_THREE DAYS WITH THE BOOKS._
THE arrival of the schoolmaster quickened the slow paces of the Boer's
family. The thrifty "tante" was anxious to make the most of his three
days' sojourn.
The Black Antelope had dragged off Zyl and Sannie to the wash-tub.
Being in disgrace already, they submitted, but not without a pout and
a grimace at the inordinate scrubbing the zealous creature thought it
her duty to inflict. Genderen, she insisted, ought to show her respect
for "the man of books" by taking off the long checked pinafore and
exhibiting the brightly-flowered cotton dress beneath it.
The Black Antelope's veneration for a man who make a white sheet talk,
by just sprinkling it with something black, knew no bounds. She would
have remained all day watching her charges whilst the lessons were
going forward if her mistress would have allowed it, on the "qui vive"
for other magical performances perhaps as wonderful. This was certainly
a sign that pen and ink were not often required in the Boer's household
when the schoolmaster was not present.
Tante Milligen was seated on the lumbering settee, smoothing down the
sides of her voluminous apron, whilst the schoolmaster did justice to
the ample lunch she had provided for him. Whilst he ate, she enlarged
upon her own and her husband's satisfaction with their present
arrangements. She hoped they were doing their duty by their children.
They had always taken them to church twice a year, although it was
such a long way to Pretoria; but now they had a schoolmaster in the
neighbourhood again, they must all make up for lost time.
Young Algarkirke was not slow at taking a hint, so he professed himself
quite ready to begin lessons at once.
The Black Antelope bustled in her charges, with their freckled faces
polished to a deep rose-pink, and arranged the chairs. Books were
brought out and selected from the heterogeneous contents of the
capacious cupboard, and slates were dusted.
Sandford Algarkirke looked at Sannie with some dismay, for she was an
addition to the party quite outside his hopes or expectations.
"She is young," remarked Tante Milligen; "but she will have to make a
beginning some day, and there is no time like the present. We don't
keep any schoolmaster amongst us over-long, and then there is often a
year or two before we get another to settle, so I hope you will let her
take her turn with her brother and sister."
Forthwith the assiduous Kafir produced an additional cushion, which
raised the would-be learner to the level of the big table, and darting
upon a Latin grammar Mr. Algarkirke had just taken out of his own
pocket, she laid it open before her with great solemnity.
"That will do," said Tante Milligen, pointing her domestic to the door.
"Now bring me that pinafore, and I'll see how I can patch it."
"Inkosi! (Kafir for mistress) Inkosi!" exclaimed the excited black.
"One word, and I will trouble your ears no more this day. The little
Ingleese lamb without a mother lies weeping in the dust by his father's
oxen. Why? Because he is shut out while the books speak. Open to him,
inkosi, that he too may learn wisdom."
"Listen to our black spider," muttered Zyl. "Has not she got eyes all
round her head, and feet that can run every way at once? Oh, we are
just dummies and blocks beside her."
"Be still," whispered Genderen; "she'll get him in."
"Let him come, then," said Tante Milligen.
"By all means," added the schoolmaster warmly.
A swifter messenger than the Black Antelope never lived. She ran at her
fastest now. The fleetness of foot had won for her her name. But her
volubility was lost on Jack, who could not understand any one of the
endearing epithets she showered upon him. It was true he was crying
bitterly, but her conjecture as to the cause of his grief was quite a
mistake, for he was mourning over his folly in losing sight of Vickel.
She caught him by both his hands and whirled him away to the door of
the sit-kamé, where Zyl was stumbling through a page of Dutch history,
about which his teacher knew nothing, whilst Genderen, with her fingers
in her mouth and her low forehead drawn into most painful puckers, was
trying hard to cast up an addition sum.
Mr. Algarkirke's knowledge of Dutch had been picked up during a short
stay in Amsterdam before he emigrated, and when he found himself at a
loss for a word, he recalled attention by a rap with his cane.
Genderen sighed heavily, and Zyl tugged at his fore-lock. Lessons with
the Dutch children were a very laborious matter. If they had not been
so fully alive to their importance, the new schoolmaster would have
been a failure. With stolid gravity Zyl pulled through blunders his
master was quite unable to rectify, and closed his book at last with an
air of satisfaction that would have convulsed an English school with
merriment.
Mr. Algarkirke seated Jack beside him, for an English child was a
welcome addition to his pupils. But alas! the school-books were all in
Dutch, except the Latin grammar, at which Sannie was profoundly staring.
"May I do a sum?" asked Jack, who knew "the good spell at the figures"
did not come off so frequently as his father desired.
