"Koos, the youngest, sprang from his saddle and made towards the house; but he was not gone five paces before Vasco spurred his horse on to him and knocked him down.
"'Keep off,' he said then, turning to face them all, as Koos rose slowly. 'If I cannot bring the girl out none of you can, and you had better not try. Whoever does will be hurt, for I shall stand in front of the door.'
"And he went straight to the house, and, dismounting, stood in the doorway, with his hands resting on the beam above his head. He was a big man, and he filled the door.
"'Hear him,' foamed the old father. 'God, if I were as young as any of you, I would drag the girl across his body. Sons, he has defied us, and the girl has bewitched him. Run at him, lads, and bring them both out!'
"'They all came towards the house in a body, but stopped when Vasco raised his hand.
"'I warn you,' he told them—'I warn you to let the matter be. This will not be an affair of fighting, with only broken bones to mend when it is over. If I take hold of any one after this warning, that man will be cold before the sun sets. And to show you how useless this quarrel is, I will ask the girl once more if she will come out. You all saw her?'
"'Yes,' they answered; 'but what is this foolery about asking her?'
"'You saw her—very well.' He raised his voice and called into the house, 'Meisje, will you not come out? I ask you to.'
"There was silence for a moment, and then they heard the answer. 'No,' it said; 'I will stay where I am. And you are to go away.'
"'As soon as may be, my girl,' called Vasco in answer.
'Now,' he said to the men, 'you see she will not come.'
"'But, man, in the name of God, cast her over your shoulder and carry her out,' cried the father.
"'Vasco looked at him. 'Not this one,' he said. 'She shall do as she pleases.'
"Then they rushed on him, but he stepped out from the door, and caught young Koos round the middle. With one giant's heave he raised him aloft and dashed him at the gang, scattering them right and left, and knocking one to the ground, where he remained motionless. But Koos lay like a broken tool or a smashed vessel, as dead men lie. And all the while Vasco talked to them.
"'Come on,' he was saying. 'Come all of you. We shall never do anything but fight now. I see plainly we ought to have fought long ago. Bring her out, indeed!'
"They paused after that, aghast at the fury of the man they were contending against. But the old man gave them no rest.
"'Get sticks,' he cried to them—get sticks and kill him.'
"They dragged beams from a hut roof, and one of them took a heavy stone. Vasco stood back and watched them till they came forward again.
"The one with the stone came first, but it was too big to throw from a distance, and he dared not go near. The others approached with caution, and Vasco stood still, with his hands resting as before at the top of the door. They were bewildered at his manner, and very cautious, but at length they drew near and rushed at him.
"Then a most astonishing thing happened. With one wrench Vasco tore the thick architrave from the wall, a beam as thick as a man's thigh, and smote into the middle of them. Where he hit the bone gave and the flesh fell away, and as they ran from before him the wall fell in.
"Down came the wall, and with it the heavy beams on the roof. The old father, cursing over a broken arm, heard the girl scream, and saw the wreck come crashing about Vasco's shoulders till he disappeared below it. And then, where the house had been stood a ruin, with two souls buried in the midst of it.
"It steadied them like a dash of cold water. However they might fight among themselves, they were loyal to one another. Besides the old father, with his broken arm, there was only one other that could put a hand to the work, and together they started to drag away the beams and bricks and stones that covered Vasco and the girl.
"I know they were wicked men who are in hell long since, but I cannot contain a sort of admiration for the spirit that fastened them to their toil all that long night,—the old man with his broken arm, the young one with a dozen horrid wounds. As the sky paled towards morning, they discovered the girl dead, and leaving her where she lay they wrought on to uncover Vasco.
"When they found him he was crushed and broken, and pierced in many places with splinters and jagged broken ends of wood. But he had his senses still, and smiled as they cleared the thatch from above his face.
"The old man looked at him carefully. 'You are dying, my son,' he said.
"'Of course,' answered Vasco. 'Is that Renault?' He smiled again at his brother. 'So there are two of you alive, anyhow. How about the others?'
"'Two dead,' answered his father. 'And the other will not walk again all his days. You are a terrible fighter, my son.'
"'Yes,' answered Vasco, in a faint voice. 'It was the girl, you see.'
"'She was a witch, then?' asked the old man.
"'No,' said Vasco smiling. 'Or perhaps, yes. I do not know.
But I will fight for her again if you like.'
"'Oho! so that is it,' and the old man knelt down beside him. 'Now, I see,' he said. 'I never guessed before—did not know it was in you. My son, I ask you to forgive us.'
"'I forgive, but where is she?'
"'Dead. No, it was none of our doing. You did it,—the roof fell on her. We will lay you together.'
"'Do so,' replied Vasco. 'I think I am dying now.'
"'Yes,' answered the father. Your face is becoming gray. Your throat will rattle in a minute. Look here; this is what my mother used to do.'
"'And he did thus," said the Vrouw Grobelaar, giving a very good imitation of the sign of the cross.
"But that was not a bad ending," cried Katje. "I think it was beautiful. I hope Vasco and the girl went straight to God."
The Vrouw Grobelaar sighed.
THE PERUVIAN
FROM her pocket Katje produced stealthily a clean-scoured wish-bone. The Vrouw Grobelaar was sleeping in her chair with tight-shut eyes. So I took one end of the bone, and we broke it, and the wish remained with Katje.
"Wish quick," I said.
She puckered her pretty brows with a charming childish thoughtfulness.
"I can't think of anything to wish for," she answered.
"Wish to be delivered from the sin of playing with witchcraft and dirty old bones!" The suggestion echoed roundly in the old lady's deep tones, and we, startled and abashed, looked up to find her wide awake, and in her didactic mood. The Vrouw Grobelaar never slept to any real purpose. One might have remembered that.
"Yes, witchcraft," she pursued. "For if bones are not witchcraft, tell me what is? When a Hottentot wants to find a strayed ox, he makes magic with bones, doesn't he? And the bones of a dead baboon are dangerous things too. Katje, throw that bone away."
Katje, who hated to be found out, threw it over the rail of the stoop into the kraal. When the good Vrouw had kept her steady eye on me for a few seconds, I threw my half after Katje's.
"I thought so," said the Vrouw Grobelaar, with a twitch of the lips like a smile stillborn.
"It's only a game," said Katje plaintively. "There's no harm in it."
The old lady shook her head.
"There's harm in things you don't understand," she pronounced. "There's harm in failing in love, for instance, if you don't know what you are doing. But witchcraft is worse than anything. You've seen how hard it is to make a Kafir doctor show his tricks. That's because he's never certain which is master, he or the devil. I knew a man once, a Peruvian, who burned his fingers badly."
A Peruvian, for the Vrouw Grobelaar, was any one for whose nationality she had no name. In Johannesburg it means a Polish Jew; in this instance I believe the man was a Greek.
