rejoicing in the muscles that ached with work and in his
capacity to do more and bear more than the Kafirs who were
his rivals.
For me, I was pleased enough and thankful to hear the heart
of him thus vocal, and to mark the man I knew of old and
chose to be my mate come to light in this laborer, new from
his toil.
"We did not sit late that night, for, with all his elation
and reawakened spirits. Kornel was weary to the honest bone
of him, and swayed with sleep as he stood on his feet. He
rolled into my clean, cool sheets with a grunt of utter
satisfaction. 'This is comfort indeed,' he said drowsily,
as I leaned over him, and he was asleep before I had
answered.
"At daylight he rose and went forth to the spruit again,
and there all day he labored earnestly. Each time that I
looked towards him I saw his back bent and his arms
plunging in the mud, while the rows of wet bricks grew
longer and multiplied. I heard him whistling at it,--some
English melody he had gathered long before at a
waapenschauw,--with a light heart, the while he was up to
his knees in the dirty water, with the mud plastered all
over him.
"By and by I went down to the bank and asked him how he
did. He straightened himself, grimacing humorously at the
stiffness of his back, and answered me cheerily.
"'Tomorrow old Pagan will come down and pay for what I have
done,' he said. I think he will be surprised at the amount.
His Kafirs have no such appetite for it as I.' And he
laughed.
"It was a dreadful business he had taken in hand, and work
hard beyond believing. The boxes stood in a pile above the
stream, and each had to be reached down as one was filled,
and as soon as two were full Kornel must climb the bank to
set them aside. When all were full, they had to be turned
out on the level ground, and all this, as you can see,
meant that he must scramble up and down in the heavy mud,
taxing every spring in his poor body. Yet he toiled
ceaselessly, attacking the job with a kind of light-hearted
desperation that made nothing of its hardships, bringing to
it a tough and unconquerable joy in the mere effort, which
drove him ever like a spur.
"As I watched him delving, I thought that here a woman
could render some measure of help, and as he turned from
talking to me I began to empty out the boxes that were
ready and stack them again on the pile. I had not yet
turned out ten bricks when he saw me, and paused in his
melancholy work.
"'Stop that!' he cried, and scrambled out of the spruit to
where I stood. 'I suppose,' he went on, 'you would like
your father to know that I had suffered you to work for me
like a Kafir.'
"'Kornel!' I cried in horror.
"But he was white on the cheek-bones and breathing hard,
and I could not soften him.
"'Rich man's daughter or poor man's wife,' he said, 'you
are white, and must keep your station. It is my business to
sell myself, not yours. Get you back to the house I have
given you, and stay there.'
"And with that he picked up the soft bricks I had turned
for him, and threw them one by one into the spruit.
"'Poverty and meanness and all,' he added, 'it shall not be
said at your father's house that you worked for me. Nor
that you lacked aught it became you to have, neither,' he
added, with a quick heat of temper. 'Get to your house.'
"I slunk off, crying like a child, while he went back to
the mud--and the labor.
"Next day came Pagan to pay for the work that was done. He
drove up in his smart cart, and tiptoed his way daintily to
the edge of the spruit where the bricks lay. He was an old
man, very cleanly dressed, with hard white hair on his head
and face, and a quick manner of looking from side to side
like a little bird. In all his aspect there was nothing but
spoke of easy wealth and the serenity of a well-ordered
life; there was even that unkindly sharpness of tone and
manner that is a dead-weight on the well-to-do. My husband
was at work when he drove up, but he straightened his back,
squared his broad shoulders, and came up from the mud,
walking at the full of his height and smiling down at the
rich man with half-closed eyes.
"'Daag, Heer Pagan,' he said to him, in the tone of one who
needs and desires nothing, and held out his hand--mud from
the elbow--with something lordly in the gesture. The rich
man cocked his head quickly, in the way he had, and hung in
the breeching for a moment, ere he rendered his hand to
Kornel, with a reddening of the cheek above his white
whisker that betrayed him, I thought, for a paltry soul.
"'I've come to see your bricks,' he said curtly, 'and to
pay for 'em, if they're all right.'
"'Ah, the bricks,' said Kornel airily. 'Yes, to be sure.
There they are. Go and count them, if you like, and then
you can come to me at my house where the Vrouw du Plessis
(which was me) will give us some coffee.'
