THE SIN OF VROUW BOTMAR
When the meat was cleared away I bade Suzanne go to bed, which she did
most unwillingly, for knowing the errand of these men she wished to
hear our talk. As soon as she was gone I took a seat so that the light
of the candles left my face in shadow and fell full on those of the
three men—a wise thing to do if one is wicked enough to intend to tell
lies about any matter—and said:
“Now, here I am at your service; be pleased to set out the business
that you have in hand.”
Then they began, the lawyer, speaking through the interpreter, asking,
“Are you the Vrouw Botmar?”
“That is my name.”
“Where is your husband, Jan Botmar?”
“Somewhere on the veldt; I do not know where.”
“Will he be back to-morrow?”
“No.”
“When will he be back?”
“Perhaps in two months, perhaps in three, I cannot tell.”
At this they consulted together, and then went on:
“Have you living with you a young Englishman named Ralph Mackenzie?”
“One named Ralph Kenzie lives with us.”
“Where is he?”
“With my husband on the veldt. I do not know where.”
“Can you find him?”
“No, the veldt is very wide. If you wish to see him you must wait till
he comes back.”
“When will that be?”
“I am not his nurse and cannot tell; perhaps in three months, perhaps
six.”
Now again they consulted, and once more went on:
“Was the boy, Ralph Mackenzie, or Kenzie, shipwrecked in the _India_ in
the year 1824?”
“Dear Lord!” I cried, affecting to lose my patience, “am I an old
Kaffir wife up before the Landdrost for stealing hens that I should be
cross-questioned in this fashion? Set out all your tale at once, man,
and I will answer it.”
Thereon, shrugging his shoulders, the lawyer produced a paper which the
interpreter translated to me. In it were written down the names of the
passengers who were upon the vessel _India_ when she sailed from a
place called Bombay, and among the names those of Lord and Lady
Glenthirsk and of their son, the Honourable Ralph Mackenzie, aged nine.
Then followed the evidence of one or two survivors of the shipwreck,
which stated that Lady Glenthirsk and her son were seen to reach the
shore in safety in the boat that was launched from the sinking ship.
After this came a paragraph from an English newspaper published in
Capetown, dated not two years before, and headed “Strange Tale of the
Sea,” which paragraph, with some few errors, told the story of the
finding of Ralph—though how the writing man knew it I know not, unless
it was through the tutor with the blue spectacles of whom I have
spoken—and said that he was still living on the farm of Jan Botmar in
the Transkei. This was all that was in the paper. I asked to look at it
and kept it, saying in the morning that the Kaffir girl seeing it lying
about the kitchen had used it to light the fire; but to this day it is
with the other things in the waggon chest under my bed.
When the paper was done with, the lawyer took up the tale and told me
that it was believed in England that Lord Glenthirsk had been drowned
in the sea, as indeed he was, and that Lady Glenthirsk and her son
perished on the shore with the other women and children, for so those
sent by the English Government to search out the facts had reported.
Thus it came about that after a while Lord Glenthirsk’s younger brother
was admitted by law to his title and estates, which he enjoyed for some
eight years, that is, until his death. About a year before he died,
however, someone sent him the paragraph headed “Strange Tale of the
Sea,” and he was much disturbed by it, though to himself he argued that
it was nothing but an idle story, such as it seems are often put into
newspapers. The end of the matter was that he took no steps to discover
whether the tale were true or false, and none knew of it save himself,
and he was not minded to go fishing in that ugly water. So it came
about that he kept silent as the grave, till at length, when the grave
yawned at his feet, and when the rank and the lands and the wealth were
of no more use to him, he opened his mouth to his son and to his
lawyer, the two men who sat before me, and to them only, bidding them
seek out the beginning of the tale, and if it were true, to make
restitution to his nephew.
Now—for all this, listening with my ears wide open, and sometimes
filling in what was not told me in words, I gathered from the men
before they left the house—as it chanced the dying lord could not have
chosen two worse people for such an errand, seeing that although the
son was honest, both of them were interested in proving the tale to be
false. Since that time, however, often I have thought that he knew this
himself, and trusted by the choice both to cheat his own conscience and
to preserve the wealth and dignity for his son. God, to whom he has
gone, alone knows the truth of it, but with such a man it may very well
have been as I think. I say that both were interested, for it seems, as
he told me afterwards, that the lawyer was to receive a great sum—ten
thousand pounds—under the will of the dead lord for whom he had done
much during his lifetime. But if Ralph were proved to be the heir this
sum would have been his and not the lawyer’s, for the money was part of
his father’s inheritance; therefore it was worth just ten thousand
pounds to that lawyer to convince himself and the false lord that Ralph
was not the man, and therefore it was that I found him so easy to deal
with.
Now after his father was dead the lawyer tried to persuade the son to
take no notice of his dying words, and to let the matter rest where it
was, seeing that he had nothing to gain and much to lose. But this he
would not consent to, for, as I have said, he was honest, declaring
that he could not be easy in his mind till he knew the truth, and that
if he did not go to find it out himself he would send others to do so
for him. As the lawyer desired this least of anything, he gave way, and
they set out upon their journey—which in those days was a very great
journey indeed—arriving at last in safety at our stead in the Transkei;
for, whether he liked it or not, his companion—who now was called Lord
Glenthirsk—would not be turned aside from the search or suffer him to
prosecute it alone.
At length, when all the tale was told, the lawyer looked at me with his
sharp eyes and said, through the interpreter:
“Vrouw Botmar, you have heard the story, tell us what you know. Is the
young man who lives with you he whom we seek?”
