"Has he pleaded guilty, your worship?"
"No, he hasn't; but he was left, in the lurch as far as his legal
adviser was concerned," retorts the Bench, with rather a cruel emphasis
on the word "legal," for the practitioners at Doppersdorp are not
precisely shining lights in their profession.
An appreciative chuckle from the audience, started by a professional
rival, greets this sally, and the Bench, mollified, accepts graciously
the defaulting attorney's excuses.
Then the prosecutor goes on to describe how he had been riding round his
farm on such and such a day, and had come upon the prisoner's flock left
to itself. Instead of shouting for the missing herd he had searched
cautiously for him, suspecting he was up to mischief of some sort. Then
he had lit upon traces of blood, and following them he came to a spot
where a sheep had recently been killed, amid a clump of mimosa. There
were footmarks around, which he traced to some rocks hard by, and there
he found the meat, roughly quartered, hidden in a cleft. It was quite
fresh, and must have been deposited there that day. As he left the
place he saw somebody lying behind a low bush watching him, but
pretended not to notice. Shortly afterwards, as he returned to where
the flock was left, the accused came hurrying up. He accounted for his
absence by a cock-and-bull story, that he had seen a jackal skulking
near the sheep, and bad gone after it to drive it away. Witness
pretended to believe this tale, but as he was listening he noticed two
splashes of blood on the prisoner's leg. He evinced no suspicion
whatever, but on reaching home sent off at once for the District Police.
When the sheep were counted in that night one was missing. The
prisoner's hut was searched that night, and the skin was found, hidden
among a lot of blankets. It was quite fresh, and must have been flayed
off that day. He could swear that, and could swear to the skin. He
produced it in court. It bore his mark--an "S" reversed. On the
discovery of the skin Gonjana was arrested. The value of the sheep was
about 1 pound.
The prisoner's attorney, who all this time has been taking copious notes
or pretending to, jumps up to cross-examine. But little enough change
can he get out of the witness, whose statement is clear enough, nor does
anybody expect he will, least of all himself. As for the man he saw
lying behind the bush watching him, the prosecutor cannot absolutely
swear it was Gonjana, but he is certain of it short of that. The spoor
was the spoor of one man. He is accustomed to follow spoor--has been
all his life; he is certain, too, that no other people were in the
neighbourhood. He did not analyse the blood spots on the prisoner's
leg--they _might_ have been pig's blood, as Mr Darrell so sagely
suggests, there being hardly such a thing as a pig in the whole district
of Doppersdorp--but they were blood spots anyhow; that he can swear.
Why should the skin found in the prisoner's hut have been brought home
and not the meat? Well, skins were negotiable at some canteens, and
natives were fond of grog. He made no allegations against any canteen
keeper in the district, he merely answered the question. Gonjana had
been with him about a year, and twice he had suspected him of killing
sheep before. In other respects his behaviour was far from
satisfactory. Why did he keep him in his service? Well, servants were
scarce just then, and good ones scarcer still. He employed a bad one,
as some people employ an attorney--as a necessary evil.
Amid a great splutter of mirth Mr Darrell appeals vehemently to the
Bench to protect him against the insults of the witness, but there is a
twinkle in his eye and a half-suppressed grin on his face as he does so.
"Any more questions?"
"No."
So the prosecutor steps down, and is replaced by the police sergeant,
who deposes to the finding of the skin and the arrest of the prisoner.
The latter made no remark except that he supposed some one must have put
it there, as he knew nothing about it. This witness is not
cross-examined.
No evidence has Mr Darrell to call. But he draws a pathetic picture of
his unfortunate client, wrongfully accused--mistakenly rather, for
nobody who knows Mr Suffield would suspect him of wilfully making a
false accusation. This unfortunate man then--the very nature of whose
work obliges him to be alone in the lonely veldt, cannot of course call
any rebutting evidence, cannot prove an _alibi_--is being victimised by
the real culprit, but would rather take the punishment upon himself than
inform against the real culprit; and so on, and so on. The while
Gonjana, standing nonchalantly in the dock, is marvelling at the
stupendous idiocy of the white man, who can take up all that time
determining the plainest and clearest proofs of his guilt. And the
Bench shares in substance his opinion.
"This case," says the Bench, "is as plain as the nose on one's face.
Mr Darrell has made the best of a bad job on behalf of his client, but
even he could hardly be sanguine enough to expect to succeed. Tell him
I find him guilty," concludes the magistrate. And the constable
interprets accordingly.
"What is he saying?" as the man is vehemently muttering something.
"He say, sir, nobody see him kill dat sheep."
"Of course not. If every crime had to be seen by an eye-witness, how
many criminals would be convicted at all? Has he the means of paying a
fine? It will make a difference in his sentence."
"Yes, sir. He say he has one cow and fifteen sheep and goats."
This statement having been corroborated by the prosecutor, the Bench
goes on:--
"If he had possessed no means I had intended giving him the heaviest
sentence in my power, namely, a year's imprisonment with hard-labour.
Stock-stealing has assumed alarming proportions of late, and I am
determined to check it in this district, by making an example of every
offender. As it is, I sentence Gonjana to pay a fine of 4 pounds, to
pay Mr Suffield 1 pound, the value of the sheep, and to receive
twenty-five lashes with the `cat.' Call on the next case."
Kaffirs are stoical folk. This one's expression of countenance
undergoes no change, nor does he make any remark as, his sentence having
been interpreted to him, he shambles down from the dock to take his seat
on the prisoners' bench until the rising of the court. His place is
taken by a fellow-countryman, who is charged with contravening the
Masters and Servants Act by refusing to obey the lawful commands of his
master, Petrus Jacobus Botha.
