if he loved you! No, not he. Nor anyone else in the world, 'tis plain; Who ever heard that another, free As I, young, prosperous, sound and sane, Poured life out, proffered it--'Half a glance Of those eyes of yours, and I drop the glass!'" --ROBERT BROWNING.

Bert Mestaer flung open the door of his farm kitchen, and strode in.

All was clean and quiet. His supper, covered up in a saucepan, had been left on the stove. Anna, his Boer housekeeper, had long since retired to her heavy slumbers.

The eye of the master roved round the kitchen that night, like one who saw it for the first time. He gazed upon the ceiling, and noted that it needed fresh lime-wash. He contemplated the shining rows of plates on the dresser, as though taking a new pride in his possessions; and then, moving forward, he pushed open a door at the opposite side of the room, and found himself in darkness and coolness. He struck a light, held it to a candle on the table, and his critical glance travelled round the parlour which had been his mother's pride.

There was a piano; he had a dim memory of her sitting there, playing to him, the hymns that had charmed her own English childhood--

"Once in Royal David's city--"

the sound of the tune floated across the brain which for so long had heard no such strains. He saw himself, a boy with yellow curls, in which she had delighted, lifting his piercing childish treble at her bidding. What would she not have given for the English Mission which had come to Slabbert's Poort since her death, and the ministrations of Carol Mayne! Bert had not entered a church now, for years. As he stood by her silent piano, he was invaded by a vague feeling that he could hardly expect a neglected God to take his part.

The room contained an old bureau and comfortable chairs. There were good engravings on the walls. The carpet was still serviceable, and there were clean curtains in the windows. From the wall before him smiled down his mother's frank, good-humoured face--the face of Alice Brooke--a brave girl, who had earned her living among strangers in a strange land, until the rich Boer farmer had persuaded her to be his wife. Beside her, the broad-bearded, benevolent face of her devoted husband, a Boer of the best type.

Bert folded his arms, and gazed at them both, with a heart full of curious longings, rebellions and regrets. Mrs. Mestaer had died when he was eight years old. Her death was the result of an accident--a runaway horse had cut short the happy life on that out-of-the-way farm; and people said that Mestaer had never rallied from the shock. He became an old man in a few short months. He turned a deaf ear to those who urged him to take some expansive Boer lady to look after him and his motherless boy, and he died of pneumonia when Bert was seventeen, seeming only too glad of the chance to be gone.

Bert did not remember feeling much grief when he was told of his father's death. He had been chiefly conscious of the excitement of leaving school and coming home to take possession of his property, and ruffle it in the streets of Slabbert's Poort.

Just at that time had come the diamond-finding craze, which changed the little rural hamlet into a haunt of needy adventurers, gamblers and sharpers, Slabbert's Poort was to be the new Kimberley. The usual influx of rabble followed; the usual mad period of wild speculation. To let off big portions of his land to speculators had seemed to young Mestaer far more "sporting" than to continue stolidly to farm the precious acres. He chummed in with the prospectors, who were only too ready to flatter a young fellow with money in his pockets. The result was that his proper business languished; and now it was universally allowed that the diamond-bearing capacities of the locality had been absurdly over estimated.

Bert had fallen into ways which would have wrung his mother's heart, when, for good or ill, the white face of Millie crossed his horizon, to remain as a fixed star in his heavens.

To-night he was beginning to realise all that it might have meant for him if his mother had lived. She was English; she would have understood and befriended Millie; she would have told him the things that English girls demand of their lovers, and have devised ways in which the acquaintance might be encouraged.

There was not, as it happened, a solitary English-woman in the place. Mayne, at the Mission, was a bachelor, so could not be used as a chaperon. Millie had never seen the interior of Bert's house in her life. He felt sure that if she could see the rooms made comfortable by his English mother, it must to her seem preferable to her own miserable quarters. She only saw him slouching about the streets, in the unkempt condition affected by his pals; she took him, he felt sure, for other than he was, or than he felt himself capable of becoming for her sake.

Remorsefully he remembered that Millie had seen him drunk. He had not cared at the time--the thing was growing far too fashionable to be looked upon as a disgrace in the little place which had been so pastoral--but love was teaching him strange things, and now he felt as though he were looking upon the sordid episode of drunkenness through Millie's tired, contemptuous eyes.

What would he not have given to be able to make her understand that, if she would be kind to him, he would be what she chose--to be able to show her the clean, peaceful farm, known throughout the district as High Farm, owing to its being the only house for miles which was built English fashion on two floors--and tell her that, if she would be mistress there, he would use all his vast strength to work as never man worked before, and keep her like a lady?

But how to get at her? He felt that any written expression of his desires would be ludicrously inadequate. At one time he thought of begging Mayne to speak for him; but his pride jibbed too violently at the notion of having to confess that he lacked courage to speak. His heart was heavy as lead. Four times since his last strikingly unsatisfactory interview he had hung over the gate in vain. Each evening it was Kattie the Kaffir girl who had been sent to draw the water; and he was too proud to send a message by her.

But on the fourth night he had yielded to unbearable longing, and entrusted the grinning damsel with a note for Millie--a folded scrap of paper, on which he had written:

"Do let me have a word. I'm so blamed sorry I said that to you. "BERT."

He had some self-questionings as to whether "blamed" might be looked upon as a swear-word; but he decided that it must be harmless.

