Kitabı oku: «A Veldt Official: A Novel of Circumstance», sayfa 14
Chapter Twenty Four.
“Who Knew Not Joseph.”
Mr Frederick Romsey Shaston, the new Resident Magistrate of Doppersdorp, was in every respect a direct antithesis of the old one.
In aspect he was a square-built, middle-aged man, with grizzled hair, and rather thin, short beard, prominent nose, and cold blue eyes; a man of few words, and those few words, when spoken, conveying distinctly that in the speaker’s mind there was but one opinion worth the slightest consideration in all the world – viz., that of Mr Frederick Romsey Shaston.
He was a man to dislike on sight, one whose manner might be termed brusque for the sake of euphemy, but which sometimes and by accident just fell short of being offensive; a man in whom lurked not one spark of geniality or kindly feeling; a cold, flaccid, mental jelly fish.
The flourish of trumpets which had enveloped the departure of his predecessor was an offence to him, possibly as suggesting the certainty of a very different farewell, when his own time should come. In this spirit he went closely into all connected with the office, hoping to discover some pretext for throwing mud at Mr Van Stolz’ administration. But he might as well have tried to chip a snowball out of the moon.
To Roden Musgrave he took an intense dislike, which he exhibited in first pointedly wondering at finding a man of his age in that position; an impertinence which its recipient could afford utterly to ignore. From the very first, however, he had made up his mind to bring about a change, partly to secure the berth for a relation of his wife, partly because he only felt comfortable with young subordinates, whom he could treat as he chose; whereas this one, even he realised that he could not treat as he chose.
For he knew that in experience and knowledge of the world, this man was immeasurably his superior; and the better able to hold his own, that he was most thoroughly up to his work. He had mastered all the ins and outs of office and court routine, and had everything at his fingers’ ends. He would be an extremely difficult man to oust; yet as we have said, Mr Shasten made up his mind from the very first that ousted he should be.
By the attorneys and law-agents practising in the District Court the new R.M. was most cordially detested. Not one of them but had been snubbed more or less – frequently more – when practising before Mr Van Stolz, but never undeservedly, and this they well knew. So, too, did they know that outside the Court, that sunny-natured official would be the first to crack a joke with them, or lend them his horse, or do them a good turn in any way he could. The present occupant of the Bench, however, was past master in the art of delivering himself of cold, scathing, contemptuous rebukes. The practitioners for once agreed among themselves. They put their heads together and arranged to “go for” him whenever opportunity offered, and now and again it did offer, for Mr Shaston was at times a trifle shaky, alike in his procedure and in his judgments. Then they went for him tooth and nail, Darrell especially, who feared no man living, and between whom find the new official many a passage of arms would occur, of increasing fierceness and frequency.
With the farmers, too, he was unpopular. Mr Van Stolz, himself a Dutchman, had been pre-eminently the right man in the right place. Mr Shaston, however, was utterly devoid of that bluff, open-hearted species of blarney which is the right way to the Boer heart; consequently, by that stolid and wooden-headed race, he was regarded as the most stiff and starched type of the verdommde Engelschman. Moreover, rightly or wrongly, he soon acquired a reputation for favouring the native servants, as against their white employers, in such cases as came before him; which reputation once established on the part of a magistrate is a very death knell to his popularity among the Boers, and scarcely less so among their fellow English stock-raisers.
Some among the townspeople he condescended to admit to a certain degree of friendship. Among these was Lambert, the District Surgeon, also Sonnenberg; both of whom toadied him fulsomely, for they began to see in the new R.M. a possible weapon for striking a deadly blow at the object of their respective hate. His dislike of his subordinate was by this time patent, and both worthies now began to chuckle; for they foresaw the not far distant removal of the latter from Doppersdorp. Not that this would satisfy the malice of the vindictive Jew; nothing would, short of the ruin and disgrace of his enemy. Since the gun episode, resulting so signally in the biter being bit, and bit hard, Sonnenberg had cudgelled his crafty and scheming brain to hit upon a plan, but hitherto in vain. As postmaster, the thought had crossed his mind that he might in some way or another strike at his enemy through his correspondence. But then the latter never received or despatched any correspondence; never from month’s end till month’s end. This in itself was singular, and set the Jew thinking.
