TROOPER PETER HALKET OF MASHONALAND
by Olive Schreiner
Author of “Dreams,” “Dream Life and Real Life,” “The Story of an African
Farm,” etc.
Colonial Edition
(A photographic plate at the front of the book shows three people
hanging from a tree by their necks. Around them stand eight men, looking
not at all troubled by their participation in the scene. Of this event
all the survivors appear to be white, the victims black. The plate is
titled “From a Photograph taken in Matabeleland.” S.A.)
To a Great Good Man, Sir George Grey,
Once Governor of the Cape Colony, who, during his rule in South Africa,
bound to himself the Dutchmen, Englishmen, and Natives he governed, by
an uncorruptible justice and a broad humanity; and who is remembered
among us today as representing the noblest attributes of an Imperial
Rule.
“Our low life was the level’s and the night’s;
He’s for the morning.”
Olive Schreiner.
19, Russell Road,
Kensington, W.,
February, 1897.
Aardvark - The great anteater.
Cape Smoke - A very inferior brandy made in Cape Colony.
Kopje - Little hillock.
Kraal - A Kaffir encampment.
Mealies - Maize (corn).
Riem - A thong of undressed leather universally used in South Africa.
Vatje of Old Dop - A little cask of Cape brandy.
Veld - Open Country.
Chapter I.
It was a dark night; a chill breath was coming from the east; not enough
to disturb the blaze of Trooper Peter Halket’s fire, yet enough to make
it quiver. He sat alone beside it on the top of a kopje.
All about was an impenetrable darkness; not a star was visible in the
black curve over his head.
He had been travelling with a dozen men who were taking provisions of
mealies and rice to the next camp. He had been sent out to act as scout
along a low range of hills, and had lost his way. Since eight in the
morning he had wandered among long grasses, and ironstone kopjes, and
stunted bush, and had come upon no sign of human habitation, but the
remains of a burnt kraal, and a down-trampled and now uncultivated
mealie field, where a month before the Chartered Company’s forces had
destroyed a native settlement.
Three times in the day it had appeared to him that he had returned to
the very spot from which he had started; nor was it his wish to travel
very far, for he knew his comrades would come back to look for him, to
the neighbourhood where he had last been seen, when it was found at the
evening camping ground that he did not appear.
Trooper Peter Halket was very weary. He had eaten nothing all day; and
had touched little of the contents of a small flask of Cape brandy
he carried in his breast pocket, not knowing when it would again be
replenished.
As night drew near he determined to make his resting place on the top of
one of the kopjes, which stood somewhat alone and apart from the others.
He could not easily be approached there, without his knowing it. He had
not much fear of the natives; their kraals had been destroyed and their
granaries burnt for thirty miles round, and they themselves had fled:
but he feared, somewhat, the lions, which he had never seen, but of
which he had heard, and which might be cowering in the long grasses and
brushwood at the kopje’s foot:--and he feared, vaguely, he hardly knew
what, when he looked forward to his first long night alone in the veld.
By the time the sun had set he had gathered a little pile of stumps and
branches on the top of the kopje. He intended to keep a fire burning all
night; and as the darkness began to settle down he lit it. It might
be his friends would see it from far, and come for him early in the
morning; and wild beasts would hardly approach him while he knelt beside
it; and of the natives he felt there was little fear.
He built up the fire; and determined if it were possible to keep awake
the whole night beside it.
He was a slight man of middle height, with a sloping forehead and pale
blue eyes: but the jaws were hard set, and the thin lips of the large
mouth were those of a man who could strongly desire the material good of
life, and enjoy it when it came his way. Over the lower half of the face
were scattered a few soft white hairs, the growth of early manhood.
From time to time he listened intently for possible sounds from the
distance where his friends might be encamped, and might fire off their
guns at seeing his light; or he listened yet more intently for sounds
nearer at hand: but all was still, except for the occasional cracking
of the wood in his own fire, and the slight whistle of the breeze as it
crept past the stones on the kopje. He doubled up his great hat and put
it in the pocket of his overcoat, and put on a little two-pointed cap
his mother had made for him, which fitted so close that only one lock
of white hair hung out over his forehead. He turned up the collar of his
coat to shield his neck and ears, and threw it open in front that the
blaze of the fire might warm him. He had known many nights colder than
this when he had sat around the camp fire with his comrades, talking of
the niggers they had shot or the kraals they had destroyed, or grumbling
over their rations; but tonight the chill seemed to creep into his very
bones.
The darkness of the night above him, and the silence of the veld about
him, oppressed him. At times he even wished he might hear the cry of a
jackal or of some larger beast of prey in the distance; and he wished
that the wind would blow a little louder, instead of making that little
wheezing sound as it passed the corners of the stones. He looked down
at his gun, which lay cocked ready on the ground at his right side;
and from time to time he raised his hand automatically and fingered the
cartridges in his belt. Then he stretched out his small wiry hands to
the fire and warmed them. It was only half past ten, and it seemed to
him he had been sitting here ten hours at the least.
After a while he threw two more large logs on the fire, and took the
flask out of his pocket. He examined it carefully by the firelight to
see how much it held: then he took a small draught, and examined it
again to see how much it had fallen; and put it back in his breast
pocket.
Then Trooper Peter Halket fell to thinking.
