Luck at the Diamond Fields Part 14

"You haven't been doing anything wrong--not been on the cross in any way? That Bill Jeffson hasn't been letting you in or getting you to go in for anything shady?" Jim Heap asked, for from experience a sudden necessity to leave a place was a.s.sociated in his mind with a desire to get away from the jurisdiction of criminal courts.

"No, don't think that of me; I haven't been doing anything that's mean or dishonest, but I ain't sure I sha'n't if I stay here," Charlie said, and, shaking Jim Heap's h.o.r.n.y hand, he left him in a state of considerable bewilderment.

Jim Heap was right about Connie taking his sudden departure rather badly. When she was told the two pieces of news, she seemed far more surprised and hurt at Charlie's having left without saying good-bye to her than she was rejoiced to learn that she was the owner of one of the largest diamonds in the world, and seemed to think that the good luck had come too late now that her father was dead and could not rejoice over it. She did not say much about Charlie, but Jim Heap and his wife both thought that she was a good deal hurt about it. After she had first expressed her surprise at his having gone she rarely mentioned his name. She wanted some share of the price of the diamond, which sold for 20,000 pounds, to be given to him for finding it, but as she was a minor that was impossible. To the plan of her going home she made no objections, for though she looked forward to a change of life without much pleasure, she knew it was what her father would have wished; and one day, some weeks after the diamond was found, a crowd of diggers gave her a last cheer as Jim Heap drove her across the veldt to Barkly, where she was to meet the wife of the clergyman there, who was going home and had arranged to take her under her protection, and duly introduce her to her father's relations; and nothing was left of the General and Connie except the house in which they used to live and the claims where the big diamond was found; though their memory will live and their story will be told so long as diamonds are dug for on the banks of the Vaal River.

After some months, Charlie came back from the gold-fields on foot, for he had found, as Jim Heap prophesied, that there was nothing much sticking out for him up there. He came back with empty pockets and worn-out boots, but he did not seem sickened of the chances of digging, or had not the energy to try anything else, for he turned to his old occupation again. Fortune thought fit to do him a good turn, as it did to many others down the river that year. The Vaal that winter became unusually shallow, and the diggers who went to work in its bed, as they do when they can get at it, found very well. When the river came down again, Charlie had found a nice lot of diamonds which he sold for eight hundred pounds, and, rather to the surprise of every one who knew him, he announced his intention of going for a run home. Maybe he would never have another chance, he said, and he would like to know a little bit more of the world than South Africa. The truth was that he felt a longing to know something about the world in which Connie would live; not that he supposed there was any chance of his seeing her--he did not want to see her, he told himself. So he took his pa.s.sage home, and in a few weeks found himself in London.

After a few weeks of the round of theatres, race meetings, and sight-seeing, which colonists generally go in for, he began to feel half tired and bored with it all. The feeling of being alone in a crowd chilled him, as it does those who have always lived in a small community, and he began to feel something that was very like home-sickness. He was delighted when he came across any one he had known on the Diamond Fields, even finding himself pleased to talk to men whom at the mine he had rather disliked and avoided. He was in this state of mind when he met one Brown, a man whom out there he had always looked upon as an a.s.s. Mr Brown was equally lonely and in want of a companion; he was about to set out on a Continental trip; and though he doubted whether Charlie was not a little too colonial to be a desirable travelling companion, still he thought that it would be better to get him to go with him than travel by himself, so they agreed to travel together, and started for the regulation Rhine and Switzerland trip.

Mr Brown's misgivings as to Charlie were confirmed by his conduct. He hadn't got the mind for travel, and took nothing in. He was all very well on the Diamond Fields, but he ought to have stopped there, was the opinion expressed to himself of Charlie after they had travelled together for two days. On the Rhine steamer his disgust reached a climax. Charlie showed his hopeless ignorance by saying that the Rhine reminded him of the Vaal River, and he seemed to take more interest in that grovelling fancy than in anything he saw. He refused to listen to Mr Brown's stories from Murray about the castles and islands he was pa.s.sing by, nor did he seem to care to have the special beauties of the scenery pointed out to him--for Mr Brown had a nice taste for Nature-- but he sat silent and stupid. To tell the truth, his thoughts were far away amongst old familiar scenes. He seemed to see the hut by the river, to hear the swish of the diggers' cradles and Kaffirs jabbering at their work, and Connie's silvery laugh as she ran along the bank to her father's claim. That scene had come back to his mind twenty times a day since he had left Africa.