Now, if there was one individual whom the change of administration concerned almost more than all the rest of the community put together, that individual was Roden himself. No more was the daily routine lightened by an occasional cheery talk, the ever-present joke, and the sociable pipe, and above all by the most perfect of mutual good feeling. This he was prepared for. But when his new superior began to show his hostility in the most needlessly gratuitous fashion; to find fault, and that too often publicly, where, as a matter of fact, no fault was to be found, his temper, at no time a long-suffering one, began to feel the strain. Still he kept it in hand, observing the most rigid scrupulosity in the discharge of his duties, and giving no handle to the other for putting him in the wrong. He knew that an explosion was only a question of time, and was shrewd enough so to order his doings as to keep on the right side.
But, if in his new official superior he had found an enemy, he had made one in the person of that functionary’s wife, though this was perhaps inevitable. Personally Mrs Shaston was a good-looking woman, tall, and of rather striking appearance, who had once been very handsome. But to her husband’s brusquerie she added a commanding manner, or, to drop euphemy, a domineering one, which rendered her a trifle more unpopular than himself, if that were possible. She had at first inclined to a modicum of reserved graciousness towards Roden Musgrave, which soon changed to the most bitter and virulent rancour, when she discovered that he had no notion whatever of being turned into a sort of running footman. Her husband’s subordinates were her subordinates; such was her creed, and what did a subordinate mean but one who had to do as he was told? So when Roden took the earliest opportunity of differing with her on this point, and that in the most practical way possible, she became his bitter enemy for all time.
Daily his position became more manifestly unpleasant. He had never laid himself out to win anybody’s goodwill, and this sin of omission had rendered him as unpopular as those of commission on the part of his chief had brought about a like result concerning the latter. Of two unpopular officials in a place like Doppersdorp, or for the matter of that anywhere, the most powerful would score, and Mr Shaston after all was a power in the community. Moreover, such a community has a special faculty for producing a large litter of curs, wherefore many who had been effusively civil to Roden Musgrave when the latter was hand-in-glove with Mr Van Stolz, now showed their real nature by turning round and barking at him unceasingly.
Now, of course such pleasant little amenities as smoking pipes in office hours, or shutting up at all sorts of times when there was nothing particular doing, though tending to render life pleasant, were, after all, irregular, and no one knew this better than Roden; consequently he was quite prepared for all sorts of changes in this direction, and accepted them cheerfully. But his new superior thought he saw a very promising ground of annoyance, which might, if deftly worked, bring about the revolt he desired.
“There is a matter I have been intending to speak to you about, Mr Musgrave,” he began one day when Roden had taken some correspondence in to be signed, “and that is your very frequent absences; I don’t mean from the office during hours, but from the town. For instance, I find that you are frequently absent from Doppersdorp the whole night, visiting your friends in the country, and not infrequently for two nights.”
“But that would be only from Saturday evening to Monday morning early, sir; while off duty.”
“A Civil Servant is never off duty, Mr Musgrave, except when he is on leave of absence,” was the frigid rejoinder. “Now, I am not aware that the absences to which I refer come under that heading.”
With a strong effort Roden mastered his contemptuous indignation, for he saw that his superior had discovered a new form of mean and petty annoyance. He had far too much savoir vivre to make any such retort as would have arisen to the lips of nine men but of ten in like position – viz., that Mr Van Stolz had never raised any such objection. So he said:
“Do I understand, sir, that you object to my sleeping the night at a friend’s house if outside Doppersdorp, even though I am back punctually for office hours?”
The other felt vicious. The question was unpleasant in its directness, and, while put with perfect respect, its pointedness seemed cutting.
“Er – you see, Mr Musgrave, we are supposed to be resident here – that is, to reside here; the object of which is that we may be found when wanted, and that object is defeated if we are whole nights, or a day and a night, away from the place. It is not a personal matter, not a question of what I object to; but supposing any emergency were to arise requiring your presence, and nobody knew where to find you; or at any rate, that you were so far away that it amounted to the same thing!”
“Would you mind, sir, stating for my guidance the precise distance the Service regulations allow an official to ride or walk without having obtained formal leave of absence?”
The other felt very cornered at this persistent attempt to knock his objections to match-wood, and proportionately savage.
