A Simpleton

C >> Charles Reade >> A Simpleton


He said, "The only thing--it makes me ashamed, I do not feel my poor
father's death more; but you know it has been so long expected." Then
he was silent a long time; and then he asked her if such a woman as that
would not make him happy, if he could win her.

It was on her ladyship's tongue to say, "She did not make her first
happy;" but she forbore, and said coldly, that was maw than she could
say.

Tadcaster seemed disappointed by that, and by and by Cicely took herself
to task. She asked herself what were Tadcaster's chances in the lottery
of wives. The heavy army of scheming mothers, and the light cavalry of
artful daughters, rose before her cousinly and disinterested eyes,
and she asked herself what chance poor little Tadcaster would have
of catching a true love, with a hundred female artists manoeuvring,
wheeling, ambuscading, and charging upon his wealth and titles. She
returned to the subject of her own accord, and told him she saw but one
objection to such a match: the lady had a son by a man of rare merit and
misfortune. Could he, at his age, undertake to be a father to that son?
"Othahwise," said Lady Cicely, "mark my words, you will quall over that
poor child; and you will have two to quall with, because I shall be on
her side."

Tadcaster declared to her that child should be quite the opposite of a
bone of contention. "I have thought of that," said he, "and I mean to be
so kind to that boy, I shall MAKE her love me for that."

On these terms Lady Cicely gave her consent.

Then he asked her should he write, or ask her in person.

Lady Cicely reflected. "If you write, I think she will say no."

"But if I go?"

"Then, it will depend on how you do it. Rosa Staines is a true mourner.
Whatever you may think, I don't believe the idea of a second union has
ever entered her head. But then she is very unselfish: and she likes you
better than any one else, I dare say. I don't think your title or your
money will weigh with her now. But, if you show her your happiness
depends on it, she may, perhaps, cwy and sob at the very idea of it,
and then, after all, say, 'Well, why not--if I can make the poor soul
happy?'"

So, on this advice, Tadcaster went down to Gravesend, and Lady Cicely
felt a certain self-satisfaction; for, her well-meant interference
having lost Rosa one husband, she was pleased to think she had done
something to give her another.

Lord Tadcaster came to Rosa Staines; he found her seated with her head
upon her white hand, thinking sadly of the past.

At sight of him in deep mourning, she started, and said, "Oh!"

Then she said tenderly, "We are of one color now," and gave him her
hand.

He sat down beside her, not knowing how to begin.

"I am not Tadcaster now. I am Earl of Miltshire."

"Ah, yes; I forgot," said she indifferently.

"This is my first visit to any one in that character."

"Thank you."

"It is an awfully important visit to me. I could not feel myself
independent, and able to secure your comfort and little Christie's,
without coming to the lady, the only lady I ever saw, that--oh, Mrs.
Staines--Rosa--who could see you, as I have done--mingle his tears
with yours, as I have done, and not love you, and long to offer you his
love?"

"Love! to me, a broken-hearted woman, with nothing to live for but his
memory and his child."

She looked at him with a sort of scared amazement.

"His child shall be mine. His memory is almost as dear to me as to you."

"Nonsense, child, nonsense!" said she, almost sternly.

"Was he not my best friend? Should I have the health I enjoy, or even be
alive, but for him? Oh, Mrs. Staines--Rosa, you will not live all your
life unmarried; and who will love you as I do? You are my first and only
love. My happiness depends on you."

"Your happiness depend on me! Heaven forbid--a woman of my age, that
feels so old, old, old."

"You are not old; you are young, and sad, and beautiful, and my
happiness depends on you." She began to tremble a little. Then he
kneeled at her knees, and implored her, and his hot tears fell upon the
hand she put out to stop him, while she turned her head away, and the
tears began to run.

Oh! never can the cold dissecting pen tell what rushes over the heart
that has loved and lost, when another true love first kneels and
implores for love, or pity, or anything the bereaved can give.




CHAPTER XXIII.


When Falcon went, luck seemed to desert their claim: day after day went
by without a find; and the discoveries on every side made this the more
mortifying.

By this time the diggers at Bulteel's pan were as miscellaneous as the
audience at Drury Lane Theatre, only mixed more closely; the gallery
folk and the stalls worked cheek by jowl. Here a gentleman with an
affected lisp, and close by an honest fellow, who could not deliver a
sentence without an oath, or some still more horrible expletive that
meant nothing at all in reality, but served to make respectable flesh
creep: interspersed with these, Hottentots, Kafirs, and wild blue blacks
gayly clad in an ostrich feather, a scarlet ribbon, and a Tower musket
sold them by some good Christian for a modern rifle.

