the kloof, all the Burghers uplifted with hope, and the
very oxen pulling their best. But Piet Naude said nothing,
for he had a strange doubt in his heart, and he rode on
anxiously. And when they came to the kloof they saw that
all the Burgher had said was even less than true. The veld
underfoot was soft and tender as satin, and the grass was
fresh and green. On each side the tall hills cast back the
sun, so that the beautiful cool shade fell like a blessing
on their scorched faces. There was wild hemp {dagga} for
the Kafirs to smoke; and wild apricots running over the
stones; water splashing, clear and fresh, beside the way;
mimosa-trees to give wood for the fires; and everywhere
they saw the spoor of every kind of buck. The Burghers were
overwhelmed with gladness, and pushed on gaily.
"On the next day the kloof widened out, and they came forth
into a most wonderful plain girt round with steep cliffs,
and all overgrown with grass and trees. At a little
distance they saw cattle grazing wild, and big herds of
buck roaming in the open. Birds started without fear from
under their feet, and in the streams fish swam plain to
see.
"Then Piet Naude said, 'Brothers, let us go away from this
place. I am afraid of all I see. God did not send all this
wealth easy to our hands at no cost of labor. Let us go
away lest we be entrapped into some devilishness.' But the
others laughed him down and would not listen to him, saying
his brain was rotten in his head with the long trek and the
sun.
"So there they stayed and built themselves houses and
kraals, and set about gathering the hay and catching
cattle. But everything fell out so easily and all they
needed came so plentifully that there grew over them a sort
of sloth, and they slept without shame in the hours of
work, and gave no attention to the future.
"Then by degrees it began to be noticed that they were
growing fat. Soon they had bellies like sows, and their
necks and their limbs became so great that they were
obliged to go about without clothes, like the wild Kafirs
and the brutes that perish. And when one of them would lie
down, his fatness so burdened him that without help he
could scarcely rise to his feet. None were spared: even the
godly Piet Naude was as great as an ox; but the difference
was, he felt shame for it all, whereas the others felt
none.
"Many a time he implored them to inspan and leave the
place; but each time they cried him down. And when he said
he would go himself, they reminded him that it was he who
had urged them to trek, and asked him if he would now
desert them. So for a while he stayed.
"But at length he resolved he would no longer be bound, and
he called to know who would go with him. But as he spoke a
storm came up, and the wind screamed and the rain threshed,
and the poor fat creatures waddled off to their houses, and
of all that people only one stayed to go with Piet Naude.
It was a young Burgher whose name was Hendrik Van der
Merwe, a decent lad; and the two set off together.
"But when they came to the beautiful kloof they were amazed
at the work of the storm. The wind had torn great boulders
from the hills and rolled them down; and the rain had
churned the earth into mud, and washed the roots of the
trees loose; so that where everything had once been so fair
and orderly there was now a crazy wilderness of rocks and
thorns and mud.
"But they breasted the obstacles gallantly, those two
alone; and at hazard of their lives they climbed over and
under great rocking crags, cutting their hands and tearing
their feet with the sharp stones and the thorns of the
mimosas. But as they went they saw with delight that their
fatness dwindled from them, and their limbs fell back to
their old shapeliness, while the blubber on their cheeks
retreated from their eyes and left them free as before.
"So after three days of climbing and slipping and
scrambling, the rain and the wind ceased, and they came
forth into the country beyond, tall and slender as they
were before."
This, in reality, is the end of the story, but the children
are wont to ask in chorus what the two heroes did next.
"They went back," says Vrouw Grobelaar, omitting all
details of how the return was accomplished; "and when the
Burghers went forth on the Great Trek, they went with them,
and lived long, had many children, and then died happy and
were buried."
"And what is the moral?" asked little Koos, who supplies
the part of the Greek chorus.
"The moral," replies the old lady in her most impressive
manner, "is that you should obey your elders, learn your
psalms, get up early, shut the door after you, tell the
truth, and blow your nose."
It will thus be seen that for a truly comprehensive parable
the above would be hard to beat.
LIKE UNTO LIKE
For the most part the Vrouw Grobelaar's nephews and nieces
were punctually obedient. Doubtless this was policy; for
the old lady founded her authority on a generous complement
of this world's goods. However, man is as the grass of the
field (as she would constantly aver); and it fell that
Frikkie Viljoen, otherwise a lad of promise, became
enamored of a girl of lower caste than the Grobelaars and
Viljoens, and this, mark you, with a serious eye to
marriage. Even this, after a proper and orthodox reluctance
on the part of his elders and betters, might have been
condoned; for the Viljoens had multiplied exceedingly in
the land, and the older sons were not yet married. But, as
though to aggravate the business, Frikkie took a sort of
glory in it, and openly belauded his lowly sweetheart.
