The next day was a dream of delight. The evaporation from the sand
counteracted the heat of the sun, and the pungent air was full of
germinating energy. Cool, gentle breezes awoke now and then, wandered
vaguely to and fro, and then laid themselves down to rest, rising anon
to play in a circle of mimic whirlwinds. Old Schalk sat in the doorway
of the mat-house with his feet in the sun and the large Bible open upon
his knees. The combination of Old Schalk and an open Bible meant either
that he was in extremely good humour and felt at peace with all mankind
and in general harmony with his environment--or else the direct reverse.
In the former case he would usually have the volume open at the Song of
Solomon; in the latter, at the 109th Psalm. To-day he prayed, although
he knew it not, for his heart was lifted up in involuntary thankfulness
and appreciation of the feast which was so lavishly spread around him.
His happiness was even beyond the terms of his favourite Psalms, which
he knew off by heart--even the numbers of the great lyric poets of
Israel seemed to fall short of the music which Nature was making upon
his worn heart-strings.
Mrs Hattingh was sitting boiling soap inside the kitchen-scherm, her
failing eyes rendered more than usually red and rheumy by the steam
arising from the acrid lye. She, too, felt the benign influences with
which the Desert was rich; the labour she was engaged in was not as
irksome as usual. As she broke the bushes into the soap-pot she might
have been a rapt sorceress brewing a love-philtre, or a priestess
sacrificing at the shrine of the God of Cleanliness.
Maria and Petronella were sitting on the wagon-box crooning a weird song
in a minor key. They felt sleepy and happy, for Mother Nature had a
word for them too. It was a word very softly spoken, and in a language
which they did not yet fully understand, but it made them dream vague,
sweet dreams. Susannah heard the voice, and, low as it was spoken, it
awoke her and she hearkened to it. She, too, failed to understand the
words, but the cadences were sweet and seemed to be full of an infinite
promise.
Nature, in her spring guise, has to do her work in the Desert, when she
does it at all, in a hurry. There the seasons do not follow the regular
course. At the end of her summer revel in other southern lands she
sometimes suddenly bethinks her that away to the northward she has been
for long neglectful of her duties, so she flies to the arid plains,
where perhaps the very traces of her footprints have been long since
forgotten. Then with a sudden dower of riches she tries to make amends
for her forgetfulness; she tarries for a few sweet, pregnant hours, and
the ardours and burgeonings of a season are consummated in one delicious
day.
Susannah felt the rapid sap of sudden springtime rise in a sweet storm
to her heart and to her brain. It seemed to her as though she had
wings, and she longed to fly out over the infinite waste and beyond the
blue, mysterious haze in which it merged with the horizon in a sapphire
ring. The highest of the little group of kopjes stood just at the back
of the camp, and her senses bounded at the thought of climbing quickly
to the summit and thus getting so much nearer the sky. A tall
koekerboom which stood on the very top quivered in the wind, and every
cluster of leaves at the ends of its dichotomous branches seemed to
beckon to her to come.
She climbed into the wagon, opened the camphor-wood box in which she
kept her limited wardrobe, and selected her best dress. This was a
cheap print, delicately flowered, and of soft hues. It thus afforded a
pleasing contrast to the gaudy and crudely coloured habiliments of her
cousins. After she had put it on one might have seen that the dress
fitted her neat figure like a new glove. Her ample hair she rolled into
a knot, but, after a moment's consideration, she uncoiled it again and
shook it back over her shoulders. Then she put on a "cappie" made of
print of the same pattern as her frock. A cheap necklet of coral
completed her toilet. She clasped this hurriedly about her throat as
she sprang to the ground from the back of the wagon. She panted with
desire to get away to the high peak where the solitary koekerboom, which
had defied the sun for centuries, stood beckoning to her, and any delay
was a pain. She sped away among the aromatic shrubs that clustered
among the impassive granite rocks on the side of the kopje, and the
brown stones she trod on seemed to be as buoyant as the air that filled
her veins with ecstasy. In a few minutes she had gained the top of the
kopje, when she sank down in pleasant exhaustion at the foot of the
hoar-ancient koekerboom.
As she ascended the kopje the breeze freshened, and the stiff, awkward
branches of the archaic tree seemed to be seized with excitement
unfitting its age and experience; it beckoned violently, and until Max,
who was standing at the door of the shop, saw not alone its signal, but
the flutter of the delicately flowered print dress which at that moment
was rippling against its gnarled knees.