It was not often that he thought. On patrol and sitting round camp fires
with the other men about him there was no time for it; and Peter Halket
had never been given to much thinking. He had been a careless boy at the
village school; and though, when he left, his mother paid the village
apothecary to read learned books with him at night on history and
science, he had not retained much of them. As a rule he lived in the
world immediately about him, and let the things of the moment impinge
on him, and fall off again as they would, without much reflection.
But tonight on the kopje he fell to thinking, and his thoughts shaped
themselves into connected chains.
He wondered first whether his mother would ever get the letter he had
posted the week before, and whether it would be brought to her cottage
or she would go to the post office to fetch it. And then, he fell to
thinking of the little English village where he had been born, and where
he had grown up. He saw his mother’s fat white ducklings creep in and
out under the gate, and waddle down to the little pond at the back of
the yard; he saw the school house that he had hated so much as a
boy, and from which he had so often run away to go a-fishing, or
a-bird’s-nesting. He saw the prints on the school house wall on which
the afternoon sun used to shine when he was kept in; Jesus of Judea
blessing the children, and one picture just over the door where he hung
with his arms stretched out and the blood dropping from his feet. Then
Peter Halket thought of the tower at the ruins which he had climbed so
often for birds’ eggs; and he saw his mother standing at her cottage
gate when he came home in the evening, and he felt her arms round his
neck as she kissed him; but he felt her tears on his cheek, because he
had run away from school all day; and he seemed to be making apologies
to her, and promising he never would do it again if only she would not
cry. He had often thought of her since he left her, on board ship, and
when he was working with the prospectors, and since he had joined the
troop; but it had been in a vague way; he had not distinctly seen and
felt her. But tonight he wished for her as he used to when he was
a small boy and lay in his bed in the next room, and saw her shadow
through the door as she bent over her wash-tub earning the money which
was to feed and clothe him. He remembered how he called her and she came
and tucked him in and called him “Little Simon,” which was his second
name and had been his father’s, and which she only called him when he
was in bed at night, or when he was hurt.
He sat there staring into the blaze. He resolved he would make a great
deal of money, and she should live with him. He would build a large
house in the West End of London, the biggest that had ever been seen,
and another in the country, and they should never work any more.
Peter Halket sat as one turned into stone, staring into the fire.
All men made money when they came to South Africa,--Barney Barnato,
Rhodes--they all made money out of the country, eight millions, twelve
millions, twenty-six millions, forty millions; why should not he!
Peter Halket started suddenly and listened. But it was only the wind
coming up the kopje like a great wheezy beast creeping upwards; and he
looked back into the fire.
He considered his business prospects. When he had served his time
as volunteer he would have a large piece of land given him, and the
Mashonas and Matabeles would have all their land taken away from them in
time, and the Chartered Company would pass a law that they had to work
for the white men; and he, Peter Halket, would make them work for him.
He would make money.
Then he reflected on what he should do with the land if it were no good
and he could not make anything out of it. Then, he should have to
start a syndicate; called the Peter Halket Gold, or the Peter Halket
Iron-mining, or some such name, Syndicate. Peter Halket was not very
clear as to how it ought to be started; but he felt certain that he and
some other men would have to take shares. They would not have to pay for
them. And then they would get some big man in London to take shares. He
need not pay for them; they would give them to him; and then the company
would be floated. No one would have to pay anything; it was just the
name--“The Peter Halket Gold Mining Company, Limited.” It would float
in London; and people there who didn’t know the country would buy the
shares; THEY would have to give ready money for them, of course; perhaps
fifteen pounds a share when they were up!--Peter Halket’s eyes blinked
as he looked into the fire.--And then, when the market was up, he,
Peter Halket, would sell out all his shares. If he gave himself only six
thousand and sold them each for ten pounds, then he, Peter Halket, would
have sixty thousand pounds! And then he would start another company, and
another.
Peter Halket struck his knee softly with his hand.
That was the great thing--“Always sell out at the right time.”
That point Peter Halket was very clear on. He had heard it so often
discussed. Give some shares to men with big names, and sell out: they
can sell out too at the right time.
Peter Halket stroked his knee thoughtfully.
And then the other people, that bought the shares for cash! Well, they
could sell out too; they could all sell out!
Then Peter Halket’s mind got a little hazy. The matter was getting too
difficult for him, like a rule of three sum at school when he could not
see the relation between the two first terms and the third. Well, if
they didn’t like to sell out at the right time, it was their own faults.
Why didn’t they? He, Peter Halket, did not feel responsible for them.
Everyone knew that you had to sell out at the right time. If they didn’t
choose to sell out at the right time, well, they didn’t. “It’s the
shares that you sell, not the shares you keep, that make the money.”
But if they couldn’t sell them?
Here Peter Halket hesitated.--Well, the British Government would have to
buy them, if they were so bad no one else would; and then no one would
lose. “The British Government can’t let British share-holders suffer.”
He’d heard that often enough. The British taxpayer would have to pay for
the Chartered Company, for the soldiers, and all the other things, if IT
couldn’t, and take over the shares if it went smash, because there were
lords and dukes and princes connected with it. And why shouldn’t they
pay for his company? He would have a lord in it too!
