Produced by Charles Klingman
VROUW GROBELAAR
AND HER LEADING CASES
SEVENTEEN SHORT STORIES
BY
PERCEVAL GIBBON
AUTHOR OF SOULS IN BONDAGE
NEW YORK
McCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO.
MCMVI
Copyright, 1906, by
McCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO.
Published, January, 1906
TO MY WIFE
CONTENTS
UNTO THE THIRD GENERATION
THE DREAM-FACE
THE AVENGER OF BLOOD
THE HANDS OF THE PITIFUL WOMAN
PIET NAUDE'S TREK
LIKE UNTO LIKE
COUNTING THE COLORS
THE KING OF THE BABOONS
MORDER DRIFT
A GOOD END
VASCO'S SWEETHEART
THE PERUVIAN
TAGALASH
THE HOME KRAAL
THE SACRIFICE
THE COWARD
HER OWN STORY
UNTO THE THIRD GENERATION
The Vrouw Grobelaar, you must know, is a lady of excellent
standing, as much by reason of family connections (for she
was a Viljoen of the older stock herself, and buried in her
time three husbands of estimable parentage) as of her
wealth. Her farms extended from the Ringkop on the one side
to the Holgaatspruit on the other, which is more than a
day's ride; and her stock appears to be of that ideal
species which does not take rinderpest. Her Kafirs were
born on the place, and will surely die there, for though
the old lady is firmly convinced that she rules them with a
rod of iron, the truth is she spoils them atrociously; and
were it not that there is an excellent headman to her
kraals, the niggers would soon grow pot-bellied in
idleness.
The Vrouw Grobelaar is a lady who commands respect. Her
face is a portentous mask of solemnity, and her figure is
spacious beyond the average of Dutch ladies, so that
certain chairs are tacitly conceded her as a monopoly. The
good Vrouw does not read or write, and having never found a
need in herself for these arts, is the least thing
impatient of those who practice them. The Psalms, however,
she appears to know by heart; also other portions of the
Bible; and is capable of spitting Scripture at you on the
smallest provocation. Indeed she bubbles with morality, and
a mention of "the accursed thing" (which would appear to be
a genus and not a species, so many articles of human
commerce does it embrace) will set her effervescing with
mingled blame and exhortation. But if punishment should
come in question, as when a Kafir waylaid and slew a
chicken of hers, she displays so prolific an invention in
excuses, so generous a partiality for mercy, that not the
most irate induna that ever laid down a law of his own
could find a pretext for using the stick.
She lives in her homestead with some half-dozen of nieces,
a nephew or two, and a litter of grandchildren, who know
the old lady to the core, cozen and blarney her as they
please, and love her with a perfect unanimity. I think she
sometimes blames herself for her tyrannical usage of these
innocents, who nevertheless thrive remarkably on it. You
can hardly get on your horse at the door without maiming an
infant, and you can't throw a stone in any direction
without killing a marriageable damsel. They pervade the old
place like an atmosphere; the kraals ring with their
voices, and the Kafirs spend lives of mingled misery and
delight at their irresponsible hands.
I do not think I need particularize in the matter of these
youngsters, save as regards Katje. Katje refuses to be
ignored, and she was no more to be overlooked than a tin-
tack in the sole of your foot. She was the only child of
Vrouw Grobelaar's youngest brother, Barend Viljoen, who
died while lion-hunting in the Fever Country. At the time I
am thinking of Katje might have been eighteen. She was like
a poppy among the stubble, so delicate in her bodily
fabric, and yet so opulent in shape and coloring. She was
the nicest child that ever gave a kiss for the asking (you
could kiss her as soon as look at her), but she was also
the very devil to deal with if she saw fit to take a
distaste of you. I saw her once smack a fathom of able-
bodied youth on both sides of the head with a lusty vigor
that constrained the sufferer to howl. And I have seen her
come to meet a man--well, me, with the readiest lips and the
friendliest hand in the world. Oh, Katje was like a blotch
of color in one's life; something vivid, to throw the days
into relief.
A stranger to the household might have put down Katje's
behavior towards the Vrouw Grobelaar as damnable, no less;
and in the early days of my acquaintance with the family I
was somewhat tempted to this opinion myself. For she not
only flouted the old lady to her face, but would upon
occasion disregard her utterly, and do it all with what I
can only call a swagger that seemed to demand a local
application of drastic measures. But Katje knew her victim,
if such a word can be applied to the Vrouw Grobelaar, and
never prodded her save on her armor. For instance, to say
the Kafirs were overdriven and starved was nothing if not
flattery--to say they were spoiled and coddled would have
been mere brutality.
With it all, the Vrouw Grobelaar went her placid way, like
an elephant over egg-shells. Her household did her one
service, at least, in return for their maintenance, and
that was to provide the old lady with an audience. It was
in no sense an unwilling service, for her imagination ran
to the gruesome, and she never planted a precept but she
drove it home with a case in point. As a result night was
often shattered by a yell from some sleeper whose dreams
had trespassed on devilish domains. The Vrouw Grobelaar
believed most entirely in Kafir magic, in witchcraft and
second sight, in ghosts and infernal possession, in
destiny, and in a very personal arch-fiend who presided
over a material hell when not abroad in the world on the
war-path. Besides, she had stores of tales from the lives
of neighbors and acquaintances: often horrible enough, for
the Boers are a lonely folk and God's finger writes large
in their lives.