"He was a smouser" (pedlar), she went on, "a little cowering man, with a black beard and a white face, who spoke Kafir better than he spoke the Taal. He sold thimbles and pills and hymn-books to the wives and daughters of Burghers, and grand watches and cheap diamonds to the Kafirs. It was a dirty little trade, and there was nothing about the man that streaked it with nobility. I remember a Scotch smouser, who was called Peter Piper, who sold pills like a chemist, and everybody liked him and respected him, till he had his great dispute with the Predikant at Dopfontein. But this little man was like a slimy thing made to crawl on its belly; and many is the time he would have been sjamboked from a door, were it not for—well, I don't know. But he was such a mean helpless thing, that, when he shrank away and looked up, with his white eyes staring and his lips parted, not the most wrathful Burgher could lift a whip.
"And even as he seemed to fear everything, the Kafirs certainly feared him. Kafirs, you know, go naked to all the little winds, and the breezes that will not hurt a thatch carry death to them. They are deaf to God. but the devil has but to whisper, and they hear. They bought shameful watches and sleepy diamonds from the Peruvian, as they kill a goat at the flowering of the crops—to appease something that might else visit them in the night. It was a thing much spoken of, and since even among the Burghers there are folks who dirty their fingers with magic and wish-bones—ay, you may well pout!—perhaps this had something to do with the fact that he was never flogged to the beacons and kicked across.
"In fact, there grew up about him a something of mystery, uncanny and not respectable. The little plodding man who went so meekly past our gates had a shadow one feared to tread on.
"You won't remember, but you will have heard of, the terrible to-do there was when Freda van der Byl disappeared. She was a most ordinary girl, perhaps eighteen years old, with a fine appetite, and nothing whatsoever about her that was strange or extraordinary: and yet one night she was missing, and it has never been set past doubt who saw her last. She was on the stoop in the afternoon, ate well at supper, went out then in the usual way to the hut where the tobacco-sacks were, and never came in again. She disappeared like a flame blown out, with never a spoor to give direction to those that sought her, without a shred of clothing on a thorn-bush to hint at a tale. She seemed to have fled clean out of the world—a big ten—stone girl with red hair melted like a bubble.
"And how they hunted for her! Old Johannes van der Byl and his sons went through the country like locusts, and with them were a mob of relations and friends, and some prospectors from the Hangklip who betted about it. Every kloof was scoured, every Kafir stad and kraal turned inside out, and the half of them burned. Their ponies streaked the long grass of the veld for miles; the men, their loaded rifles in hand, were abroad late and early; and yet they never found even a shoe-sole or a shred of hair to give them a clue. The witch-doctors would have been glad enough to find her, for they were flogged from morning to night, and Barend van der Byl beat the life out of one who did not seem to be doing his best. If Freda had been anywhere in the veld she would have been found, so fervently did the Kafirs hunt her in order to get a little peace and security.
"But nothing availed; no trace of her came to light, and even the women of her family grew tired of weeping. But one hot dusty afternoon, when her brothers Jacobus and Piet were riding home from the fruitless search, they came upon the Peruvian sitting under a bush smoking his yellow cigarettes. He glanced up at them as they went past, slavish as ever, yet still with that subtle significance of mien that made him noteworthy, and suddenly Jacobus reined up.
"'Piet,' he called, pointing with his sjambok. Look—our last chance!'
"Piet did not understand.
"'We have been cutting the Kafir doctors into ribbons,' explained Jacobus, 'and they were no good. But here is a wizard, and a white one, who won't wait to be flogged. If he can do nothing, then there is nothing to do. Let us bring him along, Piet.'
"Piet was a fat youth, deadly strong, who never spoke while there was work to do. He merely dropped from his saddle and caught the Peruvian deftly by the back of the neck. The smouser, of course, whined and squirmed, but Piet was the man who broke the bullock's neck at Bothaskraal, and he made no difficulty of tying the little man's wrists to his off stirrup. All his trinkets and fallals they left behind, and riding at a walk, talking calmly between themselves of the buck with wide horns that the Predikant's cousin missed, they dragged the little smouser to the homestead.
"'Several of the men had already come back, and when they heard Jacobus's plan, some were openly afraid and wished to have the Peruvian set loose. But Oom Johannes cursed at them and smacked Jacobus on the back.
"'My daughter is lost, and evil tongues are active about her,' he roared. 'I want her back, and I don't care how she comes. Come to supper, Jacobus; and afterwards you shall take your smouser into a hut and persuade him.'
"It was not an easy thing to make the Peruvian understand what was wanted of him. But by and by, when he had been argued with in Dutch and Kafir, and shown a skull that was found in a kloof, and the dol oss, and a picture in the Bible of the Witch of Endor, he suddenly grasped the idea, and grinned. Piet spat on the ground as the white teeth gleamed through the greasy black beard.
"'Yes, perhaps I can do that,' said the Peruvian, in the
Taal. 'Perhaps, but one cannot be sure. You will pay, eh?'
"Jacobus wanted to threaten, but Oom Johannes would not have it.
"'Find my girl,' he said, 'and you shall be paid. Fifty pounds for any news of her, more if she is alive and well.'
"But the smouser explained that he could only find her if she were dead.
"'I can get her to speak, perhaps,' he said. 'More? No!'
"At last Jacobus and Piet took him into one of the big huts and gave him the little lamp that he demanded. He set it in the middle of the floor, and when they pulled to the door behind them the big domed hut was still almost dark, save for the ring of quiet light in the centre that flickered a little.
"'I wish he could do this kind of thing when I'm not there,' grumbled Jacobus, who hated creepy things.
"'Hush! be quiet!' commanded the Peruvian, and the two young men sat down, very close together, with their backs to the door.
"'The first thing that the Peruvian did was to take off all his clothes, and then he came into the dim circle of light mother-naked. He was a little man at best, but Piet said afterwards the muscles stood out under his swarthy skin in knots and ridges. And there he stood, facing them across the lamp, with his arms stretched forwards and his hands just fluttering loosely. Nothing more. His eyes were upturned and his face lifted, so that a streak of shadow rose across it, and the black beard against his neck rose and fell with his breathing. But for the gentle flutter of his hands and the heave of his chest he was still as stone— so still that for those who watched him all relation to human kind seemed to leave him, and he was a being alone in a twilight world of his own, a creature as remote and as little to be understood as the spirits of the dead.
"Have you ever, when wakeful in a hot night, with darkness all about you, called yourself by name again and again? It was a trick we dared sometimes when I was a girl. After a while it is something else that is calling, something of you but not in you, to which your soul answers at last; and if you go on till the will to call is no longer your own, the soul goes forth in response to it, and you are dead. And even so, gaunt in the beam of the lamp, the Peruvian seemed to insist upon himself, till the eyes of the watchers were for him only, till that which they saw was less the mean body of the smouser than the vehicle of the potent soul within.
"Piet was a youth as solid in mind as in body, and ere the scene grasped him against his will he says he saw with an angry impatience the flicker of a leer on the darkened face of the Peruvian. But it did not last. In a few minutes the two young Burghers were not the only ones whom the spell had subdued—the wizard was netted too. And then, as he stood, his hands still fluttering, they heard him drone a string of words, a dull chant, level like an incantation, inevitably apt to the hour and the event.
