Max's mourning for his old friend was deep and sincere. The heart of
the young man, from its first awakening, recoiled from the sordidness of
most of those with whom he had come in daily contact, and clave to the
best within its reach--this by virtue of its natural intuitions. For a
time it seemed as though a blank had been created which could never be
filled. The evenings spent in the shop when Oom Schulpad and Gemsbok
had contended like a couple of troubadours--the weird tales of his
experiences during the six years of his banishment from the tents of
men, which the old waif had related with such tragic and truthful
pathos--his devotion to his miserable old wife, that decayed relic of
womanhood, which was as tender as ever his love could have been for the
companion of his early years--all these dwelt in the mind of Max and
tinged it with what he deemed would be an abiding sadness.
On the other hand the acquisition of the five diamonds had materially
improved his prospects. He hid them in a safe place and determined not
to mention the fact of their existence to any one but Susannah. They
were stones of very pure water, averaging about ten carats each in
weight. Max knew that they must be very valuable, but he was unable to
guess their worth. He made up his mind that he would have to take them
to Europe and realise them there.
Even Oom Schulpad seemed to be depressed by the old Hottentot's fate.
When he now came to see Max of an evening he did not bring his violin.
The two would just sit and smoke in silence, each well aware of what was
filling the thoughts of the other. To Max it seemed as if the ghost of
the slain man haunted the room on these occasions, asking why his only
friends had not taken vengeance upon his slayer.
Oom Schulpad did not believe very much in anything outside the circle of
his experiences--certainly not in ghosts. He had attained to a
philosophy which might be summed up in a phrase--"Never interfere in
anything that does not directly concern you." His stock formula into
which the foregoing principle had crystallised was--"No man should ever
rub resin on any but his own bow."
"But," he continued one night after reiterating this phrase several
times, "I mean to scratch Koos Bester's nose with a certain piece of
resin which I have in my pocket. He had no business to put his big
hands upon any man who could make music like that, Bushman or no
Bushman."
Max pricked up his ears and looked at the old fiddler with a question in
his eyes.
"I know Koos," continued Oom Schulpad, "and if he does not bark his
shins as well as his nose against the lump of resin which I will put in
his path--well, I'm no fiddler and the Bushman knew no music. He said
my back was like a springbuck's when it `pronks,' did he, and that my
mouth was as poisonous as a sand-adder's? Also he broke the ramkee--to
say nothing of killing the old Bushman."
"What do you intend to do to him?" queried Max.
"I'll tell you that when he comes back, my child. It will be all right,
don't fear. You shall, perhaps, help me. I know Koos well. When he
was quite a big boy he used to be afraid of being alone in the dark.
I'll make him dance a new step to the old Bushman's music. Ja, he knew
more music than I, that old Bushman."
Three days elapsed after the tragedy before Max visited the Hattingh
camp. He found Old Schalk looking extremely sulky. Max, however, had
ceased to take much heed of people or their moods. He no longer dreaded
Old Schalk. As in the case of Mrs Hattingh, he now felt he had him at
a moral disadvantage. His recent experiences had tended to give Max
considerable self-confidence.
He found Susannah alone in the mat-house, and asked her to go with him
for a walk. As they passed out it seemed as though the old man sitting
in the chair meant to stop them. He bent forward with an angry
expression, removed the pipe from his mouth, and opened his lips as if
to speak. Max, however, looked him steadily in the face, so he
remembered his account at the shop--it seemed as though Nathan meant to
stay away indefinitely--and Old Schalk's sack of coffee was running very
low indeed. At the same instant he thought of the inquest--the menace
which he seemed to read in Max's face might perhaps have reference to
that judicial triumph. Whilst these considerations were working through
his mind the lovers passed him and he made no protest. They climbed the
big kopje and again sat at the foot of the large koekerboom.
Max poured out his sorrow and indignation in a flood. Susannah had been
told simply that Gert Gemsbok had met his death through an accident in
connection with a horse. She had seen the strange funeral and wondered
thereat. Now Max's account of the old Hottentot's life, which she had
never heard before, and of his cruel and mysterious death, moved the
girl to deep sympathy.
A horrible suspicion had haunted Max from the first--he could not avoid
connecting his brother with the murder, for such he was convinced had
occurred. Nathan had taken his departure with Koos Bester just before
the deed was done; it was inconceivable that he could be ignorant of the
crime. Max believed him to be fully capable of participating in the
commission of any evil.
When Susannah questioned him as to whom he suspected, Max tried hard to
avoid replying. When he could no longer do this he told the girl all
his thoughts and then bent his head on her knee and wept bitter tears.