I almost think I can see it now--the low Dutch kitchen with
its plank ceiling, the old lady in her chair, with an
illustrative forefinger uplifted to punctuate the periods
of her tale, the embers, white and red, glowing on the
hearth, and the intent shadow-pitted faces of the hearers,
agape for horrors.
There was a tale I heard her tell to Katje, when that
damsel had seen fit to observe, apropos of disobedience in
general, that her grandfather's character had nothing to do
with hers. The tale was in plaintive Dutch, the language
that makes or breaks a story-teller, for you must hang your
point on the gutturals or you miss it altogether.
"Look at my husband's uncle," said the old lady. "A sinful
man, forever swearing and cursing, and drinking. His farm
was the worst in the district; the very Kafirs were ashamed
of it when they went to visit the kraals. But Voss (that
was the name of my husband's uncle) cared nothing so long
as there was a horse to ride into the dorp on and some
money to buy whiskey with. And he drank so much and carried
on so wickedly that his wife died and his girls married
poor men and never went to stay with their father. So at
last he lived in the house, with only his son to help him
from being all alone.
"This son was Barend Voss, a great hulking fellow, with the
strength of a trek-ox, and never a word of good or bad to
throw away on any one. But his face was the face of a
violent man. He had blue eyes with no pleasantness about
them, but a sort of glitter, as though there were live
coals in his brain. He did not drink like his father; and
these two would sit together in the evenings, the one
bleared and stupid with liquor, and the other watching him
in silence across the table.
"They spoke seldom to one another; and it would often
happen that the father would speak to the son and get not a
word of answer--only that lowering ugly stare that had grown
to be a way with the boy.
"I think those two men must have grown to hate each other
in the evenings as they sat together; the younger one
despising and loathing his father, and the father hating
his son for so doing. I have often wondered how they never
came to blows--before they did, that is.
"One morning old Voss rode off to the dorp, and Barend
watched him from the door till he went out of sight in the
kloof. All the day he was away, and when he came back again
it was late in the night. Barend was sitting in his usual
place at the table scowling over his folded arms.
"Old Voss had not ridden off his liquor; and he staggered
into the house singing a dirty English song. He had a
bottle in his hands, and banged it down on the table in
front of his son.
"'Now, old sheep's head,' he shouted, 'have a drink and
drop those airs of yours.'
"Barend sat where he was, and said not a word--just watched
the other.
"'Come on,' shouted old Voss; 'I'm not going to drink
alone. If you won't take it pleasantly I'll make you take
it, and be damned to you!'
"Barend sat still, scowling always. I dare say a sober man
would have seen something in his eyes and let be. But old
Voss was blind to his danger, and shouted on.
"The younger man kept his horrid silence, and never moved,
till the father was goaded to a drunken rage.
"'If you won't drink,' he screamed, 'take that,' and he
flung a full cupful of the spirit right in the young man's
face.
"Then everything was in the fire. The two men fought in the
room like beasts, oversetting table and lamp, and stamping
into the fire on the hearth. Barend was mad with a passion
of long nursing, and hewed with his great fists till the
old man fell heavily to the ground, and lay moaning.
"Barend stood over him, glowering. 'Swine!' he said to his
father; 'swine and brute! get you out of this house to the
veld. You are no father of mine.'
"But the old man was much hurt, and lay where he had
fallen, groaning as though he had not heard.
"'I will have you out of this,' said the son. 'If you are
come to die, die on the road. I had wished you dead for
years.'
"So he wound his hand, with the knuckles all over blood, in
the old man's white hair, and threw open the door with his
other hand.
"'Out with you!' he shouted, and dragged him down the step
and into the yard. Yes, he dragged him across the yard to
the gate; and when he unfastened the gate the old man
opened his eyes and spoke.
"'Leave me here,' he said, speaking slowly and painfully.
'Leave me here, my son. Thus far I dragged my father.'"
The Vrouw Grobelaar, to point a weighty moral, turned her
face upon Katje. But that young lady was sleeping soundly
with her mouth open.
THE DREAM-FACE
"I wish," said Katje, looking up from her book--"I wish a
man would come and make me marry him."
The Vrouw Grobelaar wobbled where she sat with
stupefaction.
"Yes," continued Katje, musingly casting her eyes to the
rafters, "I wish a man would just take me by the hand--so--
and not listen to anything I said, nor let me go however I
should struggle, and carry me off on the peak of his saddle
and marry me. I think I would be willing to die for a man
who could do that."
The Vrouw Grobelaar found her voice at last. "Katje," she
said with deep-toned emphasis, "you are talking wickedness,
just wickedness. Do you think I would let a man--any man, or
perhaps an Englishman--carry you off like a strayed ewe?"
"The sort of man I'm thinking of," replied the maiden,
"wouldn't ask you for permission. He'd simply pick me up,
and away he'd go."
At times, and in certain matters, Vrouw Grobelaar would
display a ready acumen.
"Tell me, Katje," she said now, "who is this man?"
Then Katje dropped her book and, sitting upright with an
unimpeachable surprise, stared at the old lady.
"I'm not thinking of any man," she remarked calmly. "I was
just wishing there was a man who would have the pluck to do
it."
The Vrouw Grobelaar shook her head. "Good Burghers don't
carry girls away," she said. "They come and drink coffee,
and sit with them, and talk about the sheep."
"And behave as if they had never worn boots before, and
didn't know what to do with their hands," added the maiden.
"Aunt, am I a girl to marry a man who upsets three cups of
coffee in half an hour and borrows a handkerchief to wipe
his knees?"