Jack found it much easier to grapple with the difficulties of long
division in the day-time, when he was wide awake, than in his brief but
pleasant lessons between winks, when his father was often more weary
than himself. He said he should like a good spell at arithmetic, using
his father's words a little proudly. But when Mr. Algarkirke rewarded
his painstaking by setting him another and a longer example in money
division, he felt himself becoming something worse than sleepy, for he
was downright stupid at the conclusion.
"Please, Mr. Algarkirke, may I have a book?" he asked.
"Touch a book with such dirty paws!" retorted the schoolmaster, who had
considerably widened the distance between them. "No, sir; no, I say."
Jack crimsoned to the roots of his hair, and hid his hands under the
table. The schoolmaster grumbled something in Dutch. All eyes turned on
Jack.
"A travelling schoolmaster expects his pupils to be ready for him. It
is not treating me with proper respect to come here covered with soot
and dust," he continued sharply.
Jack got up slowly and went to the door.
The Black Antelope was told off to recall him; but her ready wit
had already divined the cause of Mr. Algarkirke's offence. Poor,
disconcerted Jack was whirled away into one of the side rooms, where
tub and towel awaited him.
The touch of his hot head and burning hands distressed her, and ere
the bathing was finished, she felt quite sure the poor child would
be prostrate with African fever before many hours were over. Should
she tell her mistress? The Boers were so hard and unfeeling to their
slaves, the Kafir could not depend upon their sympathy. But her woman's
heart went forth to the poor white lamb without a mother, and she made
up her mind to steal out at night and watch over him, if he were sent
back into the waggon to sleep alone.
She took away his burnt and blackened clothes, and dressed him in a
cast-off suit of Zyl's; but the shirt and trousers were immensely too
big, so she rolled up the sleeves of the former to his elbows and the
legs of the trousers to his knees. In place of a belt, she found a
large scarlet and orange handkerchief of the "oom's," and wound it
round Jack's waist, dancing round him with delight, and shouting to a
sister Kafir, who was pounding home-grown pepper in the entrance court,
to come and admire his little shell-like ears, his shapely knees, etc.
Jack, who could not understand her lavish praise, felt supremely
ridiculous when she led him back to the sit-kamé, where the business
of school was proceeding rapidly. A hearty laugh greeted Jack's
transformation.
"You need not have leaped from a chimney-sweep to a merry-andrew,"
observed Mr. Algarkirke, as the mirth subsided, "and you an English
boy."
Slow of speech as Zyl and Genderen habitually were, they resented the
tones of reproach in which these words were spoken. Dropping an unwary
ink-spot on her copybook as she gathered up her courage, Genderen
began the story of the fire, which Zyl confirmed with sundry snorts of
vengeance against the thievish Kafirs.
"And so they brought you here just as they pulled you out of the
flames!" exclaimed the young Englishman. "Why did not you tell me this
before, Jack?"
Tante Milligen began to think the interruption had been too prolonged,
so she got up and reminded the new teacher that Sannie had not yet had
her turn.
The young Englishman, who would have been at his ease in the
lecture-room of an Oxford professor, inwardly groaned. His disgust at
the sight of the little blue-checked bundle that was dog's-earing his
Latin grammar exceeded Jack's on the preceding evening.
But happily for him, no alphabet could be found in any one of the
time-worn school-books that Tante Milligen had produced. They had
already served the educational needs of three generations, and many a
loose page had disappeared in the process. What was to be done? Tante
Milligen was rummaging her cupboard, but in vain.
Jack, who was sitting on a corner of Zyl's chair, helping him through
the mazes of his multiplication, looked up brightly, and offered to cut
out an alphabet with his knife if he might have a loose book lid which
was lying on the table.
But the process of alphabet cutting proved so interesting to Zyl and
Genderen they could do nothing but watch it, until Mr. Algarkirke
banished Jack and his knife to the back of the settee. Sannie crept
after him unperceived, and learnt her first lesson unawares, for Jack
had chosen a nice sized capital "A" on the title-page of the Latin
grammar, which he got her to hold before him as a pattern; but the
little fat fingers let the leaves fly over a dozen times. The bruise
on her forehead made Jack wince every time he caught sight of the
blue-green shadow.
He was patience itself, and turning back to his copy pointed to it
with a smile, sometimes finding another A and sometimes turning back
to the title-page with which he started, until at last Sannie's finger
followed his as she drawled out, "Das is ein" (that is one); and she
was right. Whilst Jack was at work on the B, Sannie fitted her card A
to the corresponding capital in the pages of the grammar.