“I am surprised, Mr Musgrave,” he said, speaking more quickly, “at a man of your age asking such a question. Surely you should know that there is a common-sense medium in all things.”
“Still I should prefer to know exactly what restrictions the Service places upon our movements. Do you mean, sir, that we are never to pass the night at the house of a country friend without formal leave of absence?”
“No, no. I don’t mean to lay down quite such a hard and fast rule,” was the more yielding reply, for this deft plurality imported into the pronoun was disconcerting. “What I would dwell upon, however, is the strong desirability of returning to the town to sleep, unless detained by unforeseen circumstances, such as stress of weather, or anything else which is absolutely unavoidable.”
“I shall remember your wishes in the matter, sir,” said Roden, in his habitual tone of studied and ceremonious politeness, which was the best commentary on the state of relations existing between himself and his new superior.
But although there was a show of reason in the other’s objection, the real ugly motive was manifest – viz., petty annoyance, and the thought of how, at his time of life, his means of existence, or at any rate of that which made existence tolerable, should be dependent on his capacity for eating dirt at the hands of such a mean-minded snob as this Shaston, was bitter and galling to the last degree. The thing was getting past a joke, past all bearing, in fact. Should he endeavour to arrange a transfer? Mr Van Stolz might be able to help him in this. But then he hated to ask anything of anybody: besides, he did not choose to allow himself to be driven out of the place; to yield the ground; to own himself beaten. And then there was Mona.
Mona, the bright beacon star that had arisen upon the grey blankness of his latter-day life. Mona, whose sweet, entrancing spells had woven around the hard granite of his cynical and desolate heart a glittering network of golden sun-rays. Mona, whose secret lore had welled forth warm in its dazzling wares what time he hung helpless over the yawning jaws of death, and the power of whose marvellous love triumphing over the material forces of Nature itself, had again availed to save him. How could he, of his own act, think of leaving her, of going where day after day, week after week, even month after month, nothing would remain of her but a memory? Better endure a little discomfort; better exercise a further stretch of self-control. And then as he thought how sudden had been the change from the former happy circumstances of life, to this wherein his hand was against every man and every man’s hand against him, and life was passed in a state of on the defensive, a cold, grey presentiment shot across his heart. What if it were but the precursor of another change? Nothing lasts; least of all, love.
Thus musing, and not looking where he was going, he ran right into somebody. A hearty laugh drowned his apologies. Looking up he found he had collided with Father O’Driscoll.
“You’re the very man I wanted to meet,” said the old priest, the first greetings over. “See now, Mr Musgrave. D’ye mind stepping round to my place for a moment. I’m in want of a stable-boy, and a fellow has just come to be taken on, but he seems rather lame in one leg. He says you know him, and will recommend him.”
“I?” echoed Roden in some astonishment. “Does he know me?”
“He does. And – well, here we are.”
A sturdy, thick-set Kaffir was squatting against the gate-post of the priest’s house. He rose rather stiffly as they entered, uttering a half-shy and wholly humorous greeting as his eyes met Roden’s, his dark face and shining white teeth all ablaze with mirth, which indeed the other fully shared, remembering how and where they had seen each other last. For in the aspirant for stable duty in the ecclesiastical establishment, he recognised no less a personage than Tom, alias Geunkwe.
“Hallo, Tom! Where have you dropped from? Damaged leg, eh?”
“Been away to see my father, Baas,” answered the Kaffir, grinning all over his face. “An ox kicked me on the leg, but it will soon be well.”
“An ox kicked you, did it?” said Roden, with a half laugh; for he shrewdly suspected the hoof of that ox to have been of very small size, and made of lead. And the Kaffir laughed again, for he knew that Roden was not deceived.
“You know him? Is he honest now?” said Father O’Driscoll.
“Thoroughly, I believe. What’s more, he’s a man of his word. I am telling Father O’Driscoll you are a man of your word, Tom,” said Roden, translating into Dutch, and speaking with a meaning not lost upon the Kaffir.
“I am your child, chief,” replied the native. “Au, I would like to serve the old Baas. He looks kind.”