"Mark you," said the Vrouw Grobelaar with tremendous
solemnity, "this choice is your own. Take care you do not
find a Leah in your Rachel."
Frikkie replied openly that he was sure enough about the
girl.
The Vrouw Grobelaar shook a doubtful head. "Her grandfather
was a bijwohner," she said. "Pas op! or she will one day go
back to her own people and shame you."
The misguided Frikkie saw fit to laugh at this.
"Oh, you may laugh! You may laugh, and laugh, until your
time comes for weeping. I tell you, she will one day return
to her own people, bijwohners and rascals all of them, as
Stoffel Mostert's wife did."
The old lady paused, and Frikkie defiantly demanded further
particulars.
"Yes," continued the Vrouw Grobelaar, "I remember all the
disgrace and shame of it to this day, and how poor Stoffel
went about with his head bowed and looked no one in the
face. He had a farm under the Hangklip, and a very nice
farm it was, with two wells and a big dam right up above
the lands, so that he had no need for a windmill to carry
his water. If he had stuck to the farm Stoffel might have
been a rich man; and perhaps, when he was old enough to be
listened to, the Burghers might have made him a feldkornet.
"But no! He must needs cast his eyes about him till they
fell on one Katrina Ruiter, the daughter, so please you, of
a dirty takhaar bijwohner on his own farm. He went mad
about the girl, and thought her quite different from all
other girls, though she had a troop of untidy sisters like
herself galloping wild about the place. I will own she was
a well-grown slip of a lass, tall and straight, and all
that; but she had a winding, bending way with her that
struck me like something shameless. For the rest, she had a
lot of coal-black hair that bunched round her face like the
frame round a picture; but there was something in the color
of her skin and the shaping of her lips and nostrils, that
made me say to myself, 'Ah, somewhere and somewhen your
people have been meddling with the Kafirs.'
"Black? No, of course she wasn't black. Nor yet yellow; but
I tell you, the black blood showed through her white skin
so clearly that I wonder Stoffel Mostert did not see it and
drive her from his door with a sjambok.
"But the man was clean mad, and, spite of all we could do,--
spite of his uncle, the Predikant; spite of the ugly dirty
family of the girl herself,--he rode her to the dorp and
married her there; for the Predikant, godly man, would not
turn a hand in the business.
"Now, just how they lived together I cannot tell you for
sure; for you may be very certain I drank no coffee in the
house of the bijwohner's daughter. But, by all hearings,
they bore with one another very well; and I have even been
told that Stoffel was much given to caressing the woman,
and she would make out to love him very much indeed.
"Perhaps she really did? What nonsense! How can a
bijwohner's baggage love a well-to-do Burgher? You are
talking foolishness. But anyhow, if there was any trouble
between them, they kept it to themselves for close upon a
year.
"Then (this is how it has been told to me) one night
Stoffel woke up in the dark, and his wife was not beside
him.
"'Is it morning already?' he said, and looked through the
window. But the stars were high and bright, and he saw it
was scarcely midnight.
"He lay for a while, and then got up and drew on his
clothes--doing everything slowly, hoping she would return.
But when he was done she was not yet come, and he went out
in the dark to the kitchen, and there he found the outer
door unlocked and heard the dog whining in the yard.
"He took his gun from the beam where it hung and went
forth. The dog barked and sprang to him, and together they
went out to the veld, seeking Katrina Ruiter.
"The dog seemed to know what was wanted, and led Stoffel
straight out towards the Kafir stad by the Blesbok Spruit.
They did not go fast, and on the way Stoffel knelt down and
prayed to God, and drew the cartridges from the gun. Then
they went on.
"When they got to the spruit they could see there was a big
fire in the stad and hear the Kafirs crying out and beating
the drums. The dog ran straight to the edge of the water,
and then turned and whined, for there was no more scent.
But Stoffel walked straight in, over his knees and up to
his waist, and climbed the bank to the wall of the stad.
"Inside the Kafirs were dancing. Some were tricked out with
ornaments and skins and feathers; some were mother-naked
and painted all over their bodies. And there was one, a
gaunt figure of horror, with his face streaked to the
likeness of a skull, and bones hanging clattering all about
him. They capered and danced round the fire like devils in
hell, and behind them the men with the drums kept up their
noise and seemed to drive the dancers to madness.