"I was watching, you may be sure, and again I saw the
wintry red swell above the white whisker, and I clenched my
hands in wrath and contempt at the creature's littleness. I
was sure he would have liked to sweep my man's courtesy
aside, and certainly the politeness had a prick in it. He
was rich, and old, and fat, with a consequence in his mien
and an air that hinted he was used to deference, and Kornel
was but a muddy brick-moulder. Yet there stood my man, so
easy in his quiet speech, so sure of himself, so dangerous
a target for contempt, that the rich man only stammered.
Kornel nodded as though he understood the invitation to be
accepted, and walked up to the house, leaving old Pagan to
count the bricks and follow.
"I kissed him as he came in. 'You've trampled his dirty
soul under your heel,' I said, 'and I love you for it. I
love to see you upright and a man of purpose; whatever
comes of it, I shall honor you always.'
"He kissed me and laughed. 'Nothing will happen, if we are
lucky,' he said. 'There is more in John Pagan than the big
stomach and the money. But we mustn't crawl to him; I'll
wager he never crawled himself when he was poor.'
"I set the coffee ready, spreading the table with a fine
cloth I had brought from Kornel's farm, one of the few
things we had taken with us, and presently in came old
Pagan. Directly I saw him I felt a doubt of him; there was
a kind of surreptitious viciousness showing in his sour
smile that warned me. He was like a man who is brewing an
unpleasant joke.
"'Ah, Mrs. du Plessis,' he said, 'your man will have been
working very hard.'
"'You know what brick-moulding is, then?' I said.
"He grinned. 'A little,' he said; 'yes, a little. There's
few jobs I haven't put a hand to in my time. Work's a fine
thing, when a man knows how to work.'
"'You are very right,' agreed Kornel.
"'This is good coffee,' said John Pagan, as he stirred his
cup. 'In fact, it's better than the bricks.'
"'A better hand was at work on it,' said Kornel.
"'So I should judge,' answered Pagan sleekly. 'I should
like another cup of this coffee, if I may trouble you, Mrs.
du Plessis.'
"He laid his cup on the table and bit his nails while I
filled it, glancing round at my poor room the while and
smiling to himself.
"'Yes,' he said, 'I like the coffee, but I don't like the
bricks. They're no good at all.'
"We both stared at him, silent and aghast, and the white-
haired old man chuckled in our stricken faces.
"'What is wrong with them?' demanded Kornel at last. His
face was white, but he spoke quite naturally.
"'Aha!' laughed old Pagan. 'Ye see, there's no trade, that
ye can take up without a bit o' learning, not even makin'
mud-bricks. The very same thing happened to me. Lord, it's
past forty years ago, I turned out six hundred dozen, and
had 'em thrown on my hands. It nearly broke my heart.'
"'I can understand that,' said Kornel. 'But what is wrong
with my bricks?'
"Old Pagan set his cup back on the table and sat up in his
chair. As he began to speak he hitched back the sleeves of
his coat and moved his neck in his white collar.
"'See here!' he said. 'It's a little thing, like turning up
the toe of a horseshoe, but just as essential. When ye set
your full moulds out to dry, did ye set 'em on edge, to
drain away the water? Ye did not? Well, that's what's
wrong. They're just mud-pies-lumps o' damp dirt, that'll
crumble as soon as they're dry. There's ninety dozen of
'em, by my count, and there'll not be three dozen that ye
could use in any way consistent wi' conscience. Do ye take
my meanin'?'
"Kornel nodded very thoughtfully.
"'Well, you'll just need to get to work again,' said the
old man. 'Maybe I'm not exactly keen on greetings and
invitations and the like, but you'll not be able to teach
me anything on bricks. So if ye're thinking anything about
the splendor o' your work, wait dll ye're master of it
before you waste more thought. I'm your better as a
craftsman,' he said, with a glance towards me.
"I was red all over, what with shame and sorrow, but I
marked that the paltriness seemed to have gone from John
Pagan as soon as he began to talk of work. He turned then
to Kornel with a briskness that was not unkindly.
"'I was relying on you for bricks,' he said, 'for you can
work, and that's a fact. Perhaps you can let me have a
hundred dozen by Thursday, eh? I'm waitin' on them. And if
you make sure of it, I'll do wi' ye what's my common
custom, and that's pay half the price in advance. How's
that suit?'
"Kornel rose from his chair and stammered thanks, and John
Pagan paid the money on to the table.
