Blue Aloes | Page 6

upon no man, but attended
strictly to his business. He was the best manager the farm had ever
known. After being there for less than a year, he had so improved the
stock and the land that Bernard van Cannan looked upon him as a little
god, and his word was law on the farm. His private history, a rather sad
one, Christine had already heard from Mrs. van Cannan. It appeared
that his wife had been terribly disfigured in a fire and was not only a
semi-invalid but a victim of melancholia. She lived with him in an
isolated bungalow some way off, and he did everything for her with his
own hands as she shrank from being seen by any one, and particularly
detested natives. While her husband was away at his duties, she
remained locked in the bungalow, inaccessible to any one save Mrs.
van Cannan, who sometimes went to sit with her.
"But I can't bear to go often," Isabel van Cannan told Miss Chaine.
"She depresses me so terribly, and what good can I do her, poor soul?"
Unnecessary for her to add that she hated being depressed. It was bad
for the complexion, she laughed. Laughter was never far from her lips.
But, at the moment, there really seemed some trace of the morning's

pain on her as she looked at her husband.
"Bernard's shoulder is giving him so much trouble," she said
appealingly to Saltire. "He wants to go to East London to see his old
specialist, but I don't believe in that man. I think rest in bed is the cure
for all ills. Don't you agree with me, Mr. Saltire?"
"Bed has its uses no doubt," laughed Saltire, with the cheerful
carelessness of the thoroughly healthy man, "but a change of scene is
better sometimes, for some people."
Van Cannan, his shoulder and left eye twitching perpetually, turned a
searching gaze upon the deeply tanned face of the forestry expert, as
though suspecting some double meaning in the words. Saltire bore the
scrutiny undisturbed. Immaculate in white linens, his handsome fairish
head wearing a perpetually well-groomed look, perhaps by reason of a
bullet which, during the Boer War, had skimmed straight through his
hair, leaving a perfect parting in the centre, he was a striking contrast to
the haggard master of the house, who muttered morosely:
"There is some Latin saying--isn't there?--about people 'changing their
skies but not their dispositions.'"
"Indisposition is a different matter," remarked Saxby sagely, "and with
neuritis it is a mistake to let the pain get too near the heart. I think you
ought to see a doctor, Mr. van Cannan, but East London is a long way
off. Why not call in the district man?"
"He would prescribe a bottle of pink water and charge me a couple of
pounds for it. I need better treatment than that. I could not even ride
this morning--had to leave my horse and walk home. The pain was
vile."
Saxby looked at him sympathetically.
"Well, try a couple of weeks' rest in bed, as Mrs. van Cannan suggests.
You know that I can keep things going all right."

"And Mr. Saltire will continue to turn the prickly-pears into ogres and
hags," said his wife, with her childlike smile. "When you get up again,
he will have a whole army of shrivelled monsters ready for you."
It is true that this was Richard Saltire's business on the farm--to rid the
land of that bane and pest of the Karoo, the prickly-pear cactus. The
new governmental experiment was the only one, so far, that had shown
any good results in getting rid of the pest. It consisted in inoculating
each bush with certain poisons, which, when they entered the sap of the
plant, shrivelled and withered it to the core, making its large, pale,
flapping hands drop off as though smitten by leprosy, and causing the
whole bush to assume a staggering, menacing attitude that was
immensely startling and grotesque. Many of the natives were now
afraid to go about on the farm after dusk. They said the prickly-pears
threatened them, even ran after them, intent on revenge.
Christine had heard Mr. van Cannan say that his father knew the man
whose grandfather was the first Dutchman to introduce the prickly-pear
into the Karoo. It was a great treasure then, being looked upon as good
fodder for beast and ostrich in time of drought, and the boy used to be
beaten if he did not properly water the leaves which were being
laboriously preserved on the great trek into the desert. Unfortunately,
the preservation had been so complete that it was now the ruin of many
a fine Karoo estate, springing up everywhere, smothering other growths
and destroying, with its tiny multitudinous thorns,