A Simpleton

C >> Charles Reade >> A Simpleton


Sometimes one of the older birds would show an inclination to stray out
of the pan. Then the infant rolled after her, and tapped her ankles with
a wand. She instantly came back, but without any loss of dignity, for
she strutted with her nose in the air, affecting completely to ignore
the inferior little animal, that was nevertheless controlling her
movements. "There's a farce," said Phoebe. "But you would not believe
the money they cost me, nor the money they bring me in. Grain will not
sell here for a quarter its value: and we can't afford to send it to
Cape Town, twenty days and back; but finery, that sells everywhere. I
gather sixty pounds the year off those poor fowls' backs--clear profit."

She showed him the granary, and told him there wasn't such another in
Africa. This farm had belonged to one of the old Dutch settlers, and
that breed had been going down this many a year. "You see, sir, Dick
and I being English, and not downright in want of money, we can't bring
ourselves to sell grain to the middlemen for nothing, so we store it,
hoping for better times, that maybe will never come. Now I'll show you
how the dam is made."

They inspected the dam all round. "This is our best friend of all," said
she. "Without this the sun would turn us all to tinder,--crops, flowers,
beasts, and folk."

"Oh, indeed," said Staines. "Then it is a pity you have not built it
more scientifically. I must have a look at this."

"Ay do, sir, and advise us if you see anything wrong. But hark! it is
milking time. Come and see that." So she led the way to some sheds, and
there they found several cows being milked, each by a little calf and a
little Hottentot at the same time, and both fighting and jostling each
other for the udder. Now and then a young cow, unused to incongruous
twins, would kick impatiently at both animals and scatter them.

"That is their way," said Phoebe: "they have got it into their silly
Hottentot heads as kye won't yield their milk if the calf is taken away;
and it is no use arguing with 'em; they will have their own way; but
they are very trusty and honest, poor things. We soon found that out.
When we came here first it was in a hired wagon, and Hottentot drivers:
so when we came to settle I made ready for a bit of a wrangle. But my
maid Sophy, that is nurse now, and a great despiser of heathens, she
says, 'Don't you trouble; them nasty ignorant blacks never charges more
than their due.' 'I forgive 'em,' says I; 'I wish all white folk was as
nice.' However, I did give them a trifle over, for luck: and then they
got together and chattered something near the door, hand in hand. 'La,
Sophy,' says I, 'what is up now?' Says she, 'They are blessing of us.
Things is come to a pretty pass, for ignorant Muslinmen heathen to be
blessing Christian folk.' 'Well,' says I, 'it won't hurt us any.' 'I
don't know,' says she. 'I don't want the devil prayed over me.' So she
cocked that long nose of hers and followed it in a doors."

By this time they were near the house, and Phoebe was obliged to come to
her postscript, for the sake of which, believe me, she had uttered
every syllable of this varied chat. "Well, sir," said she, affecting to
proceed without any considerable change of topic, "and how do you find
yourself? Have you discovered the past?"

"I have, madam. I remember every leading incident of my life."

"And has it made you happier?" said Phoebe softly.

"No," said Christopher gravely. "Memory has brought me misery."

"I feared as much; for you have lost your fine color, and your eyes are
hollow, and lines on your poor brow that were not there before. Are you
not sorry you have discovered the past?"

"No, Mrs. Falcon. Give me the sovereign gift of reason, with all the
torture it can inflict. I thank God for returning memory, even with the
misery it brings."

Phoebe was silent a long time: then she said in a low, gentle voice,
and with the indirectness of a truly feminine nature, "I have plenty of
writing-paper in the house; and the post goes south to-morrow, such as
'tis."

Christopher struggled with his misery, and trembled.

He was silent a long time. Then he said, "No. It is her interest that I
should be dead."

"Well, but, sir--take a thought."

"Not a word more, I implore you. I am the most miserable man that ever
breathed." As he spoke, two bitter tears forced their way.

Phoebe cast a look of pity on him, and said no more; but she shook her
head. Her plain common sense revolted.

However, it did not follow he would be in the same mind next week: so
she was in excellent spirits at her protege's recovery, and very proud
of her cure, and celebrated the event with a roaring supper, including
an English ham, and a bottle of port wine; and, ten to one, that was
English too.

Dick Dale looked a little incredulous, but he did not spare the ham any
the more for that.

After supper, in a pause of conversation, Staines turned to Dick, and
said, rather abruptly, "Suppose that dam of yours were to burst and
empty its contents, would it not be a great misfortune to you?"