It was the shame of being related to a creature such as Nathan which
struck him to the heart. A hatred of his surroundings, and more
especially of his brother, had been born in him. He made up his mind to
leave his brother's service at once, come what might.
"Susannah, I can stay here no longer; will you come away with me?"
The girl did not reply. She sat thinking of what the consequences of
such a step would be. Her utter inexperience of life was strongly
qualified by natural caution, as well as by that instinct of
self-preservation which clothes most women like an armour of proof.
"I feel I can stay here no longer," he continued. "Leaving out Oom
Schulpad and yourself, I hate and despise every one here. Will you come
away with me?"
"I will go with you when you marry me, Max."
"How can I marry you when you are only nineteen and your uncle will not
give his consent?"
"I will wait for you. Go away, and you will find me here when you come
back--if there is any water left in the well."
"I do not want to go away without you, and I feel I cannot endure to
stay. Why are you afraid to trust me?"
"I am not afraid to trust you, but--while you were talking at first I
was thinking. I thought to myself that we could not get away and that
there was no place for us to go to."
"You can leave all that to me--"
"No, no, it cannot be. If you want to marry me, Max, you must make up
your mind never to live in any place but Bushmanland--"
"What! live all our lives at Namies?"
"No, not at Namies. Bushmanland is large; there are many camps and many
water-places in it. You know that I am only a poor Boer girl and that I
could not live among those women whose pictures you showed me in the
fashion books and who never speak anything but English; you would be
ashamed of me and I should want to come back to live among the people I
know."
Max, after the manner of lovers, assured her that he never could, under
any possible circumstances, be ashamed of her. She continued in the
same strain as formerly--
"I once saw some girls who went past our camp in a wagon, when we dwelt
on the other side of the Desert, far away to the eastward, and I felt
like a Bushwoman beside them when I noticed their clothes and heard them
talk. No, Max, I will never go to any place where you would be able to
compare me with women such as those."
Max assured her that she could easily challenge comparison with any girl
in South Africa for physical advantages. Her colour heightened with
pleasure at his compliments, but she was not to be moved from her
resolution.
"Max, I shall never live in any place outside Bushmanland, so you had
better make up your mind to that. Besides, you will have to wait for me
until I am old enough to marry without my uncle's consent. Bushmanland
is long and wide, but when a girl is talked about for doing what you
want me to do, the tongues of the women are heard, louder than thunder,
from one side of it to the other. If I were to do this thing the people
of the only land I can live in would look upon me as being no better
than a Hottentot girl at the Copper Mines."
Max felt, instinctively, that the girl was right. He made no further
attempt to move her, but he reconsidered his decision about leaving
Namies at once. At all events he would wait for Nathan's return. As
the lovers walked back to the camp, they said few words to each other.
Nathan returned late in the afternoon of the next day. The brothers met
outside the shop. Nathan greeted Max with cheerfulness, as though he
wished to ignore what had last passed between them. Max looked him
straight in the eyes without acknowledging his salute.
"Hello," said Nathan, "got the hump, eh?"
Max went into the shop; Nathan followed him after outspanning the
horses. In the meantime the flock of sheep had been driven home by a
strange herd. Nathan burned with curiosity to know what had transpired.
He walked up to Max and addressed him again--
"Where's your old chum? I see you've got a new nigger."
Max gave him a contemptuous glance and then went on with what he had
been doing, without replying to the question.
"Are you deaf?"
"I'm not deaf; neither am I blind."
"Then why the devil don't you answer me? Where's the old nigger?"
"Mightn't he be lying dead in a sluit where you and Koos Bester left him
last week?"
"Look here, none of your blasted conundrums. I didn't pull you out of a
Whitechapel gutter and bring you here to get lip from you."
Max went on with his occupation of tidying the goods upon the shelves,
without making any reply. Nathan, furious, strode round the counter and
gripped him by the arm. Max turned and gazed steadily into his eyes.
"You bastard Christian dog, if you don't answer my question I'll make
pork sausages of you!"
Max seized Nathan by the throat and flung him backwards. The latter's
foot caught against the corner of a box and he fell sprawling under the
counter. As he picked himself up Max strode towards him. Nathan
recoiled in alarm; he had not expected such treatment from the shy,
silent, diffident lad whom he had been in the habit of cuffing and
cursing at whenever he felt in a bad temper and wanted to relieve his
feelings.
"Where is he?" shouted Max in a voice strident with rage. "He is where
you will never be--in an honest man's grave. He lived long enough to
let me know that you and Koos Bester are murderers. I only regret that
he did not let me know enough to hang you both."