On one side of Staines were two swells, who lay on their backs and
talked opera half the day, but seldom condescended to work without
finding a diamond of some sort.

After a week's deplorable luck, his Kafir boy struck work on account of
a sore in his leg; the sore was due to a very common cause, the burning
sand had got into a scratch, and festered. Staines, out of humanity,
examined the sore; and proceeding to clean it, before bandaging, out
popped a diamond worth forty pounds, even in the depreciated market.
Staines quietly pocketed it, and bandaged the leg. This made him suspect
his blacks had been cheating him on a large scale, and he borrowed Hans
Bulteel to watch them, giving him a third, with which Master Hans was
mightily pleased. But they could only find small diamonds, and by this
time prodigious slices of luck were reported on every side. Kafirs and
Boers that would not dig, but traversed large tracts of ground when the
sun was shining, stumbled over diamonds. One Boer pointed to a wagon
and eight oxen, and said that one lucky glance on the sand had given him
that lot: but day after day Staines returned home, covered with dust,
and almost blinded, yet with little or nothing to show for it.

One evening, complaining of his change of luck, Bulteel quietly proposed
to him migration. "I am going," said he resignedly: "and you can come
with me."

"You leave your farm, sir? Why, they pay you ten shillings a claim, and
that must make a large return; the pan is fifteen acres."

"Yes, mine vriend," said the poor Hollander, "they pay; but deir money
it cost too dear. Vere is mine peace? Dis farm is six tousand acres.
If de cursed diamonds was farther off, den it vas vell. But dey are too
near. Once I could smoke in peace, and zleep. Now diamonds is come, and
zleep and peace is fled. Dere is four tousand tents, and to each tent a
dawg; dat dawg bark at four tousand other dawgs all night, and dey bark
at him and at each oder. Den de masters of de dawgs dey get angry, and
fire four tousand pistole at de four tousand dawgs, and make my bed
shake wid the trembling of mine vrow. My vamily is with diamonds
infected. Dey vill not vork. Dey takes long valks, and always looks on
de ground. Mine childre shall be hump-backed, round-shouldered, looking
down for diamonds. Dey shall forget Gott. He is on high: dere eyes are
always on de earth. De diggers found a diamond in mine plaster of mine
wall of mine house. Dat plaster vas limestone; it come from dose kopjes
de good Gott made in His anger against man for his vickedness. I zay so.
Dey not believe me. Dey tink dem abominable stones grow in mine house,
and break out in mine plaster like de measle: dey vaunt to dig in mine
wall, in mine garden, in mine floor. One day dey shall dig in mine body.
I vill go. Better I love peace dan money. Here is English company make
me offer for mine varm. Dey forgive de diamonds."

"You have not accepted it?" cried Staines in alarm.

"No, but I vill. I have said I shall tink of it. Dat is my vay. So I say
yah."

"An English company? They will cheat you without mercy. No, they shall
not, though, for I will have a hand in the bargain."

He set to work directly, added up the value of the claims, at ten
shillings per month, and amazed the poor Hollander by his statement of
the value of those fifteen acres, capitalized.

And to close this part of the subject, the obnoxious diamonds obtained
him three times as much as his father had given for the whole six
thousand acres.

The company got a great bargain, but Bulteel received what for him was a
large capital, and settling far to the south, this lineal descendant of
le philosophe sans savoir carried his godliness, his cleanliness, and
his love of peace, out of the turmoil, and was happier than ever, since
now he could compare his placid existence with one year of noise and
clamor.

But long before this, events more pertinent to my story had occurred.

One day, a Hottentot came into Bulteel's farm and went out among the
diggers, till he found Staines. The Hottentot was one employed at Dale's
Kloof, and knew him. He brought Staines a letter.

Staines opened the letter, and another letter fell out; it was directed
to "Reginald Falcon, Esq."

"Why," thought Staines, "what a time this letter must have been on the
road! So much for private messengers."