"Misfortune, sir! Don't talk of it. Why, it would ruin us, beast and
body."

"Well, it will burst, if it is not looked to."

"Dale's Kloof dam burst! the biggest and strongest for a hundred miles
round."

"You deceive yourself. It is not scientifically built, to begin, and
there is a cause at work that will infallibly burst it, if not looked to
in time."

"And what is that, sir?"

"The dam is full of crabs."

"So 'tis; but what of them?"

"I detected two of them that had perforated the dyke from the wet side
to the dry, and water was trickling through the channel they had made.
Now, for me to catch two that had come right through, there must be a
great many at work honeycombing your dyke; those channels, once made,
will be enlarged by the permeating water, and a mere cupful of water
forced into a dyke by the great pressure of a heavy column has an
expansive power quite out of proportion to the quantity forced in.
Colossal dykes have been burst in this way with disastrous effects.
Indeed, it is only a question of time, and I would not guarantee your
dyke twelve hours. It is full, too, with the heavy rains."

"Here's a go!" said Dick, turning pale. "Well, if it is to burst, it
must."

"Why so? You can make it safe in a few hours. You have got a clumsy
contrivance for letting off the excess of water: let us go and relieve
the dam at once of two feet of water. That will make it safe for a day
or two, and to-morrow we will puddle it afresh, and demolish those busy
excavators."

He spoke with such authority and earnestness, that they all got up from
table; a horn was blown that soon brought the Hottentots, and they all
proceeded to the dam. With infinite difficulty they opened the waste
sluice, lowered the water two feet, and so drenched the arid soil that
in forty-eight hours flowers unknown sprang up.

Next morning, under the doctor's orders, all the black men and boys were
diving with lumps of stiff clay and puddling the endangered wall with a
thick wall of it. This took all the people the whole day.

Next day the clay wall was carried two feet higher, and then the doctor
made them work on the other side and buttress the dyke with supports so
enormous as seemed extravagant to Dick and Phoebe; but, after all, it
was as well to be on the safe side, they thought: and soon they were
sure of it, for the whole work was hardly finished when the news came in
that the dyke of a neighboring Boer, ten miles off, had exploded like a
cannon, and emptied itself in five minutes, drowning the farm-yard and
floating the furniture, but leaving them all to perish of drought; and
indeed the Boer's cart came every day, with empty barrels, for some
time, to beg water of the Dales. Ucatella pondered all this, and said
her doctor child was wise.

This brief excitement over, Staines went back to his own gloomy
thoughts, and they scarcely saw him, except at supper-time.

One evening he surprised them all by asking if they would add to all
their kindness by lending him a horse, and a spade, and a few pounds to
go to the diamond fields.

Dick Dale looked at his sister. She said, "We had rather lend them you
to go home with, sir, if you must leave us; but, dear heart, I was half
in hopes--Dick and I were talking it over only yesterday--that you would
go partners like with us; ever since you saved the dam."

"I have too little to offer for that, Mrs. Falcon; and, besides, I am
driven into a corner. I must make money quickly, or not at all: the
diamonds are only three hundred miles off: for heaven's sake, let me try
my luck."

They tried to dissuade him, and told him not one in fifty did any good
at it.

"Ay, but I shall," said he. "Great bad luck is followed by great good
luck, and I feel my turn is come. Not that I rely on luck. An accident
directed my attention to the diamond a few years ago, and I read a
number of prime works upon the subject that told me of things not
known to the miners. It is clear, from the Cape journals, that they
are looking for diamonds in the river only. Now, I am sure that is a
mistake. Diamonds, like gold, have their matrix, and it is comparatively
few gems that get washed into the river. I am confident that I shall
find the volcanic matrix, and perhaps make my fortune in a week or two."

When the dialogue took this turn, Reginald Falcon's cheek began to
flush, and his eyes to glitter.

Christopher continued: "You who have befriended me so will not turn
back, I am sure, when I have such a chance before me; and as for the
small sum of money I shall require, I will repay you some day, even
if"--

"La, sir, don't talk so. If you put it that way, why, the best horse we
have, and fifty pounds in good English gold, they are at your service
to-morrow."

"And pick and spade to boot," said Dick, "and a double rifle, for there
are lions, and Lord knows what, between this and the Vaal river."

"God bless you both!" said Christopher. "I will start to-morrow."

"And I'll go with you," said Reginald Falcon.