Nathan quailed; he wondered how much Gemsbok had told. Then he cast up
the column of possibilities in his mind. No, he was all right. There
might be suspicion, but there could be no proof that he had been
accessory to the crime. However, it would be just as well not to
provoke Max any further at present. He walked out of the shop and Max
closed the door behind him.
The Desert twilight was quickly fading. Nathan wished to be alone, so
he strolled past the camps without calling at any of them, and then back
along the road he had just previously travelled.
After he had passed the last camp by about a hundred yards he sat down
on a stone. He was sunk in the deepest thought. An idea had struck him
just after Max's outburst and had taken root, branched and burgeoned
until it seemed to be a tree full of flowers which promised rich fruit.
The muffled thud of tired horses' feet on the sandy road leading from
the dunes broke in upon his reverie. He lifted his head from where it
had been sunk upon his breast and chuckled with unclean mirth.
"Well, I think I'm in jam _this_ time," soliloquised he; "whole blooming
coppers of it."
When he returned home Max was not on the premises. The shop was locked,
but the little room at the back where Nathan slept was open. Of late
Max had taken to sleeping on the counter in the shop.
Nathan lit a candle and began to undress. The elation of his mind was
evinced upon his face. He went to bed and softly whistled the tune of a
music-hall song as he lay back on the pillow with his hands clasped at
the back of his head. He felt extremely happy. His luck was in--this
last development, over which he had been chuckling so, proved that
conclusively.
Again the sound which he had heard when sitting on the stone broke in on
his waking dreams, the slow tramp, tramp, tramp of the feet of tired
horses, muffled by the soft sand. This time the sound came from much
nearer than before. Then he heard the creaking of the vehicle and the
wisch-wisch of the ploughing wheels. Then the sound ceased. A few
moments later he heard a stealthy step approaching the door; just
afterwards came a light tap.
"Who is there?" he called out.
"Open the door quickly. It is I, Koos."
Nathan sprang out of bed and drew back the bolt. Koos at once stepped
into the room and glanced furtively around. His face looked drawn and
haggard and his eyes were bloodshot.
"Are you alone?" he asked, in a husky voice.
"Yes, I am alone. But be careful, I don't know where Max is."
Koos bent forward until his dry lips almost touched Nathan's ear, and
whispered--
"What has happened? Tell me quickly."
Nathan drew back slightly and let the ghost of a mocking smile flit over
his features.
"Oh, I got home all right, thanks. But what brings you here?"
The Boer leant forward across the table and grasped the Jew's wizened
shoulder in his enormous hand. Nathan shuddered convulsively under the
pressure; he thought his bones were being crushed. The eyes of Koos
seemed to shoot forth dusky flames.
"Tell me quickly," he said.
"All right," said Nathan, trying hard to wrench himself free, and
feeling, at the same time, that it might be dangerous to take liberties
with the man before him, "I'll tell you, unless you break my blooming
back first of all. You kicked a little too hard, Koos; the old nigger
is dead."
The visage of Koos became frightful. He gasped for breath and a low
gurgle came from his throat. He sat silent for a few moments with his
eyes fixed upon Nathan's in a burning stare. Then he said in a
strained, hoarse voice--
"Tell me more. Tell me all about it."
"That's all I know about it myself."
Koos arose slowly from his seat and stretched his hands out towards
Nathan, who, seeing murder in his eye, retreated into the corner.
"Stop, Koos!" he almost screamed. "So help me God, I know nothing more
about it than what I've told you. I only came home just before you
did."
Koos sank back into the chair and covered his face with his hands.
After a few minutes he arose and staggered out of the room. He went to
where his tired horses were still standing in the harness, outspanned
them, and after tying the front legs of each together with a reim,
turned them out to graze. Then he wrapped himself in his kaross, for
the night air was chilly, and laid himself down under the cart.
He could not sleep. It seemed to him as if he had never slept, as if
the axis upon which the hollow globe of stars turned was laid through
his brain, as if there were no such thing as sleep in the whole wide
world. The sky was clear and limpid, as only the sky which leans over
and seems to love the Desert can be. The sweet, piercing smell of the
dew-wet sand came to him and brought memories of nights spent on the
hunting-field, when the pungent scent, the very breath and essence of
the quick earth, had seemed to renew his spent strength, after the
fatigues of the chase. But then he had not stained his hands with
blood.
But the awful silence. Would nothing break it? It seemed to press upon
and crush him like something ponderable and tangible. He lifted his
fist and smote lightly the bottom of the cart just over his head. The
sound seemed to split his brain like an axe. Then the returning wave of
silence surged around him, and under its impact he seemed to sink as
into a quicksand.
