"Smith, Wilbur - Ballantyne 02 - Men of Men" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Wilbur)

She had been attracted by the romance surrounding young Major Zouga
Ballantyne. He was the traveller and adventurer in far places of the
African continent. There was the legend of the great elephant hunter
that surrounded him, the glamour of the book that he had recently
published in London. All Cape Town society was agog with this young man
and envied her his suit.

That had been many years ago, an the egend ad tarnished.

Aletta's delicate breeding had not been equal to the rigours of the
savage interior beyond the gentle and temperate airs of the Cape
littoral, and the rough country and rougher peoples had appalled her.
She had succumbed swiftly to the fevers and pestilences which had
weakened her so that she suffered repeated miscarriages.

All her married life she seemed to be in child-bed, or lost in the mists
of malarial fever, or waiting interminably for the golden-bearded,
godlike figure whom she worshipped to return from across an ocean or
from the hot and unhealthy hinterland to which she could no longer
follow him.

On this journey to the diamond fields, Zouga had taken it for granted
that she would once again remain at her father's home at the Cape, to
guard her failing health and to care for their two boys, fruit of the
only pregnancies which she had succeeded in bringing to full term.

However, she had suddenly shown an uncharacteristic determination, and
none of his arguments to make her remain behind had prevailed. Perhaps
she had some premonition of what was to follow, "I have been alone too
long," she answered him, softly but stubbornly.

Ralph, the eldest boy, was old enough by then to ride ahead of the wagon
with his father and take his shot at the springbuck herds which drifted
like thin pale brown smoke across the scrubby plains of the wide Karroo.

Already he sat his rugged little Basuto pony with the panache of a
hussar and he shot like a man.

Jordan, the younger boy, would sometimes take his turn at leading the
fore oxen of the span, or wander away from the wagons to chase a
butterfly or pick a wild flower; but mostly he was content to sit beside
his mother on the wagon box while she read aloud from a small
leather-bound book of romantic poetry, his green eyes sparkling with the
thrilling sound of the words that he was still too young properly to
understand and the brilliant Karroo sunlight turning his golden curls
into an angel's halo.

It was six hundred miles from Good Hope to the fields, a journey that
took the family eight weeks. They camped each night on the open veld and