The Ghost Kings | Page 5

affection was at the bottom of it, for Janey Dove was a very
faithful woman; also there were other things--her fatalism, and stronger
still, her weariness. She believed that they were doomed. Well, let the
doom fall; she had no fear of the Beyond. At the best it might be happy,
and at the worst deep, everlasting rest and peace, and she felt as though
she needed thousands of years of rest and peace. Moreover, she was
sure no harm would come to Rachel, the very apple of her eye; that she
was marked to live and to find happiness even in this wild land. So it

came about that she refused her husband's offer to allow her to return
home where she had no longer any ties, and for perhaps the twentieth
time prepared herself to journey she knew not whither.
Rachel, seated there in the sunless, sweltering heat, reflected on these
things. Of course she did not know all the story, but most of it had
come under her observation in one way or other, and being shrewd by
nature, she could guess the rest, for she who was companionless had
much time for reflection and for guessing. She sympathised with her
father in his ideas, understanding vaguely that there was something
large and noble about them, but in the main, body and mind, she was
her mother's child. Already she showed her mother's dreamy beauty, to
which were added her father's straight features and clear grey eyes,
together with a promise of his height. But of his character she had little,
that is outside of a courage and fixity of purpose which marked them
both.
For the rest she was far, or fore-seeing, like her mother, apprehending
the end of things by some strange instinct; also very faithful in
character.
Rachel was unhappy. She did not mind the hardship and the heat, for
she was accustomed to both, and her health was so perfect that it would
have needed much worse things to affect her. But she loved the baby
that was gone, and wondered whether she would ever see it again. On
the whole she thought so, for here that intuition of hers came in, but at
the best she was sure that there would be long to wait. She loved her
mother also, and grieved more for her than for herself, especially now
when she was so ill. Moreover, she knew and shared her mind. This
journey, she felt, was foolishness; her father was a man "led by a star"
as the natives say, and would follow it over the edge of the world and
be no nearer. He was not fit to have charge of her mother.
Of herself she did not think so much. Still, at Grahamstown, for a year
or so there had been other children for companions, Dutch most of
them, it is true, and all rough in mind and manner. Yet they were white
and human. While she played with them she could forget she knew so
much more than they did; that, for instance, she could read the Gospels

in Greek--which her father had taught her ever since she was a little
child--while they could scarcely spell them out in the Taal, or Boer
dialect, and that they had never heard even of William the Conqueror.
She did not care particularly about Greek and William the Conqueror,
but she did care for friends, and now they were all gone from her, gone
like the baby, as far off as William the Conqueror. And she, she was
alone in the wilderness with a father who talked and thought of Heaven
all day long, and a mother who lived in memories and walked in the
shadow of doom, and oh! she was unhappy.
Her grey eyes filled with tears so that she could no longer see that
everlasting ocean, which she did not regret as it wearied her. She wiped
them with the back of her hand that was burnt quite brown by the sun,
and turning impatiently, fell to watching two of those strange insects
known as the Praying Mantis, or often in South Africa as Hottentot
gods, which after a series of genuflections, were now fighting
desperately among the dead stalks of grass at her feet. Men could not
be more savage, she reflected, for really their ferocity was hideous.
Then a great tear fell upon the head of one of them, and astonished by
this phenomenon, or thinking perhaps that it had begun to rain, it ran
away and hid itself, while its adversary sat up and looked about it
triumphantly, taking to itself all the credit of conquest.
She heard a step behind her, and having again furtively wiped her eyes
with her hand, the only handkerchief available, looked