and felt and had speech of by one who told it afterwards
with white lips and fevered eyes that compelled belief. A
Boer woman, mind you, and no liar; the young wife of an
upright and well-seen Burgher, who had his farm an easy
four hours from here.
"It is Folly Joubert I mean, who married when she was
eighteen one Johannes Olivier, a youth with hair like an
Irishman--all red. I had known her somewhat, and she was
just that kind of girl in whom one feels the thrust of a
fate. She was thin, for one thing, and without any of the
comfortable comeliness that makes young men doubtful and
old men sure. She had a face that was always rapt, lips
that parted of themselves as if in wonder at great things
newly seen, and big troubled eyes that spoke, despite her
leanness and long legs, of a spring of hot blood crouching
within her. Yes, she seemed doomed to something far and
tragic, and outside the lives of decent stupid men.
"There was much bother, I believe, to persuade her to a
marriage with Johannes, though he was rich enough.
"Perhaps it was hard on her, but then it must have been
hard on him too. For he was another kind than she; just a
big youth that ate four times a day with desperation, and
lived the rest of the time as a tree lives. There is no
harm in such men, though; it is they that people this world
and have the right to guide it, for they put most into it
and hew most from it; but for those who are born with a
streak of heaven or hell in their fabric, they are heavy
companions at the best. But these two married at last, and
faced life like oxen that pull different ways in the same
yoke. And within a month Johannes walked about with a face
like one who tries to guess a riddle-troubled and puzzled;
and Polly was walking elsewhere, carving herself a new
religion from the stones of the bitterness of life.
"I have the rest from her own lips, as she told it when she
came back. Yes, she went away--I will make that plain
enough. It was after a quarrel with Johannes over some
little grossness of no consequence that she walked forth
from the house and down towards the spruit. It was between
afternoon and evening, and she sought a quiet place to sit
and prey on her heart. There was a pool that summer, deep
and very black, lying between steep banks on which grew
bushes and tall grass, and to this she came and sat by the
edge of the water, and dabbled her long thin fingers in its
coolness and let her thoughts surge in her.
"'I thought of death,' she said, as she sat in her chair
and told of it--'of death, and peace, and hatred glutted,
and dead enemies, and love, and sin. A wild storm of
dreams, was it not? A grim tempest to lay waste a sore
heart. And she only eighteen, with eyes like lakes on a
mountainside!' As she told it, she cast back on her memory--
you could see she was aching to strip her fault naked and
scourge it before us all--'And the thoughts were like a
sleeping draught to my anger,' she went on pitifully. 'I
drowned my wrath in dreams of vengeance and sinful hopes of
a joy to find in the future.'
"'I conjured up faces of eager, bold men who should court
me, and one that I had thought on before--a small man, lean
at the waist, who moved like a spark among burning wood,
and laughed ere he struck.' Her finger traveled in the air,
and he was plain to see.
"She went on: 'I was looking in the water between my hands,
creating my lover by the spell of desire, and I could see
his face in the vortex my fingers made as I moved them to
and fro. I gazed and gazed and gazed, and then, suddenly,
some fear gripped me, for the face became a face of a man,
with the idle water swilling across it. But it was a face:
my mind battled against the realization till the fact
governed it. It was a face, brown and keen and smiling with
a gleam of white teeth, and then a hand met my hand in the
water and drew me forward. I did not drag back. I think I
fell on my face, but here I have no memory.'
"When again she came to a sense of things, she was lying in
a dim place where all that moved seemed shadows only. At
first it was her thought that she was yet on the bank by
the pool, but as her mind renewed its hold she knew this
was not so. She breathed an air alien to her living
nostrils, and knew that here she had no part in a world of
human creatures, and the thought rose in her that she was
dead, drowned in the pool, and had reached the next world.
'Can this be hell?' she wondered, as she rose to a sitting
posture and strove to see about her.
"It was a grassed mound she sat on, in a kind of plain, and
she heard the creaking of bushes about her where no wind
breathed on her cheek. The dimness was not the part
darkness of a summer night, but a shadow where no sun had
ever shone, a barren gloom that was lugubrious and uneasy.
A dozen feet from her all was blurred and not to be
distinguished, but it seemed to her that many people moved
round about her, and now and again there was a rustle of
hushed voices, as of folk who met stealthily and spoke with
checked breath. In the dimness shapes moved, faintly
suggested to her eyes, and presently, though she had no
thrill of fear, a loneliness oppressed her that nearly made
her weep. She was not as one that has no comrade in the
world, for such a one is at least kin by blood and flesh to
all others. She was alone, as a living man in a tomb is
alone.
