hold of me, as he used to tell it. There was a family in
those parts of the name of Preez. No relation to the Du
Preez you know, who are well enough in their way, but Preez
simply,--a short name and a bad one. They were big holders
of land, with every reason to be rich, but bad farmers,
lazy hunters, and deep drinkers. The Kafirs down there make
a drink out of fruit which is very fiery and conquers a man
quickly, and these people were always to be seen half
drunk, or else stupid from the stuff. Old Preez, the
father, in particular, was a terrible man, by all tellings;
full threescore and ten years of age, but strong, fiery,
and full of oaths. My second husband used to say there was
something in the look of him that daunted one; for his hair
and his beard were white, his face was savagely red, and
his eyes were like hot coals. And with it all he had a way
of looking on you that made you run from him. When he was
down with drink and fever he would cry out in a terrible
voice that his mother was a queen's daughter and he was a
prince."
"I have heard of the people you speak of," I said. "They
are half-Portuguese, and perhaps the old man was not wholly
lying."
"Um! Well, prince or not, he married in his youth a woman
of the half-blood, and begot of her a troop of devils. Five
sons he had, all great men, knowing not God and fearing
none of God's works. And after them came a daughter, a
puling slip of a thing, never meant to live, whom they did
to death among them with their drinking and blaspheming and
fighting.
"My second husband told me tales of that family that set my
blood freezing. He had his own way of telling stories, and
made you see pictures, as it were. Once, he used to say,
for a trifle spoken concerning them and their ways, they
visited a missionary by night, dragged him from his bed,
and crucified him against his door, while his wife clung to
the old man's knees and besought the mercy they never gave
and never got. Even the wild folk of the countryside were
stricken with the horror and impiety of the deed; and it
says much for the fear in which the Preez family were held
that none molested them or called them to account.
"In the end the eldest of the five sons took a mind to
marry and to leave some of his accursed stock to plague the
world when it should be delivered from him and his
brothers. They cast about for a wife for him, and were not
content with the first that offered. They had their pride,
the Preez, and in their place a fair measure of respect,
for among the wicked, you know, the devil is king. From one
farmhouse to another they rode, dragging forth women and
girls to be looked at like cattle. Many a tall, black-
browed hussy would have been content to go away with Vasco
Preez (such was his unchristian name), but he was not
willing to do right by any of them.
"They were returning home from one of these expeditions
when they passed a lowly house beside the road with no
fence around it. But before the house a girl stood on the
grass, with her kapje in her hand, to see the six big men
ride by. She was little and slim, and, unlike the maidens
of the country, whitish, with a bunch of yellow hair on the
top of her head and hanging over her ears. The others would
have passed her by, judging her unworthy even an insult,
but Vasco reined in his horse and shouted a great oath.
"'The woman for me!' he cried. 'The woman I was looking
for! I never knew what I wanted before.'
"The others halted to look, and the girl, frightened, ran
into the house. Vasco got down from his horse.
"'Fetch the filly out,' shouted the old man. 'Fetch her out
and let us see her paces.'
"Vasco walked straight into the little house, while the
others waited, laughing. They heard no screams and no
fighting, and presently out comes Vasco alone.
"He went over to his horse and mounted. 'There is nothing
to wait for,' he said. 'Let us be getting on.'
"'But the girl?' cried one of his brothers. 'Is she dead,
or what?'
"'No,' said Vasco, 'but she would not come.'
"'Would not come!' bellowed the old father, while the
others laughed. 'Did you say she would not come?'
"'That is what I said,' answered Vasco, sitting his horse
very straight, and scowling at the lot of them.
"'He has a fever,' cried the old man, looking from one to
another. 'He is light in the head. My faith! I believe the
girl has been beating him with a stick. Here, one of you,'
he roared, turning on them, 'get down and kick the girl out
of the door. We'll have a look at the witch!'
"Koos, the youngest, sprang from his saddle and made
towards the house; but he was not gone five paces before
Vasco spurred his horse on to him and knocked him down.
"'Keep off,' he said then, turning to face them all, as
Koos rose slowly. 'If I cannot bring the girl out none of
you can, and you had better not try. Whoever does will be
hurt, for I shall stand in front of the door.'
"And he went straight to the house, and, dismounting, stood
in the doorway, with his hands resting on the beam above
his head. He was a big man, and he filled the door.
"'Hear him,' foamed the old father. 'God, if I were as
young as any of you, I would drag the girl across his body.
Sons, he has defied us, and the girl has bewitched him. Run
at him, lads, and bring them both out!'
