“I have found something in the loft,” said Em to Waldo, who was
listlessly piling cakes of fuel on the kraal wall, a week after. “It is
a box of books that belonged to my father. We thought Tant Sannie had
burnt them.”
The boy put down the cake he was raising and looked at her.
“I don’t think they are very nice, not stories,” she added, “but you can
go and take any you like.”
So saying, she took up the plate in which she had brought his breakfast,
and walked off to the house.
After that the boy worked quickly. The pile of fuel Bonaparte had
ordered him to pack was on the wall in half an hour. He then went to
throw salt on the skins laid out to dry. Finding the pot empty, he went
to the loft to refill it.
Bonaparte Blenkins, whose door opened at the foot of the ladder, saw the
boy go up, and stood in the doorway waiting for his return. He wanted
his boots blacked. Doss, finding he could not follow his master up the
round bars, sat patiently at the foot of the ladder. Presently he looked
up longingly, but no one appeared. Then Bonaparte looked up also, and
began to call; but there was no answer. What could the boy be doing? The
loft was an unknown land to Bonaparte. He had often wondered what was
up there; he liked to know what was in all locked-up places and
out-of-the-way corners, but he was afraid to climb the ladder. So
Bonaparte looked up, and in the name of all that was tantalizing,
questioned what the boy did up there. The loft was used only as a
lumber-room. What could the fellow find up there to keep him so long?
Could the Boer-woman have beheld Waldo at that instant, any lingering
doubt which might have remained in her mind as to the boy’s insanity
would instantly have vanished. For, having filled the salt-pot, he
proceeded to look for the box of books among the rubbish that filled the
loft. Under a pile of sacks he found it--a rough packing-case, nailed
up, but with one loose plank. He lifted that, and saw the even backs of
a row of books. He knelt down before the box, and ran his hand along its
rough edges, as if to assure himself of its existence. He stuck his hand
in among the books, and pulled out two. He felt them, thrust his fingers
in among the leaves, and crumpled them a little, as a lover feels the
hair of his mistress. The fellow gloated over his treasure. He had had
a dozen books in the course of his life; now here was a mine of them
opened at his feet. After a while he began to read the titles, and now
and again opened a book and read a sentence; but he was too excited to
catch the meanings distinctly. At last he came to a dull, brown volume.
He read the name, opened it in the centre, and where he opened began
to read. It was a chapter on property that he fell upon--Communism,
Fourierism, St. Simonism, in a work on Political Economy. He read down
one page and turned over to the next; he read down that without changing
his posture by an inch; he read the next, and the next, kneeling up all
the while with the book in his hand, and his lips parted.
All he read he did not fully understand; the thoughts were new to him;
but this was the fellow’s startled joy in the book--the thoughts were
his, they belonged to him. He had never thought them before, but they
were his.
He laughed silently and internally, with the still intensity of
triumphant joy.
So, then, all thinking creatures did not send up the one cry--“As thou,
dear Lord, has created things in the beginning, so are they now, so
ought they to be, so will they be, world without end; and it doesn’t
concern us what they are. Amen.” There were men to whom not only kopjes
and stones were calling out imperatively, “What are we, and how came
we here? Understand us, and know us;” but to whom even the old, old
relations between man and man, and the customs of the ages called, and
could not be made still and forgotten.
The boy’s heavy body quivered with excitement. So he was not alone, not
alone. He could not quite have told any one why he was so glad, and
this warmth had come to him. His cheeks were burning. No wonder that
Bonaparte called in vain, and Doss put his paws on the ladder, and
whined till three-quarters of an hour had passed. At last the boy put
the book in his breast and buttoned it tightly to him. He took up the
salt pot, and went to the top of the ladder. Bonaparte, with his hands
folded under his coat-tails, looked up when he appeared, and accosted
him.
“You’ve been rather a long time up there, my lad,” he said, as the
boy descended with a tremulous haste, most unlike his ordinary slow
movements. “You didn’t hear me calling, I suppose?”
Bonaparte whisked the tails of his coat up and down as he looked at him.
He, Bonaparte Blenkins, had eyes which were very far-seeing. He looked
at the pot. It was rather a small pot to have taken three-quarters of
an hour in the filling. He looked at the face. It was flushed. And yet,
Tant Sannie kept no wine--he had not been drinking; his eyes were
wide open and bright--he had not been sleeping; there was no girl up
there--he had not been making love. Bonaparte looked at him sagaciously.