"They did not know how long they crouched, watching unwinkingly till their eyes grew sore; but at last it seemed that the posturing and the words had made something due. Jacobus started as though from sleep, and Piet, who was not till then frightened, looked up quickly. He caught sight of something—a shadow, a hint, a presence in the darkness behind the naked man, and knew, somehow, with a coldness of alarm, that IT had arrived. He barely realized this knowledge when the power of the quietness and the jugglery were rudely sundered, and the Peruvian, shrieking and clucking in his throat, dived towards them and tried to hide. He plunged frantically against the door, which gave and let him fall through, and in a moment, with the cold sweat of horror upon them, Piet and Jacobus struggled through after him and ran with still hearts for the house.
"But in that moment that he was jammed in the narrow doorway with his brother, Piet saw into the hut, and there was something there. There was another with them.
"They came fast to the lighted room upon the heels of the naked Peruvian, who fell on his face and writhed, weeping in sheer terror. There was alarm, and chairs overturned, and screaming of women, and it was long before they could get the smouser to his feet and bring him to speech. And then he would not go a foot away from them.
"'It came; it came!' he babbled, quivering under the table- cloth they had cast over his nakedness. 'It came—behind me!' and forthwith he began to stammer in his own strange tongue.
"'What was it?' demanded Oom Johannes, who was beginning to feel nervous.
"'There was a ghost!' was all that Piet could tell him. 'It frightened the smouser. It frightened all of us.'
"And by this time the smouser was babbling again, turning from one to the other, like one who excuses himself.
"'I did not bring it,' he wailed. 'I did nothing—only tricks. Just tricks to get money—and it came behind me. Mother of God! It came behind me!'
"Not one of them ventured beyond the door that night. They had not even the heart to turn the smouser out, though he expected nothing less, and clung howling to Piet's knees when the lad rose to bolt the door. But in the morning he was gone, and"—here the Vrouw Grobelaar became truly impressive—"he had not even fetched his clothes from the hut.
"So you see, Katje, what comes of messing your fingers with wish-bones."
"Pooh!" sneered Katje, "I'm not afraid of the ghost of the fowl."
TAGALASH
When we came to the farmhouse, Katje and I, the Vrouw Grobelaar asked if we had been down by the spruit. We had— all the afternoon. There are cool and lonely places in the long grass beside the spruit, where its midsummer trickle of water sojourns peacefully in wide pools of depth and quiet.
"You can't mind that, anyhow," said Katje patiently.
"Why can't I?" demanded the Vrouw Grobelaar. "Why can't I mind that as well as anything else? I tell you, my girl, that things are not quite so simple as you take them to be. Even a herd of swine can house a devil, mark you. A bit of stick in the path can be a puff adder, and there are spells tucked away in the words of the Psalms even. And the spruit! Why, you crazy child, a spruit is just the place for things to lurk in wait. Yes, slippery things that have no name in man's speech. Even the Kafirs know of a spirit that lives in a pool."
Katje laughed, "Oh, Tagalash!" she said.
Tagalash is the little god who abducts girls who go down to fetch water in the evening, and carries them away to the dim world under the floor of the pools to be his brides. He lives in the water, and sings in the reeds, sometimes, of an evening and at other times works mischief among the crops and the cattle with spells that baffle the husbandman.
So Katje laughed as she mentioned him, and the Vrouw
Grobelaar bridled ominously.
"You laugh," she said scathingly—"you laugh in the face of wisdom and counsel as they laughed in Sodom and Gomorrah. Yes; Tagalash, Katje! What have you to say against Tagalash? You think, I suppose, that he doesn't exist. I tell you, my girl, there's many a god of the heathen who is a devil of the Christians. That's what Christianity is for— to make devils of the gods of the heathen. And besides, this Tagalash is not like the others. He has been seen."
She paused. "Who by, Tante?" I asked, while Katje affected to whistle carelessly.
"Ah," she said, "you want to know? Well, Tagalash was seen and felt and had speech of by one who told it afterwards with white lips and fevered eyes that compelled belief. A Boer woman, mind you, and no liar; the young wife of an upright and well-seen Burgher, who had his farm an easy four hours from here.
"It is Folly Joubert I mean, who married when she was eighteen one Johannes Olivier, a youth with hair like an Irishman—all red. I had known her somewhat, and she was just that kind of girl in whom one feels the thrust of a fate. She was thin, for one thing, and without any of the comfortable comeliness that makes young men doubtful and old men sure. She had a face that was always rapt, lips that parted of themselves as if in wonder at great things newly seen, and big troubled eyes that spoke, despite her leanness and long legs, of a spring of hot blood crouching within her. Yes, she seemed doomed to something far and tragic, and outside the lives of decent stupid men.
"There was much bother, I believe, to persuade her to a marriage with Johannes, though he was rich enough.
"Perhaps it was hard on her, but then it must have been hard on him too. For he was another kind than she; just a big youth that ate four times a day with desperation, and lived the rest of the time as a tree lives. There is no harm in such men, though; it is they that people this world and have the right to guide it, for they put most into it and hew most from it; but for those who are born with a streak of heaven or hell in their fabric, they are heavy companions at the best. But these two married at last, and faced life like oxen that pull different ways in the same yoke. And within a month Johannes walked about with a face like one who tries to guess a riddle-troubled and puzzled; and Polly was walking elsewhere, carving herself a new religion from the stones of the bitterness of life.
"I have the rest from her own lips, as she told it when she came back. Yes, she went away—I will make that plain enough. It was after a quarrel with Johannes over some little grossness of no consequence that she walked forth from the house and down towards the spruit. It was between afternoon and evening, and she sought a quiet place to sit and prey on her heart. There was a pool that summer, deep and very black, lying between steep banks on which grew bushes and tall grass, and to this she came and sat by the edge of the water, and dabbled her long thin fingers in its coolness and let her thoughts surge in her.
"'I thought of death,' she said, as she sat in her chair and told of it—'of death, and peace, and hatred glutted, and dead enemies, and love, and sin. A wild storm of dreams, was it not? A grim tempest to lay waste a sore heart. And she only eighteen, with eyes like lakes on a mountainside!' As she told it, she cast back on her memory— you could see she was aching to strip her fault naked and scourge it before us all—'And the thoughts were like a sleeping draught to my anger,' she went on pitifully. 'I drowned my wrath in dreams of vengeance and sinful hopes of a joy to find in the future.'
"'I conjured up faces of eager, bold men who should court me, and one that I had thought on before—a small man, lean at the waist, who moved like a spark among burning wood, and laughed ere he struck.' Her finger traveled in the air, and he was plain to see.
"She went on: 'I was looking in the water between my hands, creating my lover by the spell of desire, and I could see his face in the vortex my fingers made as I moved them to and fro. I gazed and gazed and gazed, and then, suddenly, some fear gripped me, for the face became a face of a man, with the idle water swilling across it. But it was a face: my mind battled against the realization till the fact governed it. It was a face, brown and keen and smiling with a gleam of white teeth, and then a hand met my hand in the water and drew me forward. I did not drag back. I think I fell on my face, but here I have no memory.'