Peter Halket looked into the fire completely absorbed in his
calculations.--Peter Halket, Esq., Director of the Peter Halket Gold
Mining Company, Limited. Then, when he had got thousands, Peter
Halket, Esq., M.P. Then, when he had millions, Sir Peter Halket, Privy
Councillor!
He reflected deeply, looking into the blaze. If you had five or six
millions you could go where you liked and do what you liked. You could
go to Sandringham. You could marry anyone. No one would ask what your
mother had been; it wouldn’t matter.
A curious dull sinking sensation came over Peter Halket; and he drew in
his broad leathern belt two holes tighter.
Even if you had only two millions you could have a cook and a valet, to
go with you when you went into the veld or to the wars; and you could
have as much champagne and other things as you liked. At that moment
that seemed to Peter more important than going to Sandringham.
He took out his flask of Cape Smoke, and drew a tiny draught from it.
Other men had come to South Africa with nothing, and had made
everything! Why should not he?
He stuck small branches under the two great logs, and a glorious flame
burst out. Then he listened again intently. The wind was falling and the
night was becoming very still. It was a quarter to twelve now. His back
ached, and he would have liked to lie down; but he dared not, for fear
he should drop asleep. He leaned forward with his hands between his
crossed knees, and watched the blaze he had made.
Then, after a while, Peter Halket’s thoughts became less clear: they
became at last, rather, a chain of disconnected pictures, painting
themselves in irrelevant order on his brain, than a line of connected
ideas. Now, as he looked into the crackling blaze, it seemed to be one
of the fires they had make to burn the natives’ grain by, and they were
throwing in all they could not carry away: then, he seemed to see his
mother’s fat ducks waddling down the little path with the green grass
on each side. Then, he seemed to see his huts where he lived with the
prospectors, and the native women who used to live with him; and he
wondered where the women were. Then--he saw the skull of an old Mashona
blown off at the top, the hands still moving. He heard the loud cry of
the native women and children as they turned the maxims on to the kraal;
and then he heard the dynamite explode that blew up a cave. Then again
he was working a maxim gun, but it seemed to him it was more like the
reaping machine he used to work in England, and that what was going down
before it was not yellow corn, but black men’s heads; and he thought
when he looked back they lay behind him in rows, like the corn in
sheaves.
The logs sent up a flame clear and high, and, where they split, showed
a burning core inside: the cracking and spluttering sounded in his brain
like the discharge of a battery of artillery. Then he thought suddenly
of a black woman he and another man caught alone in the bush, her baby
on her back, but young and pretty. Well, they didn’t shoot her!--and a
black woman wasn’t white! His mother didn’t understand these things;
it was all so different in England from South Africa. You couldn’t
be expected to do the same sort of things here as there. He had an
unpleasant feeling that he was justifying himself to his mother, and
that he didn’t know how to.
He leaned further and further forward: so far at last, that the little
white lock of his hair which hung out under his cap was almost singed by
the fire. His eyes were still open, but the lids drooped over them, and
his hands hung lower and lower between his knees. There was no picture
left on his brain now, but simply an impress of the blazing logs before
him.
Then, Trooper Peter Halket started. He sat up and listened. The wind had
gone; there was not a sound: but he listened intently. The fire burnt up
into the still air, two clear red tongues of flame.
Then, on the other side of the kopje he heard the sound of footsteps
ascending; the slow even tread of bare feet coming up.
The hair on Trooper Peter Halket’s forehead slowly stiffened itself. He
had no thought of escaping; he was paralyzed with dread. He took up his
gun. A deadly coldness crept from his feet to his head. He had worked a
maxim gun in a fight when some hundred natives fell and only one white
man had been wounded; and he had never known fear; but tonight his
fingers were stiff on the lock of his gun. He knelt low, tending
a little to one side of the fire, with his gun ready. A stone half
sheltered him from anyone coming up from the other side of the kopje,
and the instant the figure appeared over the edge he intended to fire.
Then, the thought flashed on him; what, and if it were one of his own
comrades come in search of him, and no bare-footed enemy! The anguish of
suspense wrung his heart; for an instant he hesitated. Then, in a cold
agony of terror, he cried out, “Who is there?”
And a voice replied in clear, slow English, “A friend.”
Peter Halket almost let his gun drop, in the revulsion of feeling. The
cold sweat which anguish had restrained burst out in large drops on his
forehead; but he still knelt holding his gun.
“What do you want?” he cried out quiveringly.
From the darkness at the edge of the kopje a figure stepped out into the
full blaze of the firelight.
Trooper Peter Halket looked up at it.
It was the tall figure of a man, clad in one loose linen garment,
reaching lower than his knees, and which clung close about him. His
head, arms, and feet were bare. He carried no weapon of any kind; and on
his shoulders hung heavy locks of dark hair.
Peter Halket looked up at him with astonishment. “Are you alone?” he
asked.
“Yes, I am alone.”
Peter Halket lowered his gun and knelt up.
“Lost your way, I suppose?” he said, still holding his weapon loosely.
“No; I have come to ask whether I may sit beside your fire for a while.”
“Certainly, certainly!” said Peter, eyeing the stranger’s dress
carefully, still holding his gun, but with the hand off the lock. “I’m
confoundedly glad of any company. It’s a beastly night for anyone to be
out alone. Wonder you find your way. Sit down! sit down!” Peter looked
intently at the stranger; then he put his gun down at his side.