"'They all came towards the house in a body, but stopped
when Vasco raised his hand.
"'I warn you,' he told them--'I warn you to let the matter
be. This will not be an affair of fighting, with only
broken bones to mend when it is over. If I take hold of any
one after this warning, that man will be cold before the
sun sets. And to show you how useless this quarrel is, I
will ask the girl once more if she will come out. You all
saw her?'
"'Yes,' they answered; 'but what is this foolery about
asking her?'
"'You saw her--very well.' He raised his voice and called
into the house, 'Meisje, will you not come out? I ask you
to.'
"There was silence for a moment, and then they heard the
answer. 'No,' it said; 'I will stay where I am. And you are
to go away.'
"'As soon as may be, my girl,' called Vasco in answer.
'Now,' he said to the men, 'you see she will not come.'
"'But, man, in the name of God, cast her over your shoulder
and carry her out,' cried the father.
"'Vasco looked at him. 'Not this one,' he said. 'She shall
do as she pleases.'
"Then they rushed on him, but he stepped out from the door,
and caught young Koos round the middle. With one giant's
heave he raised him aloft and dashed him at the gang,
scattering them right and left, and knocking one to the
ground, where he remained motionless. But Koos lay like a
broken tool or a smashed vessel, as dead men lie. And all
the while Vasco talked to them.
"'Come on,' he was saying. 'Come all of you. We shall never
do anything but fight now. I see plainly we ought to have
fought long ago. Bring her out, indeed!'
"They paused after that, aghast at the fury of the man they
were contending against. But the old man gave them no rest.
"'Get sticks,' he cried to them--get sticks and kill him.'
"They dragged beams from a hut roof, and one of them took a
heavy stone. Vasco stood back and watched them till they
came forward again.
"The one with the stone came first, but it was too big to
throw from a distance, and he dared not go near. The others
approached with caution, and Vasco stood still, with his
hands resting as before at the top of the door. They were
bewildered at his manner, and very cautious, but at length
they drew near and rushed at him.
"Then a most astonishing thing happened. With one wrench
Vasco tore the thick architrave from the wall, a beam as
thick as a man's thigh, and smote into the middle of them.
Where he hit the bone gave and the flesh fell away, and as
they ran from before him the wall fell in.
"Down came the wall, and with it the heavy beams on the
roof. The old father, cursing over a broken arm, heard the
girl scream, and saw the wreck come crashing about Vasco's
shoulders till he disappeared below it. And then, where the
house had been stood a ruin, with two souls buried in the
midst of it.
"It steadied them like a dash of cold water. However they
might fight among themselves, they were loyal to one
another. Besides the old father, with his broken arm, there
was only one other that could put a hand to the work, and
together they started to drag away the beams and bricks and
stones that covered Vasco and the girl.
"I know they were wicked men who are in hell long since,
but I cannot contain a sort of admiration for the spirit
that fastened them to their toil all that long night,--the
old man with his broken arm, the young one with a dozen
horrid wounds. As the sky paled towards morning, they
discovered the girl dead, and leaving her where she lay
they wrought on to uncover Vasco.
"When they found him he was crushed and broken, and pierced
in many places with splinters and jagged broken ends of
wood. But he had his senses still, and smiled as they
cleared the thatch from above his face.
"The old man looked at him carefully. 'You are dying, my
son,' he said.
"'Of course,' answered Vasco. 'Is that Renault?' He smiled
again at his brother. 'So there are two of you alive,
anyhow. How about the others?'
"'Two dead,' answered his father. 'And the other will not
walk again all his days. You are a terrible fighter, my
son.'
"'Yes,' answered Vasco, in a faint voice. 'It was the girl,
you see.'
"'She was a witch, then?' asked the old man.
"'No,' said Vasco smiling. 'Or perhaps, yes. I do not know.
But I will fight for her again if you like.'
"'Oho! so that is it,' and the old man knelt down beside
him. 'Now, I see,' he said. 'I never guessed before--did not
know it was in you. My son, I ask you to forgive us.'
"'I forgive, but where is she?'
"'Dead. No, it was none of our doing. You did it,--the roof
fell on her. We will lay you together.'
"'Do so,' replied Vasco. 'I think I am dying now.'
"'Yes,' answered the father. Your face is becoming gray.
Your throat will rattle in a minute. Look here; this is
what my mother used to do.'
"'And he did thus," said the Vrouw Grobelaar, giving a very
good imitation of the sign of the cross.
"But that was not a bad ending," cried Katje. "I think it
was beautiful. I hope Vasco and the girl went straight to
God."
