Chapter 1.VIII. He Catches the Old Bird.
At four o'clock the next afternoon the German rode across the plain,returning from his search for the lost sheep. He rode slowly, for he hadbeen in the saddle since sunrise and was somewhat weary, and the heatof the afternoon made his horse sleepy as it picked its way slowly alongthe sandy road. Every now and then a great red spider would start outof the karoo on one side of the path and run across to the other, butnothing else broke the still monotony. Presently, behind one of thehighest of the milk-bushes that dotted the roadside, the German caughtsight of a Kaffer woman, seated there evidently for such shadow as themilk-bush might afford from the sloping rays of the sun.
The German turned the horse's head out of the road. It was not his wayto pass a living creature without a word of greeting. Coming nearer, hefound it was no other than the wife of the absconding Kaffer herd. Shehad a baby tied on her back by a dirty strip of red blanket; anotherstrip hardly larger was twisted round her waist, for the rest her blackbody was naked. She was a sullen, ill-looking woman with lips hideouslyprotruding.
The German questioned her as to how she came there. She muttered inbroken Dutch that she had been turned away. Had she done evil? She shookher head sullenly. Had she had food given her? She grunted a negative,and fanned the flies from her baby. Telling the woman to remain whereshe was, he turned his horse's head to the road and rode off at afurious pace.
"Hard-hearted! cruel! Oh, my God! Is this the way? Is this charity?"
"Yes, yes, yes," ejaculated the old man as he rode on; but, presently,his anger began to evaporate, his horse's pace slackened, and by thetime he had reached his own door he was nodding and smiling.
Dismounting quickly, he went to the great chest where his provisionswere kept. Here he got out a little meal, a little mealies, a fewroaster-cakes. These he tied up in three blue handkerchiefs, and puttingthem into a sailcloth bag, he strung them over his shoulders. Then helooked circumspectly out at the door. It was very bad to be discoveredin the act of giving; it made him red up to the roots of his oldgrizzled hair. No one was about, however, so he rode off again. Besidethe milk-bush sat the Kaffer woman still--like Hagar, he thought, thrustout by her mistress in the wilderness to die. Telling her to loosen thehandkerchief from her head, he poured into it the contents of his bag.The woman tied it up in sullen silence.
"You must try and get to the next farm," said the German.
The woman shook her head; she would sleep in the field.
The German reflected. Kaffer women were accustomed to sleep in the openair; but then, the child was small, and after so hot a day the nightmight be chilly. That she would creep back to the huts at the homesteadwhen the darkness favoured her, the German's sagacity did not makeevident to him. He took off the old brown salt-and-pepper coat, and heldit out to her. The woman received it in silence, and laid it across herknee. "With that they will sleep warmly; not so bad. Ha, ha!" said theGerman. And he rode home, nodding his head in a manner that would havemade any other man dizzy.
"I wish he would not come back tonight," said Em, her face wet withtears.
"It will be just the same if he comes back tomorrow," said Lyndall.
The two girls sat on the step of the cabin weeping for the German'sreturn. Lyndall shaded her eyes with her hand from the sunset light.
"There he comes," she said, "whistling 'Ach Jerusalem du schone' so loudI can hear him from here."
"Perhaps he has found the sheep."
"Found them!" said Lyndall. "He would whistle just so if he knew he hadto die tonight."
"You look at the sunset, eh, chickens?" the German said, as he cameup at a smart canter. "Ah, yes, that is beautiful!" he added, as hedismounted, pausing for a moment with his hand on the saddle to lookat the evening sky, where the sun shot up long flaming streaks, betweenwhich and the eye thin yellow clouds floated. "Ei! you weep?" said theGerman, as the girls ran up to him.
Before they had time to reply the voice of Tant Sannie was heard.
"You child, of the child, of the child of a Kaffer's dog, come here!"
The German looked up. He thought the Dutchwoman, come out to coolherself in the yard, called to some misbehaving servant. The old manlooked round to see who it might be.
"You old vagabond of a praying German, are you deaf?"
Tant Sannie stood before the steps of the kitchen; upon them sat thelean Hottentot, upon the highest stood Bonaparte Blenkins, both handsfolded under the tails of his coat, and his eyes fixed on the sunsetsky.
The German dropped the saddle on the ground.
"Bish, bish, bish! what may this be?" he said, and walked toward thehouse. "Very strange!"
The girls followed him: Em still weeping; Lyndall with her face ratherwhite and her eyes wide open.