The stranger sat down on the opposite side of the fire. His complexion
was dark; his arms and feet were bronzed; but his aquiline features, and
the domed forehead, were not of any South African race.
“One of the Soudanese Rhodes brought with him from the north, I
suppose?” said Peter, still eyeing him curiously.
“No; Cecil Rhodes has had nothing to do with my coming here,” said the
stranger.
“Oh--” said Peter. “You didn’t perhaps happen to come across a company
of men today, twelve white men and seven coloured, with three cart loads
of provisions? We were taking them to the big camp, and I got parted
from my troop this morning. I’ve not been able to find them, though I’ve
been seeking for them ever since.”
The stranger warmed his hands slowly at the fire; then he raised his
head:--“They are camped at the foot of those hills tonight,” he said,
pointing with his hand into the darkness at the left. “Tomorrow early
they will be here, before the sun has risen.”
“Oh, you’ve met them, have you!” said Peter joyfully; “that’s why you
weren’t surprised at finding me here. Take a drop!” He took the small
flask from his pocket and held it out. “I’m sorry there’s so little, but
a drop will keep the cold out.”
The stranger bowed his head; but thanked and declined.
Peter raised the flask to his lips and took a small draught; then
returned it to his pocket. The stranger folded his arms about his knees,
and looked into the fire.
“Are you a Jew?” asked Peter, suddenly; as the firelight fell full on
the stranger’s face.
“Yes; I am a Jew.”
“Ah,” said Peter, “that’s why I wasn’t able to make out at first what
nation you could be of; your dress, you know--” Then he stopped, and
said, “Trading here, I suppose? Which country do you come from; are you
a Spanish Jew?”
“I am a Jew of Palestine.”
“Ah!” said Peter; “I haven’t seen many from that part yet. I came out
with a lot on board ship; and I’ve seen Barnato and Beit; but they’re
not very much like you. I suppose it’s coming from Palestine makes the
difference.”
All fear of the stranger had now left Peter Halket. “Come a little
nearer the fire,” he said, “you must be cold, you haven’t too much
wraps. I’m chill in this big coat.” Peter Halket pushed his gun a little
further away from him; and threw another large log on the fire. “I’m
sorry I haven’t anything to eat to offer you; but I haven’t had anything
myself since last night. It’s beastly sickening, being out like this
with nothing to eat. Wouldn’t have thought a fellow’d feel so bad after
only a day of it. Have you ever been out without grub?” said Peter
cheerfully, warming his hands at the blaze.
“Forty days and nights,” said the stranger.
“Forty days! Ph--e--ew!” said Peter. “You must have have had a lot to
drink, or you wouldn’t have stood it. I was feeling blue enough when you
turned up, but I’m better now, warmer.”
Peter Halket re-arranged the logs on the fire.
“In the employ of the Chartered Company, I suppose?” said Peter, looking
into the fire he had made.
“No,” said the stranger; “I have nothing to do with the Chartered
Company.”
“Oh,” said Peter, “I don’t wonder, then, that things aren’t looking very
smart with you! There’s not too much cakes and ale up here for those
that do belong to it, if they’re not big-wigs, and none at all for those
who don’t. I tried it when I first came up here. I was with a prospector
who was hooked on to the Company somehow, but I worked on my own account
for the prospector by the day. I tell you what, it’s not the men
who work up here who make the money; it’s the big-wigs who get the
concessions!”
Peter felt exhilarated by the presence of the stranger. That one unarmed
man had robbed him of all fear.
Seeing that the stranger did not take up the thread of conversation, he
went on after a time: “It wasn’t such a bad life, though. I only wish I
was back there again. I had two huts to myself, and a couple of nigger
girls. It’s better fun,” said Peter, after a while, “having these black
women than whites. The whites you’ve got to support, but the niggers
support you! And when you’ve done with them you can just get rid of
them. I’m all for the nigger gals.” Peter laughed. But the stranger sat
motionless with his arms about his knees.
“You got any girls?” said Peter. “Care for niggers?”
“I love all women,” said the stranger, refolding his arms about his
knees.
“Oh, you do, do you?” said Peter. “Well, I’m pretty sick of them. I had
bother enough with mine,” he said genially, warming his hands by the
fire, and then interlocking the fingers and turning the palms towards
the blaze as one who prepares to enjoy a good talk. “One girl was only
fifteen; I got her cheap from a policeman who was living with her, and
she wasn’t much. But the other, by Gad! I never saw another nigger like
her; well set up, I tell you, and as straight as that--” said Peter,
holding up his finger in the firelight. “She was thirty if she was a
day. Fellows don’t generally fancy women that age; they like slips of
girls. But I set my heart on her the day I saw her. She belonged to the
chap I was with. He got her up north. There was a devil of a row about
his getting her, too; she’d got a nigger husband and two children;
didn’t want to leave them, or some nonsense of that sort: you know what
these niggers are? Well, I tried to get the other fellow to let me have
her, but the devil a bit he would. I’d only got the other girl, and I
didn’t much fancy her; she was only a child. Well, I went down Umtali
way and got a lot of liquor and stuff, and when I got back to camp I
found them clean dried out. They hadn’t had a drop of liquor in camp for
ten days, and the rainy season coming on and no knowing when they’d get
any. Well, I’d a vatje of Old Dop as high as that--,” indicating with
his hand an object about two feet high, “and the other fellow wanted to
buy it from me. I knew two of that. I said I wanted it for myself. He
offered me this, and he offered me that. At last I said, ‘Well, just to
oblige you, I give you the vatje and you give me the girl!’ And so
he did. Most people wouldn’t have fancied a nigger girl who’d had two
nigger children, but I didn’t mind; it’s all the same to me. And I tell
you she worked. She made a garden, and she and the other girl worked in
it; I tell you I didn’t need to buy a sixpence of food for them in six
months, and I used to sell green mealies and pumpkins to all the fellows
about. There weren’t many flies on her, I tell you. She picked up
English quicker than I picked up her lingo, and took to wearing a dress
and shawl.”