CHAPTER XX.


"Heaven forbid!" said Phoebe. "No, my dear, no more diamonds for us. We
never had but one, and it brought us trouble."

"Nonsense, Phoebe," replied Falcon; "it was not the diamond's fault.
You know I have often wanted to go there, but you objected. You said you
were afraid some evil would befall me. But now Solomon himself is going
to the mines, let us have no more of that nonsense. We will take our
rifles and our pistols."

"There--there--rifles and pistols," cried Phoebe; "that shows."

"And we will be there in a week; stay a month, and home with our pockets
full of diamonds."

"And find me dead of a broken heart."

"Broken fiddlestick! We have been parted longer than that, and yet here
we are all right."

"Ay, but the pitcher that goes too often to the well gets broke at last.
No, Reginald, now I have tasted three years' happiness and peace of
mind, I cannot go through what I used in England. Oh, doctor! have you
the heart to part man and wife, that have never been a day from each
other all these years?"

"Mrs. Falcon, I would not do it for all the diamonds in Brazil. No, Mr.
Falcon, I need hardly say how charmed I should be to have your company:
but that is a pleasure I shall certainly deny myself, after what your
good wife has said. I owe her too much to cause her a single pang."

"Doctor," said the charming Reginald, "you are a gentleman and side with
the lady. Quite right. It adds to my esteem, if possible. Make your
mind easy; I will go alone. I am not a farmer. I am dead sick of this
monotonous life; and, since I am compelled to speak my mind, a little
ashamed, as a gentleman, of living on my wife and her brother, and doing
nothing for myself. So I shall go to the Vaal river, and see a little
life; here there's nothing but vegetation--and not much of that. Not
a word more, Phoebe, if you please. I am a good, easy, affectionate
husband, but I am a man, and not a child to be tied to a woman's
apron-strings, however much I may love and respect her."

Dick put in his word: "Since you are so independent, you can WALK to the
Vaal river. I can't spare a couple of horses."

This hit the sybarite hard, and he cast a bitter glance of hatred at his
brother-in-law, and fell into a moody silence.

But when he got Phoebe to himself, he descanted on her selfishness,
Dick's rudeness, and his own wounded dignity, till he made her quite
anxious he should have his own way. She came to Staines, with red eyes,
and said, "Tell me, doctor, will there be any women up there--to take
care of you?"

"Not a petticoat in the place, I believe. It is a very rough life; and
how Falcon could think of leaving you and sweet little Tommy, and this
life of health, and peace, and comfort--"

"Yet YOU do leave us, sir."

"I am the most unfortunate man upon the earth; Falcon is one of the
happiest. Would I leave wife and child to go there? Ah me! I am dead to
those I love. This is my one chance of seeing my darling again for many
a long year perhaps. Oh, I must not speak of HER--it unmans me. My good,
kind friend, I'll tell you what to do. When we are all at supper, let
a horse be saddled and left in the yard for me. I'll bid you all
good-night, and I'll put fifty miles between us before morning. Even
then HE need not be told I am gone; he will not follow me."

"You are very good, sir," said Phoebe; "but no. Too much has been
said. I can't have him humbled by my brother, nor any one. He says I
am selfish. Perhaps I am; though I never was called so. I can't bear
he should think me selfish. He WILL go, and so let us have no ill blood
about it. Since he is to go, of course I'd much liever he should go with
you than by himself. You are sure there are no women up there--to take
care of--you--both? You must be purse-bearer, sir, and look to every
penny. He is too generous when he has got money to spend."

In short, Reginald had played so upon her heart, that she now urged the
joint expedition, only she asked a delay of a day or two to equip them,
and steel herself to the separation.

Staines did not share those vague fears that overpowered the wife, whose
bitter experiences were unknown to him; but he felt uncomfortable at her
condition--for now she was often in tears--and he said all he could to
comfort her; and he also advised her how to profit by these terrible
diamonds, in her way. He pointed out to her that her farm lay right
in the road to the diamonds, yet the traffic all shunned her, passing
twenty miles to the westward. Said he, "You should profit by all your
resources. You have wood, a great rarity in Africa; order a portable
forge; run up a building where miners can sleep, another where they
can feed; the grain you have so wisely refused to sell, grind it into
flour."

"Dear heart! why, there's neither wind nor water to turn a mill."

