Jasper Lyle. Ward
tremor in the head indicated palsy. A teapot stood on a little table beside her, and with her feet turned backwards round the legs of the chair, and her arms folded under her apron, she looked as if she had dressed herself in the round-eared cap and ample gown of voerchitz, a coarse print, manufactured in England, for once and for aye, never to be changed. A felt hat crowned the white head of the old man, and with more courtesy than the Boer usually exhibits, he lifted it from his brow, but replaced it ere he shook hands with Major Frankfort, who offered his palm at once. Two or three heads of round-faced Dutch girls, Vanbloem’s elder daughters, peeped in from a door leading to a back room; they vanished with a giggle, and then one, less shy than the rest, came forward and ventured to offer the “tea-water.” This was declined with thanks; but unwilling to treat the civilities of these poor people with coldness, Frankfort promised to say “Good night” before he and his friend retired for the night.
They then proceeded to the outspan, and gave orders for the preparation of their repast, while they bathed in the stream, yet warm from the effects of the sun.
The pools under the alders were clear and deep. How delicious it was to cast aside the heavy coat, saturated as it had been with wet; how refreshing to lave the weary limbs in the crystal bath!
Then what ample justice was done to the carbonatje (broiled mutton steaks), and the stewed buck, and the “remove” of quail, to say nothing of the glass of “warm stuff,” when the sun went down and the cool breeze came up the river. Verily, our travellers enjoyed their repose on that green bank with a greater zest than they could have done in a well-appointed foam, after a more luxurious feast in this quiet-going, “very comfortable” England.
It must be owned they had not a very military appearance, albeit they are “armed and accoutred” for “the road.” Their jackets of drab duffle, reaching to the hip, were rendered more useful than ornamental by the capacious pockets; their felt hats were of that description long since adopted by the patriarchal Boers of Southern Africa, and of late become fashionable in England under the designation of “Jem Crows” and “wide-awakes;” and the ostrich plume, wound round these, not only shaded their brows from the fervid sun, but attracted the flies from their faces, somewhat blistered by the alternations of heat and wind and rain. Their trowsers of pliable brown leather stoutly resisted the thorns, or rather spikes, of the mimosa bushes; their veldt scoons (shoes) were of the same material, but stronger, and fitted the foot as easily as a glove; and their costume was rendered complete by the belt buckled round the waist, from which was slung, besides the flask, a small pouch of buckskin, containing gun-caps, a clasp-knife with numerous blades, and various other articles necessary for the journey,—a pair of long-barrelled pistols completing the equipment when starting for the trek. When riding without their waggons, they moved with a change of linen in a small sabretache of tiger-skin, appended to the saddle, while in a haversack was a good store of dried meat, hard-boiled eggs when they were to be had, and biscuit; in short, sufficient, on a pinch, for a good day’s meal.
They rose to pay their adieux to Vanbloem and his family. Frankfort was unarmed, but Ormsby had by chance stuck in his belt his six-barrelled pistol, then a great novelty in that far country. Frankfort remarked this on entering Vanbloem’s gateway; but his companion explained that it was not loaded, which was satisfactory, for the Dutch, though kindly disposed towards English settlers, were no great friends to the government, and, alas! there were not wanting men of a bad faction to turn even a trifling action of this nature to bad account.
The glory of the sun had departed, but there was twilight, which makes the summer day of the Cape so much longer and pleasanter than that of the tropics. The door of the great room at Vanbloem’s stood wide open, and the coarse, flaring, home-made candles shed their flickering rays on a group assembled to look at the two Englishmen. To the family party were now added three or four Hottentot servant-girls, their woolly locks concealed beneath bright-coloured douks (head-kerchiefs). They had a smart air, for they were arrayed in flaunting colours. Scarlet or yellow bodices set off a striped or elaborately-patched petticoat, ample in width and scanty in length, displaying ankles that fine ladies would have coveted and feet proportionally minute. A bevy of children, very merry, very noisy, and very dirty, were chattering together at play, and looking in at an open window, with the strong light falling on their dusky forms, round which, their blankets loosely and gracefully draped, were two Kafir herdsmen. Their crisp hair, thicker than that of the Hottentots, was elaborately coiffé, being stiffened with red clay; round their well-shaped throats were necklaces of beads intermixed with wolves’ teeth, and sundry rude ornaments adopted as charms, having been endued with certain magic powers by the witch doctors or rain-makers of the tribe. Their wrists were encircled by brazen bangles, and each carried his snuffbox, a miniature tortoise-shell, with its long ivory spoon appended by a brazen chain.
One of them was in the act of putting a spoonful of the mixture into his mouth, when Ormsby walked up to him, and with great deliberation began examining him with the same curiosity that a naturalist would have evinced on seeing some newly-discovered animal. Both Kafirs returned his survey with a steady gaze.
In strong contrast to these sculptured and dignified-looking beings, rose the noise of chattering among the other occupants of the house and stoep (the platform that runs along the front of all Dutch houses). The old patriarch and his wife indeed maintained their usual taciturnity, and sat just within the door, their chairs having been moved there by their son, for the filial deference of the Dutch is remarkable.
At last some of the Hottentots, who had retired to a corner of the stoep, after a due examination of the travellers, began singing in a soprano key; the men coming from the farm-yards and joining them in deeper tones, all in perfect harmony, and some of the voices exceedingly pleasing.
It was an old but popular air, one which had found its way, like an angel’s voice, across the waters, into the wilderness. It was a hymn sung to the tune of “Home, sweet Home!”
The sopranos were a little tremulous, to be sure, but true to time and tune, and the bass voices gave solemnity to the chorus.
The associations it called up were strangely contrasted with the scene. A rude dwelling, oddly peopled, standing in the midst of a wild garden, ill-tended, but perfumed by orange-trees, waving their scented boughs in the still air, while beyond, in dreamy profile, rose the boundary of hills with the spacious silent landscape between; but the far mountains, of brown and purple and pale blue, had faded utterly away into the clouds of night.
“Home, sweet Home!” Ormsby listened only to the air. He was not one accustomed to give way to those emotions of the soul which soften its impulses and direct its thoughts to the gentlest and most hallowed ties of earth; it must, indeed be confessed that he was too much inclined to discourage such emotions and to quiz them, as it is called, in others; but his heart, at this distance from the beloved and remembered faces which had shone upon him at home, was disturbed by its reminiscences.
The air was identified with a lost sister, the pet of his boyhood. There was a sudden vision of a long, narrow, day nursery, with many windows looking out upon green uplands and rich waving woods, where the fox-hounds used to meet; of another room, within, where old nurse Hetty used to sit and sing to his consumptive little sister, who died afterwards.
As he leaned against one of the rough pillars supporting a gable of the building, his thoughts wandered back to those early days; vividly he remembered that one on which his little favourite sister had been carried away dead; with what terror had he watched the dark and high-plumed hearse, with its fearful train of black carriages, all drawn by solemn, heavy sable horses, waiting for the small coffin, to bear it through the snow of the churchyard. He remembered it was midwinter; the ground and the trees and the hills and the roofs of the stables were all white with snow; it powdered the harness of the coal-black horses, and the carriages and hearse, as they wended their dreary way down the long avenue of leafless trees, and through the lodge-gates and along the road, till they were lost sight of below the slopes at the boundary of the park.
He remembered hearing his younger brother begin to sing the familiar tune, and nurse Hetty’s dismay because she could not silence him, and his mother, in her white dressing-gown, looking into the nursery with eyes streaming with tears.
That air had long been forbidden in his