Now there could be no shadow of doubt that this was an
open-breasted cut at young Fanie van Tromp, whose affection
for Katje was a matter of talk on the farms, and whose
overtures that young lady had consistently sterilized with
ridicule.
The Vrouw Grobelaar was void of delicacy. "Fanie is a good
lad," she said, "and when his father dies he will have a
very large property."
"It'll console him for not adding me to his live stock,"
retorted Katje.
"He is handsome, too," continued the old lady. "His beard
is as black as--"
"A carrion-crow," added Katje promptly.
"Quite," agreed the Vrouw Grobelaar, with a perfect
unconsciousness of the unsavoriness of the suggestion.
"And he walks like a duck with sore feet," went on Katje.
"He is as graceful as a trek-ox, and his conversational
talents are those of a donkey in long grass."
"All that is a young girl's nonsense," observed the old
lady. "I was like that once myself. But when one grows a
little older and fatter, and there is less about one to
take a man's eye,--a fickle thing, Katje, a fickle thing,--
one looks for more in a husband than a light foot and a
smart figure."
Katje was a trifle abashed, for all the daughters of her
house, were they never so slender, grew tubby in their
twenties.
"Besides," continued the worthy Vrouw, "your talk is chaff
from a mill. It must come out to leave the meal clean.
Perhaps, after all, Fanie is the man to carry you off. I
think you would not take so much trouble to worry him if
you thought nothing of him."
The Vrouw Grobelaar had never heard of Beatrice and her
Benedick, but she had a notion of the principle.
"I hate him," cried Katje with singular violence.
"I think not," replied the old lady. "Sometimes the thing
we want is at our elbows, and we cannot grasp it because we
reach too far. Did I ever tell you how Stoffel Struben
nearly went mad for love of his wife?"
"No," said Katje, unwillingly interested. "He was something
of a fool to begin with," commenced the Vrouw Grobelaar.
"He chose his wife for a certain quality of gentleness she
had, and though I will not deny she made him a good wife
and a patient, still gentleness will not boil a pot. He was
a fine fellow to look at; big and upstanding, with plenty
of blood in him, and a grand mat of black hair on top. He
moved like a buck; so ready on his feet and so lively in
all his movements. He might have carried you off, Katje,
and done you no good in the end.
"He was happy with his pretty wife for a while, and might
have been happy all his life and died blessedly had he but
been able to keep from conjuring up faces in his mind and
falling in love with them. Greta, his wife, had hair like
golden wheat, so smooth and rippled with light; and no
sooner had he stroked his fill of it than he conceived nut-
brown to be the most lovely color of woman's hair. Her eyes
were blue, and for half a year he loved them; then hazel
seemed to him a better sort. I said he was a fool, didn't
I?
"So his marriage to Greta became a chain instead of a
union, while the poor lass fretted her heart out over his
dark looks and short answers. He was shallow, Katje,
shallow; he had the mere capacity for love, but it was a
short way to the bottom of it. You will see by and by that
the men who deserve least always want most. Stoffel had no
right to a woman at all; when he had one, and she a good
girl, he let his eyes rove for others.
"So he went about his farm with his mind straying and his
heart abroad. If you spoke to him, he paused awhile, and
then looked at you with a start as though freshly waked. He
saw nothing as he went, neither his wife with the questions
in her eyes that she shamed to say with her lips, nor the
child that crowed at him from her arms. He was deaf and
blind to the healthy world, to all save the silly dreams
his poisoned soul fed on.
"Well, wicked or not, it is at least unsafe not to look
where one is going. This was a thing Stoffel never did:
since he overlooked his wife, it was not to be expected he
would see a strand of fencing-wire on the ground. So he
rode on to it, and down came his horse. Down came Stoffel
too, and there was a stone handy on the place where his
head lit to let some of the moonshine out of him. He saw a
heavenful of stars for a moment, and then saw nothing for a
long time. Save--one strange thing!
"When life came back to him he was in his bed very sore and
empty, and very mightily surprised to see himself alive,
after all. He was exceedingly weak and somewhat misty as to
how it all had happened. But one thing he seemed to
remember--more than seemed, so strong, so plain, so deep was
his memory of it. He thought he recalled pain and
blindness, and a sudden light, in which he saw a face close
to his, a girl's face, pitiful, tender, loving, and charged
with more than all the sweetness of beauty that his sick
heart could long for. The thing was like one of those
dreams from which one wakes sad and thoughtful, as when one
has overstepped the boundary mark of life and cast an eye
on heaven.
"It was no face that he knew, and he turned on his pillow
to think of it. He could not believe it was a dream. 'It
was a soul,' he said to himself. 'I knew, I was sure, that
somewhere there was such a face, but it only came to my
eyes when I was on the borderland of death. If ever God
gave a thing to a mortal man, he should have given me that
woman.'
"So with such blasphemous thoughts he idled through the
days of his sickness, very quiet, very weak, and kind to
his wife beyond the ordinary. Of course she, poor woman,
knew nothing of the silly tale, and when her husband gave
her those little caresses one would not withhold from an
affectionate dog, she blessed God that he was come to
himself again. You see, Katje dear, that as a man demands
more than he can claim with right, a woman must often make
shift with less. It is well to learn this early.
"Stoffel grew well in time, and got about again. But the
stone had made less of a dent in his skull than the face in
his heart, and he was changed altogether. He served a false
god, but served it faithfully. He was very gentle and
patient with every one, almost like a saint, and he took
infinite pains with the work of his farm. He would hurt no
living thing--not even so much as lash a team of lazy oxen.