The Vrouw Grobelaar sighed.
THE PERUVIAN
FROM her pocket Katje produced stealthily a clean-scoured
wish-bone. The Vrouw Grobelaar was sleeping in her chair
with tight-shut eyes. So I took one end of the bone, and we
broke it, and the wish remained with Katje.
"Wish quick," I said.
She puckered her pretty brows with a charming childish
thoughtfulness.
"I can't think of anything to wish for," she answered.
"Wish to be delivered from the sin of playing with
witchcraft and dirty old bones!" The suggestion echoed
roundly in the old lady's deep tones, and we, startled and
abashed, looked up to find her wide awake, and in her
didactic mood. The Vrouw Grobelaar never slept to any real
purpose. One might have remembered that.
"Yes, witchcraft," she pursued. "For if bones are not
witchcraft, tell me what is? When a Hottentot wants to find
a strayed ox, he makes magic with bones, doesn't he? And
the bones of a dead baboon are dangerous things too. Katje,
throw that bone away."
Katje, who hated to be found out, threw it over the rail of
the stoop into the kraal. When the good Vrouw had kept her
steady eye on me for a few seconds, I threw my half after
Katje's.
"I thought so," said the Vrouw Grobelaar, with a twitch of
the lips like a smile stillborn.
"It's only a game," said Katje plaintively. "There's no
harm in it."
The old lady shook her head.
"There's harm in things you don't understand," she
pronounced. "There's harm in failing in love, for
instance, if you don't know what you are doing. But
witchcraft is worse than anything. You've seen how hard it
is to make a Kafir doctor show his tricks. That's because
he's never certain which is master, he or the devil. I knew
a man once, a Peruvian, who burned his fingers badly."
A Peruvian, for the Vrouw Grobelaar, was any one for whose
nationality she had no name. In Johannesburg it means a
Polish Jew; in this instance I believe the man was a Greek.
"He was a smouser" (pedlar), she went on, "a little
cowering man, with a black beard and a white face, who
spoke Kafir better than he spoke the Taal. He sold thimbles
and pills and hymn-books to the wives and daughters of
Burghers, and grand watches and cheap diamonds to the
Kafirs. It was a dirty little trade, and there was nothing
about the man that streaked it with nobility. I remember a
Scotch smouser, who was called Peter Piper, who sold pills
like a chemist, and everybody liked him and respected him,
till he had his great dispute with the Predikant at
Dopfontein. But this little man was like a slimy thing made
to crawl on its belly; and many is the time he would have
been sjamboked from a door, were it not for--well, I don't
know. But he was such a mean helpless thing, that, when he
shrank away and looked up, with his white eyes staring and
his lips parted, not the most wrathful Burgher could lift a
whip.
"And even as he seemed to fear everything, the Kafirs
certainly feared him. Kafirs, you know, go naked to all the
little winds, and the breezes that will not hurt a thatch
carry death to them. They are deaf to God. but the devil
has but to whisper, and they hear. They bought shameful
watches and sleepy diamonds from the Peruvian, as they kill
a goat at the flowering of the crops--to appease something
that might else visit them in the night. It was a thing
much spoken of, and since even among the Burghers there are
folks who dirty their fingers with magic and wish-bones--ay,
you may well pout!--perhaps this had something to do with
the fact that he was never flogged to the beacons and
kicked across.
"In fact, there grew up about him a something of mystery,
uncanny and not respectable. The little plodding man who
went so meekly past our gates had a shadow one feared to
tread on.
"You won't remember, but you will have heard of, the
terrible to-do there was when Freda van der Byl
disappeared. She was a most ordinary girl, perhaps eighteen
years old, with a fine appetite, and nothing whatsoever
about her that was strange or extraordinary: and yet one
night she was missing, and it has never been set past doubt
who saw her last. She was on the stoop in the afternoon,
ate well at supper, went out then in the usual way to the
hut where the tobacco-sacks were, and never came in again.
She disappeared like a flame blown out, with never a spoor
to give direction to those that sought her, without a shred
of clothing on a thorn-bush to hint at a tale. She seemed
to have fled clean out of the world--a big ten--stone girl
with red hair melted like a bubble.