"And I have the heart of a devil, did you say? You could run me throughwith a knife, could you?" cried the Dutchwoman. "I could not drive theKaffer maid away because I was afraid of you, was I? Oh, you miserablerag! I loved you, did I? I would have liked to marry you, would I? wouldI? WOULD I?" cried the Boer-woman; "you cat's tail, you dog's paw! Benear my house tomorrow morning when the sun rises," she gasped, "myKaffers will drag you through the sand. They would do it gladly, any ofthem, for a bit of tobacco, for all your prayings with them."
"I am bewildered, I am bewildered," said the German, standing before herand raising his hand to his forehead; "I--I do not understand."
"Ask him, ask him?" cried Tant Sannie, pointing to Bonaparte; "he knows.You thought he could not make me understand, but he did, he did, youold fool! I know enough English for that. You be here," shouted theDutchwoman, "when the morning star rises, and I will let my Kaffers takeyou out and drag you, till there is not one bone left in your old bodythat is not broken as fine as bobootie-meat, you old beggar! All yourrags are not worth that--they should be thrown out onto the ash-heap,"cried the Boer-woman; "but I will have them for my sheep. Not one rottenhoof of your old mare do you take with you; I will have her--all, allfor my sheep that you have lost, you godless thing!"
The Boer-woman wiped the moisture from her mouth with the palm of herhand.
The German turned to Bonaparte, who still stood on the step absorbed inthe beauty of the sunset.
"Do not address me; do not approach me, lost man," said Bonaparte, notmoving his eye nor lowering his chin. "There is a crime from which allnature revolts; there is a crime whose name is loathsome to the humanear--that crime is yours; that crime is ingratitude. This woman has beenyour benefactress; on her farm you have lived; after her sheep you havelooked; into her house you have been allowed to enter and hold Divineservice--an honour of which you were never worthy; and how have yourewarded her?--basely, basely, basely!"
"But it is all false, lies and falsehoods. I must, I will speak," saidthe German, suddenly looking round bewildered. "Do I dream? Are you mad?What may it be?"
"Go, dog," cried the Dutchwoman; "I would have been a rich woman thisday if it had not been for your laziness. Praying with the Kaffersbehind the kraal walls. Go, you Kaffer's dog!"
"But what then is the matter? What may have happened since I left?" saidthe German, turning to the Hottentot woman, who sat upon the step.
She was his friend; she would tell him kindly the truth. The womananswered by a loud, ringing laugh.
"Give it him, old missis! Give it him!"
It was so nice to see the white man who had been master hunted down. Thecoloured woman laughed, and threw a dozen mealie grains into her mouthto chew.
All anger and excitement faded from the old man's face. He turned slowlyaway and walked down the little path to his cabin, with his shouldersbent; it was all dark before him. He stumbled over the threshold of hisown well-known door.
Em, sobbing bitterly, would have followed him; but the Boer-womanprevented her by a flood of speech which convulsed the Hottentot, so lowwere its images.
"Come, Em," said Lyndall, lifting her small proud head, "let us go in.We will not stay to hear such language."
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She looked into the Boer-woman's eyes. Tant Sannie understood themeaning of the look if not the words. She waddled after them, and caughtEm by the arm. She had struck Lyndall once years before, and had neverdone it again, so she took Em.
"So you will defy me, too, will you, you Englishman's ugliness!" shecried, and with one hand she forced the child down, and held her headtightly against her knee; with the other she beat her first upon onecheek, and then upon the other.
For one instant Lyndall looked on, then she laid her small fingers onthe Boer-woman's arm. With the exertion of half its strength Tant Sanniemight have flung the girl back upon the stones. It was not the powerof the slight fingers, tightly though they clinched her broad wrist--sotightly that at bedtime the marks were still there; but the Boer-womanlooked into the clear eyes and at the quivering white lips, and with ahalf-surprised curse relaxed her hold. The girl drew Em's arm throughher own.
"Move!" she said to Bonaparte, who stood in the door, and he, Bonapartethe invincible, in the hour of his triumph, moved to give her place.
The Hottentot ceased to laugh, and an uncomfortable silence fell on allthe three in the doorway.
Once in their room, Em sat down on the floor and wailed bitterly.Lyndall lay on the bed with her arm drawn across her eyes, very whiteand still.
"Hoo, hoo!" cried Em; "and they won't let him take the grey mare; andWaldo has gone to the mill. Hoo, hoo, and perhaps they won't let us goand say good-bye to him. Hoo, hoo, hoo!"
"I wish you would be quiet," said Lyndall without moving. "Does it giveyou such felicity to let Bonaparte know he is hurting you? We will askno one. It will be suppertime soon. Listen--and when you hear the clinkof the knives and forks we will go out and see him."
Em suppressed her sobs and listened intently, kneeling at the door.Suddenly some one came to the window and put the shutter up.
"Who was that?" said Lyndall, starting.