"And suddenly the figures round the fire gave way, save the
one with the painted face and the bones; for from the
shadow of a hut at the back of the fire came another, who
rushed into the light and swayed wildly to the barbarous
music. The newcomer was naked as a babe new born; wild as a
beast of the field; lithe as a serpent; and crazy to
savageness with the fire and the drums.
"Madly she danced, bending forwards and backwards, casting
her bare arms above her, while the horror who danced with
her writhed and screamed like a soul in pain.
"Stoffel, behind the wall, stood stunned and bound--for here
he saw his wife. He thought nothing, said nothing; but
without an effort his hand ran a cartridge into the gun,
and leveled it across the wall. He fired, and the lissome
body dropped limp across the fire."
Frikkie Viljoen rose in great wrath.
"This is how you talk of my sweetheart, is it?" he cried.
"Well, I will hear no more of your lies." And he forthwith
walked out of the house.
"Look at that!" said the Vrouw Grobelaar. "I never said a
word about his sweetheart."
COUNTING THE COLORS
THE horizon to the west was keen as the blade of a knife,
and over it all the colors swam and blended in an ecstasy
of sunset.
"There is more blood than peace in a sky like that,"
observed the Vrouw Grobelaar from her armchair on the
stoop. "When I was a child, I never saw a mess of fire in
the west but I thought it betokened the end of the world.
Ah, well, one grows wiser!"
"Green is for love," said Katje. "Do you see any green in
the sunset?" I saw a mile of it edging on a sea of orange
and a mountain of azure.
"Where?" demanded the old lady. "Oh, that--that's almost
blue, which means sin in marriage. But naming the colors in
the sky is a wasteful foolishness, and the folk that are
guided by them always tumble in the end. When Jan Uys was
on his death-bed, he said Dia had always been counting the
colors with the Irishman, and that's what caused all the
trouble."
Katje sighed.
"He was a man of sixty," the unconscious Vrouw continued,
"and a Boer of the best, with a farm below the Hangklip,
where my cousin Barend's aunt is now. He was a rich and
righteous man, too, and as upstanding and strong as any man
of his age that I ever saw. He had buried four good wives,
so nobody can say he wasn't a good husband, but he had a
way with him--something heavy and ugly, like a beast or a
Kafir--which many girls didn't like. His fifth wife was Dia,
who came from Lord knows where, somewhere down south, and
she was only sixteen.
"I believe in fitting a girl with a husband when she is
ripe, and sixteen is old enough with any well-grown maid.
But in the case of Dia, it is a pity somebody did not stop
to think. She was more than half a child; just a slender,
laughing, running thing that liked sweets and peaches
better than coffee and meat, and used to throw stones. She
threw one at my cart, with her arm low like a boy, and hit
my Kafir on the neck, and then squeaked and ran to hide
among the kraals. Yes, somebody should have stopped to
think before they coupled her to big Jan Uys, with his
scowl and his red eyes and white beard, and his sixty hard
years behind him."
"I should think so, indeed," was Katje's comment.
"What you think is of no importance," retorted the old lady
sharply. "I think so, and that settles it. Well, it did not
take long for Dia to lose all the froth and foolishness
that were in her. The child that was more than half of her
nature was simply trampled to death, for Jan Uys had a
short way of shaping his women-folk. She used to cry, they
say, but never dared to rebel, which I can understand,
knowing the man and the way he had of giving an order as
though it were impossible for any one to disobey him. In
particular, she could not learn to make cheese, and spoilt
enough milk to feed a dorp on.
"'Very well,' he said, 'if you cannot make the cheese the
Kafir woman shall do it. And you shall do her work at the
churn-handle. I want no idlers in my house.'
"And there he had her at the churn, grinding like a Kafir,
for three days in every week, a white woman and his wife.
Once she came to him and held out her hands.
"'Look,' she said. That was all: 'look!'
"Her fingers and her palms were flayed and raw and oozed
blood, but he simply glanced at them.
"'You should have learned to work before,' was all his
answer. 'Every one pays for learning, and you pay late. Go
back to the churn.'
"The next thing', of course, was that she was missing, but
Jan Uys was not troubled. He mounted his horse and rode out
along the Drifts Road, going quietly, with his pipe alight.