"'I'll be down on Thursday to see the bricks,' he said,
'and don't forget the dodge I told ye. And maybe Mrs. du
Plessis 'll be willing to give me coffee again when I come.
So good-day to ye, and mind--drain 'em!'
"When he was gone Kornel and I looked at each other and
laughed emptily. Then he went out to the mud again to make
ready for Thursday.
"So it was we lived for a time that was shorter than it
seemed, building on the mud of our shaky fortunes a pride
that our poverty could not overturn. Kornel had a saying
that seemed irreligious but very true. 'There are ministers
and farmers and lawyers who are rich,' he would observe,
'but there's no money in work,' I have since been won to
believe that there is a flaw in the argument, but for us it
was true, and bitterly true. We were never on the right
side of ten shillings; we were never out of sight of the
thin brink of want. That we were preserved and kept clear
of disaster was due only to the toil of Kornel and my own
anxious care for the spending of the money. I found out
that a wife who is strong has a great trade to drive in
upholding her house; and I, at any rate, was proficient in
maintaining cleanliness, in buying and making food, and
preserving to my home the atmosphere of happiness and
welcome that anchors a man to his own place. Take it all in
all, we were happy, and yet I would not pretend that there
were not grim hours when we wondered if the mere living
were worth all that it cost. Kornel, hard as iron always,
grew lean and stooped, and there appeared in his face a
kind of wild care that frightened me. From the chill
upcoming of the dawn to the rising of the wind at evening
he taxed himself remorselessly at the sorry work in the
mud, while I scrubbed and scraped and plotted and prayed to
make the meagre pay cover wants that were pared meagre
enough. Yes, there were certainly times when we thought the
cost too great, but, God be praised, we never thought it at
the same moment, and the stronger always upheld the weaker.
"And there was never any shame in the matter. Even as we
feared nothing, we were never ashamed. Never!
"One morning--, about an hour before high sun, when the dust
lay thick on the road into the town that passed our land,
and the neighborhood around was feverish with the fuss of
the Kafirs and yellow folk, I stood for a moment at my
door, looking down to where Kornel was fervently at work in
the spruit. There was always traffic on the road at that
hour, and something drew me to look towards it. At once I
saw my father. He was riding in, dressed in his black
clothes, very solemn and respectable, with his beard
flowing over his chest. At the same moment he saw me, and
seemed to start in his saddle and glance quickly at all
about--at my poor little house, the litter that lay about,
the squalor of the town-end we lived in, and the laborious
bent back of my man as he squattered about in the mud. He
checked his horse an instant, as though by an impulse; for
my father, though I honored him, was a weak man, in whom no
purpose was steadfast. I saw the wavering in his face and
the uncertainty of his big pale eyes; and then, half-
nodding to me as though in an embarrassment, he pushed on
and entered the town. I went down and told Kornel.
"'H'm!' He stood as though in thought, looking up to me
from the water. 'Your father, eh? Would you like him to
come and see you?'
"I nodded.
"He laughed and climbed up the bank to me. 'So would I,' he
said. 'I have a stiffness in my back that makes me inclined
for anything rather than this work. Even your father.'
"We walked up to the house together, and Kornel's brow was
creased with thought, while his lips smiled.
"'You see,' he said, 'we want nothing from him--nothing at
all, so we can't afford to be humble. Have we any money at
all?'
"'We have three shillings,' I answered, 'and I owe one
shilling for food.'
"'That's not enough,' he said, shaking his head. 'You say
he saw me working? We must have thirty shillings at least;
we must treat him well; I can't let him off now that he has
seen so much. We'll stuff him till he bulges like a rotten
cask, and wishes he could make bricks as I can. I wonder if
Pagan would pay me in advance for a thousand dozen. I'll go
and ask him.'
"He started for the door at once, but turned and came back
to me.
"'He said once he had nothing to give me,' he whispered to
me. Do you grudge me this, kleintje.'
"'Not I,' I answered. 'I only wish we could do more.'
"He kissed me and was off in a moment. Pagan made no
difficulty about the money. He looked at Kornel shrewdly
when my man made the request, and paid at once.
"'It suits me ye should be a wee thing in my debt,' he
said. 'But you're so damned proud, there's times I'm scared
o' ye. Sign yer name here.'
"'Now,' said Kornel, when he had put the money in my hand,
'get what you need for a dinner that will tickle the ou
pa's stomach, and a bottle of whiskey. There never was a
deacon that did not suffer from some complaint that whiskey
would ease; and I'll get into what clean clothes I have and
go to look for him.'