You would have thought Kafirs would have done as they
pleased with him, but they obeyed his least word, and hung
on his eyes for orders as though they worshipped him.
Kafirs and dogs will sometimes see farther than a
Christian.
"Meanwhile Greta came to die. It was a chill, perhaps, with
a trifle of fever on top of that, and it carried her off
like a candle-flame when it is blown out. She died well--
very well indeed. None of your whimpering and moaning and
slinking out of the back-door of life when nobody is
looking; nor that unconscious death that shuts out a chance
of a few last words. No; Greta saw with her eyes and spoke
with her mouth to the last, then folded her hands and died
as handsomely as one would wish to see. She prayed a
trifle, as she should; forgave her brother's wife for
speaking ill of her, and hoped her tongue would not lure
her to destruction. I have heard her brother's wife never
forgave her for it.
"On the last day she sent everybody out of the room save
only Stoffel, and him she held by the hand as he sat beside
the bed. She knew she was drawing to her end (the dying
always know it) and feared nothing. But there was a matter
she wanted to know.
"'Stoffel,' she said when they were alone, won't you tell
me now who that woman is?'
"'What woman?' said Stoffel amazed, for of his dream in his
sickness he had spoken to no living soul.
"She stroked his hand and shook her head at him. Ah,
Stoffel,' she said, 'it is long since I first made place
for that woman, and if I grudged her you, I never grudged
you her. I was content with what you gave me, Stoffel; I
thought you right, whatever you did, and I go to God still
thinking so. All our life, Stoffel, she prevailed against
me, and I submitted; but now, at this last moment, I want
to have the better of it. Tell me, who was it?'
"And Stoffel, looking on the floor, answered, 'I swear to
you there was no woman.'
"She replied, 'And ere the cock crows thou shall deny me
thrice.' She turned her head and looked at him with a
pitiful drawn smile that would have dragged tears from a
demon. 'Was she dark, Stoffel? I am fair, you know; but my
hair--look at it, Stoffel,--my hair is golden. Did you never
notice it before? She was tall, I suppose? Well, I am
something short, but, Stoffel, I am slender, too. Will you
not so much as tell me her name, Stoffel? It is not as if I
blamed you.'
"A truth, hardly won, is always set on a pile of lies. 'How
do you know there was a woman?' asked Stoffel.
"'How?' she repeated. 'How I know! Stoffel, you never had a
thought I did not know; never a hope but I hoped it for
you, nor a fear but I thought how to safeguard you. I never
lived but in you, Stoffel.
"'Let us speak nothing but the truth now,' she went on.
'You and I have always been beyond the need for lies to one
another, and as I wait here for you to tell me, I have one
hand in yours and the other in Christ's. Let me not think
hardly of her as I go.'
"'You would not curse her?' he said quickly. "'Not even
that' she answered, smiling a little. 'And if you will not
tell me, I will die even content with that, since it is
your wish.'
"'Listen,' said Stoffel then. And forthwith, looking
backwards and forwards in shame and sorrow, he told the
tale. He told how he saw a face, which laid hold on his
life ever after, how it governed and compelled him with the
mere memory, and hung in his mind like a deed done. And he
also told how he hoped after death to see that face with
the eyes of his soul, and dwell with it in heaven.
"When he had finished he cast a glance at his wife. She was
lying on her back, holding his hand still, and smiling up
to the ceiling with a pleasant face of contentment.
"'Can you forgive me?' he cried, and would have gone on to
protest and explain, but she pressed his hand and he was
silent.
"'Forgive you!' she said at last. 'Forgive you! No; but I
will bless you for all of it. So it seems I have won after
all, but now I wish I had let be. It was no spirit you saw,
Stoffel. There was a woman there, and while you lay white
and lifeless she held you in her arms, and bent over you.
And just for one moment you opened your eyes and saw her,
while her face was close to yours. Then you died again, and
remained so for a day and a night Was there love in her
eyes, Stoffel?'
"'Love!' cried Stoffel, and fell silent.
"In a minute he spoke again. 'I am helpless,' he said, 'and
you are strong. But, curse and hate me as you will, you
must tell me who this woman was.'
"'A little time since it was I that asked,' she said, 'and
you would not tell me.'
"'I beseech you,' he said.
"'You shall never ask twice,' she answered gently. 'I will
tell you, but not this moment.'
"So for a while they sat together, and the sun began to go
down, and blazed on the window-panes and on the golden hair
of the dying woman. She lay as if in a mist of glory, and
smiled at Stoffel. He, looking at her, could not lack of
being startled by the beauty that had come over her face
and the joy that weighed her eyelids.
"She stirred a little, and sighed. Stoffel cast an arm
round her to hold her up, and his heart bounded woefully
when he felt how light she was. Her head came to his
shoulder, as to a place where it belonged, and their lips
met.
"'Shall I tell you now?' she said in a whisper.
"Stoffel did not answer, so she asked again. 'Will you
know, Stoffel?'
"'No,' he answered. 'I'm cured.'
"'I will tell you, then,' she cried. 'No,' he repeated.
'Let it be.'
"So together they sat for a further while, and the time
grew on for going. She was to die with the sun; she had
said it. And as they sat both could see through the window
the sun floating lower, with an edge in its grave already,
and the rim of the earth black against it. The noises of
the veld and the farm came in to them, and they drew closer
together.
"Neither wept; they were too newly met for that. But
Stoffel felt a dull pain of sorrow overmastering him, and
soon he groaned aloud.
"'My wife, my wife,' he cried.
