us, great and violent and unawaited. Kornel had been up at
daybreak again, working as strongly as ever, though his
mouth was loose with the strain and his face very yellow
and white. The drying and the dry bricks were lying on the
ground in long rows, and some which were hard were already
stacked to make room for others. It was a tremendous output
for one man in the time it had taken; and when the Kafirs
turned out, gabbling and laughing as usual, they stopped to
look in surprise at our plot and the great quantity of
bricks. They gathered in a group, and talked among
themselves and pointed, and presently I was aware there was
something toward. One of them in particular,--a great brown
brute, with bulky shoulders and huge arms, seemed to be
concerned in the affair; he stared continually towards
Kornel, and talked loudly, his voice running up into the
squeak of a Kafir when he is excited, or angry, or afraid;
and presently he stepped over our border line and walked
down to the bricks. He was jabbering to himself all the
time as he stooped and picked up bricks and examined them
closely, and glanced down to the spruit where Kornel was
still working.
"I watched him, but I said nothing, hoping he would go away
before Kornel saw him; but he kept on, and presently my man
looked up.
"He saw the Kafir at once, and climbed up the bank pretty
quickly. There was something like a smile on his face, a
look as though he had found the relief he needed. He walked
swiftly over to the Kafir.
"'What are you doing here?' he demanded, keeping his eyes
unwinkingly on the staring eyes of the Kafir.
"The latter held a dried brick in his great paw, and now he
thrust it forward and broke into a torrent of speech. He
accused Kornel of having trespassed in the night and stolen
the bricks of the Kafirs. No man, he said, could have made
so many by himself, and then he began to call names. I
shuddered and put my hands before my face, and took them
down again in time to see Kornel's fist fly up and out, and
the great Kafir reel back from a vicious blow in the face.
"But he gave way for a moment only. Next instant he
recovered and his huge arm rose, and I screamed and ran
forward as the brick, dry and hard as a stone, struck
Kornel on the head and tumbled him, loosely like a dead
man, among the rows of bricks about him. I did not see the
Kafir run away; I saw only the thin white face of my man
turned up to the sun, and the blood that ran from his brown
hair. I lifted his head and called to him; but his head
lolled on his shoulders, and I let him lie while I ran out
crying to find help.
"It was some of the yellow folk who carried him in for me,
and brought the German doctor.
"Kornel was on the bed when he came, and he caused the cut
to be bandaged, and then spoke abstrusely of the effect of
the blow, so that I understood nothing at all. I learned,
however, how I was to tend him, how feed him, and how he
would lie unconscious for long intervals when there would
be nothing at all to do for him. But he told me I had
nothing to fear in the end. Indeed, he had a kind of
cheeriness which seems to belong to doctors, which did much
to comfort me and steady me for what was to come. Kornel
would not die, he said; and it was that assurance I chiefly
needed.
"The day went slowly for me, I can tell you. There was yet
food enough in the house to last us a little while, and I
made a mess for Kornel, and ate what I wanted myself. He
recovered his sense of things once or twice, but when night
came he dropped off again into a stupor from which he was
not to be roused, and it was then I left him. I felt as
though I were a traitor to him in his weakness; but my mind
had buzzed hopelessly all day about the problem of our mere
living, and I saw nothing else for it, so down I went to
the spruit to earn what I might for my sick husband.
"The moon gave me light, and I had watched Kornel often
enough to know how to go about the work. But the water, as
it flowed about my legs, bit me with a chill that made me
gasp, and the effort of the work, the constant bending and
lifting, tried every muscle in my body. I had seen the
cruelty of the work in its traces on Kornel, and knew how
little it gave and how much it took; but with this first
trial of it came the realization, never lost since, of how
gallant a man I had chosen to stand between me and the
world, and how much I owed him. I had not time to think a
great deal, for the torture of brick-making is partly in
the tact that while it wrenches the body, it joins the mind
to its infinite triviality. If you think, you do not pack
the mud as it must be packed, and the sun crumbles your
bricks to dust. It is no task for a real man at all; even
for a woman, it debases, it unmakes, it breaks.
"I worked hard at it, husbanding my strength, and within an
hour I was weak and foolish with the effort. Twice I had
left it to go in and see if all was well with Kornel, and
this rested me; but I was now resolved that I must rest no
more, if ever our debt was to be paid and bread earned for
the grim days to come. So I stayed in the bitter water and
worked on, till even the sense of pain was dulled and it
seemed that I was past the capacity of feeling.
"I was toiling thus (never mind my old troubles, Katje,
dear; this is years ago) when a sound came to my ears that
caused me to look up. It had been going on for some time,
persisting till it gained my notice, and suddenly I became
aware that there were men on our ground among the bricks. I
climbed half-way up the bank to look at them, where they
could not see me; and I saw several dark figures bent to
some business or moving here and there. I caught the sound
of hushed voices, too, though no words; and then the hot
wrath set my blood racing as I realized what was going on.
The Kafirs, who knew my man was wounded and helpless--the
very beast who had felled him--were stealing the bricks he
had labored so stoutly to make. My head swam with a
delirium of vivid anger at the meanness of the crime, and
without calculation, with no thought of fear, I scrambled
up and ran at them, shouting.
"I suppose they were surprised at my coming out of the
spruit, and some of them ran as soon as they heard me.
Others stood and waited ominously--you know what a Kafir is
with a woman,--and doubtless I should have met my last
earthly troubles then and there, but that from the road
beyond us there were other shouts, and men came running.
"I saw the forms of the rescuers as they raced up, and
marked one tall young man who ran past me with his arm
lifted before him. There was a flash and a bang, and I sat
down heavily as the white men shot at the Kafirs who were
now all running to cover. It took but an instant, and I
remember it as one remembers a thing seen at night by a
lightning flash, sharp and feverish.
"'Ye've no need to be feared,' someone said to me. 'They're
only my clerks, but they're a handy lot.'
"A short stout man was standing over me, and as I looked up
I saw it was old Pagan. Away in the darkness there were yet
cries and the sound of blows, where the white men pursued
the Kafirs.
"'Ye see,' continued the old man, 'I heard o' what had
happened, an' I counted on this. I'm a man o' experience,
Mrs. du Plessis, an' the very same thing happened to me
once. So I got a few o' my lads along, and we've been
waitin' for what ye might call the eventuality. I'm no'
exactly a negrophilist, ye ken. An' after seem' you
squatterin' about in the mud yonder, while yer husband was
sick a-bed, there was no holdin' the lads. No' that I
endeavored to restrain them, in any precise sense.'
"Away in the darkness a Kafir shrieked agonizedly.
"'There ye are,' said the old man. 'Yon's chivalry. If ye
had been a man, they'd never ha' put their hearts into it
like that.'
"He helped me to my feet and gave me an arm towards the
house.
"'There's just one thing,' he said, 'and it's this. I'm no'
quite the slave-driver ye might take me for--workin' in the
night to drag a pittance out o' me! For instance, I've a
job in the store that yer man can have, if it'll suit him,
and if you're willing yerself. It's no' a big thing, but
it's white. And for the present while, I dare say I can
advance ye enough to be going on with. And me and the lads
'll say no word about seein' you at yer work.'
"What is the use of carrying this tale on? It was there we
ceased to have the troubles that go to making tales, and
entered upon the ordered life of good industry and clean
living. But, Katje, of all that came afterwards, money and
success, and even children, there was nothing to knit us as
did the sorry months by the spruit, when my Kornel proved
himself the man I knew him to be. Be happy, Katje; be happy
at any rate."
I think she has been happy.
THE END