"And how they hunted for her! Old Johannes van der Byl and
his sons went through the country like locusts, and with
them were a mob of relations and friends, and some
prospectors from the Hangklip who betted about it. Every
kloof was scoured, every Kafir stad and kraal turned inside
out, and the half of them burned. Their ponies streaked the
long grass of the veld for miles; the men, their loaded
rifles in hand, were abroad late and early; and yet they
never found even a shoe-sole or a shred of hair to give
them a clue. The witch-doctors would have been glad enough
to find her, for they were flogged from morning to night,
and Barend van der Byl beat the life out of one who did not
seem to be doing his best. If Freda had been anywhere in
the veld she would have been found, so fervently did the
Kafirs hunt her in order to get a little peace and
security.
"But nothing availed; no trace of her came to light, and
even the women of her family grew tired of weeping. But one
hot dusty afternoon, when her brothers Jacobus and Piet
were riding home from the fruitless search, they came upon
the Peruvian sitting under a bush smoking his yellow
cigarettes. He glanced up at them as they went past,
slavish as ever, yet still with that subtle significance of
mien that made him noteworthy, and suddenly Jacobus reined
up.
"'Piet,' he called, pointing with his sjambok. Look--our
last chance!'
"Piet did not understand.
"'We have been cutting the Kafir doctors into ribbons,'
explained Jacobus, 'and they were no good. But here is a
wizard, and a white one, who won't wait to be flogged. If
he can do nothing, then there is nothing to do. Let us
bring him along, Piet.'
"Piet was a fat youth, deadly strong, who never spoke while
there was work to do. He merely dropped from his saddle and
caught the Peruvian deftly by the back of the neck. The
smouser, of course, whined and squirmed, but Piet was the
man who broke the bullock's neck at Bothaskraal, and he
made no difficulty of tying the little man's wrists to his
off stirrup. All his trinkets and fallals they left behind,
and riding at a walk, talking calmly between themselves of
the buck with wide horns that the Predikant's cousin
missed, they dragged the little smouser to the homestead.
"'Several of the men had already come back, and when they
heard Jacobus's plan, some were openly afraid and wished to
have the Peruvian set loose. But Oom Johannes cursed at
them and smacked Jacobus on the back.
"'My daughter is lost, and evil tongues are active about
her,' he roared. 'I want her back, and I don't care how she
comes. Come to supper, Jacobus; and afterwards you shall
take your smouser into a hut and persuade him.'
"It was not an easy thing to make the Peruvian understand
what was wanted of him. But by and by, when he had been
argued with in Dutch and Kafir, and shown a skull that was
found in a kloof, and the dol oss, and a picture in the
Bible of the Witch of Endor, he suddenly grasped the idea,
and grinned. Piet spat on the ground as the white teeth
gleamed through the greasy black beard.
"'Yes, perhaps I can do that,' said the Peruvian, in the
Taal. 'Perhaps, but one cannot be sure. You will pay, eh?'
"Jacobus wanted to threaten, but Oom Johannes would not
have it.
"'Find my girl,' he said, 'and you shall be paid. Fifty
pounds for any news of her, more if she is alive and well.'
"But the smouser explained that he could only find her if
she were dead.
"'I can get her to speak, perhaps,' he said. 'More? No!'
"At last Jacobus and Piet took him into one of the big huts
and gave him the little lamp that he demanded. He set it in
the middle of the floor, and when they pulled to the door
behind them the big domed hut was still almost dark, save
for the ring of quiet light in the centre that flickered a
little.
"'I wish he could do this kind of thing when I'm not
there,' grumbled Jacobus, who hated creepy things.
"'Hush! be quiet!' commanded the Peruvian, and the two
young men sat down, very close together, with their backs
to the door.
"'The first thing that the Peruvian did was to take off all
his clothes, and then he came into the dim circle of light
mother-naked. He was a little man at best, but Piet said
afterwards the muscles stood out under his swarthy skin in
knots and ridges. And there he stood, facing them across
the lamp, with his arms stretched forwards and his hands
just fluttering loosely. Nothing more. His eyes were
upturned and his face lifted, so that a streak of shadow
rose across it, and the black beard against his neck rose
and fell with his breathing. But for the gentle flutter of
his hands and the heave of his chest he was still as stone--
so still that for those who watched him all relation to
human kind seemed to leave him, and he was a being alone in
a twilight world of his own, a creature as remote and as
little to be understood as the spirits of the dead.
"Have you ever, when wakeful in a hot night, with darkness
all about you, called yourself by name again and again? It
was a trick we dared sometimes when I was a girl. After a
while it is something else that is calling, something of
you but not in you, to which your soul answers at last; and
if you go on till the will to call is no longer your own,
the soul goes forth in response to it, and you are dead.
And even so, gaunt in the beam of the lamp, the Peruvian
seemed to insist upon himself, till the eyes of the
watchers were for him only, till that which they saw was
less the mean body of the smouser than the vehicle of the
potent soul within.