"But there are oxen. I'll show you how to make an ox-mill. Send your
Cape cart into Cape Town for iron lathes, for coffee and tea, and
groceries by the hundredweight. The moment you are ready--for success
depends on the order in which we act--then prepare great boards, and
plant them twenty miles south. Write or paint on them, very large,
'The nearest way to the Diamond Mines, through Dale's Kloof, where is
excellent accommodation for man and beast. Tea, coffee, home-made bread,
fresh butter, etc., etc.' Do this, and you will soon leave off decrying
diamonds. This is the sure way to coin them. I myself take the doubtful
way; but I can't help it. I am a dead man, and swift good fortune will
give me life. You can afford to go the slower road and the surer."

Then he drew her a model of an ox-mill, and of a miner's dormitory, the
partitions six feet six apart, so that these very partitions formed
the bedstead, the bed-sacking being hooked to the uprights. He drew his
model for twenty bedrooms.

The portable forge and the ox-mill pleased Dick Dale most, but the
partitioned bedsteads charmed Phoebe. She said, "Oh, doctor, how can one
man's head hold so many things? If there's a man on earth I can trust my
husband with, 'tis you. But if things go cross up there, promise me you
will come back at once and cast in your lot with us. We have got money
and stock, and you have got headpiece; we might do very well together.
Indeed, indeed we might. Promise me. Oh, do, please, promise me!"

"I promise you."

And on this understanding, Staines and Falcon were equipped with rifles,
pickaxe, shovels, waterproofs, and full saddle-bags, and started, with
many shakings of the hand, and many tears from Phoebe, for the diamond
washings.




CHAPTER XXI.


Phoebe's tears at parting made Staines feel uncomfortable, and he said
so.

"Pooh, pooh!" said Falcon, "crying for nothing does a woman good."

Christopher stared at him.

Falcon's spirits rose as they proceeded. He was like a boy let loose
from school. His fluency and charm of manner served, however, to cheer a
singularly dreary journey.

The travellers soon entered on a vast and forbidding region, that
wearied the eye; at their feet a dull, rusty carpet of dried grass and
wild camomile, with pale-red sand peeping through the burnt and scanty
herbage. On the low mounds, that looked like heaps of sifted ashes,
struggled now and then into sickliness a ragged, twisted shrub. There
were flowers too, but so sparse, that they sparkled vainly in the
colorless waste, which stretched to the horizon. The farmhouses were
twenty miles apart, and nine out of ten of them were new ones built by
the Boers since they degenerated into white savages: mere huts, with
domed kitchens behind them. In the dwelling-house the whole family
pigged together, with raw flesh drying on the rafters, stinking skins
in a corner, parasitical vermin of all sorts blackening the floor, and
particularly a small, biting, and odoriferous tortoise, compared with
which the insect a London washerwoman brings into your house in her
basket, is a stroke with a feather--and all this without the excuse of
penury; for many of these were shepherd kings, sheared four thousand
fleeces a year, and owned a hundred horses and horned cattle.

These Boers are compelled, by unwritten law, to receive travellers and
water their cattle; but our travellers, after one or two experiences,
ceased to trouble them; for, added to the dirt, the men were sullen, the
women moody, silent, brainless; the whole reception churlish. Staines
detected in them an uneasy consciousness that they had descended, in
more ways than one, from a civilized race; and the superior bearing of a
European seemed to remind them what they had been, and might have been,
and were not; so, after an attempt or two, our adventurers avoided the
Boers, and tried the Kafirs. They found the savages socially superior,
though their moral character does not rank high.

The Kafir cabins they entered were caves, lighted only by the door, but
deliciously cool, and quite clean; the floors of puddled clay or ants'
nests, and very clean. On entering these cool retreats, the flies that
had tormented them shirked the cool grot, and buzzed off to the nearest
farm to batten on congenial foulness. On the fat, round, glossy babies,
not a speck of dirt, whereas the little Boers were cakes thereof. The
Kafir would meet them at the door, his clean black face all smiles and
welcome. The women and grown girls would fling a spotless handkerchief
over their shoulders in a moment, and display their snowy teeth, in
unaffected joy at sight of an Englishman.

At one of these huts, one evening, they met with something St. Paul
ranks above cleanliness even, viz., Christianity. A neighboring lion had
just eaten a Hottentot faute de mieux; and these good Kafirs wanted the
Europeans not to go on at night and be eaten for dessert. But they could
not speak a word of English, and pantomimic expression exists in theory
alone. In vain the women held our travellers by the coat-tails, and
pointed to a distant wood. In vain Kafir pere went on all-fours and
growled sore. But at last a savage youth ran to the kitchen--for they
never cook in the house--and came back with a brand, and sketched, on
the wall of the hut, a lion with a mane down to the ground, and a saucer
eye, not loving. The creature's paw rested on a hat and coat and another
fragment or two of a European. The rest was fore-shortened, or else
eaten.