"If you don't say that, dashed if I know what you could say," he reflected irritably.

His heart beat insufferably as he watched the girl stagger across the yard, the pail in one hand, the little note in the other.

Strange thrills crept through his nerves, his breath seemed to trouble him as he drew it If Millie herself should come in answer, what should he say to her? He was all unprepared.

A shadowy figure was stealing towards him stealthily in the gathering gloom. It was slim--it moved quietly. He grew crimson in the dark. An unmistakable Kaffir chuckle broke on his ear: it was only Kattie back again. She handed him a piece of paper and ran away in an instant He struck a match and looked eagerly at what he held: it was just his own message, crumpled up and returned without comment.

He had been enraged, but not daunted for long. It was highly possible that Tante Wilma had got hold of the message, and that Millie had never seen it. The thing now was to invent some new plan of campaign--some scheme by which the plenty and good plenishing of his home might burst upon the vision of the girl.

To-night he set down the kerosene lamp upon the table, which had a serge cover of a good shade of blue. He surveyed the well-upholstered sofa, with silk cushions of the same blue. He tried, with doubled fist, the springs of the deep easy-chair. He stared at the tall glass vases and glazed pots, and dimly recalled the fact that in his mother's lifetime these had been wont to hold flowers. A girl would like, perhaps, to see flowers in a room. He believed there were some in the yard; but he paid no attention to them, and never gathered any. A deep sigh escaped him at the thought of his inability to cope with the situation in general.

He strolled back with his lamp into the tiled kitchen.

Should he consult Amurrica? The Yankee was the only one of all the set for whom he entertained anything but a profound and steady contempt. And Amurrica was, he knew, untrustworthy. He had a secret fear--which brought the blood to his head when he considered it--that Amurrica himself was "on to Millie." It was possible that the Lutwyches might consider an American more akin to themselves than the son of a Boer. Even as he turned the delicate subject over and over in his thoughts, there came a tap at his door, and a long whistle, which told him that the man who occupied his thoughts stood upon his threshold.

He went and opened, standing aside as the visitor sauntered in, and manifesting no curiosity as to the reason of so late a call. Amurrica shut the door carefully behind him, and walked to the clean hearth. His face was of the hatchet variety, not handsome, but keen, with that eagle keenness which is the hall-mark of a certain type of American. The humour in his half-closed hazel eyes atoned for their lack of size; the composure of his manner hid his real thoughts from sight. Bert had never before considered him formidable, but to-night he was conscious of a foreboding as he mechanically produced the whisky-jar from a corner cupboard, and pushed it across the table. Amurrica sat down.

His eye roved around restless until it lighted upon the spittoon in the corner by the hearth. He made his shot with precision, and then, laying his pipe on the table, began to pour whisky into a tumbler.

"'S come at last," he observed.

"What?" asked Bert, slouching in his chair, his listless eyes on the fading red glimmer between the bars of the stove.

Amurrica shifted slightly in his seat, so as to face his host squarely. He took a pull at his whisky before replying casually:

"Lutwyche is cuttin' the stick."

There was silence. Bert knew he was being watched; felt instinctively that the time had come. With no other word spoken, he knew that they were rivals; that it would be perhaps a question of which man was prepared to give most to the Boer step-mother for the attainment of what he desired. He must feign indifference; for aught he knew, Amurrica might have his shooting-iron in his pocket.

He had no personal fear of him; his fears were all for Millie. His love was teaching him stratagem.

His eyelids did not flicker, he did not even remove his pipe from his mouth. Amurrica's eyes were boring him like gimlets, but he puffed calmly on, his thoughts racing each other over the well-known ground. What was he to do?

"Who told you?" he presently vouchsafed.

"Met Boka, galloping for the doctor like the very devil."

Boka was one of Lutwyche's Kaffirs.

Bert asked no question, manifested no curiosity; but the other was full of news, and intent upon imparting it.

"Said the gal had made him sleep in the kitchen nights, for a week past, 'n case she needed to call him up. To-night, down she come with a face like chalk, and told him to ride like hell: said he judged by the looks of her the ole man was gone already."

Again there was a silence, while both smoked. Bert presently spoke--two words:

"Mayne there?"

"Mayne? Not that I know of." A surprised inflection in the voice.

"Then I think," said Mestaer, slowly rising to his full height, and knocking his pipe against the chimney, to dislodge the dottle--"I think I'd better go an' send him."

"What's the blank good of that?" cried Amurrica, in a choice outburst of astonished profanity.

"Parson's the right man when it comes to dyin', ain't he?" said Bert tranquilly. "An' you done right to come an' tell me, Amurrica, for I'm the man who's concerned in this. I thank you. Put yourself outside o' that whisky, an' I'll make so free as to turn you out."

He was moving quietly about the room as he spoke, opening drawers, and Amurrica saw him slip a revolver into his pocket.

The Yankee sat for a minute with a frozen face, digesting his plans. Then he stood up, and his features relaxed towards a smile.

"Well, here's luck!" he said, draining his glass.

"Thanks!" said Bert

He approached the table, and took the empty glass, as though to carry it away; but as he moved, it slipped through his fingers, and fell in shivers upon the floor. Amurrica's nostrils twitched: was it an accident? Bert said "Damn!" quite naturally, and kicked the fragments with his foot. A second time his visitor decided, upon reflection, not to quarrel; and they left the house together.