CHAPTER V

A BOER BURYING

"--Within some glass, dimmed by our breath, Our hearts discern wild images of Death, Shadows and shoals that edge Eternity." --DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI.

The sunrise flashed into their eyes, as the farm-house door closed upon the two men. They went together through the yard, and out at the gate where Bert had so often watched in vain for Millie. Their steps echoed with an unfamiliar ring upon the hard, caked earth at this unwonted hour of stark, raw dawn. The sight of the well gave Bert a twinge as he passed it.

"Even that 'ud be better than a drinkin' Boer," he muttered, under his breath.

Before they had gone much farther, he grappled with the new fear that was clutching at his heart.

"I say," he growled, stopping and planting himself before Mr. Mayne, who of necessity stopped also; "what did you mean by what you said up there about letters from England? She--she hasn't got friends in England, has she?"

"It is very doubtful," said Mayne hesitatingly. "Look here, Mestaer!" he added abruptly. "My hand was forced just now. You were not supposed to hear what I said. Can I trust you not to repeat it?"

"Repeat it! Who'd I repeat it to?"

"Otis; or any of your lot."

"My lot! That's her cry too. Has she learnt it from you? Do you lump me in with Amurrica's crew of thievin' idlers? ---- them all for a set of ----"

Mayne's hand went up with the slight gesture which always stopped Bert's swearing.

"Mestaer," he said, "after what we have just seen, you will drop your fancy for Millie, won't you? There are girls who will play with a man's love to the very brink of the end; but if a girl has any sort of feeling for a man, she will turn to him in her trouble. Millie doesn't care for you--you must see that, don't you?"

Bert looked as though he had been suddenly turned into a graven image. Meeting the squareness of his jaw, the metallic glint of his hard grey eye, Mayne was conscious anew of the dreadful strength of undisciplined human nature, and the imperious quality of its desires. One is sometimes apt to wonder what twenty centuries of Christianity have done for Europe. The answer to the question stares you in the face the moment you step outside the circle in which Christianity has insensibly moulded public opinion.

"If she don't want me, she don't want no other man," said the giant doggedly; "and look how young she is. I've got patience; I can wait. But if she's going to be taken off to England--"

He broke off, and began to walk on.

"If she is going away to England?" repeated Mayne, trudging beside him.

"Why, then, I don't know as how I can."

Mayne thought rapidly for a minute.

"You're not reasonable," he said. "You own that Millie's too young to be married; but you wouldn't have her stay in Vrouw Lutwyche's clutches, would you?"

"The worse they treat her, the more likely she is to come to me," said Bert calmly.

"Or to Otis."

"Chuck it!" burst out Bert hoarsely. "Chuck it, I tell you." He shook with all the inward feelings which he could not explain. How could he say that it scorched him with sheer physical heat and shame, to hear Amurrica even suggested as a mate for Millie? "He'd poison her soul," he groaned; and Mayne felt an acute inward sympathy with him.

"Mestaer," he said kindly. "It seems very doubtful whether any of the English relations of Millie's mother will be willing--or if willing, able to receive her. Her father has left in my hands a little sum of money--very small, but enough to pay her passage home. It appears that the family of the first Mrs. Lutwyche all disapproved of her marriage. They are poor proud people, and as he has had no communication with them since her death, I do not even know whether his letter will reach them. If however they do write, and if they offer to have the girl home, on any terms, you have the sense to see that she most certainly ought to go."

"Perhaps she won't go. Who's goin' to make her?"

"I am her guardian," said Mayne, very quietly.

"If you try an' make her do anything she don't wanter, I'll choke you with my own hands," said Bert earnestly.

The priest was unable to help smiling.

"Mestaer, if you had lived in other days, you would have been a devout lover," he said. "As it is, you are a bit of a barbarian, are you not?"

"A drinkin' Boer; that's it, if you want to do any classifying," retorted the young man, with exceeding bitterness; and with no parting salutation, he flung off, turned the corner leading to the High Farm, and marched away, leaving Mayne to pursue the road to the Mission alone.

The news he had heard was working like some stimulating drug in the young farmer's brain. The fatal word "England" lit up the future in one long, awful glare, as of an endless avenue along which he seemed to see himself moving--alone. Surely there was something that a strong man could do to chain a girl's affections! What charm can lead a spirit captive? Bert knew well enough, though he never said so to himself in set terms, not being by way of analysing his emotions--he knew that it was Millie's self, her love, her soul, her inmost being, that he longed for. If he could make her long for him as he longed for her! He thought of the cold, white face and little delicate, sneering mouth till he was half mad.