"With a little fervor of troubled recollection, like a
child reciting a psalm, she told us how she rose to her
feet and gazed about her, pondering which way to take. And
while she was yet doubtful a hand touched her elbow, and
she started to face a man that had come from behind her.
Staring at his face with wits clenched like a fist, the
contours of the face in the water returned to her mind, the
sharp brown face that had grown up in the middle of the
countenance she dreamed upon, and she knew in a moment that
here was the face again and the rest of the man with it.
"'I knew it at once when his teeth shone through his
smile,' she said. 'He was not so tall as I, and very brown
in that sorrowful light, but not black. There was a robe he
wore from his neck to his ankles that left one arm bare and
the little feet below its hem, and his head was bare with
straight black hair upon it. His hand was on my arm, and he
stood before me and looked in my face and smiled a little
at me, very gently and timidly.'
"It seems he found her scarcely less strange than she found
him. In his bearing was something of awe and wonder, while
she stared with a mere surprise.
"'Are you a man?' she asked at length, stupidly.
"He smiled yet. 'No,' he answered gently. 'But oh, you are
beautiful!'
"She replied nothing at first, and he went on with a soft
voice like the voice of a tender child. 'I saw you in the
water long ago, I looking up to you, you looking down to
where I was hidden. I smiled to you and reached my hand,
but there was no smile on your face, and I did not dare
take you till--till this time. Then your hands were
stretched forward, and as I clasped them you sank to me,--my
beloved! my beloved!'
"His brown face glowed upon his words with a fire of
worship. She started back from him with a quick terror,
hands clasped and lips parted.
"'Tell me,' she cried, 'tell me, where am I? What is this
place? Am I dead at last?'
"He soothed her. 'You are in my country,' he said very
gently. 'Now it is your country, as I am yours. You are not
dead but living, and brimming with the love I languish for;
and here you will stay with me, and we will love one
another very tenderly in the heart of my gloom, and you
will be my bride.
"'Oh, listen to me!' he cried, when she would have
answered. 'Many slim and delicate girls have come to me
through the mirror of the pool, but none such as you, with
a warm soul floating on your face and a bosom aching for
love. When first I saw you I yearned for you, I coveted
you. The thought of you was my food and drink, and stayed
my eyes from sleep; I set my spell on the waters that they
should slumber and hold your image unbroken, and now I have
you; you are here with me. You are mine.'
"He was glowing with a kind of eagerness it hurts one to
rebuff, and she watched him, her fears under control, with
a growing wonder.
"'Yes,' she said slowly. 'It must be true, then--that old
tale. You are Tagalash!'
"He smiled. I am Tagalash,' he answered.
"'But,' she said, 'I am white!' For no one had ever heard
of any but Kafir brides for Tagalash.
"He shrank a little, but smiled yet beseechingly, as he
would have her cease that part of the tale.
"'You are so beautiful,' he urged, come with me to my
house, will you not?'
"But that she would not do, and moved not from her place on
the grassed knoll throughout her stay in the shadows--
something like a week.
"'I am the wife of Johannes Olivier,' she said, and her
words sounded foolish in her own ears. 'I am a wife,' she
persisted, there in that dead land of the black gods. 'I
want to go back,' she cried like a strayed child. 'I want
to go back. I am afraid. Take me back to the light.'
"'He tried to comfort her with gentle words and talk of his
passion and her beauty, but to no effect. She shrank from
the unnatural flesh of him; she panted as though the dust
of tombs were in her nostrils; and at last he stood off,
looking at her with a mild trouble, and then he went away,
and she was sitting once more alone amid the traffic of
hushed voices and moving shadows.
"'There came no night,' she told us, in a voice that
quavered uncertainly, 'always that unlovely twilight only;
and I sat on the grass and wept. She had no sensation of
hunger or sleep in that world, the whole of her stay. She
stayed in the same place, dreary and waiting, with no
active hope and little fear--only a longing for the
sunlight; and at last a dull pain of yearning for the rough
red head and beefy texture of her human husband. A week,
mind you--a week she stayed there thus, save when Tagalash
would come up unheard to court her again.
"After that first time he was a more cautious lover, and
sat at her feet with lowered eyes pleading with her. One
answer always stilled him, and that was her cry of 'Take me
back; I am afraid.'