The stranger still sat motionless, looking into the fire.
Peter Halket reseated himself more comfortably before the fire. “Well,
I came home to the huts one day, rather suddenly, you know, to fetch
something; and what did I find? She, talking at the hut door with a
nigger man. Now it was my strict orders they were neither to speak a
word to a nigger man at all; so I asked what it was. And she answers, as
cool as can be, that he was a stranger going past on the road, and asked
her to give him a drink of water. Well, I just ordered him off. I didn’t
think anything more about it. But I remember now. I saw him hanging
about the camp the day after. Well, she came to me the next day and
asked me for a lot of cartridges. She’d never asked me for anything
before. I asked her what the devil a woman wanted with cartridges, and
she said the old nigger woman who helped carry in water to the garden
said she couldn’t stay and help her any more unless she got some
cartridges to give her son who was going up north hunting elephants. The
woman got over me to give her the cartridges because she was going to
have a kid, and she said she couldn’t do the watering without help. So I
gave them her. I never put two and two together.
“Well, when I heard that the Company was going to have a row with the
Matabele, I thought I’d volunteer. They said there was lots of loot to
be got, and land to be given out, and that sort of thing, and I thought
I’d only be gone about three months. So I went. I left those women
there, and a lot of stuff in the garden and some sugar and rice, and I
told them not to leave till I came back; and I asked the other man to
keep an eye on them. Both those women were Mashonas. They always said
the Mashonas didn’t love the Matabele; but, by God, it turned out
that they loved them better than they loved us. They’ve got the damned
impertinence to say, that the Matabele oppressed them sometimes, but the
white man oppresses them all the time!
“Well, I left those women there,” said Peter, dropping his hands on his
knees. “Mind you, I’d treated those women really well. I’d never given
either of them one touch all the time I had them. I was the talk of all
the fellows round, the way I treated them. Well, I hadn’t been gone a
month, when I got a letter from the man I worked with, the one who had
the woman first--he’s dead now, poor fellow; they found him at his hut
door with his throat cut--and what do you think he said to me? Why, I
hadn’t been gone six hours when those two women skooted! It was all the
big one. What do you think she did? She took every ounce of ball and
cartridge she could find in that hut, and my old Martini-Henry, and even
the lid off the tea-box to melt into bullets for the old muzzle-loaders
they have; and off she went, and took the young one too. The fellow
wrote me they didn’t touch another thing: they left the shawls and
dresses I gave them kicking about the huts, and went off naked with only
their blankets and the ammunition on their heads. A nigger man met them
twenty miles off, and he said they were skooting up for Lo Magundi’s
country as fast as they could go.
“And do you know,” said Peter, striking his knee, and looking
impressively across the fire at the stranger; “what I’m as sure of as
that I’m sitting here? It’s that that nigger I caught at my hut, that
day, was her nigger husband! He’d come to fetch her that time; and when
she saw she couldn’t get away without our catching her, she got the
cartridges for him!” Peter paused impressively between the words. “And
now she’s gone back to him. It’s for him she’s taken that ammunition!”
Peter looked across the fire at the stranger, to see what impression his
story was making.
“I tell you what,” said Peter, “if I’d had any idea that day who that
bloody nigger was, the day I saw him standing at my door, I’d have given
him one cartridge in the back of his head more than ever he reckoned
for!” Peter looked triumphantly at the stranger. This was his only
story; and he had told it a score of times round the camp fire for the
benefit of some new-comer. When this point was reached, a low murmur
of applause and sympathy always ran round the group: tonight there was
quiet; the stranger’s large dark eyes watched the fire almost as though
he heard nothing.
“I shouldn’t have minded so much,” said Peter after a while, “though no
man likes to have his woman taken away from him; but she was going to
have a kid in a month or two--and so was the little one for anything I
know; she looked like it! I expect they did away with it before it came;
they’ve no hearts, these niggers; they’d think nothing of doing that
with a white man’s child. They’ve no hearts; they’d rather go back to a
black man, however well you’ve treated them. It’s all right if you get
them quite young and keep them away from their own people; but if once
a nigger woman’s had a nigger man and had children by him, you might as
well try to hold a she-devil! they’ll always go back. If ever I’m shot,
it’s as likely as not it’ll be by my own gun, with my own cartridges.