The letter ran thus:--


DEAR SIR,--This leaves us all well at Dale's Kloof, as I hope it shall
find you and my dear husband at the diggings. Sir, I am happy to say I
have good news for you. When you got well by God's mercy, I wrote to
the doctor at the hospital and told him so. I wrote unbeknown to you,
because I had promised him. Well, sir, he has written back to say you
have two hundred pounds in money, and a great many valuable things, such
as gold and jewels. They are all at the old bank in Cape Town, and the
cashier has seen you, and will deliver them on demand. So that is the
first of my good news, because it is good news to you. But, dear sir,
I think you will be pleased to hear that Dick and I are thriving
wonderfully, thanks to your good advice. The wooden house it is built,
and a great oven. But, sir, the traffic came almost before we were
ready, and the miners that call here, coming and going, every day, you
would not believe, likewise wagons and carts. It is all bustle, morn
till night, and dear Reginald will never be dull here now; I hope you
will be so kind as tell him so, for I do long to see you both home
again.

Sir, we are making our fortunes. The grain we could not sell at a fair
price, we sell as bread, and higher than in England ever so much. Tea
and coffee the same; and the poor things praise us, too, for being so
moderate. So, sir, Dick bids me say that we owe this to you, and if
so be you are minded to share, why nothing would please us better.
Head-piece is always worth money in these parts; and if it hurts your
pride to be our partner without money, why you can throw in what you
have at the Cape, though we don't ask that. And, besides, we are offered
diamonds a bargain every day, but are afraid to deal, for want of
experience; but if you were in it with us, you must know them well by
this time, and we might turn many a good pound that way. Dear sir, I
hope you will not be offended, but I think this is the only way we have,
Dick and I, to show our respect and good-will.

Dear sir, digging is hard work, and not fit for you and Reginald, that
are gentlemen, amongst a lot of rough fellows, that their talk makes my
hair stand on end, though I dare say they mean no harm.

Your bedroom is always ready, sir. I never will let it to any of them,
hoping now to see you every day. You that know everything, can guess
how I long to see you both home. My very good fortune seems not to taste
like good fortune, without those I love and esteem to share it. I shall
count how many days this letter will take to reach you, and then I shall
pray for your safety harder than ever, till the blessed hour comes when
I see my husband, and my good friend, never to part again, I hope, in
this world.

I am sir, your dutiful servant and friend,

PHOEBE DALE.

P.S. There is regular travelling to and from Cape Town, and a post now
to Pniel, but I thought it surest to send by one that knows you.


Staines read this letter with great satisfaction. He remembered his two
hundred pounds, but his gold and jewels puzzled him. Still it was good
news, and pleased him not a little. Phoebe's good fortune gratified
him too, and her offer of a partnership, especially in the purchase of
diamonds from returning diggers. He saw a large fortune to be made;
and wearied and disgusted with recent ill-luck, blear-eyed and almost
blinded with sorting in the blazing sun, he resolved to go at once to
Dale's Kloof. Should Mrs. Falcon be gone to England with the diamonds,
he would stay there, and Rosa should come out to him, or he would go and
fetch her.

He went home, and washed himself, and told Bulteel he had had good news,
and should leave the diggings at once. He gave him up the claim, and
told him to sell it by auction. It was worth two hundred pounds still.
The good people sympathized with him, and he started within an hour.
He left his pickaxe and shovel, and took only his double rifle, an
admirable one, some ammunition, including conical bullets and projectile
shells given him by Falcon, a bag full of carbuncles and garnets he
had collected for Ucatella, a few small diamonds, and one hundred
pounds,--all that remained to him, since he had been paying wages and
other things for months, and had given Falcon twenty for his journey.

He rode away and soon put twenty miles between him and the diggings.

He came to a little store that bought diamonds and sold groceries and
tobacco. He haltered his horse to a hook, and went in. He offered a
small diamond for sale. The master was out, and the assistant said there
was a glut of these small stones, he did not care to give money for it.

"Well, give me three dozen cigars."

While they were chaffering, in walked a Hottentot, and said, "Will you
buy this?" and laid a clear, glittering stone on the counter, as large
as a walnut.

"Yes," said the young man. "How much?"

"Two hundred pounds."

"Two hundred pounds! Let us look at it;" he examined it, and said he
thought it was a diamond, but these large stones were so deceitful, he
dared not give two hundred pounds. "Come again in an hour," said he,
"then the master will be in."

"No," said the Hottentot quietly, and walked out.

Staines, who had been literally perspiring at the sight of this stone,
mounted his horse and followed the man. When he came up to him, he asked
leave to examine the gem. The Hottentot quietly assented.

Staines looked at it all over. It had a rough side and a polished side,
and the latter was of amazing softness and lustre. It made him tremble.
He said, "Look here, I have only one hundred pounds in my pocket."

The Hottentot shook his head.

"But if you will go back with me to Bulteel's farm, I'll borrow the
other hundred."