"'You were not fashioned for a rude love,' he said to her
once.
"'Ah,' she answered then, 'but there is that in me that
welcomes a heavy hand and a strong arm.'
"'The others are like that,' he answered, as though
speaking to himself. 'But they have no such hungry beauty
as you.'
"'My beauty,' she told him, 'is a chance vessel for a mere
woman's soul.'
"At last he became wistful, and seemed afraid to ask: for
what he desired. 'But I can yet give to you,' he told her.
'Say what you would have. I can bring it you.'
"'Then give me back to my world,' she cried. 'Do that, and
I will thank you on my knees.'
"He sighed. 'Is that all you desire?' he said. 'Supposing I
granted you that, is there nothing you would take back with
you?'
"'No,' she answered.
"'No charm?' he asked again. 'Not a charm to compel love? I
can give you even that.'
"'Take me back,' she begged, 'and teach me how to win my
husband to forgive me.'
"He smiled very sadly, and she could almost have pitied
him, so poor he seemed, bereaved of his desire.
"'You are greater than Tagalash,' he said slowly, 'since
you make a slave of him. You shall have what you will. Go
back to your world, my beloved, my love that shall
henceforth dread the still pools.'
"'So I came back,' she said, looking-round on us as though
all were explained.
"'How?' we asked.
"'Why, I came,' she answered plaintively, and had no more
to tell. She had been found sleeping on the grass near the
spruit, after a week of absence during which the men of the
district had combed the very bushes for a trace of her.
"'But the charm?' asked one of us. 'The charm to win
forgiveness? What was that?'
"She looked timidly at the tall Johannes who stood by her
chair in silence.
"'I have forgotten what it was,' she answered with wet
eyes.
"'No,' he cried, bending to her lips. 'No! It is a true
charm that, my kleintje.'"
"Good old Tagalash!" remarked Katje cheerfully.
THE HOME KRAAL
After sunset on a summer's day, when evening has overcome
the oppression of the still heat and breezes grow up like
thoughts, the world of veld becomes odorous, and every air
has its burden of unforgettable scents.
As we sat in the stoop, steeped in a flood of shadow,
looking down over the kraals to where the grasses are ever
green about the spruit, the Vrouw Grobelaar spoke gently.
"I should remember this," she said, "after a hundred years
of heaven. The winds of Mooimeisjes would call me even
then."
Katje's hand moved in mine.
"It is home," said Katje. "It--it makes me want to cry."
The Vrouw Grobelaar smiled. "As for me," she answered, "it
makes me think of nothing so much as that hollow beside
Cornel's grave, where, in my time, I shall go to my long
dreaming. This place has peace written large on its face;
and ah! it is at home that one would like to lie at last.
Yes, none of your damp churchyards for me! The home kraal,
like a Boer vrouw; for the grave and the home are never
quite two things to us Boers. How some have striven for the
home kraal, that feared to lie with strangers. Allemachtag,
yes!"
She moved a little in her armchair, and we waited in
silence for the tale to come. Katje came closer to me, in
that way she has, like a dear child or a little dog.
"The Vrouw van der Westhuizen," said the old lady, "had but
one child, a son. Emmanuel, she called him, for a dozen
poor reasons; and for him and in him she had her whole
life. The poor, they say, are rich in poor things, and this
lad grew to manhood with a multitude of mean little vices
and dirty ways which showed like a sign on his pale weak
face, and summed up the trivial soul within for you at the
first glance. Most of us have cause to thank God that He
has not written on our faces; but Emmanuel could have
carried no writing large enough for his mother to read.
Because he was weak and idle, two of her nephews lived on
the farm, Barend and Peter van Trump, great slow true men,
with hearts like children; yet she esteemed Emmanuel as
much above them as they in truth, in all points of worth
and virtue, were over him. Ah, but a mother is a traitor to
the whole world.
"I remember this Emmanuel well. A bony small man of the
color of straw, with eyes that moved too quickly and a cold
hand, a body like a wisp of linen-cloth-so flimsy and
slight--and some slenderness at the knee that made him
shamble like a thief! Peter stood with a great brown hand
on his shoulder, smiling at me with a frank open mouth and
cheeks creased with pleasantry. When he laughed, his body
shook mightily, and the motion of his hand made the other
stagger. And the Vrouw van der Westhuizen stood there
looking, with eyes like pools of pride for her son.