At length, a sound. Far away on the waste he heard the long-drawn
nasal, melancholy howl of a jackal. Before the weird cry came to an end
it was taken up by others at a greater distance, and then repeated on
and on like the challenges of crowing cocks in the dawning.
A gush of gratitude came from his darkened heart; he felt that he almost
loved the prowling brutes that had drawn his soul out of the quagmire of
silence in which it had been sunk. He seemed to feel a kind of
fellowship and sympathy with the jackals. He wondered why this was.
Then he remembered--
The waning moon had been making paler the western stars, but he had not
noticed it. The straining of his sound-sense had left no room for that
of sight to come into play. Now the spell of silence was broken, and
the sense of sight began to assert itself.
His eyes had been closed for some little time. When he opened them the
Desert was flooded with a gentle haze of diaphanous pearl. This made
the Namies kopjes look like a group of enchanted islands floating in an
unearthly sea. The scene was almost too beautiful for mortal eyes.
As the moon soared higher and higher the stones and bushes, which at a
few paces' distance could not be separated from their shortening
shadows, took on strange and ever-changing shapes. God! What was that
a few yards from him? Surely they cannot have brought the body up from
the gully and left it exposed upon the kopje-side? Yes, there it lay,
huddled and horrible.
He must go and look at it--examine it--even if the doing of this killed
him or drove him mad. He arose to a crouching position and passed
slowly across the intervening space of a few yards with hesitating
steps. He bent his horror-distorted face over a stone half hid in
tufted pelargonium.
Day came near. The glamour and mystery receded from the Desert,
gathered into a wave and broke against the splendid gates of dawn. A
short and troubled sleep fell upon the wretched man under the cart, and
perhaps saved him for the time being from insanity. He awoke to find
the flaming sun high in the brazen sky, and the camp at his feet astir
with life.
In the full light of day Koos Bester could hardly realise that he had
been a prey to the horrors of the damned during the long hours of the
previous night. His terrors had vanished with the distorting moonlight.
What did it matter, after all? It was true that Nathan could put the
rope around his neck with a word, but he easily persuaded himself the
word would never be spoken. His conscience was still sore, but not
agonisingly so, now in the daylight. A Bushman was, after all, only a
Bushman, and the mind of the Boer always draws an important distinction
between a "mens" and a "schepsel."
He felt hungry, so he strolled down through the camps on the look-out
for a breakfast. He did not want to eat with Nathan again if he could
possibly avoid doing so. He knew that he must expect to have to run the
gauntlet of covert allusion and innuendo. He knew that suspicion of
having done the deed--the memory of which hung around his neck like a
millstone--had already marked him, in the estimation of some, at least,
as a sort of minor Cain. This, however, he was prepared for, and he
could meet the prospect with calmness. He was now high at the dizzy
extreme of hopeful confidence, resting for the instant's pause before
the return swing of the pendulum to which he was bound, like Ixion to
the wheel, should whirl him back towards the ledges of anguish where the
vultures of remorse were perched, waiting to tear anew at his vitals.
He was consumed by an apprehensive curiosity which burnt him like a
fever. He longed to hear all about the finding of the body, or--
horrible thought!--had the man been still alive when found? No, that
was impossible; his reason told him from the heights of reassurance, had
such been the case he would have been apprehended long before this.
As he walked furtively along, still limping slightly from the effects of
the dislocated toe, he glanced hurriedly from side to side from under
his bent brows. He fancied he was being watched from every mat-house.
Yes, he was. In the gloom of every doorway he could see the dim faces
of women and children turned in his direction. Even thus, he imagined,
must the Lord have set a mark upon Cain, that all mankind might know
him. It seemed as though by some subtle means every one throughout the
scattered camps had simultaneously become aware of his presence. Just
before descending the hill from where his cart stood outspanned he had
heard laughter and the shrill voices of children at play. Now all was
mute in an awful, accusing hush. The sudden silence reminded him of
what he had suffered during the night, before the jackals claimed
fellowship with him, and passed the word of his initiation into their
brotherhood across the listening Desert. He felt that the brand of
Cain, which none may describe but which none may fail to recognise, was
upon him.
Old Schalk was sitting before his tent, smoking. Koos made an effort,
and, turning abruptly in his course, walked up and greeted him. Old
Schalk returned the salutation with more than ordinary friendliness, and
then offered a chair and the inevitable cup of coffee. These were
gratefully accepted. The old Boer called to Susannah to bring the
coffee. She was in the wagon and was thus unaware of the identity of
the visitor. When she came from the scherm with the cup she coloured
angrily and her eye flashed. She passed the visitor the cup, but did
not offer her hand in greeting. Koos winced. Among the Boers such an
omission can only be construed as a deliberate insult.