The Hottentot declined, and told him he could get four hundred pounds
for it by going back to Pniel. "But," said he, "my face is turned so;
and when Squat turn his face so, he going home. Not can bear go the
other way then," and he held out his hand for the diamond.

Staines gave it him, and was in despair at seeing such a prize so near,
yet leaving him.

He made one more effort. "Well, but," said he, "how far are you going
this way?"

"Ten days."

"Why, so am I. Come with me to Dale's Kloof, and I will give the other
hundred. See, I am in earnest, for here is one hundred, at all events."

Staines made this proposal, trembling with excitement. To his surprise
and joy, the Hottentot assented, though with an air of indifference;
and on these terms they became fellow-travellers, and Staines gave him
a cigar. They went on side by side, and halted for the night forty miles
from Bulteel's farm.

They slept in a Boer's out-house, and the vrow was civil, and lent
Staines a jackal's skin. In the morning he bought it for a diamond, a
carbuncle, and a score of garnets; for a horrible thought had occurred
to him, if they stopped at any place where miners were, somebody might
buy the great diamond over his head. This fear, and others, grew on him,
and with all his philosophy he went on thorns, and was the slave of the
diamond.

He resolved to keep his Hottentot all to himself if possible. He shot
a springbok that crossed the road, and they roasted a portion of the
animal, and the Hottentot carried some on with him.

Seeing he admired the rifle, Staines offered it him for the odd hundred
pounds; but though Squat's eye glittered a moment, he declined.

Finding that they met too many diggers and carts, Staines asked his
Hottentot was there no nearer way to reach that star, pointing to one he
knew was just over Dale's Kloof.

Oh, yes, he knew a nearer way, where there were trees, and shade, and
grass, and many beasts to shoot.

"Let us take that way," said Staines.

The Hottentot, ductile as wax, except about the price of the diamond,
assented calmly; and next day they diverged, and got into forest
scenery, and their eyes were soothed with green glades here and there,
wherever the clumps of trees sheltered the grass from the panting sun.
Animals abounded, and were tame. Staines, an excellent marksman, shot
the Hottentot his supper without any trouble.

Sleeping in the wood, with not a creature near but Squat, a sombre
thought struck Staines. Suppose this Hottentot should assassinate him
for his money, who would ever know? The thought was horrible, and he
awoke with a start ten times that night. The Hottentot slept like a
stone, and never feared for his own life and precious booty. Staines was
compelled to own to himself he had less faith in human goodness than the
savage had. He said to himself, "He is my superior. He is the master of
this dreadful diamond, and I am its slave."

Next day they went on till noon, and then they halted at a really
delightful spot; a silver kloof ran along a bottom, and there was a
little clump of three acacia-trees that lowered their long tresses,
pining for the stream, and sometimes getting a cool grateful kiss from
it when the water was high.

They halted the horse, bathed in the stream, and lay luxurious under the
acacias. All was delicious languor and enjoyment of life.

The Hottentot made a fire, and burnt the remains of a little sort of
kangaroo Staines had shot him the evening before; but it did not suffice
his maw, and looking about him, he saw three elands leisurely feeding
about three hundred yards off. They were cropping the rich herbage close
to the shelter of a wood.

The Hottentot suggested that this was an excellent opportunity. He would
borrow Staines's rifle, steal into the wood, crawl on his belly close up
to them, and send a bullet through one.

Staines did not relish the proposal. He had seen the savage's eye
repeatedly gloat on the rifle, and was not without hopes he might even
yet relent, and give the great diamond for the hundred pounds and
this rifle; and he was so demoralized by the diamond, and filled with
suspicion, that he feared the savage, if he once had the rifle in
his possession, might levant, and be seen no more, in which case he,
Staines, still the slave of the diamond, might hang himself on the
nearest tree, and so secure his Rosa the insurance money, at all events.
In short, he had really diamond on the brain.

He hem'd and haw'd a little at Squat's proposal, and then got out of it
by saying, "That is not necessary. I can shoot it from here."

"It is too far," objected Blacky.

"Too far! This is an Enfield rifle. I could kill the poor beast at three
times that distance."

Blacky was amazed. "An Enfield rifle," said he, in the soft musical
murmur of his tribe, which is the one charm of the poor Hottentot; "and
shoot three times SO far."

"Yes," said Christopher. Then, seeing his companion's hesitation, he
conceived a hope. "If I kill that eland from here, will you give me the
diamond for my horse and the wonderful rifle?--no Hottentot has such a
rifle."