"There was nothing in the farm to hold Emmanuel, no charm
in the veld nor interest in the work. He was barely a man
when he would ride on to the dorp and its saloons, and in
time he was there oftener and oftener, drinking and soiling
his hands with all the strange foulness of life the English
bring with them. We, the neighbors round about, marked it
of course; but none thought much of Emmanuel and his
doings; and the thing was little talked of till it became
known that at last he was gone for good, and had betaken
himself to live in a great town, among devilries that have
no name in our clean Taal.
"It was a grievous blow for the Vrouw van der Westhuizen.
From the time he departed, she became old; as she went
about her affairs, the woe at her heart was plain to see.
She was a stricken woman, the world had been cut from under
her; and about her, now that her child was gone, she felt
nothing familiar, but lived, dumb and bewildered, in a maze
of strangers. Barend and Peter had no wits to console her.
How, indeed, should they have hoped to console a mother
thus bereft? The days lounged by inexorably, bringing no
word of Emmanuel with them, and no mercy. Their footprints
were the wounds upon the Vrouw van der Westhuizen's heart;
and, in the end she sickened wearily and lay listless, due
to death.
"Then only did the silence break and let through a word of
news. Some one--I cannot remember now who it was--had been to
the town to a law-case to be cheated of some land, and he
brought back news of Emmanuel--news that he was deadly ill
in a mean place, and lacking money. He told it shortly to
the Vrouw van der Westhuizen, and she sent at once for
Barend and Peter.
"'Get to your horses,' she told them, 'and bring my
kleintje back to me. Be quick to bring him--why do you stand
gaping like sick cows while he is dying? And take money.
Take all the money that is in my box under the bed, in case
he should need something. Get the box out quickly, now!'
"They obeyed her. In the box was the money of the house, as
the Boers need to keep it, a great deal of money in
sovereigns, very heavy to carry. But she would not even
suffer them to count it, so they filled a bag with it, and
Barend tied it to his belt, and then they caught the horses
and started on the long trek to the town.
"It is a journey of fifteen days by wagon, yet those two,
by killing horses--they who used all beasts so gently--did it
in three, and on the fourth, much troubled by the great
throng of people all about them, came to a narrow street,
smelling of poor food, and found the house in which
Emmanuel lay. A woman with a cruel face and naked breasts
opened to them, staring at their great size and their
beards, and showed them up a long stair to a room with a
bed, from which Emmanuel looked up at them.
"It was a small room, tucked close under the roof, and held
but the tumbled frowsy bed, an uneasy table and a chair. On
the floor, clothes and boots lay heaped with old
newspapers, and the place was hot with stale air. From the
pillows, the face of Emmanuel met them with something of
expectancy; and the two big men, fresh from the wind of the
veld, saw with a quick dismay how his pale skin stood tight
over the bones of him, and a clear pink burned like a
danger lamp high up on each cheek.
"'I thought you would come,' said the sick man in a weak
voice, 'I knew it. I was sure I should not die alone in
this hole, while my mother's horses were sound. It is bad
enough to die at all, but no man deserves to die away from
home.'
"Peter kneeled down beside the bed and would have passed an
arm under his shoulder. But he would not have it.
"'No need to slobber,' he said, with a note of contempt in
the voice that rang so faintly. The woman, who was leaning
in the door, laughed harshly, and a passing smile flickered
over Emmanuel's face.
"'I couldn't live, could I, Flo?' he said to her. 'But I
can die. You watch--it'll be worth seeing. What's that you
have at your belt, Barend? Not money?'
"Barend nodded. 'Yes, it is money,' he said. 'The ou ma
sent it, if you should need it.'
"'Need it!' Emmanuel laughed harshly.
"'God, but I do need it. When didn't I? How much is it,
man?'
"'She would not have us stay to count it,' answered Barend.
'But it is a very great sum.' He loosened the bag from his
belt. 'All gold,' he added, and poured the sovereigns in a
heap on the tumbled bed.
"'God! said Emmanuel again, striving to sit up. The woman
at the door uttered a short oath and came forward with
parted lips and bent over the gold.
"'Laddie, it's a pile,' she said hoarsely. 'A jugfull!' Her
twitching hands ploughed through the heap, and the coins
tinkled among her fingers. She was glancing from one to
another of the men, and drew forth her hand clenched on a
full fist of sovereigns. Peter, still kneeling beside the
bed, made a noise in his throat.
"She bent her look on him, a look of narrow warlike eyes
and bared teeth, the first stare of a savage animal
disturbed on its kill; but the big Boer met her with a face
of calm.