Now I thought for a second, though that second seemed like a year. All
doubt had left me, there was no room for it. Ralph and no other was the
man, and on my answer might hang his future. But I had argued the thing
out before and made up my mind to lie, though, so far as I know, it is
the only lie I ever told, and I am not a woman who often changes her
mind. Therefore I lied.
“It is not he,” I said, “though for his sake I might wish that it were,
and this I can prove to you.”
Now, when I had told this great falsehood, prompted to it by my love
for the lad and my love for Suzanne, his affianced wife, my mind grew
as it were empty for a moment, and I remember that in the emptiness I
seemed to hear a sound of laughter echoing in the air somewhere above
the roof of the house. Very swiftly I recovered myself, and looking at
the men I saw that my words rejoiced them, except the interpreter
indeed, who being a paid servant coming from far away, from the
neighbourhood of Capetown I believe, had no interest in the matter one
way or the other beyond that of earning his money with as little
trouble as possible. Yes, they smiled at each other, looking as though
a great weight had been lifted off their minds, till presently the
lawyer checked himself and said:
“Be so good as to set out the proofs of which you speak, Vrouw Botmar.”
“I will,” I answered, “but tell me first, the ship _India_ was wrecked
in the year 1824, was she not?”
“Undoubtedly,” answered the lawyer.
“Well, have you heard that another ship called the _Flora_, travelling
from the Cape I know not whither, was lost on this coast in the same
month of the following year, and that a few of her passengers escaped?”
“I have heard of it,” he said.
“Good. Now look here,” and going to a chest that stood beneath the
window, I lifted from it the old Bible that belonged to my grandfather
and father, on the white pages at the beginning of which are written
the record of many births, marriages, deaths and other notable events
that had happened in the family. Opening it I searched and pointed to a
certain entry inscribed in the big writing of my husband Jan, and in
ink which was somewhat faint, for the ink that the traders sold us in
those days had little virtue in it. Beneath this entry were others made
by Jan in later years, telling of things that had happened to us, such
as the death of his great-aunt who left him money, the outbreak of
small-pox on the farm, and the number of people who died from it, the
attack of a band of the red Kaffirs upon our house, when by the mercy
of God we beat them off, leaving twelve of their dead behind them, but
taking as many of our best oxen, and so forth.
“Read,” I said, and the interpreter read as follows:
“On the twelfth day of September in the year 1825 (the date being
written in letters) our little daughter Suzanne found a starving
English boy in a kloof, who had been shipwrecked on the coast. We have
taken him in as a gift of the Lord. He says that his name is Rolf
Kenzie.”
“You see the date,” I said.
“Yes,” answered the lawyer, “and it has not been altered!”
“No,” I added, “it has not been altered;” but I did not tell them that
Jan had not written it down till afterwards, and then by mistake had
recorded the year in which he wrote, refusing to change it, although I
pointed out the error, because, he said, there was no room, and that it
would make a mess in the book.
“There is one more thing,” I went on; “you say the mother of him you
seek was a great lady. Well, I saw the body of the mother of the boy
who was found, and it was that of a common person very roughly clad
with coarse underclothes and hands hard with labour, on which there was
but one ring, and that of silver. Here it is,” and going to a drawer I
took from it a common silver ring which I once bought from a pedlar
because he worried me into it. “Lastly, gentlemen, the father of our
lad was no lord, unless in your country it is the custom of lords to
herd sheep, for the boy told me that in his own land his father was a
shepherd, and that he was travelling to some distant English colony to
follow his trade. That is all I have to say about it, though I am sorry
that the lad is not here to tell it you himself.”
When he had heard this statement of mine, which I made in a cold and
indifferent voice, the young lord, Ralph’s cousin, rose and stretched
himself, smiling happily.
“Well,” he said, “there is the end of a very bad nightmare, and I am
glad enough that we came here and found out the truth, for had we not
done so I should never have been happy in my mind.”
“Yes,” answered the lawyer, the interpreter rendering their words all
the while, “the Vrouw Botmar’s evidence is conclusive, though I shall
put her statement in writing and ask her to sign it. There is only one
thing, and that is the strange resemblance of the names,” and he
glanced at him with his quick eyes.
“There are many Mackenzies in Scotland,” answered Lord Glenthirsk, “and
I have no doubt that this poor fellow was a shepherd emigrating with
his wife and child to Australia or somewhere.” Then he yawned and
added, “I am going outside to get some air before I sleep. Perhaps you
will draw up the paper for the good lady to sign.”
“Certainly, my lord,” answered the lawyer, and the young man went away
quite convinced.
After he had gone the lawyer produced pen and ink and wrote out the
statement, putting in it all the lies that I had told, and copying the
extract from the fly-leaf of the Bible. When he had done the
interpreter translated it to me, and then it was that the lawyer told
me about the last wishes of the dying lord, and how it would have cost
him ten thousand pounds and much business also had the tale proved
true. Now at last he gave me the paper to sign. Besides the candles on
the table, which being of mutton fat had burnt out, there was a lamp
fed with whale’s oil, but this also was dying, the oil being exhausted,
so that its flame, which had sunk low, jumped from time to time with a
little noise, giving out a blue light. In that unholy blue light, which
turned our faces ghastly pale, the lawyer and I looked at each other as
I sat before him, the pen in my hand, and in his eyes I read that he
was certain that I was about to sign to a wicked lie, and in mine he
read that I knew it to be a lie.
For a while we stared at each other thus, discovering each other’s
souls. “Sign,” he said, shrugging his shoulders, “the light dies.”
Then I signed, and as I wrote the lamp went out, leaving us in
darkness, and through the darkness once more I heard that sound of
laughter echoing in the air above the house.