Squat became cold directly. "The price of the diamond is two hundred
pounds."

Staines groaned with disappointment, and thought to himself with rage,
"Anybody but me would club the rifle, give the obstinate black brute a
stunner, and take the diamond--God forgive me!"

Says the Hottentot cunningly, "I can't think so far as white man. Let me
see the eland dead, and then I shall know how far the rifle shoot."

"Very well," said Staines. But he felt sure the savage only wanted his
meal, and would never part with the diamond, except for the odd money.

However, he loaded his left barrel with one of the explosive projectiles
Falcon had given him; it was a little fulminating shell with a steel
point. It was with this barrel he had shot the murcat overnight, and he
had found he shot better with this barrel than the other. He loaded his
left barrel then, saw the powder well up, capped it and cut away a strip
of the acacia with his knife to see clear, and lying down in volunteer
fashion, elbow on ground, drew his bead steadily on an eland who
presented him her broadside, her back being turned to the wood. The sun
shone on her soft coat, and never was a fairer mark, the sportsman's
deadly eye being in the cool shade, the animal in the sun.

He aimed long and steadily. But just as he was about to pull the
trigger, Mind interposed, and he lowered the deadly weapon. "Poor
creature!" he said, "I am going to take her life--for what? for a single
meal. She is as big as a pony; and I am to lay her carcass on the plain,
that we may eat two pounds of it. This is how the weasel kills the
rabbit; sucks an ounce of blood for his food, and wastes the rest. So
the demoralized sheep-dog tears out the poor creature's kidneys, and
wastes the rest. Man, armed by science with such powers of slaying,
should be less egotistical than weasels and perverted sheep-dogs. I will
not kill her. I will not lay that beautiful body of hers low, and glaze
those tender, loving eyes that never gleamed with hate or rage at man,
and fix those innocent jaws that never bit the life out of anything, not
even of the grass she feeds on, and does it more good than harm. Feed
on, poor innocent. And you be blanked; you and your diamond, that I
begin to wish I had never seen; for it would corrupt an angel."

Squat understood one word in ten, but he managed to reply. "This is
nonsense-talk," said he, gravely. "The life is no bigger in that than in
the murcat you shot last shoot."

"No more it is," said Staines. "I am a fool. It is come to this,
then; Kafirs teach us theology, and Hottentots morality. I bow to my
intellectual superior. I'll shoot the eland." He raised his rifle again.

"No, no, no, no, no, no," murmured the Hottentot, in a sweet voice
scarcely audible, yet so keen in its entreaty, that Staines turned
hastily round to look at him. His face was ashy, his teeth chattering,
his limbs shaking. Before Staines could ask him what was the matter,
he pointed through an aperture of the acacias into the wood hard by the
elands. Staines looked, and saw what seemed to him like a very long dog,
or some such animal, crawling from tree to tree. He did not at all
share the terror of his companion, nor understand it. But a terrible
explanation followed. This creature, having got to the skirt of the
wood, expanded, by some strange magic, to an incredible size, and sprang
into the open, with a growl, a mighty lion; he seemed to ricochet from
the ground, so immense was his second bound, that carried him to the
eland, and he struck her one blow on the head with his terrible paw, and
felled her as if with a thunderbolt: down went her body, with all the
legs doubled, and her poor head turned over, and the nose kissed the
ground. The lion stood motionless. Presently the eland, who was not
dead, but stunned, began to recover and struggle feebly up. Then the
lion sprang on her with a roar, and rolled her over, and with two
tremendous bites and a shake, tore her entrails out and laid her dying.
He sat composedly down, and contemplated her last convulsions, without
touching her again.

At this roar, though not loud, the horse, though he had never heard or
seen a lion, trembled, and pulled at his halter.

Blacky crept into the water; and Staines was struck with such an awe as
he had never felt. Nevertheless, the king of beasts being at a distance,
and occupied, and Staines a brave man, and out of sight, he kept
his ground and watched, and by those means saw a sight never to be
forgotten. The lion rose up, and stood in the sun incredibly beautiful
as well as terrible. He was not the mangy hue of the caged lion, but a
skin tawny, golden, glossy as a race-horse, and of exquisite tint that
shone like pure gold in the sun; his eye a lustrous jewel of richest
hue, and his mane sublime. He looked towards the wood, and uttered a
full roar. This was so tremendous that the horse shook all over as if in
an ague, and began to lather. Staines recoiled, and his flesh crept, and
the Hottentot went under water, and did not emerge for ever so long.