“Well, Tom, I’ll take you on so,” said the priest. “Go round now, and see after the horse at once; for faith, it’s a long ride the poor beast has just come off. By the way,” he added, turning to Roden as the Kaffir departed, “I seem to have seen him somewhere before. Has he been with any one here?”
“He was with that arch-sweep, Sonnenberg, who employed him to do a particularly dirty trick, and got ‘had’ sweetly in return, as you would be the first to allow if I were to disclose it. There is another thing I might reveal which would convince you that in defining Tom as a man of his word I was speaking no more than the literal truth, only I promised him never to mention it. You have got a right good boy in him, Father O’Driscoll, and if I had any use for a boy I’d employ him myself.”
“Oh, I’m quite satisfied, I assure ye, Mr Musgrave. Many thanks for your trouble.”
Thus Tom obtained the best place in Doppersdorp, and Roden was able in some slight measure to requite the loyalty and good faith of the ci-devant savage warrior, who might, by breaking his word, have delivered him over on that memorable morning to a violent and barbarous death.
Chapter Twenty Five.
Lambert makes a Discovery
Lambert’s predecessor in the district-surgeoncy of Doppersdorp had an odd hobby – viz., a mania for taking in newspapers representing, not only all parts of the British Empire, but other sections, wild or tame, of the known world. Now, nothing is so cumbersome and space-devouring as files of old newspapers, wherefore those accumulated by Dr Simpson had, by the time of that estimable practitioner’s departure, come to take up the whole available space afforded, by two fair-sized rooms.
At this time, however, it occurred to Lambert that he had custodied this bulky collection of bygone journalism about long enough, wherefore, he wrote to his predecessor suggesting its removal. But the answer he received was to the effect that the cost and trouble of such removal would be too great, and that he might consider these musty old files henceforward his own property, the merit of which endowment being somewhat negative, in that it empowered the recipient to destroy the cumbersome gift; and to such destruction Lambert forthwith resolved to proceed, yet by degrees; for it could not be that among all these records he should fail to find other than a great deal of highly interesting and, from time to time, strange and startling matter. So Lambert would frequently lug in some dusty old file, which, having duly shaken and in a measure cleansed, he constituted a companion to his evening pipe. For reading matter was deplorably lacking in Doppersdorp – the contents of the “public library,” so called, consisting mainly of ancient and heavy novels, soporific and incomplete, or the biographies of divines, sour of habit and of mind narrow as the “way” they were supposed to indicate.
Lambert had his reward, for these old records reaching back a decade – two decades – judiciously scanned, were interesting, undeniably so. There were representative papers issued in the Australian colonies, in New Zealand, in India and America, and in no end of lands beside. Lambert resolved, before accomplishing his projected wholesale destruction, to scissor out such incidents as were worth preserving, and to set up a scrap book; the main difficulty about this resolve lying in the formidable mass of matter from which he felt called upon to select. But while solving this problem, Lambert was destined to receive a shock, and one of considerable power and magnitude.
He was seated alone one evening, looking through such an old file. The paper was an American one, published in some hardly known Western township. Its contents were racy, outspoken, very; and seemed of the nature to have been written by the left hand of the editor, while the right grasped the butt of the ever-ready “gun.” But in turning a sheet of this Lambert suddenly came upon that which made him leap in his chair, and stare as though his eyes were about to drop from his head to the floor. This is what he read: —
“The Crime of Stillwell’s Flat.
Portrait of the Accused.
Sordid Affair.
He Tomahawks his Partner for the sake of Four Hundred Dollars.
The Man with the Double Scar.
Clever Arrest.”
Such were some of the headings in bold capitals, which, distributed down the column, about summed up the facts of the case, but only cursory attention did Lambert at first pay to these. Not by them had his eye been originally attracted, but by the portrait which headed the column. For this portrait, mere pen-and-ink sketch as it originally had been, was a most vivid and unmistakable likeness of Roden Musgrave.
Yes, there it was, the same clear-cut features, the same carriage of the head – the artist seemed not merely to have caught his expression, but even the characteristics of his very attitude. And – surer, more convincing than all – the same double scar beneath the lower lip. Two men might wear the same marvellous resemblance to each other, but no two men could possibly do so to the extent of both being marked with that peculiar double scar. That, at any rate, rendered the identity complete, and beyond all room for doubt.