"When again she came to a sense of things, she was lying in a dim place where all that moved seemed shadows only. At first it was her thought that she was yet on the bank by the pool, but as her mind renewed its hold she knew this was not so. She breathed an air alien to her living nostrils, and knew that here she had no part in a world of human creatures, and the thought rose in her that she was dead, drowned in the pool, and had reached the next world. 'Can this be hell?' she wondered, as she rose to a sitting posture and strove to see about her.
"It was a grassed mound she sat on, in a kind of plain, and she heard the creaking of bushes about her where no wind breathed on her cheek. The dimness was not the part darkness of a summer night, but a shadow where no sun had ever shone, a barren gloom that was lugubrious and uneasy. A dozen feet from her all was blurred and not to be distinguished, but it seemed to her that many people moved round about her, and now and again there was a rustle of hushed voices, as of folk who met stealthily and spoke with checked breath. In the dimness shapes moved, faintly suggested to her eyes, and presently, though she had no thrill of fear, a loneliness oppressed her that nearly made her weep. She was not as one that has no comrade in the world, for such a one is at least kin by blood and flesh to all others. She was alone, as a living man in a tomb is alone.
"With a little fervor of troubled recollection, like a child reciting a psalm, she told us how she rose to her feet and gazed about her, pondering which way to take. And while she was yet doubtful a hand touched her elbow, and she started to face a man that had come from behind her. Staring at his face with wits clenched like a fist, the contours of the face in the water returned to her mind, the sharp brown face that had grown up in the middle of the countenance she dreamed upon, and she knew in a moment that here was the face again and the rest of the man with it.
"'I knew it at once when his teeth shone through his smile,' she said. 'He was not so tall as I, and very brown in that sorrowful light, but not black. There was a robe he wore from his neck to his ankles that left one arm bare and the little feet below its hem, and his head was bare with straight black hair upon it. His hand was on my arm, and he stood before me and looked in my face and smiled a little at me, very gently and timidly.'
"It seems he found her scarcely less strange than she found him. In his bearing was something of awe and wonder, while she stared with a mere surprise.
"'Are you a man?' she asked at length, stupidly.
"He smiled yet. 'No,' he answered gently. 'But oh, you are beautiful!'
"She replied nothing at first, and he went on with a soft voice like the voice of a tender child. 'I saw you in the water long ago, I looking up to you, you looking down to where I was hidden. I smiled to you and reached my hand, but there was no smile on your face, and I did not dare take you till—till this time. Then your hands were stretched forward, and as I clasped them you sank to me,—my beloved! my beloved!'
"His brown face glowed upon his words with a fire of worship. She started back from him with a quick terror, hands clasped and lips parted.
"'Tell me,' she cried, 'tell me, where am I? What is this place? Am I dead at last?'
"He soothed her. 'You are in my country,' he said very gently. 'Now it is your country, as I am yours. You are not dead but living, and brimming with the love I languish for; and here you will stay with me, and we will love one another very tenderly in the heart of my gloom, and you will be my bride.
"'Oh, listen to me!' he cried, when she would have answered. 'Many slim and delicate girls have come to me through the mirror of the pool, but none such as you, with a warm soul floating on your face and a bosom aching for love. When first I saw you I yearned for you, I coveted you. The thought of you was my food and drink, and stayed my eyes from sleep; I set my spell on the waters that they should slumber and hold your image unbroken, and now I have you; you are here with me. You are mine.'
"He was glowing with a kind of eagerness it hurts one to rebuff, and she watched him, her fears under control, with a growing wonder.
"'Yes,' she said slowly. 'It must be true, then—that old tale. You are Tagalash!'
"He smiled. I am Tagalash,' he answered.
"'But,' she said, 'I am white!' For no one had ever heard of any but Kafir brides for Tagalash.
"He shrank a little, but smiled yet beseechingly, as he would have her cease that part of the tale.
"'You are so beautiful,' he urged, come with me to my house, will you not?'
"But that she would not do, and moved not from her place on the grassed knoll throughout her stay in the shadows— something like a week.
"'I am the wife of Johannes Olivier,' she said, and her words sounded foolish in her own ears. 'I am a wife,' she persisted, there in that dead land of the black gods. 'I want to go back,' she cried like a strayed child. 'I want to go back. I am afraid. Take me back to the light.'
"'He tried to comfort her with gentle words and talk of his passion and her beauty, but to no effect. She shrank from the unnatural flesh of him; she panted as though the dust of tombs were in her nostrils; and at last he stood off, looking at her with a mild trouble, and then he went away, and she was sitting once more alone amid the traffic of hushed voices and moving shadows.
"'There came no night,' she told us, in a voice that quavered uncertainly, 'always that unlovely twilight only; and I sat on the grass and wept. She had no sensation of hunger or sleep in that world, the whole of her stay. She stayed in the same place, dreary and waiting, with no active hope and little fear—only a longing for the sunlight; and at last a dull pain of yearning for the rough red head and beefy texture of her human husband. A week, mind you—a week she stayed there thus, save when Tagalash would come up unheard to court her again.
"After that first time he was a more cautious lover, and sat at her feet with lowered eyes pleading with her. One answer always stilled him, and that was her cry of 'Take me back; I am afraid.'
"'You were not fashioned for a rude love,' he said to her once.
"'Ah,' she answered then, 'but there is that in me that welcomes a heavy hand and a strong arm.'
"'The others are like that,' he answered, as though speaking to himself. 'But they have no such hungry beauty as you.'
"'My beauty,' she told him, 'is a chance vessel for a mere woman's soul.'
"At last he became wistful, and seemed afraid to ask: for what he desired. 'But I can yet give to you,' he told her. 'Say what you would have. I can bring it you.'
"'Then give me back to my world,' she cried. 'Do that, and
I will thank you on my knees.'
"He sighed. 'Is that all you desire?' he said. 'Supposing I granted you that, is there nothing you would take back with you?'
"'No,' she answered.
"'No charm?' he asked again. 'Not a charm to compel love? I can give you even that.'
"'Take me back,' she begged, 'and teach me how to win my husband to forgive me.'
"He smiled very sadly, and she could almost have pitied him, so poor he seemed, bereaved of his desire.
"'You are greater than Tagalash,' he said slowly, 'since you make a slave of him. You shall have what you will. Go back to your world, my beloved, my love that shall henceforth dread the still pools.'
"'So I came back,' she said, looking-round on us as though all were explained.
"'How?' we asked.
"'Why, I came,' she answered plaintively, and had no more to tell. She had been found sleeping on the grass near the spruit, after a week of absence during which the men of the district had combed the very bushes for a trace of her.
"'But the charm?' asked one of us. 'The charm to win forgiveness? What was that?'
"She looked timidly at the tall Johannes who stood by her chair in silence.
"'I have forgotten what it was,' she answered with wet eyes.
"'No,' he cried, bending to her lips. 'No! It is a true charm that, my kleintje.'"
"Good old Tagalash!" remarked Katje cheerfully.
THE HOME KRAAL
After sunset on a summer's day, when evening has overcome the oppression of the still heat and breezes grow up like thoughts, the world of veld becomes odorous, and every air has its burden of unforgettable scents.