It was the road by which he had brought her from her home,
and he knew the girl would try to go to her mother. In a
few miles he picked up her spoor, and found some of the
sole of one of her shoes. A mimosa carried a shred of her
dress, and in another place she had sat down. As he went
farther, he found she had sat down in many places.
"'Good,' he said. 'She is tired, and soon I shall catch
her.'
"He came up with her twenty miles along the road, sitting
down again. Her hair was all about her shoulders, and her
face was white, with the great eyes burning in it like
those of a woman in a fever.
"'You are ready to come back?' he asked, sitting on his
horse, smoking and scowling down on her.
"'What are you going to do with me?' she asked in a
trembling voice.
"He laughed that short ugly laugh of his. 'You are a
child,' he answered. 'I shall whip you.'
"Then she commenced to plead with him to let her go, to
return without her, to spare her, to kill her. In the
middle of it he leaned from the saddle, and caught hold of
her arms and lifted her before him.
"'All this may stop,' he said, turning the horse. 'You have
brought disgrace on me; you shall be punished.' And he
carried her back.
"He did whip her--not brutally or terribly, I believe, as a
man might do from wounded pride and revenge, but as a child
is whipped, to warn it against future foolishness. And from
the time of that beating the course of their life changed.
She was no longer a child, but a very grave and silent
woman, not prayerful at all, as might have been hoped, but
just still and solemn. Dreadful, I call it. Then the young
man Moore entered their lives.
"Jan Uys was making a dam right below the Hangklip. You
know the dam: half of it is cut from the rock, and the
water all comes into it from the end. It was not a matter
of half a dozen Kafirs with spades, like most dams, but a
business for dynamite and all kinds of ticklish and awkward
work. So Jan wisely did not put his own fingers to it, but
sent to the Rand for an Uitlander to come out and burst the
rocks; and they sent him this young fellow, the Irishman
Moore. He was a tall youth, with hair like some of the red
in that sunset over yonder, and a most astonishing way of
making you laugh only by talking about ordinary things. And
when he joked anybody would laugh, even the Predikant, who
was always preaching about the crackling of thorns under a
pot. With him, in a black box like a little coffin, he had
a machine he called a banjo, upon which he would play lewd
and idolatrous music which was most pleasing to the ear;
and he would sing songs while he played, which all ended
with a yell. He was good at bursting the rocks, too. He
would load holes full of dynamite in three or four places
at once, and fetch tons of stone and earth out with each
explosion. Jan Uys was pleased with him, for the young man
cared nothing at all for his savage looks and ugly ways,
and called him the Old Obadiah, who was a writer of the
Bible.
"'My wife,' he told him, 'is a young woman, and sad. You
must talk to her in the evenings and make her laugh.'
"The Irishman looked at him with a strange face. 'The poor
creature needs a laugh,' he said.
"So he used to talk to her on the stoop in the evenings,
while Jan sat within at his Bible, and heard the murmur of
their talk without. More than once, too, he heard a sound
that was no longer familiar to him--the sound of Dia's
pleasant childish laughter, and he scowled at his book and
told himself he was satisfied. I think, perhaps, he had
sometimes seen himself as he was, an old hard man crushing
the soul of a child. Vaguely, perhaps, and unwillingly, but
still he saw it sometimes.
"This went on. The Irishman blew up his dynamite and talked
with Dia and played with her. Jan, watching, saw the color
had returned to her cheeks and the life to her eyes. He
came into the kitchen once and she was singing. She stopped
suddenly.
"'Why do you not go on?' he asked, with his little red eyes
staring at her.
"She had nothing to say, and he went away, to go down to
the dam. The Irishman was sitting on an ant-heap away in
the sun, and Jan passed him without speaking, and walked
down to the place of explosions. He was looking at the
marks of fire on the rocks, when it seemed to him he heard
a shout, and he saw, as he turned his head, that the
Irishman was standing up. But he made no beck, and Jan
walked along. When he looked again the young man had both
hands to his head. Jan shaded his eyes to watch him.
"Moore walked a few paces to and fro, stood still, and
then, with a start, commenced to run furiously down to
where Jan was standing. He ran with long strides and very
fast, and was soon beside the old man, and seized him by
the arm.
"'Out of this!' he cried. 'Out of this! The holes are
loaded, and ye've sixty seconds to save yer life.'
"Jan stood still. 'Why did you not tell me before?' he
asked; but the other did not answer, but only dragged at
his arm.
"Jan shook his hand off. 'I have a mind to stay,' he said
in a calm voice. 'If Dia is made a widow, you will know how
to look after her.'