“The man with the double scar!” repeated Lambert to himself. “Holy Moses! Am I drunk, or dreaming? No. It’s him all right,” passing his hand over his eyes in a semi-dazed manner. “No two people could be so extraordinarily alike, and Musgrave’s is the sort of face that can’t have many ‘doubles’ in the world. Now to see what they say about it.”
Breathlessly he ran his eye down the column. The facts, as reported, fully justified the opening definition of the crime as a sordid one, if proved against the accused; and that there might be no mistake whatever as to the identity of that critically situated personage with the present assistant magistrate of Doppersdorp, he figured in the trial, simply and without disguise, under the name of Roden Musgrave.
With dazed eyes, Lambert read on. Briefly summed up, the heads of the affair were these. Two prospectors established themselves on a claim together at Stillwell’s Flat, a lonely spot beneath a northern spur of the Black Hills. Their names were respectively, John Denton and Roden Musgrave, and both were supposed to be Englishmen. One morning Denton was found in the slab hut occupied by the pair, with his head cleft nearly in twain, and beside him a bloodstained axe, and worse still, his throat was cut from ear to ear. The wandering cattlemen, by whom the discovery was made, described the place as like a slaughter-yard. A ferocious and brutal crime, indeed! The motive? Robbery, of course. The dead man, who was something of a gambler, was known to have taken back from the nearest township upwards of four hundred dollars he had won, and of this sum no trace could be found. The perpetrator? Denton’s partner, of course, who had disappeared.
Had disappeared to some purpose, too; for a long and vigorous search failed to elicit the slightest clue to his whereabouts, and as the searchers were mostly experienced plainsmen, it was concluded that he was no longer above ground, had probably been killed or captured by the Sioux, who were “bad” about there just at that time.
Then, a couple of months later, when the affair was beginning to fade out of mind, possibly eclipsed by some other and similar tragedy such as from time to time occurs to relieve the monotony of life in the “wild and woolly West,” the missing man was unexpectedly arrested on board a Mississippi steamboat – arrested simply and solely on the identification of that double scar, for his description had been so far circulated – arrested and sent back for trial. And lucky indeed for him that a long enough period had elapsed to enable the excitement to die down; for, had he been found during the first days of it, he would probably have had no trial at all. He would almost certainly have been lynched. Not that it could matter in the long ran. The crime was not only a sordid and brutal one, it was also a clumsy one; in fact, about the clumsiest on record. The murderer had knotted the noose round his own neck. No loophole of escape had he, and, this being so, public opinion was, for once, in favour of the law being allowed to vindicate itself. Such vindication there was no need to anticipate in short and summary fashion.
Lambert, his pulses beating, his hands trembling with excitement, rapidly turned over the sheets of the file. What if the report of the trial should be missing? That would be too vexatious. Yet that it had ended favourably to the accused was clear, since here he was. Stay! Had he escaped prior to it being held? Lambert felt that if that were so, why then, he held in his hand not only the prospects and social position of his enemy but the latter’s very life. Yet it could not be, since Musgrave had made no attempt at changing his name. And then, for the first time, it occurred to Lambert to glance at the date of the file. The affair had taken place just ten years previously.
Ten years? Why, the portrait might have been taken that day. Ten years? Ah, the accused might have been found guilty on a lesser count, and sentenced to imprisonment only. That indeed would be the best of all, and Lambert fairly thrilled with delight over the prospect of breaking the news to Mona Ridsdale that the man she had preferred to himself was only an ex-gaol bird who had “done time,” and who would, of course, now that he was unmasked, be promptly kicked out of the Government Service. Would he never find what he wanted? Ah! There it was.
“The Stillwell’s Flat Murder.
Trial of the Accused.
Lawyer Schofield’s Eloquent Defence.
Judge McClellar sums up.
Verdict of Acquittal.
The boys talk about Lynching.”
Acquittal? Down went poor Lambert’s house of cards, crumpled in the dust. His discovery could not damage his enemy now. Still, as he read the final report of the trial and its result, he thought he saw light. For the acquittal, under the circumstances, and obtained as it had been, amounted to a verdict of “not proven” far more than to one of “not guilty.”