"She rested wholly on his arm, and shivered a little.
"'Stoffel,' she said in a voice that henceforth was to
whisper forever, 'Stoffel, you love me?'
"'As God sees me,' he answered. "'Listen,' she said, and
fought with the tide that was fast drowning her words.
'That face--you--saw . . . was . . . mine!'
"She smiled as his arm tightened on her, and died so
smiling."
There was silence in the shadowy room as the tale finished,
until it was broken by the Vrouw Grobelaar.
"You see?" she said.
"Yes," replied Katje, very quietly.
THE AVENGER OF BLOOD
The Vrouw Grobelaar entered in haste, closed the door, and
sat down panting.
"If my last husband were alive," she said--"if any of them
were alive, that creature would be shot for looking at an
honest woman with such eyes," and she cast an anxious
glance over her shoulder.
"What is it?" demanded Katje.
"That old Hottentot hag." responded the old lady. "She
looks like a witch, and I am sure she is a witch. I would
make the Kafirs throw her on to the veld, but you can't be
too careful with witches. Why, as I came in just now, she
was squatting by the door like a big toad, and her eyes
made me go cold all through."
Katje made a remark.
"What! You say nonsense!" The old lady pricked herself into
an ominous majesty. "Nonsense, indeed! Katje, beware of
pride. Beware of puffing yourself up. Aren't there witches
in the Bible, and weren't they horrible and wicked? Didn't
King David see the dead corpses come up out of the ground
when the witch crooked her finger, like dogs running to
heel? Well, then!
"Oh, I know," continued the old lady, as Katje tossed a
mutinous head. "They've taught you a lot in that school,
but they didn't teach you belief. Nor manners. You're going
to say there are no witches nowadays."
"I'm not," said Katje.
"Yes, you are," pursued the Vrouw Grobelaar. "I know you.
But you're wrong. You don't know anything. Young girls in
these days are like young pigs, all squeak and fight, but
no bacon. Didn't the brother of my half-brother's wife die
of a witch's devilry?"
"I'm sure I don't know," returned hapless Katje.
"Well, he did. I'll tell you." The old lady settled herself
comfortably and lapsed into history.
"His name was Fanie, and he was a Van der Merwe on his
father's side, but his mother was only a Prinsloo, though
her mother was a Coetzee, for the matter of that. He wasn't
what I should call good--at least, not always; but he was
very big and strong, and made a lot of noise, and folk
liked him. The women used to make black white to prove that
the things he did and said were proper things, although
they'd have screamed all night if their own men-folk had
done the same. They say, you know," said the Vrouw
Grobelaar, quoting a very old and seldom-heard Dutch
proverb, "that when women pray they think of God as a
handsome man.
"What I didn't like about him was his way with the Kafirs.
A Kafir is more useful than a dog after all, and one
shouldn't be always beating and kicking even a dog. And
Fanie could never pass a Kafir without kicking him or
flicking his whip at him. I have seen all the Kafirs run to
their kraals when they saw him riding up the road.
"There was one old Kafir we had,--very old and weak, and no
use at all. He used to sit by the gate all day, and mumble
to himself, and seem to look at things that weren't there.
His head was quite white with age, which is not a common
thing with Kafirs, as you know; and he was so foolish and
helpless that his people used to feed him with a spiked
stick, like a motherless chicken. And in case the fowls
should go and sit on his back while he crouched in the sun,
as I have seen them do, there was a little Kafir picaninny,
as black as a crow, that was sent to play about near him
every day. Dear Lord! I have seen those two sitting there,
looking at each other for an hour on end, without a word,
as though both had been children or both old men. Nobody
minded them: we used to throw sugar to the picaninny, and
watch him fighting with the fowls for it, rolling about on
his little black belly like a new-hatched duckling himself.
"Well, Fanie, ... it was horrible. . . .
"I don't like to think of it to this day. He came over one
day in a great hurry to tell us that August de Villiers,
the father of the Predikant at Dopfontein, was choked with
a peach-stone. He was riding very fast, and as he came near
the house he rode off the road and jumped his horse at the
wall. And as he came over, up rose the little picaninny
right under his horse's hoofs. 'Twas a quick way to die,
and without much pain, no doubt; but a most awful thing to
see. The horse stumbled on to him, and I can remember now
how his knee, the near knee, crushed the little Kafirs
chest in. The little black legs and arms fought for a
moment, and then the horse struggled up, and he was dead.
"Fanie seemed sorry. He couldn't help killing the
picaninny, of course, and perhaps we had grown rather
foolish about him, having watched him and laughed at him so
long. So Fanie got off his horse and came in to tell us the
news.
"When we went out the horse was standing at the door where
Fanie had left it. But the old Kafir was kneeling by the
steps fingering its hoofs, which were all bloody, and as
Fanie came forward he put out his hands and left a little
spot of blood on Fanie's shoes.
"Fanie stood for a moment, and his face went white as paper
over his black beard. He knew, you see. But in a flash he
went red as fire, and lashed the old man across the face
with his whip. The old man did not move at all; but my
brothers held Fanie and called to the Kafirs to come and
fetch the old man away. Oh, but I promise you Fanie was
angry, as men will be when they are obliged to be good by
force.
"Well, that was all that happened that day. Fanie went
away, and we all saw that he galloped the horse as fast as
it could go. But down by the kraals the Kafirs who were
carrying the old man stopped and watched him as he went.