As we sat in the stoop, steeped in a flood of shadow, looking down over the kraals to where the grasses are ever green about the spruit, the Vrouw Grobelaar spoke gently.
"I should remember this," she said, "after a hundred years of heaven. The winds of Mooimeisjes would call me even then."
Katje's hand moved in mine.
"It is home," said Katje. "It—it makes me want to cry."
The Vrouw Grobelaar smiled. "As for me," she answered, "it makes me think of nothing so much as that hollow beside Cornel's grave, where, in my time, I shall go to my long dreaming. This place has peace written large on its face; and ah! it is at home that one would like to lie at last. Yes, none of your damp churchyards for me! The home kraal, like a Boer vrouw; for the grave and the home are never quite two things to us Boers. How some have striven for the home kraal, that feared to lie with strangers. Allemachtag, yes!"
She moved a little in her armchair, and we waited in silence for the tale to come. Katje came closer to me, in that way she has, like a dear child or a little dog.
"The Vrouw van der Westhuizen," said the old lady, "had but one child, a son. Emmanuel, she called him, for a dozen poor reasons; and for him and in him she had her whole life. The poor, they say, are rich in poor things, and this lad grew to manhood with a multitude of mean little vices and dirty ways which showed like a sign on his pale weak face, and summed up the trivial soul within for you at the first glance. Most of us have cause to thank God that He has not written on our faces; but Emmanuel could have carried no writing large enough for his mother to read. Because he was weak and idle, two of her nephews lived on the farm, Barend and Peter van Trump, great slow true men, with hearts like children; yet she esteemed Emmanuel as much above them as they in truth, in all points of worth and virtue, were over him. Ah, but a mother is a traitor to the whole world.
"I remember this Emmanuel well. A bony small man of the color of straw, with eyes that moved too quickly and a cold hand, a body like a wisp of linen-cloth-so flimsy and slight—and some slenderness at the knee that made him shamble like a thief! Peter stood with a great brown hand on his shoulder, smiling at me with a frank open mouth and cheeks creased with pleasantry. When he laughed, his body shook mightily, and the motion of his hand made the other stagger. And the Vrouw van der Westhuizen stood there looking, with eyes like pools of pride for her son.
"There was nothing in the farm to hold Emmanuel, no charm in the veld nor interest in the work. He was barely a man when he would ride on to the dorp and its saloons, and in time he was there oftener and oftener, drinking and soiling his hands with all the strange foulness of life the English bring with them. We, the neighbors round about, marked it of course; but none thought much of Emmanuel and his doings; and the thing was little talked of till it became known that at last he was gone for good, and had betaken himself to live in a great town, among devilries that have no name in our clean Taal.
"It was a grievous blow for the Vrouw van der Westhuizen. From the time he departed, she became old; as she went about her affairs, the woe at her heart was plain to see. She was a stricken woman, the world had been cut from under her; and about her, now that her child was gone, she felt nothing familiar, but lived, dumb and bewildered, in a maze of strangers. Barend and Peter had no wits to console her. How, indeed, should they have hoped to console a mother thus bereft? The days lounged by inexorably, bringing no word of Emmanuel with them, and no mercy. Their footprints were the wounds upon the Vrouw van der Westhuizen's heart; and, in the end she sickened wearily and lay listless, due to death.
"Then only did the silence break and let through a word of news. Some one—I cannot remember now who it was—had been to the town to a law-case to be cheated of some land, and he brought back news of Emmanuel—news that he was deadly ill in a mean place, and lacking money. He told it shortly to the Vrouw van der Westhuizen, and she sent at once for Barend and Peter.
"'Get to your horses,' she told them, 'and bring my kleintje back to me. Be quick to bring him—why do you stand gaping like sick cows while he is dying? And take money. Take all the money that is in my box under the bed, in case he should need something. Get the box out quickly, now!'
"They obeyed her. In the box was the money of the house, as the Boers need to keep it, a great deal of money in sovereigns, very heavy to carry. But she would not even suffer them to count it, so they filled a bag with it, and Barend tied it to his belt, and then they caught the horses and started on the long trek to the town.
"It is a journey of fifteen days by wagon, yet those two, by killing horses—they who used all beasts so gently—did it in three, and on the fourth, much troubled by the great throng of people all about them, came to a narrow street, smelling of poor food, and found the house in which Emmanuel lay. A woman with a cruel face and naked breasts opened to them, staring at their great size and their beards, and showed them up a long stair to a room with a bed, from which Emmanuel looked up at them.
"It was a small room, tucked close under the roof, and held but the tumbled frowsy bed, an uneasy table and a chair. On the floor, clothes and boots lay heaped with old newspapers, and the place was hot with stale air. From the pillows, the face of Emmanuel met them with something of expectancy; and the two big men, fresh from the wind of the veld, saw with a quick dismay how his pale skin stood tight over the bones of him, and a clear pink burned like a danger lamp high up on each cheek.
"'I thought you would come,' said the sick man in a weak voice, 'I knew it. I was sure I should not die alone in this hole, while my mother's horses were sound. It is bad enough to die at all, but no man deserves to die away from home.'
"Peter kneeled down beside the bed and would have passed an arm under his shoulder. But he would not have it.
"'No need to slobber,' he said, with a note of contempt in the voice that rang so faintly. The woman, who was leaning in the door, laughed harshly, and a passing smile flickered over Emmanuel's face.
"'I couldn't live, could I, Flo?' he said to her. 'But I can die. You watch—it'll be worth seeing. What's that you have at your belt, Barend? Not money?'
"Barend nodded. 'Yes, it is money,' he said. 'The ou ma sent it, if you should need it.'
"'Need it!' Emmanuel laughed harshly.
"'God, but I do need it. When didn't I? How much is it, man?'
"'She would not have us stay to count it,' answered Barend. 'But it is a very great sum.' He loosened the bag from his belt. 'All gold,' he added, and poured the sovereigns in a heap on the tumbled bed.
"'God! said Emmanuel again, striving to sit up. The woman at the door uttered a short oath and came forward with parted lips and bent over the gold.
"'Laddie, it's a pile,' she said hoarsely. 'A jugfull!' Her twitching hands ploughed through the heap, and the coins tinkled among her fingers. She was glancing from one to another of the men, and drew forth her hand clenched on a full fist of sovereigns. Peter, still kneeling beside the bed, made a noise in his throat.
"She bent her look on him, a look of narrow warlike eyes and bared teeth, the first stare of a savage animal disturbed on its kill; but the big Boer met her with a face of calm.
"'The ou ma sent it for Emmanuel,' he said slowly, and rose to his feet.
"She snarled at him, but Barend, with his teeth clenched on his beard, moved to the door and stood there with his legs apart and his great hands on his hips, filling up the way. Emmanuel lay on his back, breathing a little hard, the color pulsing in and out on his cheeks and a twisted smile on his lips. She turned a second to him, as though to appeal, but saw him as he lay and said nothing.
"'Put that money, Emmanuel's money, back on the bed!' said
Peter.