And the way in which it had been arrived at was ingenious. The evidence against the accused was merely presumptive; indeed, it was no evidence at all. He admitted having quarrelled with the deceased and left him, but totally denied the murder. Moreover, he had satisfactorily explained his movements since. Why had he not returned when wanted? Ah, well now. It was not completely outside knowledge that innocent men had before then been sacrificed at times of popular clamour. But there were two cards which the lawyer for the defence held in his hands, and upon which he mainly relied. The axe-blow which had slain the murdered man had split his head nearly in two, yet his throat had been cut. Now the latter act was quite superfluous, was, in fact, an act of deliberate and cold-blooded barbarity, to which his client, even if he did the killing, would hardly be likely to bring himself. The fact of the dead man’s throat being cut pointed to murderers of a very different type. Everybody knew that the tribal mark of the Sioux was cutting the throat, which never failed to distinguish the victims of their barbarity. Well, the Sioux were “bad” around there just then, and Stillwell’s Flat was a lonely place; in fact, it was in following the trail of several Indians who had run off some of their steers, that those very cattlemen had happened upon the spot. True, the man was not scalped, but possibly the Indian murderers had been alarmed, and decamped before completing that revolting essential to their barbarous work.
But the trump card of all, and one most skilfully played by the advocate, was this: – His client had served in the recent Indian war, might not the murderers have marked him out as the object of their vengeance, and have mistaken his partner for him? He had been one of that little band of heroes, under the command of General Forsyth, who only the previous year had “stood off” overwhelming forces of the enemy; and who with no other rampart than their own dead horses, and no other food than the putrefying flesh of the animals, had managed to hold their own for seven days against the fiercest and most persistent onslaughts known to Plains history. Moreover, he was one of those who had volunteered to break through at night, braving certain death, and almost certain death by torture, in order to make his way to Fort Wallace, and bring relief to the besieged handful of scouts. Was this the man to commit such a foul and sordid murder for the sake of a few dollars? Was this man, who had fought so bravely to defend their frontier, to be sacrificed to such a preposterous suspicion, to be allowed to suffer for the crime almost certainly committed by representatives of that savage enemy, to withstand whom he had so often and so freely risked his life? With the battle of the Arickaree Fork fresh in their memories, not one who heard him could be of any two minds as to the sort of verdict he would be given.
This clever drawing of a red herring across the trail of the main issue answered. Lawyer Schofield’s eloquence had its reward. He obtained his verdict, and his client was acquitted.
But it was not a spontaneous verdict, not a triumphant acquittal. Long and earnestly did the jury debate, and when at last the accused walked forth a free man, he was received with a silence that was ominous. The lawyer, of course, was quite right to do his best for his client, and his strong appeal to sentiment was specious, if successful. But nobody believed overmuch in the theory he had sprung. If the Sioux had killed John Denton, they would have run off all his possessions, probably have fired the slab hut, instead of relieving him of his cash alone. Nor would they have left him his scalp. No. To the frontier community that Indian theory would not wash. Justice had been defeated, and Roden Musgrave had few, if any, friends. But when there sallied forth stealthily that night a band of dissatisfied and justice loving citizens, well-armed, and bearing in its midst an ominous coil of rope, the man who had been acquitted that day was not to be found. Nor, in fact, were they destined ever to set eyes upon him again.
This, set forth in a voluminous report extending over many columns, was the substance of what Lambert read, and, as he grasped all the details, he realised that, although powerless to effect material ruin, there was still that about the equivocal nature of the acquittal which would be sufficient to damage his rival irreparably from a social point of view. Throw mud enough and a great deal of it is sure to stick, is a trite axiom. The crime was an exceptionally brutal one, and the bare suspicion of it still clinging to a man was enough. To do him justice, Lambert himself felt a repulsion towards one who could ever have colourably lain under so horrible a suspicion, which was not altogether the outcome of his hatred of this particular individual. What would Mona think of it? What action would Musgrave’s superior take in the matter? Surely no man could continue to hold an official position with such a stigma clinging to him. Musgrave would be called upon to resign, of course. And then an uneasy misgiving assailed the plotter’s mind, and there loomed up ugly visions of suits for slander, defamation, what not. The man had stood his trial and had been acquitted. It would be a ticklish matter spreading the story around.