"Well, in a few days most of us forgot the ugly business,
though the little picaninny used to walk through my dreams
for a time. Still, blood-kin are blood-kin, and Kafirs are
Kafirs, and one day Fanie came over to see us again and we
gave him coffee. He told us a story about a rooinek that
bought a sheep, and the man gave him a dog in a sack, and
he paid for it and went away, and we all laughed at it. He
was very funny that day, and said that when he married he
would choose an old woman who would die quickly and leave
him all her farms. So it was late and dark before he up-
saddled to go away.
"Well, he was gone a quarter of an hour when we heard
hoofs, galloping, galloping, hard and furious, coming up
the road. And as we opened the door a horse came over the
wall and Fanie tumbled off it and came rushing in.
"We all screamed. He was white like ashes, and wet with
sweat, and trembling so that he could not stand.
"'Fanie,' cried my sister, 'what is it?' and he groaned and
put his face in his hands.
"By and by he spoke, and kept glancing about him and
turning to look behind him, and would not let one of us
move away.
"'There was something behind me,' he said.
"'Something?' we all asked.
"'Yes,' he said. 'Something . . . dead I It followed me up
here, and I could not get away from it, spur as hard as I
would. I think it is a death-call.'
"Then we were all frightened, but we could not help wanting
to hear more.
"'No,' said Fanie, 'I did not see it, nor hear it even, but
I knew it was there.'
"'It was a sign,' said my mother, a very wise old woman.
'Let us all thank God.'
"So we thanked God on our knees, but I'm sure I don't know
what for.
"Then Fanie told us all he knew, and that was just nothing.
As he came to the kloof he was afraid of something in front
of him. He said he felt like a man in grave-clothes. So he
turned, and then the ... whatever it was . . . seemed to
come after him; so he galloped and galloped as hard as the
horse could lay hoof to the earth, and prayed till his
heart nearly burst. And then, not knowing where he was
going, he jumped the wall and came among us. We were all
silent when he had told us.
"Then Oom Jan spoke. He was very old, and seldom said
anything.
"'You have done murder!' he said.
"'If I talk till my mouth is stopped with dust I shall
never be able to tell how cold I felt about the heart when
I heard that. For the little picaninny came plain before my
eyes, and oh! I was all full of pity for Fanie. I liked him
well enough in those days.
"He stopped with us that night. He would not go away nor be
alone, so he slept with my brothers, and held their hands
and prayed half the night. In the morning they took him
home on one of our horses, for his own was fit to die from
the night's work.
"That was the last I ever saw of Fanie. It was as though he
went from us to God. He kissed me on both cheeks when he
went away; he kissed us all, but me first of all, and held
both my hands. I think he must have liked me too,--don't you
think so, Katje?" "'Yes," said Katje softly.
"He went down the road between my brothers with his head
bent like an old man's, and I watched him out of sight, and
I was very, very sorry for him. I don't think I cried, but
I may have. He was a fine tall man.
"One night my brothers came in just as I was going to bed,
and one stood in the door while the other whispered to my
mother. She looked up and saw me standing there.
"'Go to bed,' she said.
"'What is it?' I asked.
"'Go to bed,' said my brother.
"'No.' I said. 'Tell me, is it Fanie?'
"My brother looked at me and threw up his hand like a man
who can do no more. 'Yes,' he said.
"Then I knew, as though he had shouted it out, that Fanie
was dead. I cannot say how, but I knew it.
"'He is dead,' I said. 'Bring him in here.'
"So they went out and carried Fanie in with his clothes all
draggled and his beard full of mud. They laid him on the
table, and I saw his face. . . . Dear God! . . There was
terror on that face, carven and set in dead flesh, that set
my blood screaming in my body. Sometimes even now I wake in
the night all shrinking with fear of the very memory of it.
"But there is one thing more. We went about to put
everything in order and lay the poor corpse in decency, and
when we started to pull off his veldschoen, as I hope to
die in my bed, there was a little drop of blood still wet
on the toe.
"I think God's right hand was on my head that night that I
did not go mad.
"I heard the tale next morning. My brothers, coming home,
found him ... it . . . in a spruit, already quite dead.
There was no horse by, but his spoor led back a mile to
where the horse lay dead and stiff. When it fell he must
have run on, ... screaming, perhaps, . . . till he fell in
the spruit. I would like to think peace came to him at the
last; but there was no peace in the dead face."
The Vrouw Grobelaar dropped her face on to her hands, and
Katje came and passed an arm of sympathy and protection
around her.
THE HANDS OF THE PITIFUL WOMAN
The Vrouw Grobelaar had no opinion of Kafirs, and was
forever ready to justify herself in this particular.
"Kafirs,' she said, 'are not men, whatever the German
missionaries may say. I do not deny we have a duty to them,
as to the beasts of the field; but as for being men, well,
a baboon is as much a man as a Kafir is.
"Kafirs are made to work, and ought to work. Katje, what
are you laughing about? Did not the dear God make
everything for a purpose, and what is the use of a Kafir if
he is not made to work? Work for themselves? Katje, you are
learning nothing but rubbish at that school, and I will not
have you say such things. How could the Burghers work the
farms if they had not the Kafirs? Well, be silent, then.
"Oh, I know the Kafirs. I have seen hundreds of them--yes,
and for the matter of that, thousands. Just beasts, they
are,--nothing--else. Did you hear how the Vrouw Coetzee came
to die? Well, I will tell you, and you will see that we
must hold the Kafirs with a hand of iron or they will
destroy us.