"'The ou ma sent it for Emmanuel,' he said slowly, and rose
to his feet.
"She snarled at him, but Barend, with his teeth clenched on
his beard, moved to the door and stood there with his legs
apart and his great hands on his hips, filling up the way.
Emmanuel lay on his back, breathing a little hard, the
color pulsing in and out on his cheeks and a twisted smile
on his lips. She turned a second to him, as though to
appeal, but saw him as he lay and said nothing.
"'Put that money, Emmanuel's money, back on the bed!' said
Peter.
"She lifted it to her bosom as though to pouch it, but
Peter moved his arm and she flung the coins suddenly on the
floor, and laughed gratingly at him.
"'D'you see that, laddie?' she called to Emmanuel. 'Oh, you
sneering devil, gasping there, ain't you got a word to say
to me? Say, can't I have some of this cash? There's enough
here to spare me a fistfull.'
"'Lift me up, Peter,' said Emmanuel. Peter raised him till
he sat upright, and held him with a long arm about his
shoulders. Emmanuel reached forward hands thin as films of
milk, and shuffled the gold to and fro.
"'Can you have some?' he said, looking up at the woman.
'You! Yes, you man-wrecking pirate, go down on your knees
and whine for it, beg for it, pray with clasped hands for
it, and you shall take as much as you can grasp. Do that,
d'you hear? I want to see you on your knees for once and
groveling for a handful of sovereigns. Go on; get down with
you!'
"Barend gave a short laugh. It was amusing of Emmanuel, he
thought, to promise this on a condition so impossible. The
woman spun on her heel and faced him sharply with bent
brows and a heaving bosom.
"'Kneel, my beauty,' said Emmanuel again mockingly, but
watching the woman as she stared at Barend. There was a
kind of wonder on her dark cruel face as she studied the
big Boer's serene countenance and masterful poise of head,
and noted there the mild amusement which is the scorn of a
good man.
"'Kneel now, and plead for it,' said Emmanuel again; and of
a sudden a doubt came over Barend. There was a distress
plain to see, something remorseful and newly born surging
in this harlot; there was an appeal, fiercely shameful, in
the hard eyes bent on his.
"Of a sudden she wheeled round and spat an awful curse at
the sick man. 'Keep your damned money!' she went on, while
the thick veins in her neck grew to dark ridges. 'D'you
think you can buy everything? You've sold your life and
your innocence for filth--d'you suppose it's all to buy? You
an' me's in the same box, my boy--bad 'ems both, but you
don't make a dog of me.'
"She turned to Barend. 'Let me pass, you big hulking--'
she hesitated, looking at him.
"'Oh, you poor innocent,' she cried, with a laugh, and ran
past him and out at the door.
"Emmanuel called after her, and bade her come back and take
what she would, but her heels rattled on the stairway and
she was gone.
"'Is that the strange woman?' asked Peter, quoting from the
Proverbs.
"Emmanuel laughed. 'Strange as the devil,' he said, with
his voice running weak. 'You see souls in this town,
cousins--not bodies only, as on the farm. Souls that blush
and bleed, I tell you. But go to the head of the stairway,
Barend, and shout as loud as you can for Jim. Just shout
"Jim"!'
"Barend went and roared the name half a dozen times. There
came at last a man with a dirty coat buttoned to the neck,
grimy, ill-shod and white-eyed, and to him Emmanuel,
speaking from behind the heap of sovereigns, to which the
man's evil pale eyes strayed every moment, gave orders.
"'Tell the boys,' he said, 'that there's a spree here
tonight. Get the whole gang, Jim, and particularly Walters.
And take what money you want, and send what is necessary up
here. Steal what you must, you hound, but leave us short of
nothing, or my big cousins here will cut you to ribbons. Is
that not so, Barend?'
"'Whenever you please, Emmanuel,' said Barend.
"The man Jim took the money and went, and
Emmanuel lay in Peter's arm, picking at the gold.
"'Shall I count it for you?' said Peter at last.
"'God, no!' said Emmanuel. 'Leave it, man. It's luxury not
to know how much it is.' A dribble of coins tinkled from
the blanket to the floor. 'Don't pick them up,' he cried,
as Barend stooped. 'This is like water in a long trek to
me.' He picked up a handful of money and strewed it abroad.
'I can die,' he said, 'now I've money to throw away, and
tonight there'll be the end.'