"Did you see that pretty girl who got in at Boppart? You don't see that sort of woman in Africa. There she is, sitting opposite, next to that white-haired old buffer. Oh, what a fellow you are! you won't take an interest in anything," Mr Brown was saying when Charlie woke up from his day-dream, and looking across the deck he saw Connie sitting opposite. She was at the same time wonderfully altered, and yet her old self. The battered old straw hat and the old bright-coloured frock bought at the Barkly store in celebration of one of the General's meagre finds, which Charlie remembered so well, were replaced by soft deftly-made garments, and she had grown even more beautiful than she promised to be; but Charlie knew her at once, and as he saw her she looked round, and a joyous look of recognition came into her face. In a second he was shaking hands and was being introduced (as Mr Langdale, who was a great friend of ours in South Africa, and who found my diamond for me) to a white-haired gentleman and an elderly, somewhat grim-looking lady, who eyed him rather dubiously, as if they were inclined to doubt whether acquaintances made on the Diamond Fields were very desirable ones; but neither Connie nor Charlie troubled themselves much about them.

"What made you go to the gold-fields without waiting to say good-bye to me?" Connie said to him when they were able to talk without being overheard.

Charlie looked rather uncomfortable, and began to tell some story of a party who were going to start and would not wait, when Connie interrupted him.

"If I thought you had had no better reason than that I should forgive you; as it is, I don't think I shall unless you tell me something I want to know. You remember the day of the accident;" and a tear came into her eyes as the terrible memory of her father's death came back to her.

"Well, you remember on that day we were talking together under the trees, you and I: you were just going to tell me something when I was called away. Can you remember now what it was you were going to say?"

Of course he could remember, and once for all the heroic resolutions he had made and tried to act upon utterly broke down.

"I suppose I must tell my cousins about this," Connie said, after they had talked for some time, as she glanced in the direction of the gentleman and lady she was travelling with, who were regarding them with looks of surprise and disapproval. "They are my guardians, and perhaps they mayn't like it; but they know I always have my own way, and I think you might have known that too."

She was right, they didn't like it; but she in the end had her own way, and some twelve months after their meeting a digger of Red s.h.i.+rt, who was reading a tattered English newspaper at the canteen, came across an advertis.e.m.e.nt of the marriage of Charles, son of the late Charles Langdale, of the Griqualand West Civil Service, to Constance, daughter of the late John Stanley (late Captain --th Light Infantry), which after much debate was interpreted to mean that Charlie had married the old General's daughter after all.

Story 8.

A DUEL AT "POKER."

n.o.body on the Diamond Fields quite knew the beginning of the ill-feeling between Dr Gorman and Mr Bowker.

It had existed, as far as any one could remember, from the early days of the Fields, and had been increased and intensified by a hundred matters of grievance. It is only in a small community, where there is not much change of thought, and where a fresh face is not very often seen, that bitter personal hatred can grow luxuriantly, and the rancorous ill-will between those two men had become part of themselves, adding a sort of enjoyment to their lives, and influencing many of their actions. Men knew and counted upon the fact that one of them would oppose the other in every possible way, and those who were on bad terms with the one could always reckon on the support and friends.h.i.+p of the other.

It was as much owing to their being respectively directors of the Long Hope and the New Colonial Mining Companies, as to anything else, that the disastrous litigation, which eventually swamped both companies, broke out and was carried on to the bitter end. It was owing to some one suggesting to Bowker that it was the cherished ambition of Dr Gorman to represent Kimberley in the House of a.s.sembly, that the former first took to politics, and began that distinguished public career which we at the Diamond Fields believed was attracting the attention of Europe, while the latter, who had no more ambition to become a member of the Legislative a.s.sembly than to be a bishop, when his enemy issued his address, at once came forward and began to canva.s.s the const.i.tuency on his own account.