"It was a time when Piet Coetzee was away making laws in
Pretoria, and the Vrouw Coetzee, who was only married one
year, was alone on the farm with her little baby. There
were plenty of Kafirs to do the work; but, you see, there
was no man to have an eye to them, and take a sjambok to
them when they needed it. So one day the Kafirs came in
from the lands and would not work any more.
"Why wouldn't they work? How should I know? Who can tell
why a Kafir does anything? Perhaps a witch-doctor had come
among them. Perhaps the German missionaries had been
talking foolishness to them. Perhaps it began at a beer-
drink with some boasting by the young men before the girls.
Who can say? But however it was, they came in and sat down
before the house, and just waited there.
"Vrouw Coetzee came out with her baby on her arm and spoke
to them; but not one moved a finger or answered a word.
They sat still where they were and watched her, and others
came from the huts and sat down too, until there were close
on a hundred Kafirs before the house. Vrouw Coetzee watched
them come, and as she stood in the door the two Kafir girls
who worked about the house pushed her aside and went and
sat down too.
"Then Vrouw Coetzee, looking at the dumb black faces and
white eyes, got frightened and went backwards into the
house and closed the door. She put down the baby and drew
the iron bar across the door inside. From there she went to
the door at the back, and to all the windows, and closed
and secured them as far as possible. Then she took down the
old elephant-gun from the wall, and finding Piet's pouch
and the bullets, she loaded it and laid it on the table.
All the time the Kafirs made no sign, and from the keyhole
she saw them still sitting in silence, watching the house.
"When midday came she made some food ready to eat, and then
came a bang at the door.
"'What is it you want?' she cried, without opening.
"'Liquor!' cried one of the Kafirs. 'You have some brandy
in the house. Give it to us, or we will come and take it
and kill you at the same time.'
"'I have no brandy,' she cried, 'and when my husband comes
back I will tell him to shoot you all.'
"The Kafirs laughed, and one of the house-girls called out,
'There is brandy; we have seen it.'
"Then the Kafirs all began to shout together, and banged
the door with their knobkerries. 'Give us the brandy!' they
shouted, and she heard a stone smash through a window
against the shutters.
"The Vrouw Coetzee was a brave woman, and she hated Kafirs;
but, looking at the baby, she thought it best to give them
the brandy.
"'Stand away from the window,' she cried, 'and I will put
the brandy outside; but if one of you comes near me I will
shoot.'
"So she placed the brandy on the sill outside the window.
The Kafirs were standing about in groups, looking very
fierce, but they saw the elephant-gun and did nothing. But
as she barred the shutter again, she heard them rush up and
snatch the bottles.
"Watching through the keyhole of the door, she saw them
troop off to the huts, shouting and capering and waving the
bottles in the air. They came to the door no more that day,
but she heard them howling in the kraal as the brandy began
to inflame them.
"When it got dark she sat down with her face to the door,
her child in her arms. The howling of the Kafirs was wilder
than ever, and shrieks of women mingled with the uproar.
The Vrouw Coetzee trembled there in the dark as she
remembered stories of the Kafir wars, and how the Kafirs
had treated the white women and children they caught on the
farms.
"Late in the night the Kafirs came back and commenced to
hammer on the door again.
"'Give us more brandy,' they shouted.
"'I have no more,' she said. 'I have given you all.'
"'You lie!' they screamed. 'If you do not give us more we
will come and kill you and tear your baby to pieces.'
"Then the Vrouw Coetzee began to tremble, and, putting down
the child, took the big gun in her hands.
"'That is you, Kleinbooi,' she cried out, recognizing the
voice of one of the Kafirs. 'Why do you behave like this?
What will the baas say when he comes back?'
"'We do not care for the baas,' they replied. 'If you do
not give us the brandy we will break in your door.'
"'I have no more,' she said again, and straightway the
Kafirs commenced to hammer at the door.
"The Vrouw Coetzee raised the gun to her shoulder and
pointed it at the door. Her arms were trembling so that she
could not keep it steady; so, going close up to the door,
she rested the muzzle on the iron bar. Then she pulled the
trigger.
"The gun went off with a roar and filled the room with a
stifling smoke. The baby began to cry, but she paid it no
attention till the gun was loaded again. Then, as she
snatched up her child and soothed it, she heard wailing and
screaming from outside, where the heavy bullet had done its
work.
"The Kafirs left her at peace for about an hour, and the
noise of the wounded sank to a sobbing. At last a voice
hailed her again.
"'We will kill you now,' it said. 'You have shot two men,'
and she was assailed with a string of horrid names such as
only a Kafir can think of.
"'Where are you?' she called, terrified.
"'Here,' came the reply, and a little stone fell down the
chimney.
"'I will shoot!' she screamed, taking up the gun; but the
Kafir on the roof answered with only a laugh.
"'It will do no good,' he replied. 'We shall kill you, burn
you in a fire slowly, scald you with boiling water, cut you
in little pieces,' and he went on to threaten the lone
woman with the most fiendish and ghastly outrages, such as
I dare not even give a name to.
"The low devilish voice on the roof went on. 'And your
baby, vile thing! You shall see it writhe in the flames,
and hear it cry to you, and watch the blood spout from its
skin. You shall see the dogs tearing it, while you lie in
anguish, powerless to aid it. Yes, we will kill the child
first, and slowly--slowly! It shall cry a long time before
it shall die at last.'
"Then the Vrouw Coetzee, calling aloud on God, pointed the
gun and fired through the roof. There was a laugh again,
and before the smoke cleared a big Kafir dropped down the
wide chimney and rushed at her.
