قراءة كتاب A Veldt Official: A Novel of Circumstance
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about him, beyond that he was entirely new to the Service. It was a rare thing for a man of his age to start in this, and at the salary of a youngster. It was a rare thing, too, in a place like Doppersdorp, for a man’s private affairs to be so thoroughly a sealed book; there where everybody knew as much about his neighbour’s concerns as he did about his own, ofttimes a great deal more.
“I’ve always got on well with my clerks,” pursues Mr Van Stolz, “except one, and I worked the oracle so as to get him changed; but, with that exception, they have always been sorry to leave me, even when it meant promotion.”
The boast is a very pardonable one because true. The man who could not get on well with Peter Van Stolz could get on with nobody. An excellent official, he was the most genial and unassuming of men, and with such of his subordinates as were gentlemen he was more like a comrade than an official chief. They were all fellow Civil Servants, and he held that there should be a strong esprit de corps among such. Himself of Dutch extraction, he was the right man in the right place, in charge of a district ninety per cent, of whose population consisted of Boers. He was deservedly popular, for he held the scale evenly between all parties and all nationalities, whether Boers, natives, or British, and in his judicial capacities, wherever it was possible with due regard to strict justice to err on the side of indulgence, he was sure to do so. In outward aspect he was a little man, sturdy and well knit withal, extremely brisk in his movements, yet not in the least fussy; indeed, such briskness seemed to express in itself his expansive and fun-loving nature, and when a joke or a good story was to the fore, no laugh was more spontaneous or heartier than his.
Their ways part here, and they separate. Roden, as he strolls down towards the hotel where he has for the present taken up his quarters, recalls the verdict which had irresistibly been forced upon his mind, as he had been rattled into the place in the ramshackle post-cart one hot and dusty afternoon ten days ago.
“Heavens! what a God-forsaken looking hole!” had been his unspoken utterance as he viewed for the first time the ugly, mean-looking town, and realised that this was to be his home for an indefinite period.
To say truth the aspect of Doppersdorp was calculated to impress nobody in its favour. It lay upon an open plain, shut in on three sides by bare and craggy mountains, and consisted at first sight mainly of a couple of hundred mud-coloured tenements looking like lumps of clay dropped upon the veldt and left to dry in the sun. It improved, however, on closer inspection. The streets were broad and well laid out, and bordered by willows—and on the lower side of the town were gardens, which made a pleasant oasis of green against the prevailing aridity. Some of the houses were double-storeyed, but the most prominent building of all was the Dutch Reformed Church, an appalling specimen of architecture, staringly new, and surmounted by a badly proportioned steeple. The inhabitants of this place were firmly under the impression that Doppersdorp was the most attractive, and nearly the most important, town in the world; which was a comfortable form of belief for themselves, if a bore to the new arrival, who was expected to acquiesce.
“What d’you think of Doppersdorp?” was fired into the said new arrival by every one with whom he was brought into contact, socially or officially, unawares or with premeditation. And each individual querist would be sure to continue in a tone of complacency, which might convey the idea that it owed its attractiveness, if not its very existence, mainly to himself:
“Ah, it’s not half a bad little place, Doppersdorp; not half a bad little place.”
To which Roden Musgrave would agree, from the double-barrelled motive of expediency, and the needless exertion entailed by maintaining the contrary. His real opinion, like everything else, he held prudently in reserve.
Chapter Four.
Carte and Tierce!
“I wonder what the new magistrate’s clerk is like!”
And the speaker who had been staring meditatively skyward, her hands locked together behind the coiled masses of her brown hair, raises her magnificent form from the hammock in which it has been luxuriously resting, and, sitting upright, stretches her arms and yawns. The hammock is slung beneath a group of green willows whose drooping boughs afford a cool and pleasant shade. Beyond, bordered by a low sod wall and a ditch, is a large garden planted with fruit trees soon to be weighed down with golden apricots and ripening peaches, albeit these are at present green. Over the tree-tops shimmers the corrugated iron roof of a house.
“It’s awfully hot still, but not so hot as it was,” continues the speaker. “Why, Grace, I do believe you’re asleep!”
The other occupant of this cool retreat starts violently, nearly falling from her chair with the awakening. She is a tall, slightly built woman, some years older than the first speaker; good-looking, albeit with rather a faded and ‘washed-out’ air.
“Yes, I was; nodding, at any rate. What were you trying to say, Mona?”
“I was saying, ‘I wonder what the new magistrate’s clerk is like!’”
“Why didn’t you go into Doppersdorp with Charlie this morning? Then you could have seen for yourself.”
“Charlie would insist on starting at each an unholy hour. Charlie delights in turning me out at four o’clock if he can, and I am constitutionally lazy. Charlie is a barbarian.”
“I wonder what Gonjana will get? A year, I hope. Mr Van Stolz has been heavily down upon sheep-stealing of late.”
“Grace Suffield, I’m surprised at you! That’s a most unchristian sentiment. You ought to be more merciful to the poor benighted heathen, who doesn’t know any better.”
“He’s the worst ‘boy’ we have ever had on the place, and I for one shall be heartily glad to get rid of him.”
“Bother Gonjana! I was talking of the new magistrate’s clerk, ‘Roden Musgrave!’ It has quite a romantic sound, hasn’t it?”
“Romantic fiddlestick!” laughs Mrs Suffield. “You’re not in luck’s way this time, Mona. They say he isn’t young, and is awfully reserved and stiff; quite a middle-aged fogey, in fact.”
“Not young, eh! That makes him the more interesting, if only for a change. I believe I’m beginning to have enough of boys.”
“Oh, poor Mr Watkins! Why, Mona, I believe you were more than half engaged to that poor boy, and now you are preparing to throw him over for his successor.”
“Poor fellow, he was rather fond of me!” is the complacent rejoinder. “I don’t know that I ever saw any of them so cut up as he was when he said good-bye. But, look here, Gracie. He is no older than am, and has only been a couple of years in the Service! What sort of aged and wrinkled hag shall I be by the time he gets even a third-class magistracy?”
“Quite so. And having broken his heart—done your best to I should say, for hearts don’t break at young Watkins’ age—you are going to set to work to subjugate his successor.”
“What is life worth without its little excitements?” is the soft, purring reply; but no attempt does the speaker make to repudiate the imputation.
“Little excitements, indeed! Did you ever try and count the number of men you have made fools of? Let’s begin. There was young Watkins here; the new doctor at Villiersdorp; then there was that man on board ship—two rather—for I hear you were playing off one against the other. And while you were in England—”
“Oh, that’ll do, that’ll do! I didn’t make fools of them. They made fools of themselves.”
“You’ll do it once too often one of these days. You’ll end by singeing your own wings, and that when you least expect it.