The latter, an unkempt, corduroy-clad Dutchman, ascends the witness-box,
and, placing his greasy slouch hat on the rail, spits on the floor two
or three times, Sartly from nervousness, partly from sheer force of
habit; then he takes the oath, unctuously and with right hand uplifted,
as the manner of his countrymen is. He, too, is a farmer, and the
accused native is a herd. The facts of the case are soon got at, and
resolve themselves into a matter of "six of one, and half a dozen of the
other." The accused has no legal representative, but Mr Van Stolz
holds the scale of justice with rigid evenness. He listens to the
statements of all parties with infinite patience, and, having given the
prosecutor a little of his mind, he summarily dismisses the case, with
the metaphor that "people should come into court with clean hands, which
is just what the prosecutor has not done"; a remark which evolves a
laugh from two or three who grasp the humour underlying it.
Two Hottentot women, old offenders, are sent to gaol for a week for
lying drunk about the streets, and then the civil business begins. This
consists of a series of unimportant cases, mostly recovery suits, which
are soon disposed of; and by one o'clock the court work is over for the
day.
"Well, Musgrave," says the little magistrate, as he and his new clerk
stroll down the street together towards their respective dinners. "You
are getting quite into the swim of things, considering you have only
been at it ten days."
"If I am, Mr Van Stolz, it's thanks to the kindness and patience you
have shown to an utterly inexperienced hand, in teaching him what to do,
and how to do it."
"Oh, no one can be expected to know all about a thing by instinct. Some
men expect absurdities. A new clerk is appointed to them who knows
nothing whatever of his work, naturally, and they don't give him a
chance to learn. They expect him to have everything at his fingers'
ends the day he joins the Service, as much as if he had twenty years of
it at his back. It isn't fair on a young fellow; though by the way,
you're not a young fellow either, Musgrave. Some men at your age are
already Civil Commissioners."
The remark, though made in perfect innocence, and with no ulterior
thought whatever, was one of those which caused the hearer to shrink
imperceptibly into his shell. Though he had been ten days in the place,
not a soul in Doppersdorp knew a thing about him, beyond that he was
entirely new to the Service. It was a rare thing for a man of his age
to start in this, and at the salary of a youngster. It was a rare
thing, too, in a place like Doppersdorp, for a man's private affairs to
be so thoroughly a sealed book; there where everybody knew as much about
his neighbour's concerns as he did about his own, ofttimes a great deal
more.
"I've always got on well with my clerks," pursues Mr Van Stolz, "except
one, and I worked the oracle so as to get him changed; but, with that
exception, they have always been sorry to leave me, even when it meant
promotion."
The boast is a very pardonable one because true. The man who could not
get on well with Peter Van Stolz could get on with nobody. An excellent
official, he was the most genial and unassuming of men, and with such of
his subordinates as were gentlemen he was more like a comrade than an
official chief. They were all fellow Civil Servants, and he held that
there should be a strong _esprit de corps_ among such. Himself of Dutch
extraction, he was the right man in the right place, in charge of a
district ninety per cent, of whose population consisted of Boers. He
was deservedly popular, for he held the scale evenly between all parties
and all nationalities, whether Boers, natives, or British, and in his
judicial capacities, wherever it was possible with due regard to strict
justice to err on the side of indulgence, he was sure to do so. In
outward aspect he was a little man, sturdy and well knit withal,
extremely brisk in his movements, yet not in the least fussy; indeed,
such briskness seemed to express in itself his expansive and fun-loving
nature, and when a joke or a good story was to the fore, no laugh was
more spontaneous or heartier than his.
Their ways part here, and they separate. Roden, as he strolls down
towards the hotel where he has for the present taken up his quarters,
recalls the verdict which had irresistibly been forced upon his mind, as
he had been rattled into the place in the ramshackle post-cart one hot
and dusty afternoon ten days ago.
"Heavens! what a God-forsaken looking hole!" had been his unspoken
utterance as he viewed for the first time the ugly, mean-looking town,
and realised that this was to be his home for an indefinite period.
To say truth the aspect of Doppersdorp was calculated to impress nobody
in its favour. It lay upon an open plain, shut in on three sides by
bare and craggy mountains, and consisted at first sight mainly of a
couple of hundred mud-coloured tenements looking like lumps of clay
dropped upon the veldt and left to dry in the sun. It improved,
however, on closer inspection. The streets were broad and well laid
out, and bordered by willows--and on the lower side of the town were
gardens, which made a pleasant oasis of green against the prevailing
aridity. Some of the houses were double-storeyed, but the most
prominent building of all was the Dutch Reformed Church, an appalling
specimen of architecture, staringly new, and surmounted by a badly
proportioned steeple. The inhabitants of this place were firmly under
the impression that Doppersdorp was the most attractive, and nearly the
most important, town in the world; which was a comfortable form of
belief for themselves, if a bore to the new arrival, who was expected to
acquiesce.
"What d'you think of Doppersdorp?" was fired into the said new arrival
by every one with whom he was brought into contact, socially or
officially, unawares or with premeditation. And each individual querist
would be sure to continue in a tone of complacency, which might convey
the idea that it owed its attractiveness, if not its very existence,
mainly to himself:
"Ah, it's not half a bad little place, Doppersdorp; not half a bad
little place."
To which Roden Musgrave would agree, from the double-barrelled motive of
expediency, and the needless exertion entailed by maintaining the
contrary. His real opinion, like everything else, he held prudently in
reserve.