That election was memorable in the annals of the Diamond Fields for years, and was fought with a spirit which a journal that made a good thing out of it said was creditable to both parties, and bore witness to the healthy vitality of the Diamond Fields. Money was thrown about with a splendid recklessness, and some men, who had the foresight to put their Kaffir workmen on the register, made a good thing out of the rise in the value of free and independent voters.

There was no other candidate who stood a ghost of a chance while there were two seats, so the fight between the two was only for the honour of being senior member, but it was none the less brisk on that account.

Bowker won, and then both parties got up pet.i.tions against each other's return on account of gross bribery and corruption, and succeeded in turning each other out.

From that day they were the prominent leaders in local politics, in fact they helped to form the two parties who became the Guelphs and Ghibbelines of the Diamond Fields.

Bowker was supposed to own the 'a.s.sagai,' a satirical journal that had a stormy existence for some months, and the doctor was believed to have found the money for the 'k.n.o.bkerri,' and to have imported its editor, a broken-down London journalist, whose power of invective, until he matured the incipient delirium tremens he brought out with him, was the terror of Mr Bowker and his party.

When the former journal devoted a series of articles to the doctor's former life, and to the incidents connected with the suspicious death of his half-aunt, Bowker was believed to have inspired the attack; while the biography of Bowker, giving a graphic account of his being tarred and feathered on the Ovens Gold Field in Australia, in connection with a charge of petty theft, which sent up the circulation of the 'k.n.o.bkerri'

to a figure never before or afterwards reached by a newspaper on the Diamond Fields, was put down to the doctor. Bowker, who achieved a great reputation in colonial politics by his command of language, saying "that he recognised the contemptible handiwork of the medical a.s.sa.s.sin's dastardly brain." The enmity between these two men increased with the prosperity of the Diamond Fields, but did not go down with the shares when the bad times came.

Through good times and bad the feud between them became more bitter.

When things were at their worst, the one felt that the other's bad fortune made up to a certain extent for his own. When things began to mend, Bowker felt that his satisfaction at finding himself on the breast of the wave of returning prosperity was diminished by seeing his old enemy floating in with him. But with Bowker's shares the doctor's house property rose in value, and when at length the latter, having become weary of the dust of the Fields, determined to shake it off his feet for ever, and return home, he felt that the knowledge that he was leaving Bowker behind him a prosperous man, who in a year or two would follow him with a larger fortune, spoilt much of his self-satisfaction.

Bowker, on the other hand, heard with considerable chagrin of the other's intended departure; he felt that in a way he would miss him, and thought that life would be dull now there was little chance of seeing his enemy come to grief, and now it seemed certain on the whole that his career on the Diamond Fields might be summed up as a successful one.

One evening some days before Gorman was to leave Kimberley, he was with some of us in the card-room of the club. We had been playing some mild game of limited loo. We were discussing whether we should go on playing or leave off, no one taking much interest in the game, when Bowker came into the room with a look in his face which showed that he had been taking a fair amount of drink. At that time he was not on speaking terms with Gorman, but for all that, as he came into the room he stared more at him than any one else, and seemed to speak to him when he asked what game we were playing.

"Limited loo! call that a game! No one has got the pluck to play now-a-days. Now I wouldn't mind having a bit of a gamble to-night, but I ain't come down to limited loo," he said with a loud laugh, and a sneer at the doctor.

"What do you want to play?" Gorman said, speaking to Bowker, rather to the surprise of those who were present.

"Well, I'd play a game of poker if any one would sit down who knew how to play, as wasn't afraid of the game," Bowker growled out.

"I know how to play, and I'm not afraid of the game either, Mr Bowker,"

the doctor answered quietly enough, but with a note in his voice that some of us believed meant mischief.

The rest of us did not offer to join in the play, from the first we fancied it would be a pretty warm game. It was anything but a friendly one, for it seemed to be rather a duel than a mere gamble, and we felt sure that when the two men sat down at the table, each one promised himself that if he could manage it, the other should look back with considerable regret to that little game of poker.

