A Veldt Official: A Novel of Circumstance. Mitford Bertram

don’t want to prejudice anybody against him, far from it; but I’ve noticed that between two given people there often exists an antipathy at sight. Now, Lambert may be a decent fellow enough in the main; but between him and me that antipathy exists.”

      He did not add that from unerring signs he had taken the measure of the subject under discussion, and that that measure was as mean as mean could be.

      “You don’t take to Lambert, then?”

      “No. But I know nothing against him, and so it wouldn’t be fair to say anything against him on the score of a mere instinctive dislike.”

      “How is it you didn’t go out to the Suffields this afternoon, Mr Musgrave?” said the magistrate’s wife as, having returned from their walk, they were sitting on the stoep awaiting dinner – for with characteristic geniality his official superior had insisted upon Roden considering himself on a “run-of-the-house” footing.

      “I don’t know,” was the reply. “There was something to be done at the office, I suppose, or perhaps I felt lazy.”

      Mrs Van Stolz laughed. She was a pretty, dark-eyed woman, also of Dutch extraction, as amiable and sunny-natured as her husband.

      “Oh yes, of course,” she retorted mischievously. “But Miss Ridsdale was consoling herself with the new doctor – at any rate, as they drove past here. He’ll cut you out, Mr Musgrave, if you don’t take care. But, seriously, how do you like her on further acquaintance?”

      “Oh, we seem to get along fairly well. Fight without ceremony, and all that sort of thing.”

      “And make it up again. Take care, Mr Musgrave; she’s dangerous. Poor Mr Watkins completely lost his heart.”

      “Well, I haven’t got one to lose, Mrs Van Stolz; so I’m safe.”

      “I don’t know. I’ve already heard in two quarters that you are engaged to her.”

      “Hardly surprising, is it? I believe we have been seen twice in the same street. That would be more than enough for Doppersdorp.”

      “Don’t you let the new doctor cut you out,” she rejoined merrily.

      “He has the advantage of youth on his side, at any rate,” responded Roden. And thus the conflict of chaff went on.

      Chapter Six.

      The Verdict of Doppersdorp

      Notwithstanding the exalted opinion of it professed by its inhabitants, the interests of Doppersdorp were from the very nature of things circumscribed. They embraced, for the most part, such entrancing topics as the price of wool, the last case of assault, ditto of water rights – for the burgesses of Doppersdorp were alike a pugnacious and litigious crowd – the last Good Templar meeting, and the number of liquors Tompkins, the waggon builder, could put away without impairing his centre of gravity; whether Macsquirt, the general dealer, would bring his threatened libel action against the Doppersdorp Flag– a turgid sheet of no apparent utility, save for enveloping a bar of yellow soap – that leader of public opinion having referred to him as “an insignificant ‘winkler’” (i.e., small shopkeeper), instead of “that enterprising merchant,” and whether he would succeed in obtaining a farthing of damages or costs from its out-at-elbows proprietor and editor, if he won – such, with slight variation, were the topics which exercised the minds and the tongues of this interesting community from year’s end to year’s end. Such a variation was afforded by the arrival of two new and important members in its midst. Upon these Doppersdorp was not slow to make up its mind, and whether foregathered in council and the bar of the Barkly Hotel, or secure in the privacy of home circle, hesitated not to express the same in no halting terms.

      Now, the collective mind on the subject of Roden Musgrave was adverse. His demerits were of a negative order, which is to say that his sins had been those of omission rather than of commission, and, as was sure to be the case, had rendered him unpopular. Who was he, Doppersdorp would like to know, that he shut himself up like an oyster, as if nobody was worth speaking to? though the possibility that the motive attributed to the bivalve delicacy might be wide of the mark did not occur to the originator of this felicitous simile. His predecessor, young Watkins, had been hail-fellow-well-met with everybody; was, in fact, as nice a young fellow as they could wish – and here Doppersdorp unwittingly answered its own indignant query.

      Roden Musgrave had no idea of being “young Anybody” to Dick, Tom, and Harry, or hail-fellow-well-met – i.e., on terms to be patronised by the various ornaments of Doppersdorp society, shading off in imperceptible gradations to the local tailor, whom he would be obliged to indict nearly every Monday morning for having overstepped the limits of public order during the Saturday night’s “spree,” and been run in by the police therefor. He had a wholesome belief in the old proverb regarding too much familiarity, seeing in it a happy application to a man holding the post he did in such a place as Doppersdorp. Wherein his reasoning was sound; but the collective sense of the community opined differently, and was wont to pronounce with graphic, if somewhat profane indignation, that the new magistrate’s clerk mistook himself for his omnipotent Creator, and, in fact, wanted taking down a peg.

      Not all, however, were of this opinion: his official chief, for instance, as we have seen, and perhaps two or three others, among them the retiring District Surgeon, Lambert’s predecessor, a somewhat cynical, at bottom, though on the surface rollicking, kind of individual. He to Roden, while making his adieux: “We are sure to tumble up against each other again somewhere, Musgrave, but one consolation is that it couldn’t be among a set of more infernal scoundrels than we shall leave behind us here, as you’ll find out by the time you get a quarter of my experience of them.” Which caustic delivery Roden was at no pains to controvert, feeling sure that it covered a large substratum of truth. Indeed, he was not long in suspecting that to the dictum of Lambert’s predecessor there was every possibility Lambert might contribute, in his own person, his full share of confirmation.

      But whatever Roden’s opinion of the new doctor, it was not shared by the community at large. Lambert possessed all those qualities calculated to make him “go down” in a place like Doppersdorp. He was young and energetic – he had a certain breezy geniality of manner, and was very much hail-fellow well-met with all classes. Doppersdorp opened its arms and took him to its heart. He soon became as popular as the other was the reverse.

      But, for his own unpopularity Roden Musgrave cared not a rush. He was not over eager to court the doubtful honour of being voted a “reel jolly good chep,” by Dick, Tom, and Harry, as the price of his self-respect. His ambition did not lie that way. In private life he was not given to the exchange of shoulder slaps, or jocose digs in the ribs, or other genialities in the way of horseplay dear to the heart of that surprising trinity; nor in his official capacity was he inclined to wink at certain preposterous swindles, which the honest practitioners of Doppersdorp were wont to plant upon their clients in the form of “bills of costs,” which latter it was his business to tax, nor would he connive at any undue laxity in the matter of taking out licences, or other omissions which might fall within his sphere. So, officially and socially, he found scant favour in Doppersdorp.

      He was seated in his office one day, doing some routine work, when the door was flung open unceremoniously, and a voice demanded angrily in German English —

      “What is dis – what is dis?”

      Roden looked up. “Dis” consisted of a sheet of blue paper, partly printed, partly written upon, and held out between a finger and thumb of doubtful cleanliness. At the other end of the uncleanly finger and thumb was an ordinary-looking individual of Teutonic and generally unwholesome aspect, bearded, and his poll thatched with a profusion of dark bush. This worthy held the office of postmaster at Doppersdorp – an office whose emolument was not great. Still it was something. Anybody ambitious of incurring Sonnenberg’s enmity for life had only to hint at his being of Hebraic extraction, and indeed, if only from the horror in which he affected to hold such suggestion, it is highly probable he was. For the rest he had all the self-conceit of the average Teuton, who has made, or is making, a fair success of life.

      “What is dis – what is dis?” he repeated in a tone tremulous with rage,