And she’d stand by and watch it, and cheer them on; though I never gave
her a blow all the time she was with me. But I tell you what--if ever I
come across that bloody nigger, I’ll take it out of him. He won’t count
many days to his year, after I’ve spotted him!” Peter Halket paused.
It seemed to him that the eyes under their heavy, curled lashes, were
looking at something beyond him with an infinite sadness, almost as of
eyes that wept.
“You look awfully tired,” said Peter; “wouldn’t you like to lie down and
sleep? You could put your head down on that stone, and I’d keep watch.”
“I have no need of sleep,” the stranger said; “I will watch with you.”
“You’ve been in the wars, too, I see,” said Peter, bending forward a
little, and looking at the stranger’s feet. “By God! Both of them!--And
right through! You must have had a bad time of it?”
“It was very long ago,” said the stranger.
Peter Halket threw two more logs on the fire. “Do you know,” he said,
“I’ve been wondering ever since you came, who it was you reminded me of.
It’s my mother! You’re not like her in the face, but when your eyes look
at me it seems to me as if it was she looking at me. Curious, isn’t it?
I don’t know you from Adam, and you’ve hardly spoken a word since you
came; and yet I seem as if I’d known you all my life.” Peter moved a
little nearer him. “I was awfully afraid of you when you first came;
even when I first saw you;--you aren’t dressed as most of us dress,
you know. But the minute the fire shone on your face I said, ‘It’s all
right.’ Curious, isn’t it?” said Peter. “I don’t know you from Adam, but
if you were to take up my gun and point it at me, I wouldn’t move! I’d
lie down here and go to sleep with my head at your feet; curious, isn’t
it, when I don’t know you from Adam? My name’s Peter Halket. What’s
yours?”
But the stranger was arranging the logs on the fire. The flames shot up
bright and high, and almost hid him from Peter Halket’s view.
“By gad! how they burn when you arrange them!” said Peter.
They sat quiet in the blaze for a while.
Then Peter said, “Did you see any niggers about yesterday? I haven’t
come across any in this part.”
“There is,” said the stranger, raising himself, “an old woman in a cave
over yonder, and there is one man in the bush, ten miles from this spot.
He has lived there six weeks, since you destroyed the kraal, living on
roots or herbs. He was wounded in the thigh, and left for dead. He is
waiting till you have all left this part of the country that he may set
out to follow his own people. His leg is not yet so strong that he may
walk fast.”
“Did you speak to him?” said Peter.
“I took him down to the water where a large pool was. The bank was too
high for the man to descend alone.”
“It’s a lucky thing for you our fellows didn’t catch you,” said Peter.
“Our captain’s a regular little martinet. He’d shoot you as soon as look
at you, if he saw you fooling round with a wounded nigger. It’s lucky
you kept out of his way.”
“The young ravens have meat given to them,” said the stranger, lifting
himself up; “and the lions go down to the streams to drink.”
“Ah--yes--” said Peter; “but that’s because we can’t help it!”
They were silent again for a little while. Then Peter, seeing that the
stranger showed no inclination to speak, said, “Did you hear of the
spree they had up Bulawayo way, hanging those three niggers for spies? I
wasn’t there myself, but a fellow who was told me they made the niggers
jump down from the tree and hang themselves; one fellow wouldn’t bally
jump, till they gave him a charge of buckshot in the back: and then he
caught hold of a branch with his hands and they had to shoot ‘em loose.
He didn’t like hanging. I don’t know if it’s true, of course; I wasn’t
there myself, but a fellow who was told me. Another fellow who was at
Bulawayo, but who wasn’t there when they were hung, said they fired at
them just after they jumped, to kill ‘em. I--”
“I was there,” said the stranger.
“Oh, you were?” said Peter. “I saw a photograph of the niggers hanging,
and our fellows standing round smoking; but I didn’t see you in it. I
suppose you’d just gone away?”
“I was beside the men when they were hung,” said the stranger.
“Oh, you were, were you?” said Peter. “I don’t much care about seeing
that sort of thing myself. Some fellows think it’s the best fun out to
see the niggers kick; but I can’t stand it: it turns my stomach. It’s
not liver-heartedness,” said Peter, quickly, anxious to remove any
adverse impression as to his courage which the stranger might form; “if
it’s shooting or fighting, I’m there. I’ve potted as many niggers as any
man in our troop, I bet. It’s floggings and hangings I’m off. It’s the
way one’s brought up, you know. My mother never even would kill our
ducks; she let them die of old age, and we had the feathers and the
eggs: and she was always drumming into me;--don’t hit a fellow smaller
than yourself; don’t hit a fellow weaker than yourself; don’t hit a
fellow unless he can hit you back as good again. When you’ve always had
that sort of thing drummed into you, you can’t get rid of it, somehow.
Now there was that other nigger they shot. They say he sat as still as
if he was cut out of stone, with his arms round his legs; and some of
the fellows gave him blows about the head and face before they took him
off to shoot him. Now, that’s the sort of thing I can’t do. It makes me
sick here, somehow.” Peter put his hand rather low down over the pit of
his stomach. “I’ll shoot as many as you like if they’ll run, but they
mustn’t be tied up.”
“I was there when that man was shot,” said the stranger.
“Why, you seem to have been everywhere,” said Peter. “Have you seen
Cecil Rhodes?”
“Yes, I have seen him,” said the stranger.