The picture completed, the females looked, approved, and raised a dismal
howl.

"A lion on the road," said Christopher gravely.

Then the undaunted Falcon seized the charcoal, and drew an Englishman in
a theatrical attitude, left foot well forward, firing a gun, and a lion
rolling head over heels like a buck rabbit, and blood squirting out of a
hole in his perforated carcass.

The savages saw, and exulted. They were so off their guard as to
confound representation with fact; they danced round the white warrior,
and launched him to victory.

"Aha!" said Falcon, "I took the shine out of their lion, didn't I?"

"You did: and once there was a sculptor who showed a lion his marble
group, a man trampling a lion, extracting his tongue, and so on; but
report says it DID NOT CONVINCE THE LION."

"Why, no; a lion is not an ass. But, for your comfort, there ARE no
lions in this part of the world. They are myths. There were lions in
Africa. But now they are all at the Zoo. And I wish I was there too."

"In what character--of a discontented animal--with every blessing? They
would not take you in; too common in England. Hallo! this is something
new. What lots of bushes! We should not have much chance with a lion
here."

"There ARE no lions: it is not the Zoo," said Falcon; but he spurred on
faster.

The country, however, did not change its feature; bushes and little
acacias prevailed, and presently dark forms began to glide across at
intervals.

The travellers held their breath, and pushed on; but at last their
horses flagged; so they thought it best to stop and light a fire and
stand upon their guard.

They did so, and Falcon sat with his rifle cocked, while Staines boiled
coffee, and they drank it, and after two hours' halt, pushed on; and at
last the bushes got more scattered, and they were on the dreary plain
again. Falcon drew the rein, with a sigh of relief, and they walked
their horses side by side.

"Well, what has become of the lions?" said Falcon jauntily. He turned in
his saddle, and saw a large animal stealing behind them with its belly
to the very earth, and eyes hot coals; he uttered an eldrich screech,
fired both barrels, with no more aim than a baby, and spurred away,
yelling like a demon. The animal fled another way, in equal trepidation
at those tongues of flame and loud reports, and Christopher's horse
reared and plunged, and deposited him promptly on the sward; but he held
the bridle, mounted again, and rode after his companion. A stern chase
is a long chase; and for that or some other reason he could never catch
him again till sunrise. Being caught, he ignored the lioness, with cool
hauteur: he said he had ridden on to find comfortable quarters: and
craved thanks.

This was literally the only incident worth recording that the companions
met with in three hundred miles.

On the sixth day out, towards afternoon, they found by inquiring they
were near the diamond washings, and the short route was pointed out by
an exceptionally civil Boer.

But Christopher's eye had lighted upon a sort of chain of knolls, or
little round hills, devoid of vegetation, and he told Falcon he would
like to inspect these, before going farther.

"Oh," said the Boer, "they are not on my farm, thank goodness! they are
on my cousin Bulteel's;" and he pointed to a large white house about
four miles distant, and quite off the road. Nevertheless, Staines
insisted on going to it. But first they made up to one of these knolls,
and examined it; it was about thirty feet high, and not a vestige of
herbage on it; the surface was composed of sand and of lumps of gray
limestone very hard, diversified with lots of quartz, mica, and other
old formations.

Staines got to the top of it with some difficulty, and examined the
surface all over. He came down again, and said, "All these little
hills mark hot volcanic action--why, they are like boiling
earth-bubbles--which is the very thing, under certain conditions, to
turn carbonate of lime into diamonds. Now here is plenty of limestone
unnaturally hard; and being in a diamond country, I can fancy no place
more likely to be the matrix than these earth-bubbles. Let us tether the
horses, and use our shovels."

They did so; and found one or two common crystals, and some jasper, and
a piece of chalcedony all in little bubbles, but no diamond. Falcon said
it was wasting time.

Just then the proprietor, a gigantic, pasty colonist, came up, with his
pipe, and stood calmly looking on. Staines came down, and made a sort of
apology. Bulteel smiled quietly, and asked what harm they could do him,
raking that rubbish. "Rake it all avay, mine vriends," said he: "ve
shall thank you moch."