"Piet was a youth as solid in mind as in body, and ere the
scene grasped him against his will he says he saw with an
angry impatience the flicker of a leer on the darkened face
of the Peruvian. But it did not last. In a few minutes the
two young Burghers were not the only ones whom the spell
had subdued--the wizard was netted too. And then, as he
stood, his hands still fluttering, they heard him drone a
string of words, a dull chant, level like an incantation,
inevitably apt to the hour and the event.
"They did not know how long they crouched, watching
unwinkingly till their eyes grew sore; but at last it
seemed that the posturing and the words had made something
due. Jacobus started as though from sleep, and Piet, who
was not till then frightened, looked up quickly. He caught
sight of something--a shadow, a hint, a presence in the
darkness behind the naked man, and knew, somehow, with a
coldness of alarm, that IT had arrived. He barely realized
this knowledge when the power of the quietness and the
jugglery were rudely sundered, and the Peruvian, shrieking
and clucking in his throat, dived towards them and tried to
hide. He plunged frantically against the door, which gave
and let him fall through, and in a moment, with the cold
sweat of horror upon them, Piet and Jacobus struggled
through after him and ran with still hearts for the house.
"But in that moment that he was jammed in the narrow
doorway with his brother, Piet saw into the hut, and there
was something there. There was another with them.
"They came fast to the lighted room upon the heels of the
naked Peruvian, who fell on his face and writhed, weeping
in sheer terror. There was alarm, and chairs overturned,
and screaming of women, and it was long before they could
get the smouser to his feet and bring him to speech. And
then he would not go a foot away from them.
"'It came; it came!' he babbled, quivering under the table-
cloth they had cast over his nakedness. 'It came--behind
me!' and forthwith he began to stammer in his own strange
tongue.
"'What was it?' demanded Oom Johannes, who was beginning to
feel nervous.
"'There was a ghost!' was all that Piet could tell him. 'It
frightened the smouser. It frightened all of us.'
"And by this time the smouser was babbling again, turning
from one to the other, like one who excuses himself.
"'I did not bring it,' he wailed. 'I did nothing--only
tricks. Just tricks to get money--and it came behind me.
Mother of God! It came behind me!'
"Not one of them ventured beyond the door that night. They
had not even the heart to turn the smouser out, though he
expected nothing less, and clung howling to Piet's knees
when the lad rose to bolt the door. But in the morning he
was gone, and"--here the Vrouw Grobelaar became truly
impressive--"he had not even fetched his clothes from the
hut.
"So you see, Katje, what comes of messing your fingers with
wish-bones."
"Pooh!" sneered Katje, "I'm not afraid of the ghost of the
fowl."
TAGALASH
When we came to the farmhouse, Katje and I, the Vrouw
Grobelaar asked if we had been down by the spruit. We had--
all the afternoon. There are cool and lonely places in the
long grass beside the spruit, where its midsummer trickle
of water sojourns peacefully in wide pools of depth and
quiet.
"You can't mind that, anyhow," said Katje patiently.
"Why can't I?" demanded the Vrouw Grobelaar. "Why can't I
mind that as well as anything else? I tell you, my girl,
that things are not quite so simple as you take them to be.
Even a herd of swine can house a devil, mark you. A bit of
stick in the path can be a puff adder, and there are spells
tucked away in the words of the Psalms even. And the
spruit! Why, you crazy child, a spruit is just the place
for things to lurk in wait. Yes, slippery things that have
no name in man's speech. Even the Kafirs know of a spirit
that lives in a pool."
Katje laughed, "Oh, Tagalash!" she said.
Tagalash is the little god who abducts girls who go down to
fetch water in the evening, and carries them away to the
dim world under the floor of the pools to be his brides. He
lives in the water, and sings in the reeds, sometimes, of
an evening and at other times works mischief among the
crops and the cattle with spells that baffle the
husbandman.
So Katje laughed as she mentioned him, and the Vrouw
Grobelaar bridled ominously.
"You laugh," she said scathingly--"you laugh in the face of
wisdom and counsel as they laughed in Sodom and Gomorrah.
Yes; Tagalash, Katje! What have you to say against
Tagalash? You think, I suppose, that he doesn't exist. I
tell you, my girl, there's many a god of the heathen who is
a devil of the Christians. That's what Christianity is for--
to make devils of the gods of the heathen. And besides,
this Tagalash is not like the others. He has been seen."
She paused. "Who by, Tante?" I asked, while Katje affected
to whistle carelessly.