“Now he’s death on niggers,” said Peter Halket, warming his hands by the
fire; “they say when he was Prime Minister down in the Colony he tried
to pass a law that would give their masters and mistresses the right to
have their servants flogged whenever they did anything they didn’t like;
but the other Englishmen wouldn’t let him pass it. But here he can do
what he likes. That’s the reason some fellows don’t want him to be
sent away. They say, ‘If we get the British Government here, they’ll be
giving the niggers land to live on; and let them have the vote, and get
civilised and educated, and all that sort of thing; but Cecil Rhodes,
he’ll keep their noses to the grindstone.’ ‘I prefer land to niggers,’
he says. They say he’s going to parcel them out, and make them work on
our lands whether they like it or not--just as good as having slaves,
you know: and you haven’t the bother of looking after them when they’re
old. Now, there I’m with Rhodes; I think it’s an awfully good move. We
don’t come out here to work; it’s all very well in England; but we’ve
come here to make money, and how are we to make it, unless you get
niggers to work for you, or start a syndicate? He’s death on niggers,
is Rhodes!” said Peter, meditating; “they say if we had the British
Government here and you were thrashing a nigger and something happened,
there’d be an investigation, and all that sort of thing. But, with
Cecil, it’s all right, you can do what you like with the niggers,
provided you don’t get HIM into trouble.”
The stranger watched the clear flame as it burnt up high in the still
night air; then suddenly he started.
“What is it?” said Peter; “do you hear anything?”
“I hear far off,” said the stranger, “the sound of weeping, and the
sound of blows. And I hear the voices of men and women calling to me.”
Peter listened intently. “I don’t hear anything!” he said. “It must be
in your head. I sometimes get a noise in mine.” He listened intently.
“No, there’s nothing. It’s all so deadly still.”
They sat silent for a while.
“Peter Simon Halket,” said the stranger suddenly--Peter started; he had
not told him his second name--“if it should come to pass that you should
obtain those lands you have desired, and you should obtain black men to
labour on them and make to yourself great wealth; or should you create
that company”--Peter started--“and fools should buy from you, so that
you became the richest man in the land; and if you should take to
yourself wide lands, and raise to yourself great palaces, so that
princes and great men of earth crept up to you and laid their hands
against yours, so that you might slip gold into them--what would it
profit you?”
“Profit!” Peter Halket stared: “Why, it would profit everything.
What makes Beit and Rhodes and Barnato so great? If you’ve got eight
millions--”
“Peter Simon Halket, which of those souls you have seen on earth is to
you greatest?” said the stranger, “Which soul is to you fairest?”
“Ah,” said Peter, “but we weren’t talking of souls at all; we were
talking of money. Of course if it comes to souls, my mother’s the best
person I’ve ever seen. But what does it help her? She’s got to stand
washing clothes for those stuck-up nincompoops of fine ladies! Wait till
I’ve got money! It’ll be somebody else then, who--”
“Peter Halket,” said the stranger, “who is the greatest; he who serves
or he who is served?” Peter looked at the stranger: then it flashed on
him that he was mad.
“Oh,” he said, “if it comes to that, what’s anything! You might as well
say, sitting there in your old linen shirt, that you were as great as
Rhodes or Beit or Barnato, or a king. Of course a man’s just the same
whatever he’s got on or whatever he has; but he isn’t the same to other
people.”
“There have kings been born in stables,” said the stranger.
Then Peter saw that he was joking, and laughed. “It must have been a
long time ago; they don’t get born there now,” he said. “Why, if God
Almighty came to this country, and hadn’t half-a-million in shares, they
wouldn’t think much of Him.”
Peter built up his fire. Suddenly he felt the stranger’s eyes were fixed
on him.
“Who gave you your land?” the stranger asked.
“Mine! Why, the Chartered Company,” said Peter.
The stranger looked back into the fire. “And who gave it to them?” he
asked softly.
“Why, England, of course. She gave them the land to far beyond the
Zambezi to do what they liked with, and make as much money out of as
they could, and she’d back ‘em.”
“Who gave the land to the men and women of England?” asked the stranger
softly.
“Why, the devil! They said it was theirs, and of course it was,” said
Peter.
“And the people of the land: did England give you the people also?”
Peter looked a little doubtfully at the stranger. “Yes, of course, she
gave us the people; what use would the land have been to us otherwise?”
“And who gave her the people, the living flesh and blood, that she might
give them away, into the hands of others?” asked the stranger, raising
himself.
Peter looked at him and was half afeared. “Well, what could she do with
a lot of miserable niggers, if she didn’t give them to us? A lot of
good-for-nothing rebels they are, too,” said Peter.
“What is a rebel?” asked the stranger.
“My Gawd!” said Peter, “you must have lived out of the world if you
don’t know what a rebel is! A rebel is a man who fights against his king
and his country. These bloody niggers here are rebels because they are
fighting against us. They don’t want the Chartered Company to have them.
But they’ll have to. We’ll teach them a lesson,” said Peter Halket, the
pugilistic spirit rising, firmly reseating himself on the South African
earth, which two years before he had never heard of, and eighteen months
before he had never seen, as if it had been his mother earth, and the
land in which he first saw light.