"She lifted it to her bosom as though to pouch it, but Peter moved his arm and she flung the coins suddenly on the floor, and laughed gratingly at him.
"'D'you see that, laddie?' she called to Emmanuel. 'Oh, you sneering devil, gasping there, ain't you got a word to say to me? Say, can't I have some of this cash? There's enough here to spare me a fistfull.'
"'Lift me up, Peter,' said Emmanuel. Peter raised him till he sat upright, and held him with a long arm about his shoulders. Emmanuel reached forward hands thin as films of milk, and shuffled the gold to and fro.
"'Can you have some?' he said, looking up at the woman. 'You! Yes, you man-wrecking pirate, go down on your knees and whine for it, beg for it, pray with clasped hands for it, and you shall take as much as you can grasp. Do that, d'you hear? I want to see you on your knees for once and groveling for a handful of sovereigns. Go on; get down with you!'
"Barend gave a short laugh. It was amusing of Emmanuel, he thought, to promise this on a condition so impossible. The woman spun on her heel and faced him sharply with bent brows and a heaving bosom.
"'Kneel, my beauty,' said Emmanuel again mockingly, but watching the woman as she stared at Barend. There was a kind of wonder on her dark cruel face as she studied the big Boer's serene countenance and masterful poise of head, and noted there the mild amusement which is the scorn of a good man.
"'Kneel now, and plead for it,' said Emmanuel again; and of a sudden a doubt came over Barend. There was a distress plain to see, something remorseful and newly born surging in this harlot; there was an appeal, fiercely shameful, in the hard eyes bent on his.
"Of a sudden she wheeled round and spat an awful curse at the sick man. 'Keep your damned money!' she went on, while the thick veins in her neck grew to dark ridges. 'D'you think you can buy everything? You've sold your life and your innocence for filth—d'you suppose it's all to buy? You an' me's in the same box, my boy—bad 'ems both, but you don't make a dog of me.'
"She turned to Barend. 'Let me pass, you big hulking—' she hesitated, looking at him.
"'Oh, you poor innocent,' she cried, with a laugh, and ran past him and out at the door.
"Emmanuel called after her, and bade her come back and take what she would, but her heels rattled on the stairway and she was gone.
"'Is that the strange woman?' asked Peter, quoting from the
Proverbs.
"Emmanuel laughed. 'Strange as the devil,' he said, with his voice running weak. 'You see souls in this town, cousins—not bodies only, as on the farm. Souls that blush and bleed, I tell you. But go to the head of the stairway, Barend, and shout as loud as you can for Jim. Just shout "Jim"!'
"Barend went and roared the name half a dozen times. There came at last a man with a dirty coat buttoned to the neck, grimy, ill-shod and white-eyed, and to him Emmanuel, speaking from behind the heap of sovereigns, to which the man's evil pale eyes strayed every moment, gave orders.
"'Tell the boys,' he said, 'that there's a spree here tonight. Get the whole gang, Jim, and particularly Walters. And take what money you want, and send what is necessary up here. Steal what you must, you hound, but leave us short of nothing, or my big cousins here will cut you to ribbons. Is that not so, Barend?'
"'Whenever you please, Emmanuel,' said Barend.
"The man Jim took the money and went, and
Emmanuel lay in Peter's arm, picking at the gold.
"'Shall I count it for you?' said Peter at last.
"'God, no!' said Emmanuel. 'Leave it, man. It's luxury not to know how much it is.' A dribble of coins tinkled from the blanket to the floor. 'Don't pick them up,' he cried, as Barend stooped. 'This is like water in a long trek to me.' He picked up a handful of money and strewed it abroad. 'I can die,' he said, 'now I've money to throw away, and tonight there'll be the end.'
"It was an orgy that evening. There came men and women to that high room, where the evil man Jim had already disposed of bottles of spirits and of wine. The big Boers stood there like trees among poppies. 'Tis an evil, leering flower, the poppy, with its color of blood and love mounted on its throat of death. Barend and Peter, upright and still, stood at the head of the bed watching them as they entered, lean, cruel-mouthed dogs of the city, whose eyes went to the gold on the blanket ere they greeted the man that had bidden them thither. Emmanuel, propped in his pillows, his face a mask of hard mastery, his eyes like blurs of fire on a burned stick, looked at them as they came in, yet ever his eyes returned to the door, as though he sought some one who should yet come.
"Women spoke to him—handsome bold women with free lips, and eyes that commanded eyes of men, and these he barely answered. But a crisp step on the stairs brought the death spot hot and quick to his fevered cheeks, and there entered a man.
"A small man, a dark man! Barend, talking afterwards, with a pucker of wonder between his brows, said he was smooth. He had a face that was keen and alert without being hard; eyes that were quiet and yet judged; lips upon which there dwelt an armed peace and also a humorous curve. He seemed to have his own world, to blot from his consciousness that which displeased him; yet he himself was for those who looked upon him a man blocking the horizon of life. A great man, I judge—that is, a man great in the qualities which need but an aim to move mountains. God gives few such men an aim, or there would be more gods.
"Emmanuel spoke very quietly to him, but with no wheeze of weakness in his voice.
"'Good-evening, Walters,' he said.
"The newcomer but cast a glance over his shoulder. 'Ah!' he said, and his eye lighted on the gold, and his pleasant lip curled further.
"'Has your mother died?' he asked. 'I suppose that's why you're so gay. What a funny little beast you are, Van der Westhuizen!'
"'These are my cousins,' said Emmanuel.
"'They ought to suit you. They are as stupid as honest men, and as honest as stupid ones, This is Barend—that is Peter!'
"Walters looked up at them, and Peter held out a hand to him. He took it, and smiled, and when Barend saw the grace and friendship of that smile, he too gave his hand.
"'You have come to take Emmanuel home?' said Walters. 'Well, use him tenderly. If he is worth handling at all he is to be tenderly handled. But I am sure you will be gentle. You are too big to be rough.'
"He turned from them to a woman that was prattling near by, and at once entered her life, it seemed. She turned to him as one who worships.
"'Come, drink!' Emmanuel called to them. 'This is my farewell, you people. I've come to the jump-off place. Reach me a glass, somebody, and put something in it. What will you have, Walters? Help yourselves, all of you.'
"With chattering and laughter the bottles passed about, and a woman at the foot of the bed raised her glass with a flourish and drank to the sick man. 'You're game, boy,' she cried; 'you finish like a ferret!'
"Barend stood for three hours watching them, Peter by his side. 'It was like reading in Chronicles and Kings,' he said, when he related it later. 'There was a boil of business all about, and drinking and gabbling, and I saw faces, flushed and working, that I am sick to remember. The wine they drank came soon to possess them as Legion possessed the swine; in an hour they were lost to all reason and decency, and women were cursing in the voices of men and men weeping loosely like women. They cast off their outer garments when the room grew hot, and lounged half- naked; and of all of them, only two seemed to live aloof, like men among beasts—Emmanuel and the young man Walters.