Max hurriedly locked the shop and sped up the side of the kopje towards
the antiquated tree, which now seemed to have fallen asleep, so still it
was. Schalk Hattingh's was the only camp then at Namies, and as Nathan
had given strict injunctions that the Hattinghs were to have no more
credit, nothing was to be lost in respect of their custom. Max would,
he told himself, be able to descry any approaching customers from the
top of the kopje.
Susannah heard the nearing footstep. She had now taken off her cappie,
and was lying back between two of the shapeless roots which were
continuations of flanking buttresses thrown out by the tree towards the
north-east, from whence the storms had been trying to uproot it--
probably ever since the days when the galleys of Pharaoh passed down the
Red Sea and returned to Egypt through the Pillars of Hercules. The girl
arose into a sitting posture and turned towards the boy a face flushed
with exercise and eyes liquid with delight. Max put out his hand in
mute greeting, and she clasped it silently. Then he threw himself on
the ground at her feet.
These two had for some time attracted each other. On Max's side the
attraction had lately begun to ripen into something very like love. But
of this as yet he was unaware. To-day the universe seemed to breathe of
music, the boughs of the old tree and the granite rocks were as the
strings of a sounding harp, touched by the wind as a plectrum.
Spring, in a graciously capricious moment, resolved to crown her holiday
with an idyll. Max arose and held out his hand to the girl. She took
it, and he drew her gently to her feet. They wandered on together with
scanty, broken speech and averted eyes, through lately arid nooks and
hollows made sweet and full of the promise of verdure by yesterday's
rain. The faint-green spear-points of strange vegetation were already
piercing the brown earth; quaint beetles crawled out from under the
stones and beat their soft "tok-tok-tok" on the ground, signalling to
prospective mates; lizards of a deeper and more vivid blue than anything
else in Nature's storehouse, sunned themselves on the rocks, panting
with enjoyment.
They came to a flowering mass of gethyllis--that strange plant the
curled leaves of which wind out their spirals in winter to catch the
dewdrops and conduct them down their tube-like channels to the
deep-underground bulb, which waits until the fiercest sun of summer
shines before it sends up its lovely, tulip-like cup of snowy white or
vivid crimson. The luscious scent filled the air and caused a faint,
delicious intoxication. They bent over the blossoms and began gathering
them. In doing this their hands met by accident and they started apart
suddenly, thrilling with unknown confusion.
Their faltering speech died away altogether, and they more than ever
avoided each other's gaze. After retracing their steps for a short
distance they again paused. The vague horizon seemed to become of
absorbing interest. Each felt to blame for the abashment of the other,
and both seemed to drink of a cup of humiliation. The old tree waved
sympathetically over them its topmost branches, in which the wind seemed
to waken a sigh.
Careless Nature, to bring them together, sacrificed a life. She sent a
message down through a cleft in the rock against which Susannah was
dejectedly leaning, and called from the depths where it had long been
sleeping a poisonous red centipede. The creature crawled down over the
girl's shoulder and endeavoured to enter her sleeve at the wrist. Then
Max saw it. He sprang forward in a spasm of terror, brushed the
centipede aside with his hand; not, however, before it had given him a
venomous nip. In an instant he had crushed the life out of the creature
with his foot; then, with an exclamation of pain, he turned towards the
girl. His hand was already beginning to swell. Susannah tore a piece
off the curtain of her cappie and began to bind up the injury. As she
did so she came so close that she leant slightly against Max. Then the
opportunity triumphed over the pain--he passed his arm around her, drew
her to him, and kissed her on the quivering lips.
The centipede and its sting were soon forgotten. Nature held them,
embraced and embracing, for a blissful eternity; they saw the face of
happiness smiling in the rosy gloom under Love's wing.
The koekerboom became wrapped in a whirlwind of excitement, its gaunt
boughs swayed until they clashed, and the sap rose in its slowly beating
heart until the yellow buds which a few of its less mature twigs had put
forth tentatively, as though half ashamed of such frivolity, burst open
and sent forth a faint shower of pollen, which fell like a spangling of
gold-dust upon Susannah's hair.
As they paced away, hand in hand, a small army of fierce desert ants
were dragging away the still writhing body of the centipede to their
underground storehouse. Nature, so very lavish in large matters, is
extremely economical in trifles.