The stranger watched the fire; then he said musingly, “I have seen a
land far from here. In that land are men of two kinds who live side by
side. Well nigh a thousand years ago one conquered the other; they have
lived together since. Today the one people seeks to drive forth the
other who conquered them. Are these men rebels, too?”
“Well,” said Peter, pleased at being deferred to, “that all depends who
they are, you know!”
“They call the one nation Turks, and the other Armenians,” said the
stranger.
“Oh, the Armenians aren’t rebels,” said Peter; “they are on our
side! The papers are all full of it,” said Peter, pleased to show his
knowledge. “Those bloody Turks! What right had they to conquer the
Armenians? Who gave them their land? I’d like to have a shot at them
myself!”
“WHY are Armenians not rebels?” asked the stranger, gently.
“Oh, you do ask such curious questions,” said Peter. “If they don’t
like the Turks, why should they have ‘em? If the French came now and
conquered us, and we tried to drive them out first chance we had; you
wouldn’t call us rebels! Why shouldn’t they try to turn those bloody
Turks out? Besides,” said Peter, bending over and talking in the manner
of one who imparts secret and important information; “you see, if
we don’t help the Armenians the Russians would; and we,” said Peter,
looking exceedingly knowing, “we’ve got to prevent that: they’d get
the land; and it’s on the road to India. And we don’t mean them to. I
suppose you don’t know much about politics in Palestine?” said Peter,
looking kindly and patronisingly at the stranger.
“If these men,” said the stranger, “would rather be free, or be under
the British Government, than under the Chartered Company, why, when they
resist the Chartered Company, are they more rebels than the Armenians
when they resist the Turk? Is the Chartered Company God, that every knee
should bow before it, and before it every head be bent? Would you, the
white men of England, submit to its rule for one day?”
“Ah,” said Peter, “no, of course we shouldn’t, but we are white men, and
so are the Armenians--almost--” Then he glanced at the stranger’s dark
face, and added quickly, “At least, it’s not the colour that matters,
you know. I rather like a dark face, my mother’s eyes are brown--but the
Armenians, you know, they’ve got long hair like us.”
“Oh, it is the hair, then, that matters,” said the stranger softly.
“Oh, well,” said Peter, “it’s not altogether, of course. But it’s quite
a different thing, the Armenians wanting to get rid of the Turks,
and these bloody niggers wanting to get rid of the Chartered Company.
Besides, the Armenians are Christians, like us!”
“Are YOU Christians?” A strange storm broke across the stranger’s
features; he rose to his feet.
“Why, of course, we are!” said Peter. “We’re all Christians, we English.
Perhaps you don’t like Christians, though? Some Jews don’t, I know,”
said Peter, looking up soothingly at him.
“I neither love nor hate any man for that which he is called,” said the
stranger; “the name boots nothing.”
The stranger sat down again beside the fire, and folded his hands.
“Is the Chartered Company Christian also?” he asked.
“Yes, oh yes,” said Peter.
“What is a Christian?” asked the stranger.
“Well, now, you really do ask such curious questions. A Christian is a
man who believes in Heaven and Hell, and God and the Bible, and in Jesus
Christ, that he’ll save him from going to Hell, and if he believes he’ll
be saved, he will be saved.”
“But here, in this world, what is a Christian?”
“Why,” said Peter, “I’m a Christian--we’re all Christians.”
The stranger looked into the fire; and Peter thought he would change the
subject. “It’s curious how like my mother you are; I mean, your ways.
She was always saying to me, ‘Don’t be too anxious to make money, Peter.
Too much wealth is as bad as too much poverty.’ You’re very like her.”
After a while Peter said, bending over a little towards the stranger,
“If you don’t want to make money, what did you come to this land for? No
one comes here for anything else. Are you in with the Portuguese?”
“I am not more with one people than with another,” said the stranger.
“The Frenchman is not more to me than the Englishman, the Englishman
than the Kaffir, the Kaffir than the Chinaman. I have heard,” said the
stranger, “the black infant cry as it crept on its mother’s body and
sought for her breast as she lay dead in the roadway. I have heard also
the rich man’s child wail in the palace. I hear all cries.”
Peter looked intently at him. “Why, who are you?” he said; then, bending
nearer to the stranger and looking up, he added, “What is it that you
are doing here?”
“I belong,” said the stranger, “to the strongest company on earth.”
“Oh,” said Peter, sitting up, the look of wonder passing from his face.
“So that’s it, is it? Is it diamonds, or gold, or lands?”
“We are the most vast of all companies on the earth,” said the stranger;
“and we are always growing. We have among us men of every race and from
every land; the Esquimo, the Chinaman, the Turk, and the Englishman, we
have of them all. We have men of every religion, Buddhists, Mahomedans,
Confucians, Freethinkers, Atheists, Christians, Jews. It matters to us
nothing by what name the man is named, so he be one of us.”
And Peter said, “It must be hard for you all to understand one another,
if you are of so many different kinds?”
The stranger answered, “There is a sign by which we all know one
another, and by which all the world may know us.” (By this shall all men
know that ye are My disciples, if ye have love one to another.)
And Peter said, “What is that sign?”
But the stranger was silent.
“Oh, a kind of freemasonry!” said Peter, leaning on his elbow towards
the stranger, and looking up at him from under his pointed cap. “Are
there any more of you here in this country?”