"Her gun was empty, but the Vrouw Coetzee was the worthy
wife of a good Boer, and she raised the heavy weapon and
struck him down. He rolled, face upward, on the floor, and
as he lay she struck him again. He kicked once or twice
with his legs and clutched with his hands; and then he lay
still and died.
"It was their plan, you see, that she should fire off her
gun and then be taken before she had time to recharge it.
"'Have you got the woman, Martinus?' called a Kafir from
outside.
"'No,' cried the Vrouw Coetzee; Martinus has not got the
woman, for I have killed him. Who comes next?'
"There was a while of silence then, till she heard them
moving about again and talking among themselves. Not daring
to think what they would do next, she stood hearkening,
with the great gun on her arm. At length came a sound that
froze the blood in her body. She heard the sheet-iron on
the roof grate as it was dragged off. Then she dropped the
gun at her feet and knew that her time was come.
"I cannot tell you in so many words what she did in the
next minutes, for my tongue refuses the tale. But the
Kafirs did not get into the house. By this time the news of
their doings was gone abroad, and as the roof was being
taken off the house, some Burghers arrived with guns, and
with them my husband. Of course they shot most of the
Kafirs that they could find, and then, being unable to get
any answer to their shouts, they broke in the door of the
house and entered.
"My husband used to weep as he told of what they found. The
Vrouw Coetzee was sitting in a chair, smiling with her eyes
closed, and her baby was lying in the crutch of her left
arm. Her right hand was on his little soft throat--his face
blue and swollen, and his little arms stretched out with
tight closed fists. He was quite dead, but warm yet, for he
had missed life by but a few minutes.
"No, the Vrouw Coetzee was not dead. She died a year after;
but all that while she went witless, always smiling and
seeming to look for something.
"So you see that, after all, a Kafir is--Katje, what are you
crying about?"
PIET NAUDE'S TREK
On Sunday afternoons the Vrouw Grobelaar's household gave
itself up, unwillingly enough, to religious exercises. The
girls retired to their rooms in company with the works of
certain well-meaning but inexpressibly dreary authors, and
it is to be inferred they read them with profit. The
children sat around the big room with Bibles, their task
being to learn by heart one of the eight-verse
articulations of the 119th Psalm, while the old lady
meditated in her armchair and maintained discipline. Those
were stern times for the young students: to fidget in one's
seat was to court calamity; even to scratch oneself was a
risky experiment. David got little credit as a bard in that
assembly.
But the work once done, the stumbling recitation dared and
achieved, there were compensations, for the Vrouw Grobelaar
was then approachable for a story. To be sure, the Sunday
afternoon stories were known to all the children almost by
heart, but what good tale will not bear repetition? The
history of Piet Naude's Trek was an evergreen favorite, and
bore a weighty moral.
The old lady began this story in the only possible way.
"Once upon a time, long before the Boers came to the
Transvaal, there lived a man named Piet Naude. He was a
tall, strong Burgher, with a long beard that swept down to
his waist, and a moustache like bright gold that drooped
lower than his chin. His eye was so clear that he could see
the legs of a galloping buck a mile away; his hand was so
sure that he never wasted a bullet; and his heart was so
good and true that all the Burghers loved him and followed
him in whatever he did.
"Well, when the English came to the Burghers and wanted
them to pay taxes for their farms that they had won in
battle from the Kafirs, all the men in Piet Naude's country
were very angry and said, 'Let us take our guns and shoot
the English into the sea, so that the land will be clear of
them.' Everybody was willing, and but for Piet Naude there
would have been a great and bloody war, and all the English
would have been killed.
"But Piet Naude said, 'Brothers, have patience. When we
fought the Kafirs we beat them, but many of us were killed
also. If we fight the English, many more will be killed,
and we are not too many now. But I will tell you what we
will do. We will not pay this tax. We will inspan our oxen
and load up our wagons, and we will take our sheep and our
cattle and our horses, and trek to the north until we find
a place where we can live in peace; and thus we shall have
a country of our own and pay no taxes to anybody.'
"As soon as the Burghers heard this they were agreed, and
chose out Piet Naude to lead them to the new country. So
when the English came to collect the tax they found nobody
to pay, but only an empty country, with trampled cornlands
and burned homesteads, and wild Kafirs living in the
kraals.
"But Piet Naude and his Burghers trekked steadily on with
the wagons and the cattle,--sometimes through a fine level
country full of water and game, and sometimes through a
savage wilderness of rocks and dangerous beasts. The sun
scorched them by day and the mists froze them by night;
some died by the way, and some were killed by lions, and
some bitten by snakes. But month after month they held on,
crawling slowly over the desolate face of that great new
country, till at length the ragged weary men cried out and
said they would go no farther.
"'Let us go back to the grass-lands and water,' they said,
'and let us live there, else we shall die, forgotten of
God, in this inhospitable wilderness.' But Piet Naude
wrought with them, saying, 'Let us keep good hearts and
hold on. In time we shall surely come to the best place of
all, where we shall gain cattle and sheep and prosper all
our lives.' And after he had talked with them for a long
time, and shamed them with their weakness, they were
persuaded, and once again they faced the great unknown
country and trekked on.
"But one hot day one of the Burghers who had ridden away to
look for meat came galloping back. 'Over yonder,' he said,
pointing with his hand, 'there is a wide kloof, with a
stream in it. There is grass there as long and thick as the
best pasture of our farms, with trees and wild fruit, and
everything plentiful and beautiful. Without doubt it will
lead us to such a place as we have been seeking.'