By the time Jack reached the eighth letter, his material was exhausted.
He passed them quietly to Mr. Algarkirke, and sat down again, resting
his aching head against the back of the settee, unnoticed by anyone,
whilst Sannie was called up for her first lesson.
With a disdainful curl of the lip, as if he were condescending to the
very dust, Mr. Algarkirke laid the letters in order, and mounting the
too juvenile pupil on the chair beside him, informed her with much
preceptorial display that A was the first letter of the alphabet and
the first of the vowels.
Sannie made answer with a long-drawn "Jah!" and held up the Latin
grammar.
"That," said he, taking the volume from her to conceal the laughter
that was choking him—"that is a little beyond you. One step at a time."
Sannie stared at him with one hand in her mouth, duly impressed with
the solemnity of the occasion. Whilst he consulted the four corners of
the room as to what he should say next, Jack guessed his dilemma, and
renewed his petition for a book. The Latin grammar was handed to him.
As Jack took it, he swept the letters into a heap, and smiling at the
round baby face, almost ready to dissolve in tears, he pointed to the A
on the title-page.
"Well done, my little Dutchwoman!" exclaimed Algarkirke as Sannie
picked out the cardboard duplicate from the little heap of letters and
held it up to Jack.
Tante Milligen let her hands fall upon her lap. It was wonderful. Mr.
Algarkirke's reputation as a schoolmaster was established for ever.
"Allamachter!" she exclaimed. "Why I was full three months before they
got me to see the difference between one letter and another. No more
German teachers for me. You can't beat the English at work. They take
it all square. We must make much of him."
The Black Antelope was quite ready to echo her mistress's opinion.
Feeling she had now seen both tutor and pupils fairly started on the
road to learning, Tante Milligen withdrew to her kitchen, having been
assured for the last half-hour that the roast was burning.
Mr. Algarkirke coughed ominously.
"Jack," he whispered in an English aside, "you are a brick. You have
helped me over the worst bit of drudgery in my day's work. Now, if
there is anything I can do for you or your father, you must tell me."
"Please, sir," cried Jack, brightening, "will you sell father a coat?"
"If I were not so wretchedly down in my luck, I would give one, but
anyhow, he shall have it for a trifle," answered Algarkirke, "if he
wishes."
Jack scarcely longed for evening more earnestly than his young
countryman, who knew not how to keep the attention of his stolid pupils
through the sleepy heat of an African afternoon. The room was like an
oven. Algarkirke was painfully conscious the slow intellects of the
Boer's children were gaining from him nothing but a jumble of confused
ideas. School in the wilderness is a difficult matter, manage as you
will. Genderen's sleepy yawn, which she was unable longer to repress,
reminded the young tutor of the Hottentot.
A bright thought occurred to him—an object lesson out of doors. Weights
and measures taught amid the heaps of corn in Van Immerseel's granary
would be made clear to the most sluggish understanding. The "fatted
calf," as he chose to designate poor Sannie, was snoring at his feet.
He left her undisturbed to the enjoyment of her siesta, and marched
out the other two, slate in hand, to their own favourite resort, the
farm-yard. Jack followed wearily. At that moment he would have been
content to share the sheep-skin in the corner.
The Hottentot herdsman stood grinning at the novel proceeding. With
bushel and strike, steelyard and sack, Zyl was at home; and Genderen,
with her pencil between her lips, noting down the figures at Mr.
Algarkirke's dictation, seemed a different being. Jack stood nearest to
the door. A tug at his sleeve made look round. There was his Vickel,
with her queenly breast and outspread wings, obviously intent upon
dragging out her little master into the free, fresh air to share with
her the pleasures of a straw-stack, in which she had been revelling
with her new-found kin. Jack forgot everything in his joy at seeing her
again.
But Zyl, whose remembrance of her attack in the morning was as vivid as
ever, banged up the door and shut them both out.
Jack was now feeling too ill to wish to return. He went with Vickel
to the rustling straw, and was soon fast asleep, with his aching head
pillowed on Vickel's downy breast.
He awoke with a shiver, for the evening dews were falling. The ostrich
was roosting beside him, with her head under her wing. The farm-yard
gate was shut; but it was easy to get on to the wall from the top of
the stack. Jack did not disturb his bird; for he thought if she began
to clamour, the noise would be heard indoors, and some one would be
sure to come and fetch him. He longed to be left alone. He wanted
nobody but his father, and he would look for him where he had left him
in the early morning. So Jack let himself drop down the other side of
the wall and crept into the waggon.