The two men were a great contrast to each other. Bowker was a heavy, coa.r.s.e-looking, bull-necked man of over six feet high, with a straggling yellow beard growing over his huge red cheeks and jowls. Gorman was a slight, dark man, clean shaven except a twisted moustache, with a pair of sharp black eyes. Both men occasionally played high, though they were not habitual gamblers, and the lookers-on expected to see some sensational playing.

"What do you say to making the blind five pounds?" said the doctor, as he sat down and smiled at his opponent.

"Thought you weren't afraid of the game! but you know what you can afford," the other answered.

"Ten if you like," said the doctor, and then the game began.

For some time the luck ran with provoking evenness; both parties backed their hands with considerable freedom, but after a couple of hours' play neither had lost or won very much.

It happened that they both had a considerable sum in notes, which first collected before one player and then went across to the other. We watched the money pa.s.s from player to player, and waited for the more serious period of the game, when one party would have come to the end of his ready money, and play on credit would have begun. After a bit they increased the amount of the blind to thirty pounds, then to a hundred.

First one player would be some hundred pounds to the good, then the other would get a turn of luck which would wipe it out again. For a long time they played without what is called a meet occurring; that is to say, when one happened to hold a good hand, the other generally held nothing.

"Hanged if the rent of Gorman's buildings mustn't be going up a bit, since you're man enough to play that game. What do you put your pile at?" Bowker had said, when the other had suggested the last increase of the blind.

"Gorman's buildings are worth about as much as twenty thousand pounds'

worth of stock in the Long Hope Company, are not they, Brown?" the doctor said, turning round to a share and estate agent who was looking on at the game.

"Gorman's buildings would fetch twenty-five thousand to-morrow, and we all know the market price of Long Hope," Brown answered.

"Well, play away and hold your jaw. I ain't afraid of you and your d.a.m.ned shanties," Bowker answered.

After this change of remarks neither party said another word, except about the game. We, as we looked on, realised that there was more than mere gamblers' greed in the savage hard look in their eyes. They were anxious to ruin one another, rather than to win money; the hatred of a dozen years seemed to find a vent in that game. The amount that Bowker held in the Long Hope Company was known to be about equal to the price put upon Gorman's buildings, a row of offices near the mine; so the terms on which they met were quite fair. As hour after hour pa.s.sed the game went on, neither party winning or losing much, but each in turn being to the good. They were both fine players, the doctor the more cautious of the two, while Bowker had on the whole the best luck, which carried him through one or two attempts to win by sheer force of bluffing. As the doctor looked into the mask of red flesh opposite him, he for some time found nothing there to give any clue as to the sort of hand his opponent held; but in the small hours of the morning he began to notice that every now and then the veins in his face would seem to swell, and his breathing would become harder. The luck just then was rather in the doctor's favour, and after he had won several stakes he was able to diagnose his opponent's symptoms of intense excitement pretty satisfactorily. When Bowker had a strong hand he would back it without showing these signs, but when he was in doubt, and backing his hand for more than it was worth, they would appear.

"You had better not try that on again, it's not good for your health, and worse for your pocket, you will find, my friend," the doctor said to himself, as he dealt out the cards, determined that before long he would utilise the piece of knowledge which he fancied he had acquired.

For some time after that, however, Bowker got hand after hand that there was no resisting, and the doctor's winnings were reduced to nothing.

It was getting on into the morning, but the club was still kept up, and several members stayed on watching the sensational game played out. At last the doctor took up a hand of three knaves, a king, and an ace, doubled the blind, and then changed the king and the ace, getting a queen and another knave. He had four knaves, but he had the best possible four, for he held a queen and had thrown away a king and an ace. Unless Bowker held a straight flush (that is to say, a sequence of the same suit) he could not hold as good a hand. Bowker had taken one card, and his heavy coa.r.s.e face showed no sign. The betting went up at first gradually, then by leaps and bounds till it came to a thousand pounds.

There was no limit to the amount that could be staked, but the game of poker played on the Diamond fields only allowed a player to raise the amount at one time to double what had already been staked.

"Make it a thousand, that's a good bit of your street," Bowker said coolly enough.