"The girl, I suppose," said Em. "How early she is this evening!"
But Lyndall sprang from the bed and seized the handle of the door,shaking it fiercely. The door was locked on the outside. She ground herteeth.
"What is the matter?" asked Em.
The room was in perfect darkness now.
"Nothing," said Lyndall quietly; "only they have locked us in."
She turned, and went back to bed again. But ere long Em heard a sound ofmovement. Lyndall had climbed up into the window, and with her fingersfelt the woodwork that surrounded the panes. Slipping down, the girlloosened the iron knob from the foot of the bedstead, and climbing upagain she broke with it every pane of glass in the window, beginning atthe top and ending at the bottom.
"What are you doing?" asked Em, who heard the falling fragments.
Her companion made her no reply; but leaned on every little cross-bar,which cracked and gave way beneath her. Then she pressed with all herstrength against the shutter. She had thought the wooden buttons wouldgive way, but by the clinking sound she knew that the iron bar had beenput across. She was quite quiet for a time. Clambering down, she tookfrom the table a small one-bladed penknife, with which she began to peckat the hard wood of the shutter.
"What are you doing now?" asked Em, who had ceased crying in her wonder,and had drawn near.
"Trying to make a hole," was the short reply.
"Do you think you will be able to?"
"No; but I am trying."
In an agony of suspense Em waited. For ten minutes Lyndall pecked. Thehole was three-eighths of an inch deep--then the blade sprung into tenpieces.
"What has happened now?" Em asked, blubbering afresh.
"Nothing," said Lyndall. "Bring me my nightgown, a piece of paper, andthe matches."
Wondering, Em fumbled about till she found them.
"What are you going to do with them?" she whispered.
"Burn down the window."
"But won't the whole house take fire and burn down too?"
"Yes."
"But will it not be very wicked?"
"Yes, very. And I do not care."
She arranged the nightgown carefully in the corner of the window, withthe chips of the frame about it. There was only one match in the box.She drew it carefully along the wall. For a moment it burnt up blue, andshowed the tiny face with its glistening eyes. She held it carefully tothe paper. For an instant it burnt up brightly, then flickered and wentout. She blew the spark, but it died also. Then she threw the paper onto the ground, trod on it, and went to her bed, and began to undress.
Em rushed to the door, knocking against it wildly.
"Oh, Tant Sannie! Tant Sannie! Oh, let us out!" she cried. "Oh, Lyndall,what are we to do?"
Lyndall wiped a drop of blood off the lip she had bitten.
"I am going to sleep," she said. "If you like to sit there and howl tillthe morning, do. Perhaps you will find that it helps; I never heard thathowling helped any one."
Long after, when Em herself had gone to bed and was almost asleep,Lyndall came and stood at her bedside.
"Here," she said, slipping a little pot of powder into her hand; "rubsome on to your face. Does it not burn where she struck you?"
Then she crept back to her own bed. Long, long after, when Em was reallyasleep, she lay still awake, and folded her hands on her little breast,and muttered--
"When that day comes, and I am strong, I will hate everything that haspower, and help everything that is weak." And she bit her lip again.
The German looked out at the cabin door for the last time that night.Then he paced the room slowly and sighed. Then he drew out pen andpaper, and sat down to write, rubbing his old grey eyes with hisknuckles before he began.
"My Chickens: You did not come to say good-bye to the old man. Mightyou? Ah, well, there is a land where they part no more, where saintsimmortal reign.
"I sit here alone, and I think of you. Will you forget the old man? Whenyou wake tomorrow he will be far away. The old horse is lazy, but he hashis stick to help him; that is three legs. He comes back one day withgold and diamonds. Will you welcome him? Well, we shall see. I go tomeet Waldo. He comes back with the wagon; then he follows me. Poor boy?God knows. There is a land where all things are made right, but thatland is not here.
"My little children, serve the Saviour; give your hearts to Him whileyou are yet young. Life is short.
"Nothing is mine, otherwise I would say, Lyndall, take my books, Em mystones. Now I say nothing. The things are mine: it is not righteous, Godknows? But I am silent. Let it be. But I feel it, I must say I feel it.
"Do not cry too much for the old man. He goes out to seek his fortune,and comes back with it in a bag, it may be.
"I love my children. Do they think of me? I am Old Otto, who goes out toseek his fortune.
"O.F."
Having concluded this quaint production, he put it where the childrenwould find it the next morning, and proceeded to prepare his bundle. Henever thought of entering a protest against the loss of his goods; likea child, he submitted, and wept. He had been there eleven years, and itwas hard to go away. He spread open on the bed a blue handkerchief,and on it put one by one the things he thought most necessary andimportant--a little bag of curious seeds, which he meant to plant someday, an old German hymn-book, three misshapen stones that he greatlyvalued, a Bible, a shirt and two handkerchiefs; then there was room fornothing more. He tied up the bundle tightly and put it on a chair by hisbedside.
