Part 13

“Ja, ja!” answered the old half-breed. “He tink much about people when he want to tink about them, but he tink most about himself. Baas Meyer, he a very clever man--oh! a very clever man, who want to be a great man too. And one day, Missee, he be a great man, great and rich--if the Heer God Almighty let him.”

THE GOLD COIN

Six weeks had gone by since the eventful evening of Benita’s arrival at Rooi Krantz. Now the spring had fully come, the veld was emerald with grass and bright with flowers. In the kloof behind the house trees had put out their leaves, and the mimosas were in bloom, making the air heavy with their scent. Amongst them the ringdoves nested in hundreds, and on the steep rocks of the precipice the red-necked vultures fed their young. Along the banks of the stream and round the borders of the lake the pig-lilies bloomed, a sheet of white. All the place was beautiful and full of life and hope. Nothing seemed dead and hopeless except Benita’s heart.

Her health had quite come back to her; indeed, never before had she felt so strong and well. But the very soul had withered in her breast. All day she thought, and all night she dreamed of the man who, in cold blood, had offered up his life to save a helpless woman and her child. She wondered whether he would have done this if he had heard the answer that was upon her lips. Perhaps that was why she had not been given time to speak that answer, which might have made a coward of him. For nothing more had been heard of Robert Seymour; indeed, already the tragedy of the ship Zanzibar was forgotten. The dead had buried their dead, and since then worse disasters had happened in the world.

But Benita could not bury her dead. She rode about the veld, she sat by the lake and watched the wild fowl, or at night heard them flighting over her in flocks. She listened to the cooing of the doves, the booming of the bitterns in the reeds, and the drumming of the snipe high in air. She counted the game trekking along the ridge till her mind grew weary. She sought consolation from the breast of Nature and found none; she sought it in the starlit skies, and oh! they were very far away. Death reigned within her who outwardly was so fair to see.

In the society of her father, indeed, she took pleasure, for he loved her, and love comforted her wounded heart. In that of Jacob Meyer also she found interest, for now her first fear of the man had died away, and undoubtedly he was very interesting; well-bred also after a fashion, although a Jew who had lost his own faith and rejected that of the Christians.

He told her that he was a German by birth, that he had been sent to England as a boy, to avoid the conscription, which Jews dislike, since in soldiering there is little profit. Here he had become a clerk in a house of South African merchants, and, as a consequence--having shown all the ability of his race--was despatched to take charge of a branch business in Cape Colony. What happened to him there Benita never discovered, but probably he had shown too much ability of an oblique nature. At any rate, his connection with the firm terminated, and for years he became a wandering “smouse,” or trader, until at length he drifted into partnership with her father.

Whatever might have been his past, however, soon she found that he was an extremely able and agreeable man. It was he and no other who had painted the water-colours that adorned her room, and he could play and sing as well as he painted. Also, as Robert had told her, Mr. Meyer was very well-read in subjects that are not usually studied on the veld of South Africa; indeed, he had quite a library of books, most of them histories or philosophical and scientific works, of which he would lend her volumes. Fiction, however, he never read, for the reason, he told her, that he found life itself and the mysteries and problems which surround it so much more interesting.

One evening, when they were walking together by the lake, watching the long lights of sunset break and quiver upon its surface, Benita’s curiosity overcame her, and she asked him boldly how it happened that such a man as he was content to live the life he did.

“In order that I may reach a better,” he answered. “Oh! no, not in the skies, Miss Clifford, for of them I know nothing, nor, as I believe, is there anything to know. But here--here.”

“What do you mean by a better life, Mr. Meyer?”

“I mean,” he answered, with a flash of his dark eyes, “great wealth, and the power that wealth brings. Ah! I see you think me very sordid and materialistic, but money is God in this world, Miss Clifford--money is God.”

She smiled and answered: “I fear, then, that he is likely to prove an invisible god on the high veld, Mr. Meyer. You will scarcely make a great fortune out of horse-breeding, and here there is no one to rule.”

“Do you suppose, then, that is why I stop at Rooi Krantz, just to breed horses? Has not your father told you about the great treasure hidden away up there among the Makalanga?”

“I have heard something of it,” she answered with a sigh. “Also that both of you went to look for it and were disappointed.”

“Ah! The Englishman who was drowned--Mr. Seymour--he spoke of it, did he not? He found us there.”

“Yes; and you wished to shoot him--do you remember?”

“God in Heaven! Yes, because I thought he had come to rob us. Well, I did not shoot, and afterwards we were hunted out of the place, which does not much matter, as those fools of natives refused to let us dig in the fortress.”

“Then why do you still think about this treasure which probably does not exist?”

“Why, Miss Clifford, do you think about various things that probably do not exist? Perhaps because you feel that here or elsewhere they do exist. Well, that is what I feel about the treasure, and what I have always felt. It exists, and I shall find it--now. I shall live to see more gold than you can even imagine, and that is why I still continue to breed horses on the Transvaal veld. Ah! you laugh; you think it is a nightmare that I breed----”

Then suddenly he became aware of Sally, who had appeared over the fold of the rise behind them, and asked irritably:

“What is it now, old vrouw?”

“The Baas Clifford wants to speak with you, Baas Jacob. Messengers have come to you from far away.”

“What messengers?” he asked.

“I know not,” answered Sally, fanning her fat face with a yellow pocket-handkerchief. “They are strange people to me, and thin with travelling, but they talk a kind of Zulu. The Baas wishes you to come.”

“Will you come also, Miss Clifford? No? Then forgive me if I leave you,” and lifting his hat he went.

“A strange man, Missee,” said old Sally, when he had vanished, walking very fast.

“Yes,” answered Benita, in an indifferent voice.