"'This young man passed in and out like an eel in water. Nothing clung to him of all the filth in which he trod. He drank, but was not less the master of himself; he jested, but his laughter was the mirth of the pure in heart, without harshness in it, and they made him way and listened when he spoke; and even the gross, hot-eyed women dulled their terrible speech when he stood before them. The eyes of Emmanuel, propped in his bed, his blankets wet with the wine he spilled from his glass, were ever upon him. I think the boy admired him. Whenever he stirred, sovereigns dribbled to the floor, but he looked not once after them; he was all for watching Walters, who barely turned towards him. Ah, but he was very sick, our Emmanuel! His breath rasped as he drew it; there was a fire in his great eyes that made one tremble—that fire that makes you think of hell-fire and naked souls writhing in it. A look of savage hunger, but far off, as though desiring things not of earth!'
"A strange scene, was it not, for a chamber overshadowed by the wings of death. Towards midnight, Emmanuel sighed, and slipped down a little. Peter moved to lift him and started at the pinch of death on his face. His exclamation drew most of the others to look, but as they crowded near Emmanuel opened his eyes.
"'Walters,' he said faintly.
"'Well, my boy,' said Walters.
"'What-do-you-think-of-this?' Emmanuel asked, his weakness watering his speech.
"Walters laughed quietly. 'I'll tell you in the morning,' he said. 'But you're a good actor, my friend.'
"You'll see,' whispered Emmanuel, and closed his eyes again.
"Then Barend bade them all go forth, and after awhile, when he had taken one lewd man in his hands and cast him on the stair, they went, and the noise of their voices, raw and ungentle, filtered away. The two Boers were left at the bedside, among the bottles and the gold and the strewn clothes; and Emmanuel lay rigid, with a buzz in his throat and a spot of blood on his lips. Peter kneeled and prayed.
"But in a couple of hours, when his face had grown thin and his nose sharp, and his hands cold as clods, they saw he was dead, and spoke together of what they must do. They knew nothing of that treacherous web of law and custom which is the life of a city; they knew only that their feet were among pitfalls, and that they must move quickly if they would take Emmanuel away to the farm and the kraal. So while Peter went forth to bring three horses, Barend sought among the garments scattered about the room and dressed the thin body in them, and put his own broad-brimmed hat on the fair head that should henceforth need no shelter from the sun. When he had done, Peter returned, and came up the stairs quietly.
"They took the body of Emmanuel under the armpits, one on each side of him, and thus carried him down the stairs. A man met them on the way, his face bland and foolish in the glow of a candle he carried.
"'Drunk, eh?' he said, without particular curiosity.
'Almost dead, by the looks of him.'
"'Quite dead,' answered Barend, and they passed him and came down to the horses, hitched at the sidewalk.
"They put the body in the saddle, and rode on either side, close in, and Peter held it upright with a hand on its shoulder, as a man might conceivably ride by a comrade. There was yet no light of day, only a grayness that streaked the night sky, and a bitterness in the air like a note of mourning. Slowly, walking their sleepy horses, they passed along the streets, dark save where a lamp at a corner shed a yellow and dismal light about it. Creatures of the night, slouching here and there, looked at them; policemen, screening from the wind in dark corners, thrust forth heads; but they rode on, and none stopped them, and thus they came forth of the city and faced the veld again.
"They raised their faces to its freshness, familiar and friendly as the voice of one's kin, and pushed the horses to a trot, while behind them the blur of light that was the city paled and died down as the miles multiplied under their hoofs. Peter had the leading rein of the middle horse while Barend steadied its burden, and thus they traveled towards the east and home.
"When the sun was high, they no longer dared follow the road. Out of those they must meet and exchange words with, there would surely be some whom they could not deceive-some who had seen death before and knew the signs of it. So they pulled aside, and made for the high land of Baviaan's Nek, riding across the gray grass and among the yellow ant-hills till close on noon. Then, dipping to a hollow, where some willows cast a shade upon a pool of a spruit, they dismounted and laid the dead man in the cool, while they off-saddled the horses and rested themselves. There were biltong and bread in their saddle-bags, and tobacco they did not lack, and the need for food drove them to make a big meal. They were concerned with this so deeply that they did not notice that a Kafir, carrying the bundles which Kafirs always carry on the trek, had come up to them.
"He was an old Kafir, his wool gray and his skin rough with age, but his eyes were bright with the full of strength and peaceful with wisdom. He lay down at the pool's brink and drank, and then gave them good day.
"'Will the baas permit me to sit in the shade of the trees?' he asked. 'It is hot traveling.'
"He looked from them to the stretched body of Emmanuel as he spoke.
"'Sit over there, then,' said Barend, 'and see you keep quiet.'
"'Oh, I shall not wake that baas, at all events,' said the old Kafir, pointing to the body.
"Both the Boers were startled at this, but the man walked calmly to the farthest tree, and piled his bundles there.
"'We all have our troubles,' he said, as he shook out his brown blanket. 'Age for some of us, sorrow for others. And then there is death, too. I am not dead, at least.'
"'Why do you talk of death?' demanded Peter sharply.
"The old Kafir held up a finger. There was a kind of mirth in his motion. 'Hush, or you will wake him,' he replied. 'But I know all about death, except the taste of it. I know how it looks, and how it lies on the ground, and how it comes, and how it is concealed.'
"He raised his hard old face with eyes half-closed, and snuffled at the air.
"'And how it smells, too,' he said.
"'You will learn the taste of it in a minute,' cried Barend, springing to his feet with a white face. 'You old scarecrow, what is it you are hinting about? Do you take us for murderers?'
"The old Kafir sat down among his bundles and fumbled for his pipe. There was no concern on him; he had the still ease of one who comes upon his own special task, sees it, and knows he is the master of it. While Barend, shaking a little, stood gauntly over him, he filled his pipe, lit it, and blew forth a cloud of smoke.
"'Pooh!' he said. 'The baas gives too much importance to trifles. A dead man is of less worth than a living one. It is the baas I am interested in—not the carrion.'
"He spat very leisurely and took the pipe to his lips again.
"Barend, after a little hesitation, sat down again.
"'I have known white men,' said the old Kahr, leaning back against his tree, 'who scratched crosses in the ground, and traced them on their breasts with a finger, when they came upon death or the dead. That is a strong charm. And in the east, yonder, are others who spill wine on the earth. But in my tribe we neither make crosses nor waste liquor. We spit. Where is the baas going?'
"'Across Baviaan's Nek,' said Barend, very quietly.
"'Ah! That is a long way. Tonight the baas should camp by the huts that are over the drift where the great rocks are. There are Kafirs there who will not fear this luggage of yours. They will sell food and shelter, and refrain from curiosity. Will that serve the baas?'
"'Surely,' said Barend, and tossed him some tobacco.
"The old Kahr caught the horses for them and helped them to lift the dead man to the saddle. By this time the body had become stiff, and needed a constant effort to hold it steady. The sun was hot as they rode on, and the dust smoked up about the fetlocks of the horses. The stiff feet of the dead man were in the stirrups, and as now and again they broke into a short canter, he seemed as though he would stand up in his stirrups to look ahead.
"'So Emmanuel always did when he rode among ant-heaps,' said Peter once.
