Jess | Page 6

the sweep of rushing pinions; higher, yet higher it soared,
lifting up the listener's heart far above the world on the trembling wings
of sound--ay, even higher, till the music hung at heaven's gate, and
falling thence, swiftly as an eagle falls, quivered, and was dead.
John sighed, and so strongly was he moved, sank back in his chair,
feeling almost faint with the revulsion of feeling that ensued when the
notes had died away. He looked up, and saw Bessie watching him with
an air of curiosity and amusement. Jess was still leaning against the
piano, and gently touching the notes, over which her head was bent low,
showing the coils of curling hair that were twisted round it like a
coronet.
"Well, Captain Niel," said the old man, waving his pipe in her direction,
"and what do you say to my singing-bird's music, eh? Isn't it enough to
draw the heart out of a man, eh, and turn his marrow to water, eh?"
"I never heard anything quite like it," he answered simply, "and I have
heard most singers. It is beautiful. Certainly, I never expected to hear
such singing in the Transvaal."
Jess turned quickly, and he observed that, though her eyes were alight
with excitement, her face was as impassive as ever.
"There is no need for you to laugh at me, Captain Niel," she said
quickly, and then, with an abrupt "Good-night," she left the room.
The old man smiled, jerked the stem of his pipe over his shoulder after
her, and winked in a way that, no doubt, meant unutterable things, but
which did not convey much to his astonished guest, who sat still and
said nothing. Then Bessie rose and bade him good-night in her pleasant
voice, and with housewifely care inquired as to whether his room was
to his taste, and how many blankets he liked upon his bed, telling him
that if he found the odour of the moonflowers which grew near the
verandah too strong, he had better shut the right-hand window and open
that on the other side of the room. Then at length, with a piquant little
nod of her golden head, she went off, looking, John thought as he

watched her retreating figure, about as healthy, graceful, and generally
satisfactory a young woman as a man could wish to see.
"Take a glass of grog, Captain Niel," said the old man, pushing the
square bottle towards him, "you'll need it after the mauling that brute
gave you. By the way, I haven't thanked you for saving my Bessie! But
I do thank you, yes, that I do. I must tell you that Bessie is my favourite
niece. Never was there such a girl--never. Moves like a springbuck, and
what an eye and form! Work too--she'll do as much work as three.
There's no nonsense about Bessie, none at all. She's not a fine lady, for
all her fine looks."
"The two sisters seem very different," said John.
"Ay, you're right there," answered the old man. "You'd never think that
the same blood ran in their veins, would you? There's three years
between them, that's one thing. Bessie's the youngest, you see--she's
just twenty, and Jess is twenty-three. Lord, to think that it is
twenty-three years since that girl was born! And theirs is a queer story
too."
"Indeed?" said his listener interrogatively.
"Ay," Silas went on absently, knocking out his pipe, and refilling it
from a big brown jar of coarse-cut Boer tobacco, "I'll tell it to you if
you like: you are going to live in the house, and you may as well know
it. I am sure, Captain Niel, that it will go no further. You see I was born
in England, yes, and well-born too. I come from Cambridgeshire--from
the fat fen-land down round Ely. My father was a clergyman. Well, he
wasn't rich, and when I was twenty he gave me his blessing, thirty
sovereigns in my pocket, and my passage to the Cape; and I shook his
hand, God bless him, and off I came, and here in the old colony and
this country I have been for fifty years, for I was seventy yesterday.
Well, I'll tell you more about that another time, it's of the girls I'm
speaking now. After I left home--some years after--my dear old father
married again, a youngish woman with some money, but rather beneath
him in life, and by her he had one son, and then died. Well, it was but
little I heard of my half-brother, except that he had turned out very

badly, married, and taken to drink, till one night some twelve years ago,
when a strange thing happened. I was sitting here in this very room, ay,
in this very chair--for this part