The only plan of campaign which suggested itself was the simple one of being always on hand. He felt pretty sure, in his own mind, that the girl's stepmother would try to get even with her somehow. Her prey was to be snatched out of her hands; it would be odd if she made no attempt to revenge herself. The girl knew no fear; she had successfully cowed and defied the bullying woman for years. But Bert, with Boer intuitions in his blood, felt that she was less secure than she thought herself. It was truly British to despise an adversary; but it was a British mistake, sometimes. The kind of hate that Tante Wilma felt was hate that would improve with keeping.

Accordingly, Bert passed the next day or two in mounting guard in the immediate neighbourhood. There were various outbuildings which made it easy to hang about unseen, and he went to his post before Otis and the others were about.

On the first day, life at the farm went on much as usual. As Millie had foreseen, Tante Wilma was not visible. Various Boer ladies of her acquaintance came to condole, and discuss the purchase of widow's mourning. Mayne came and saw Millie, and gave her the money to supply her own black dress, which she sat up all night to make. There was no need for Bert to wait about when once he had seen the light of the candle in the little square patch of glass in the corrugated iron roof that lighted Millie's garret. In that fastness she was safe--safe among the coffins.[1]

[1] In remote Boer districts, a coffin or two is frequently kept in the loft, ready for emergencies. Apples and fruit for winter use are sometimes stored in these weird receptacles.

Amurrica came not near the farm all that day. Perhaps it had leaked out that the Vrouw was not in a fit state for the conduct of negotiations.

The next day the vigilant lover patiently returned to his post, and waited until dark. Millie was all right, so far, for a Boer woman had been all day long plying her needle at the farm, and the pallid, unwholesome little man who fulfilled the profitable duties of undertaker to the community had been shuffling in and out all day. Moreover, the girl herself had appeared in the yard, and been occupied there for more than an hour in hanging out wet linen, unconscious that she was watched from behind the thick hedge of prickly pear which enclosed the orchard, with its haze of peach blossom. Bert made no sign of his presence. He had determined now upon his role, and adhered to it with characteristic persistency. His plan was to bide his time, and come on the scene when Millie needed a champion. Her extremity was to be his opportunity.

About nine o'clock, Amurrica stepped briskly up to the stoep, and was admitted by Millie herself. The sentinel, much excited, stood by, every muscle tense, in view of emergencies. At the end of about three minutes, the square of candle-light appeared in the roof, gladdening the lover's heart. Millie had retired to her stronghold, out of reach of importunity. He determined to stand his ground, however, until the departure of Otis. The sound of raised voices was soon heard. No doubt Amurrica was demanding the return of his "ten quid," and demanding it of course in vain. It must have come in very handy for the purchase of the funeral garb and bake-meats. He did not stay very long. The invisible Bert studied his countenance as he emerged, but as was usual with him, there was not much to be learnt from it. It was non-committal. Bert, as he strolled home, fell to imagining what his next move was likely to be.

During the whole of the third day, four women were ceaselessly at work upon the solid feast which was to conclude the obsequies of Arnold Lutwyche, in a manner befitting the importance and position of his widow. The kitchen was a scene of bustle, excitement, constant coming and going. Bert wondered how Millie stood it. Tante Wilma, the centre of attraction, kept meritoriously sober during all this exciting period, and Bert knew that the girl was safe, at least from physical violence, while all these people were about.

Next day, the funeral took place. It happened to be the first Boer funeral that Carol Mayne had ever seen; and he found himself unprepared for it. From early dawn the cape carts and slow waggons kept coming in from all the country-side. He did not at first divine that all these people were come solely to attend the funeral. The Pieters family, to which Tante Wilma belonged, was the leading clan of the district; and before noon at least two hundred were assembled, some of them having come distances of thirty or forty miles for the sake of being present.