"So I bought the dinner. I was willing enough to suffer the
emptiness to come, if only I could wipe from my father's
memory his impression of my man's poverty; but all the
same, in case he should refuse to visit us, I bought things
that would last long enough to serve ourselves until the
thirty shillings should have been earned. They made a good
show: for I have never been a fool in the matter of food,
and I knew my father's tastes. I promised myself that his
dinner should be his chief memory of that day, at all
events. He was, I fear, the kind of man who remembers his
good dinners better than anything else.
"It was a long time before they came, and I had given up
all hope of the visit when I heard their voices. Or rather,
it was Kornel's voice that I heard, in a tone of careless
civility, like one who performs a casual duty of
politeness. He was talking nonsense in a slow drawl, and as
they picked their way from the road to the house my father
looked up to him in a kind of wonder.
"'The evenings are pleasant here,' Kornel was saying. 'We
have a little time to ourselves then, for people have
learned at last not to trouble us much. One sees the sun go
down yonder across the hills, and it is very pretty, Now,
on the farm, nobody ever knew how handsome the sunset is.
We were like Kafirs on the farm; but life in the town is
quite different.'
"He chattered on in the same strain, and my father was
plainly dazed by it, so that his judgment was all fogged,
and he took the words at their face value. I noticed that
my father seemed a little abashed and doubtful; it was easy
to see that this was the opposite of what he had expected.
"He greeted me with a touch of hesitation in his manner;
but I kissed him on the forehead and tried to appear a
fortunate daughter--smiling assuredly, you know, glad to
exercise hospitality and to receive my father in my own
house. It was not all seeming, either; for I had no shame
in my condition and my husband's fortune,--only a resentment
for those who affected to expect it.
"'You are looking well,' said my father, staring at me.
'How do you like the life you are living?'
"Kornel smiled boldly across to me, and I laughed.
"'I was never so happy in my life,' I answered--and that, at
any rate, was true.
"My father grunted, and sat listening to the gentle flow of
talk with which Kornel gagged him the while I busied myself
with the last turn of the cooking and set the table to
rights. But he glanced at me from time to time with
something of surprise and disapproval; perhaps a white
woman with no Kafir servant had never met his eyes before.
Kornel did not miss the expression of his face.
"'We will show you something new in the dinner line,' he
remarked knowingly. 'There are things you can't teach to a
Kafir, you know.'
"'What things?' demanded my father.
"'Ah, you shall see in a moment,' answered Kornel, nodding
mysteriously. 'Christina will show you. Have you ever heard
of a ragout?'
"My father shook his head. Neither had I; but I held my
tongue.
"'Well,' said Kornel, 'a ragout is a fowl cooked as
Christina has cooked it. It is a very favorite dish among
the rich men in Johannesburg. If you will draw up your
chair to the table you shall see.'
"It is true that I had a good hand with a fowl, stewed in a
fashion of my own, which was mainly the outcome of
ignorance and emergency; but it was very fortunate that on
that day of all days the contrivance should have turned out
so well. It was tender, and the flesh was seasoned to just
the right flavor by the stuff I stewed with it--certain
herbs, Katje, and a hint of a whiff of garlic. Garlic is a
thing you must not play with: like sin, you can never undo
it, whatever forgiveness you win. But a leaf or two bruised
between two clean pebbles, and the pebbles boiled with the
stew, spices the whole thing as a touch of devil spices a
man.
"You maybe sure I was anxious about it, and watched Kornel
and my pa as they started to eat. Kornel swallowed his
first mouthful with an appearance of keen judgment; then he
winked swiftly to me, and nodded slightly. It was his
praise of the dish. Oh, if you had known my man, you would
not need telling that that was enough for me. My father
commenced to eat as though curious of the food before him.
He gave no sign of liking or otherwise; but presently he
squared his shoulders, drew his chair closer to the table,
and gave his mind to the matter.
"'That's right, walk into it,' said Kornel. "'It is very
good indeed,' said my father, eating thoughtfully, and
presently I helped him to some more. Kornel gave him soda-
water with whiskey in it, and thereafter there were other
things to eat--nearly thirty shillings' worth. After that
they sat and smoked, and drank the strong coffee I made for
them, and passed the whiskey bottle to and fro between
them. All the while Kornel babbled amiably of foolish
things, sunsets, and Shakespeare and the ways of women,
till I caught myself wondering whether indeed he relished
the change from the wide clean veld of the farm to this
squalid habitation of toil.