"Barend only grunted in reply; the strain on his arm and wrist was a heavy one.
"They camped that night at the huts the old Kafir had spoken of. The Kafirs there were of a large build, strong and silent. They glanced once or twice at the body, but said nothing.
Food was forthcoming—, and a big clean hut, and here the two Boers slept beside the corpse. It was only next morning, when they had mounted and were about to start, that one, with the head-ring of dignity about his scalp, gave a word of counsel.
"He stood at Barend's bridle, looking up to him with a sort of pity.
"'The day will be hot, baas,' he said, 'and that will be doubly burdensome. So you may know that beyond the Nek, where the mimosas grow on a damp plain, the ground is very soft. There are huts there, and shovels.'
"Barend nodded his thanks, and they rode through the drift and up the Nek. It was, as the Kafir had predicted, a hot day. One of those days which come in the throng of the summer, when the sun is an oppressor, ruthless and joying in pain, when the earth is dead with heat and dryness and the very air forbears to take a freedom I When they came down the slopes beyond the crest, the flanks and rumps of the horses were slimy with running sweat, and red nostrils spoke of distress. The dead man sat in the saddle with a thin show of eyeball under each lowered lid, and a gleam of teeth above the sunken lower lip, yet for all the world like one that follows a purpose, like one guiding himself to a steadfast end. In the face there was a growing hue that does not visit the living, but the hat-brim cast a shadow over it that lent it an effect of deep gravity and solemn intention.
"'He means to reach the farm.' said Barend, after glancing at him.
"Peter drew rein. 'And yet,' he said, 'he will never do it if we travel thus. We killed horses to make the city in three days; going at this rate, it will take us six to return.'
"'Well,' replied Barend, 'what else is there to do?'
"'Only one thing,' said Peter, 'your horse is the weight- carrier. You must take Emmanuel over your saddle-bow, and we must kill more horses.'
"'But a dead man,' said Barend. 'It is like a blasphemy.'
"'We can do nothing else,' said Peter, and after a little more talking they made the change."
The Vrouw Grobelaar paused and looked at us. Katje was tight in the crook of my arm.
"Words limp while horses stride free," she said, "but conceive that ride. Taking horses where they could find them, they rested no more, nor drew rein save to fill and light their pipes. From Baviaan's Nek they traveled at the canter across the mimosa swamp, and so by the Rhenoster Drift to Ookiep, where Barend's horse fell and he and that other rolled on the veld together. When Peter had found and brought another horse, they made one stage to Jantje's Kraal, and thence, galloping wordless through the night, to Zwartvark. Long rides, you will say! Aye, rides to remember; but think of the brimming stillness of the journey, hushed and governed by that silent companion, while thought could not stray nor fancy escape from the death that chased at the elbow of each. When, on the third morning, as the sun came spouting up from the low country, they saw afar the roof that was their goal, Peter cried aloud like a child awaking from evil dreams.
"Ere noon their hoofs knocked on the stones in the front kraal, and they bore the body to the shade of the tobacco shed.
"'And now,' said Peter, when that was done, 'who is to tell the ou tante?'
"Barend leaned at the door-post with his arm cast up over his face and said nought, but there came from the house a girl of the neighborhood, who laid a finger to her lips.
"'Hush,' she said. 'Make no noise about this house. Where have you been, the two of you? An hour earlier, and you had been in time. As it is, the Vrouw van der Westhuizen died with no kin about her.'"
THE SACRIFICE
"Do not think," said the Vrouw Grobelaar, looking at me with a hard unwinking eye, "that idle men should have pretty wives. Though Katje will lose that poppy red-and- white when she begins to grow fat. Still—"
Katje made an observation.
"Her mother," pursued the Vrouw Grobelaar, still holding me fixed, "spent seventeen years in one room, because she could not go through the door; and when she died they took the roof on and hoisted her out like a bullock from a well. But as I was saying, it is not well that idle men—those with leisure for their littlenesses, like schoolmasters and doctors and Predikants should have pretty wives, or they tend to waste themselves. A man with real work and money matters and the governing of cattle and land and Kafirs to fill his day, for such a one it is very well. Her prettiness is an interval, like the drink he takes in the noonday. But for an idle man it becomes the air he breathes. He is all-dependent on it, and it is a small and breakable thing.
"Look how men have been wrecked upon a morsel of pink-and- white, how strong brains have scattered like seed from a burst pod for a trifle of hunger in a pair of eyes! I remember many such cases which would make you stare for the foolishness of men and the worthlessness of some women. There was the Heer Mostert, Predikant at Dopfontein, who fell to blasphemy and witchcraft when his wife Paula was sick and muttered emptily among her pillows."
The old lady shifted in her wide chair and took her eyes from me at last.
"She was pretty, if you like," she said. "A tall girl, with a small red mouth, and hair that swathed her head like coils of bronze. The Predikant, who had more fire in him than a minister should have, and more fullness of blood than is good for any man, spent the half of his life in the joy of being near to her. She was full in the face and slow with a sleek languor, but on his coming there was to see a quickness of welcome spread itself in her. She would flush warmly, and her eyes would cry to him. Their love glowed between them; they were children together in that mighty bond. So when a spring that came down with chill rains smote Paula with a fever, and laid her weakly on her bed, the Predikant was a widower already, and walked with a face white and hard, drawn suddenly into new lines of pain and fear.
"Women are strange in sickness. Some are infants, greatly needing caresses and the neighborhood of one tender and familiar. Others grow bitter, with an unwonted spite and temper, venting their ill-ease on all about them. But after the first, Paula was neither of these. The sense of things left her, and she lay on her bed with wide eyes that saw nothing and spoke brokenly about babies. For she had none. The doctor, a man of much brisk kindness, whose face was grown to a cheerful shape, frowned as he bent above her and questioned her heart and pulse. Paula was very ill, and as he looked up he saw the Predikant, tall and still, standing at the foot of the bed, gazing on the girl's face that gave no gaze back; and there was little he could say.
"'Speak to her,' he told him.
"The Predikant kneeled down beside her, and took her hand, that pinched and plucked upon the quilt, into his.
"'Paula!' he said gently. 'Wife!' and oh! the yearning that shivered nakedly in his voice.
"'Little hands,' moaned Paula weakly—'little hands beating on my breasts. Little weak hands; oh, so little and weak!'
"The Predikant bowed his head, and the doctor saw his shoulders bunch in a spasm of grief.
"'Paula!' he called again. 'Paula, dear. It is I—John.
Don't you know John, Paula? Won't you answer me, dear?'
"With eyes shut tight, he lifted a face of passionate prayer.
"'Say daddy!' said Paula, crooning faintly. 'Say daddy.'
"The doctor passed his arm across the Predikant.
"'Come away,' he said gently. 'This does no good. Come away, now. There is plenty of hope.'
"He led him outside, rocking like a sightless man. When he sat down on the edge of the stoop, he stared straight before him for a little while, fingering a button on his coat till it broke off. Then he flung it from him and laughed—laughed a long quiet laugh that had no tincture of wildness.