"That is not much; they cannot say I take much," he said, looking at it.
He put his knotted stick beside it, his blue tobacco bag and his shortpipe, and then inspected his coats. He had two left--a moth-eatenovercoat and a black alpaca, out at the elbows. He decided for theovercoat; it was warm, certainly, but then he could carry it over hisarm and only put it on when he met some one along the road. It was morerespectable than the black alpaca.
He hung the greatcoat over the back of the chair, and stuffed a hard bitof roaster-cake under the knot of the bundle, and then his preparationswere com
pleted. The German stood contemplating them with muchsatisfaction. He had almost forgotten his sorrow at leaving in hispleasure at preparing. Suddenly he started; an expression of intensepain passed over his face. He drew back his left arm quickly, and thenpressed his right hand upon his breast.
"Ah, the sudden pang again," he said.
His face was white, but it quickly regained its colour. Then the old manbusied himself in putting everything right.
"I will leave it neat. They shall not say I did not leave it neat," hesaid. Even the little bags of seeds on the mantelpiece he put in rowsand dusted. Then he undressed and got into bed. Under his pillow wasa little storybook. He drew it forth. To the old German a story wasno story. Its events were as real and as important to himself as thematters of his own life.
He could not go away without knowing whether that wicked earl relentedand whether the baron married Emilina. So he adjusted his spectacles andbegan to read. Occasionally, as his feelings became too strongly moved,he ejaculated: "Ah, I thought so! That was a rogue! I saw it before! Iknew it from the beginning!" More than half an hour had passed when helooked up to the silver watch at the top of his bed.
"The march is long tomorrow; this will not do," he said, taking off hisspectacles and putting them carefully into the book to mark the place."This will be good reading as I walk along tomorrow," he added, as hestuffed the book into the pocket of the greatcoat; "very good reading."He nodded his head and lay down. He thought a little of his owntroubles, a good deal of the two little girls he was leaving, of theearl, of Emilina, of the baron; but he was soon asleep--sleeping aspeacefully as a little child, upon whose innocent soul sorrow and carecannot rest.
It was very quiet in the room. The coals in the fireplace threw a dullred light across the floor upon the red lions on the quilt. Eleveno'clock came, and the room was very still.
One o'clock came. The glimmer had died out, though the ashes were stillwarm, and the room was very dark. The grey mouse, who had his hole underthe toolbox, came out and sat on the sacks in the corner; then, growingbolder, the room was so dark, it climbed the chair at the bedside,nibbled at the roaster-cake, took one bite quickly at the candle, andthen sat on his haunches listening. It heard the even breathing of theold man, and the steps of the hungry Kaffer dog going his last roundin search of a bone or a skin that had been forgotten; and it heard thewhite hen call out as the wild cat ran away with one of her brood, andit heard the chicken cry. Then the grey mouse went back to its holeunder the toolbox, and the room was quiet. And two o'clock came. By thattime the night was grown dull and cloudy. The wild cat had gone to itshome on the kopje; the Kaffer dog had found a bone, and lay gnawing it.
An intense quiet reigned everywhere. Only in her room the Boer-womantossed her great arms in her sleep; for she dreamed that a dark shadowwith outstretched wings fled slowly over her house, and she moaned andshivered. And the night was very still.
But, quiet as all places were, there was a quite peculiar quiet in theGerman's room. Though you strained your ear most carefully you caught nosound of breathing.
He was not gone, for the old coat still hung on the chair--the coatthat was to be put on when he met any one; and the bundle and stick wereready for tomorrow's long march. The old German himself lay there, hiswavy black hair just touched with grey thrown back upon the pillow.The old face was lying there alone in the dark, smiling like a littlechild's--oh, so peacefully. There is a stranger whose coming, they say,is worse than all the ills of life, from whose presence we flee awaytrembling; but he comes very tenderly sometimes. And it seemed almost asthough Death had known and loved the old man, so gently it touched him.And how could it deal hardly with him--the loving, simple, childlike oldman?
So it smoothed out the wrinkles that were in the old forehead, and fixedthe passing smile, and sealed the eyes that they might not weep again;and then the short sleep of time was melted into the long, long sleep ofeternity.
"How has he grown so young in this one night?" they said when they foundhim in the morning.
Yes, dear old man; to such as you time brings no age. You die with thepurity and innocence of your childhood upon you, though you die in yourgrey hairs.
The Story of an African Farm Page 10