"'And that's true!' cried the Irishman. 'But you shan't
make a murderer of me.'
"And he drew back his fist and knocked the old man down.
Catching him by the collar, he dragged him to the shelter
of a big boulder, flung him close to it, and lay down on
top of his body. In the next moment the blast went off, and
the gust of fire and rocks and earth roared and whistled
through the air above them. The sound struck them like a
bludgeon, and they lay for a while, stunned and deafened,
while pieces of stone slid and tinkled on the boulder that
had sheltered them. At last they rose.
"'I made a mistake and I am glad,' said Jan.
"'Will you shake hands with me?'
"'I will not,' was the answer.
"'So be it. But there can be no need to tell Dia of this.'
"The Irishman nodded, and that afternoon, again, he and Dia
were in the garden, throwing stones at a sardine-tin on a
stick to see who could hit it first. Dia knocked it down
easily, and Jan, sitting indoors with his coat off, heard
them laughing.
"At supper that night he looked up to Dia.
"'This coffee has a sour taste,' he said.
"'Mine hasn't,' said the Irishman.
"'Try mine, then,' said Jan, and passed Dia his cup to hand
to him. She fumbled in taking it and dropped it on the
floor. The new cup that she poured out for him had no sour
taste.
"For several days after that there was a sour taste in many
things that he ate and drank, and he complained of it each
time.
"'You must be getting ill,' Dia said.
"'It is possible,' he answered, watching her. 'I have felt
very strange of late days.'
"He saw the color leave her cheeks, and a light come into
her eyes.
"'What can it be?' he said. 'Should I have a doctor, do you
think?'
"'I am afraid of doctors,' she answered. 'Let me give you
some of my herb medicine.'
"He drank what she brought him and put the cup down.
"'I was hard to you once. Dia,' he said, 'I have been sorry
since.'
"That night he sent a mounted Kafir for his brother, and
when, at noon next day, that brother came, Dia and her
Irishman were already gone. But Jan would not have them
hunted.
"'I whipped her once,' he said, 'and I am paid for it.'
"His brother, a great simple soul, was dumbfounded.
"'Do you mean that she has poisoned you?' he demanded.
"The dying man shook his head.
"'They used to count the colors,' he said. 'There was much
of love in the colors, but there was nothing of me. Let
them go!'
"And so," concluded the Vrouw Grobelaar impressively, "he
died, and it all came of counting the colors in the sunset,
which is a warning to you, Katje--"
"To count colors," interrupted that maiden hotly. "I think
the old wretch got just what he deserved."
THE KING OF THE BABOONS
The old yellow-fanged dog-baboon that was chained to a post
in the yard had a dangerous trick of throwing stones. He
would seize a piece of rock in two hands, stand erect and
whirl round on his heels till momentum was obtained, and
then--let go. The missile would fly like a bullet, and woe
betide any one who stood in its way. The performance
precluded any kind of aim; the stone was hurled off at any
chance tangent: and it was bad luck rather than any kind of
malice that guided one three-pound boulder through the
window, across the kitchen, and into a portrait of Judas de
Beer which hung on the wall not half a dozen feet from the
slumbering Vrouw Grobelaar.
She bounced from her chair and ballooned to the door with a
silent swift agility most surprising to see in a lady of
her generous build, and not a sound did she utter. She was
of good veld-bred fighting stock, which never cried out
till it was hurt, and there was even something of
compassion in her face as Frikkie jumped from the stoop
with a twelve-foot thong in his hand. It was, after all,
the baboon that suffered most, if his yells were any index
to his feelings. Frikkie could smudge a fly ten feet off
with just a flick of his whip, and all the tender parts of
the accomplished animal came in for ruthless attention.
"He ought to be shot," was Frikkie's remark as he curled up
the thong at the end of the discipline. "A baboon is past
teaching if he has bad habits. He is more like a man than a
beast."
The Vrouw Grobelaar seated herself in the stoop chair which
by common consent was reserved for her use, and shook her
head.
"Baboons are uncanny things," she answered slowly. "When
you shoot them, you can never be quite sure how much murder
there is in it. The old story is that some of them have
souls and some not: and it is quite certain that they can
talk when they will. You have heard them crying in the
night sometimes. Well, you ask a Kafir what that means. Ask
an old wise Kafir, not a young one that has forgotten the
wisdom of the black people and learned the foolishness only
of the white."
"What does it mean, tante?" It was I that put the question.
Katje, too, seemed curious.
The old lady eyed me gloomily.