Old Schalk was in great form. From the first glance at the face of his
visitor he knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that the slayer of Gert
Gemsbok was before him. His previous suspicions were so strong that
little room for any doubt had existed in his mind. Here, however, was
proof, writ large for all to read. Old Schalk was extremely tolerant
where the killing of Bushmen was concerned, and it distressed him
genuinely to see Koos take a comparative trifle so much to heart. Old
Schalk fell into the error of ascribing _all_ of Koos' distress to mere
fright, so he determined to try and put him at his ease. Koos had been
watched carefully since his arrival, and Old Schalk knew it was probable
that he was seeking information as to what had transpired since the
commission of the deed.
"Did you hear of the accident the other day?" the old man asked, without
looking at the man he addressed.
"Ja--that is--I heard something--"
"I have often said that an accident would come from letting that horse
of Oom Dantje's run where he can be caught and ridden by the Bushmen."
"What did Oom Dantje's horse do?" said Koos, breathlessly.
Old Schalk shot a glance at him out of the corner of one eye, and looked
puzzled. It was evident that Koos had not even heard of the verdict.
"Well, no one saw the horse do it, you know; but from the way that old
Bushman was knocked about, I think--myself--that it must have been Oom
Dantje's horse. I reported so to the magistrate."
Koos set down the empty utensils upon the ground. The cup rattled like
castanets upon the saucer. A sense of blissful peace seemed to descend
upon him like a dove with healing wings. It was the revulsion of
feeling which made him tremble.
"Yes," continued old Schalk, "that young Jew, Max, wanted to talk some
nonsense about what the old Bushman had told him before he died, but I
wouldn't listen. It's all right, Koos--you needn't look like that."
The dove had changed, in the twinkling of an eye, into a vulture; its
beak was imbedded in his heart-strings. This was the contingency he had
dismissed as being impossible--the man's having been found alive. He
must find out what the dying Hottentot had said, or else go mad. He
arose, shook hurriedly the moist hand of his host with his own burning
one, and then limped painfully back towards the shop.
Oom Schulpad had watched Koos carefully ever since he arose from his
feverish sleep under the cart. The old fiddler was staying, just then,
with some people who had camped on the site formerly occupied by Koos;
he was sitting in the mat-house with his fiddle on his knee, when Koos
came limping up the sandy slope. Then the tones of the air which
Gemsbok so often had played upon the ramkee were slowly wailed out from
the strings in a minor key. Koos stiffened as though he had received an
electric shock, and stood stock still for an instant. Then he resumed
his limping towards the shop.
Both Nathan and Max were in the iron building; the former writing at the
empty packing-case which served as a desk, and the latter engaged in
bartering wild-cat skins from some strange Hottentots from Great
Namaqualand. One of the strangers carried a ramkee slung upon his back.
This was not a very unusual circumstance, but to Koos it was an item
full of horrible significance.
The barter was soon over. Max leaped across the counter and passed out
through the door, cutting Koos dead. Nathan came forward, greeted him
with hilarity, and then took his stand in the doorway.
The look of hunted terror in the man's face would have moved his
bitterest foe to pity. He sat down helplessly on an empty packing-case
which was lying where it had been flung, just outside the door, and
looked at Nathan with haggard eyes. Nathan had ceased from his
letter-writing and come to the doorway, because he did not care to be
alone inside with Koos, after his last night's experience of being
gripped. He stood in the doorway, whistling, and with his hands in his
pockets. Then, after a pause--
"Well, Koos, old man, you look chippy to-day. What's up, eh?"
Koos stood up and again laid his hand on Nathan's shoulder. Nathan,
however, had been prepared for this, so he slipped like an eel from
under the huge hand that threatened to crush him, darted away to a
distance of a few yards, and then wheeled round facing Koos, who was
limping heavily after him with murder in his eye. He determined to risk
something. He had planned out moves for the game he had to play. Here,
in the full light of day and within sight of the whole of Namies, was
the place to begin the struggle.
"Look here, Koos Bester," he said in a low tone, "if you think you are
going to paw me about as you would a blasted Bushman, you are very much
mistaken. Understand me now, once and for all--if ever you lay that
leg-o'-mutton hand of yours on me again, I'll--I'll--Well, I won't say
exactly what I'll do, but you can just look out for yourself--mind
that."