When he arrived at Lutwyche's, the ceremony of viewing the corpse was in active process. Just to the left of the stoep, before you entered the _sitkamer_, was a small room, the function of which seemed indeterminate. Here, in one of the coffins which had for so long borne Millie company in her loft, lay the dead Englishman, his face still uncovered. By his side, as master of the ceremonies, stood the widow's senior male cousin, Cornells Pieters, a typical Boer, with a reputation for beating his wife. His fluent Taal was not very comprehensible to Mayne; but a sick disgust came over him at the way in which he was, as it were, acting showman--stroking back the dead man's hair, pushing or poking his hands or cheeks with great stumpy fingers, and encouraging the never-ending stream of gazers to handle the corpse and finger the linen. A great laugh would go up if some young woman or child made outcry at the unexpected coldness of contact. Mayne's thoughts flew to Millie, and he wondered how she would bear this. But he could not see her anywhere. The widow, surrounded by her children, and evidently deriving moral support from a black-bordered pocket-handkerchief, sat in the _sitkamer_ receiving condolences. But Millie was invisible.

Mayne was on delicate ground here. The dead man had expressly stipulated that he should be laid to rest with the words of his own liturgy, and the services of the English priest; but the Boer Predikant was in evidence, and Carol, who was quick to learn, and was beginning to understand local etiquette, stepped up to him, and asked him to say a prayer, when--the ghoulish corpse-inspection over at last--the coffin was screwed down, borne in, and triumphantly placed upon the family dining-table.

The Predikant, gratified, though hardly placated, took full advantage of his opportunities. He talked to the Almighty about himself, the Pieters family and the Boer nation, for three quarters of an hour; while Tante Wilma's noisy, snuffling sobs filled the place.

After this Mayne stepped forward, and read the first part of the burial service. Then the coffin was raised and borne solemnly out, and down the fields beyond the Kaffir huts, to where a stone wall enclosed the little family burying-ground.

Melicent Lutwyche, standing by the open grave, saw the procession coming, and the sight of Mayne's figure, bareheaded and white-robed, shook her fortitude for the first time. Her eyes began to burn with unshed tears. All these days, all these sleepless nights, her heart had never ceased to repeat: "I am glad! I am glad! He is safe now--free! Out of her clutches for ever!" But now a new and desolating thought supervened--suggested somehow by the liturgy's majestic words--the thought of his immense distance from herself. Heaven had formed no part of her conception of his release from captivity; now the anthem of Resurrection smote her with inarticulate pain. What had she, with a heart full of black hatred, to do with Resurrection? The white flowers in her hands shook; she was shivering from head to foot on the verge of a breakdown.

Then, foremost among the great throng of following people, she saw Amurrica's hatchet profile, and her thoughts, just painfully striving to take wing, sank back to the black, bad earth she knew. Warfare was still her portion. Amurrica and Bert Mestaer should never see her weep. She turned, moved a little, and stood exactly at the grave's head. The light was behind her, and to Bert she seemed like an austere angel, waiting to bestow the dead in some still sanctuary, where vulgar hands and tongues could reach him no longer. As the earth and stones fell pattering on the coffin, her white blooms fluttered down with them. The set intensity of her small white face fairly terrified her new guardian.

The service over, people cheered up, and hurried back to the farm to eat and drink before setting out upon their long return journeys. Mayne made Bert a signal to wait behind.

"Mestaer," he said, "I have to ride to Leitersdorp and get this will proved. I can't get back inside three days. I am setting off at once, and I expect to find a letter from England waiting for me at Mr. Crick's office, so that, when I come back, I shall know better what to do with Millie. Can I trust you while I am gone?"

He looked searchingly at the young man's face.

Bert grinned. "To punch Amurrica's head? Oh, yes!"

"Exactly! Or your own, if you should feel that you deserve it."

Bert shrugged. He was in a hurry. He hardly paused to realise what the three days' absence of the guardian might mean. His memory was centred upon the strained expression of Millie's little face, and he knew, by the faculty of divination which possessed him where she was concerned, that she was near the end of her powers of endurance. He had premonition that before long she must collapse. It seemed like a duel between him and her. When she gave in he would be glad, but he must be there. This was just now all that mattered--that he should be near her when the steel springs of her will relaxed.

He hurried away with an abstracted air the moment Mayne had finished speaking; and Mayne, with a sigh, wondered whether he had done right to tell him of his departure--whether he did right to go. Until the will was proved, he felt uncertain of being able to maintain his authority against Vrouw Lutwyche and her ignorant kinsfolk; he felt that a weight would be off his mind when he was safely back again. There was an Anglican sisterhood at Leitersdorp, and he wished to inquire whether the girl might be placed there for a time should circumstances render it necessary. But his guardianship was a real puzzle, and it was seriously complicated by the passion of Bert Mestaer.