Aletta: A Tale of the Boer Invasion. Mitford Bertram

luxury of her rich, and the hideous misery and want and desperation of her poor; and I tell you that for all her outward strength she is a weak nation, a rotten nation, with all her best blood poisoned by disease, and her common blood turned to water by foul air and hunger and drunkenness. And this is the nation which is greedy for our land, is ravening to steal the gold which it contains.” Then, raising his powerful voice to thunder pitch: “Brothers, shall this go on? Now, nay, it shall not, I tell you. All is in readiness. For years we have been in readiness, increasing our armed might, and now we are ready to strike—to strike with a force and terror that shall amaze the whole world. Be in readiness, too, brave burghers, patriots all; and to deliver this message to you am I here to-night God does not will that this rotten, frivolous, and enfeebled nation shall rule over you any longer. Be ready, for the day is at hand. ‘Africa for the Afrikanders!’ is our watchword, and the flag that shall wave over that United Africa is this.”

      With the celerity of a conjurer he produced the four-coloured flag of the Transvaal Republic, and with one fierce jerk of the hand unfurling it, he waved it above his head. Instantly every hat was off, and round after round of deafening cheering hailed the symbol. Then, led by the emissary himself, the whole assembly struck up the “Volkslied,” the national hymn of the Transvaal, roaring it forth in a manner that left nothing to be desired in the way of fervour, but much in the way of time and tune, and which must have impressed the numerous baboons infesting the crags and krantzes of the surrounding Wildschutsbergen with the instinct that it was high time to quit that section of country, never to return.

      When the singing and cheering had subsided the emissary invited any of those present to express their opinions, but few cared to do so. One or two of the old men got up, but their remarks were mere quavering comments—interspersed with pious aspirations—upon all that the speaker had said, and fell woefully flat after the fiery periods and power of eloquence of the delegate from Pretoria. And the secret of that power lay in the fact that the man was so terribly in earnest. No timeserving, self-seeking stump-agitator was Andries Botma. Every word he uttered he implicitly believed, and that the whole Dutch race in South Africa were under special Divine protection, and the Anglo-Saxon under the Divine curse, he no more doubted than that the sky was above and the earth beneath. Though a hopelessly fanatical patriot, he was essentially an honest one, and this his hearers knew.

      The predikant having made a speech to high Heaven, in the guise of a long prayer thoroughly in accordance with the prevailing sentiment of the meeting, the latter broke up. A few, mostly the older men, remained behind, talking over the ideas they had just heard with all seriousness, but most of them had crowded into another room where Vrouw Grobbelaar, aided by her trio of fine and rather pretty daughters, was dispensing coffee and other refreshment. These, too, were talking over the situation, but with a breezy boisterousness which was absent in their elders.

      “It’s coming now, Tanta, it’s coming now,” cried one young fellow, thrusting his way to the front. The old lady looked at him across the table.

      “What is coming now?” she repeated shortly—a way she had with those of the speaker’s age and type.

      “Why, the war, of course. We are going to drive the English out of the country. The Patriot says so.”

      The old lady snorted.

      “You look like driving anybody out of the country, Theunis Venter, even the English. You’d be afraid to lie behind an antheap waiting to shoot rooi-baatjes for fear of spoiling that pretty waistcoat of yours”—looking him up and down contemptuously. “And his tight riding-breeches—oh!—oh! wouldn’t they split? And the rings! And yet you don’t look like an Englishman, Theunis, not even in your grand English clothes.”

      A roar of applause and derision from that section of her hearers which had not enjoyed the advantage of a South African College education and a parent with advanced ideas and generous bank-balance greeted the old woman’s scoffing words.

      “Ja, Ja, Theunis, that is just what the Patriot said,” they chorussed. But the young fellow looked sulky—very much so. He was one of that type of young Boer who no longer thinks it the mark of a man and a patriot to sleep in his clothes and wear his hat in the house. Nor was he the only one of that type there present. Others took his side, and hurled corresponding gibes at the conservative party, and the uproar became simply deafening, all talking and bellowing at once.

      But if it be imagined that this turn of affairs caused the slightest uneasiness or alarm to the fair sex as there represented, the notion can be dismissed forthwith. There was a twinkle of mirth in the old lady’s eyes which belied the sardonic droop of her mouth, and as for the girls they looked as placid and unconcerned as though some thirty odd infuriated males were not bawling the very house down within a couple of yards of them.

      “There—there!” sang out Vrouw Grobbelaar when she had had enough of it. “Make not such a row, for dear Heaven’s sake! Theunis, you are not such a bad sort of boy after all, for all your trimmed moustache and English clothes. Hendrina, give him a soepje—that is to say, if he does not turn up his nose at the good liquor his father drank before him. I’m told that the English get drunk on stuff made from smoked wood, down in Cape Town. Only one, though—I won’t encourage young men to drink, but the night is cold, and he has a long way to ride. After all, it isn’t his fault they tried to make an Englishman of him.”

      Boer brandy, when pure and well matured, is about the best liquor in the world, and this was the best of its kind; wherefore under its influence, aided by the smiles of the ministering Hendrina, the youth’s ruffled feathers were soon smoothed down, and three or four of his sympathisers claiming to join in the privilege, good-humour was restored and plenty of mirth and good-fellowship prevailed before they separated for their long ride home over the moonlit veldt; for Boers are by nature sociable folk among themselves, and the younger ones, at any rate, addicted to chaff and practical joking.

      In the other room, where refreshment had been taken in for their physical weal, sat the more serious-minded.

      “Jan,” said Andries Botma, turning to his host, “where is Stephanus De la Rey? Is he sick?”

      “No!”

      “Why is he not here to-night?”

      Swaart Jan shrugged his shoulders and grinned, his two tusks protruding more than ever.

      “How do I know, brother? Only we must not forget that his wife is half an Englishwoman.”

      “Ah!” said the delegate, who appeared to be struck with the idea.

      “Oom Stephanus would not come,” put in a young man reverentially. “That is all I know about it.”

      The speaker had been one of the most fervid listeners to the “Patriot’s” discourse, and with much trepidation had lingered behind among his elders, preferring their conversation to the boisterous merriment in the other room.

      “It is Stephanus’ nephew, Adrian De la Rey,” said Jan Grobbelaar.

      “Ah! a good name. A good name,” declared the delegate. “Bear it worthily, nephew, when the time comes.” Then, turning to the predikant, “We must win over Stephanus De la Rey, Mynheer. We must win him over.”

      “He is the only ‘good’ man here whom we have not won,” was the reply, given dubiously.

      “Ja, ja!” assented Swaart Jan, shaking his head softly. “Ja, ja! we must win over Stephanus De la Rey.”

Chapter Two.

       Table of Contents

      Sidelights.

      Down by the river bed a girl was standing. The river bed was dry. So, too, was the wide, flat expanse of veldt stretching before and around her, and the slopes of two low cliff-crowned mountains which at some distance off relieved the dead