"'I suppose,' said my father at last, when Kornel had
finished talking about sunsets,--'I suppose a ragoo, as you
call it, is very expensive to make?'
"'I really couldn't say,' answered Kornel. 'But I should
think not.'
"'H'm; and you think a Kafir could not be taught to make
them?'
"Kornel laughed. 'I should be sorry to try,' he said.
"My father pondered on that for a while, smoking strongly
and glancing from time to time at me.
"'I'm growing an old man,' he said at last, 'and old men
are lonely at the best.'
"'Some seem to wish it,' said Kornel.
"'I say they are lonely,' repeated my father sharply. 'I
have no wife, and I cannot be bothered with getting another
at my time of life.' He shook his gray head sadly. 'Not
that I should have to look far for one,' he added, however.
"Kornel laughed, and my father looked at him angrily.
"'If it had not been for you,' he said, 'I should still
have had my daughter Christina to live with me. I am tired
of being alone, and I cannot nurse the wrong done me by my
own flesh and blood. You and Christina had better come out
to the farm and live with me.'
"'And leave my business?' asked Kornel.
"'Oh, there is mud and water on the farm, if your business
pleases you,' retorted my father. 'But out there we do not
take the bread out of the mouths of Kafirs.'
"'I see,' answered Kornel briefly; and I, who watched him,
knew from his voice that there was to be no truce after
that, that we should still earn our livelihood by the mud
bricks.
"'You will come?' asked my father.
"'Good Lord, no!' replied Kornel. 'You would weary me to
death in a week, I don't mind being civil when we meet, but
live with you! It would be to make oneself a vegetable.'
"My father heard him out with a grave face, and then rose
to his feet. There was a stateliness in his manner that
grieved me, for when a man meets a rebuff with silence and
dignity he is aging.
"'You are right, perhaps,' he said. 'I don't know, but you
may be. Anyhow, I have enjoyed an excellent meal, and I
thank you. Good-bye, Christina!'
"When he was gone, Kornel turned to me.
"'It is evident you cannot have both a husband and a
father,' he said; 'but I am sorry for the rudeness,
kleintje. He is a greater man than I.'
"'I think you might have made it otherwise,' I answered,
for my heart ached for my father.
"He shrugged his shoulders. 'You must manage to forgive
me,' he said. 'I have a thousand dozen bricks to make, and
that will be punishment enough.'
"'But you will not start again tonight!' I cried, for it
was already the thin end of evening, and he was taking off
his clean clothes.
"'A thousand dozen is a big handful,' he answered, smiling.
'There's nothing like getting a grip on the work ahead.'
"So in a few minutes he was down in the water again, and
the mud flew as he worked at the heart-breaking task he had
taken upon him. After all, the ragout was expensive to
make. It came dearer than we expected.
"Late into the night he held on, though thrice I went out
to the bank of the stream to beg him to quit it and come to
bed. There was a great pale moon that night, which threw up
the colors of things strongly, and I have yet in my mind--
and my heart--that picture,--the stained water, and the bank
of gray mud over it, and between the two my Kornel bent
over the endless boxes, vehemently working with no
consideration for the limits of his strength. His arms
gleamed with the wet, and were ceaseless; he might have
been a dumb machine, without capacity for weariness. If he
had toiled before, now he toiled doubly; there was a
trouble in his mind to be sweated out and a debt of money
to be repaid. And also, like a peril always near at hand,
there was the thin margin that stood between us and
starvation.
"When he came to bed at length, he lay down without the
greeting he was wont to give me--lapsed into his place
beside me with the limpness of a man spent to the utmost
ounce. He slept without turning on his side, his worn
hands, half-closed, lying loosely on the quilt. Yet within
an hour after daylight he rose with narrow, sleep-burdened
eyes, fumbled into his clothes, and staggered out to the
spruit again, to resume his merciless work with the very
fever of energy. The Kafirs that worked leisurely on the
next plot stopped to look at him and to wonder at the speed
with which the rows of drying bricks lengthened and
multiplied. I saw them pointing as I stood at the door,
heavy-hearted and anxious, and envied the ease of their
manner of life, and the simplicity that could be content
with such work at such a wage. Yes, I have envied Kafirs,
Katje; there are times for all women when we envy the dead.