What would account for the marvellous change in the boy coming down the
ladder from the boy going up the ladder? One thing there was. Did not
Tant Sannie keep in the loft bultongs, and nice smoked sausages? There
must be something nice to eat up there! Aha! that was it!
Bonaparte was so interested in carrying out this chain of inductive
reasoning that he quite forgot to have his boots blacked.
He watched the boy shuffle off with the salt-pot under his arm; then
he stood in his doorway and raised his eyes to the quiet blue sky, and
audibly propounded this riddle to himself:
“What is the connection between the naked back of a certain boy with a
greatcoat on and a salt-pot under his arm, and the tip of a horsewhip?
Answer: No connection at present, but there will be soon.”
Bonaparte was so pleased with this sally of his wit that he chuckled a
little and went to lie down on his bed.
There was bread-baking that afternoon, and there was a fire lighted
in the brick oven behind the house, and Tant Sannie had left the great
wooden-elbowed chair in which she passed her life, and waddled out to
look at it. Not far off was Waldo, who, having thrown a pail of food
into the pigsty, now leaned over the sod wall looking at the pigs. Half
of the sty was dry, but the lower half was a pool of mud, on the edge of
which the mother sow lay with closed eyes, her ten little ones sucking;
the father pig, knee-deep in the mud, stood running his snout into a
rotten pumpkin and wriggling his curled tail.
Waldo wondered dreamily as he stared why they were pleasant to look at.
Taken singly they were not beautiful; taken together they were. Was
it not because there was a certain harmony about them? The old sow was
suited to the little pigs, and the little pigs to their mother, the
old boar to the rotten pumpkin, and all to the mud. They suggested the
thought of nothing that should be added, of nothing that should be
taken away. And, he wondered on vaguely, was not that the secret of all
beauty, that you who look on-- So he stood dreaming, and leaned further
and further over the sod wall, and looked at the pigs.
All this time Bonaparte Blenkins was sloping down from the house in an
aimless sort of way; but he kept one eye fixed on the pigsty, and each
gyration brought him nearer to it. Waldo stood like a thing asleep when
Bonaparte came close up to him.
In old days, when a small boy, playing in an Irish street-gutter, he,
Bonaparte, had been familiarly known among his comrades under the title
of Tripping Ben; this, from the rare ease and dexterity with which,
by merely projecting his foot, he could precipitate any unfortunate
companion on to the crown of his head. Years had elapsed, and Tripping
Ben had become Bonaparte; but the old gift was in him still. He came
close to the pigsty. All the defunct memories of his boyhood returned on
him in a flood, as, with an adroit movement, he inserted his leg between
Waldo and the wall and sent him over into the pigsty.
The little pigs were startled at the strange intruder, and ran behind
their mother, who sniffed at him. Tant Sannie smote her hands together
and laughed; but Bonaparte was far from joining her. Lost in reverie, he
gazed at the distant horizon.
The sudden reversal of head and feet had thrown out the volume that
Waldo carried in his breast. Bonaparte picked it up and began to inspect
it, as the boy climbed slowly over the wall. He would have walked off
sullenly, but he wanted his book, and he waited until it should be given
him.
“Ha!” said Bonaparte, raising his eyes from the leaves of the book which
he was examining, “I hope your coat has not been injured; it is of an
elegant cut. An heirloom, I presume, from your paternal grandfather? It
looks nice now.”
“Oh, Lord! oh! Lord!” cried Tant Sannie, laughing and holding her sides;
“how the child looks--as though he thought the mud would never wash off.
Oh, Lord, I shall die! You, Bonaparte, are the funniest man I ever saw.”
Bonaparte Blenkins was now carefully inspecting the volume he had picked
up. Among the subjects on which the darkness of his understanding had
been enlightened during his youth, Political Economy had not been one.
He was not, therefore, very clear as to what the nature of the book
might be; and as the name of the writer, J.S. Mill, might, for anything
he knew to the contrary, have belonged to a venerable member of the
British and Foreign Bible Society, it by no means threw light upon the
question. He was not in any way sure that Political Economy had nothing
to do with the cheapest way of procuring clothing for the army and navy,
which would be certainly both a political and economical subject.
But Bonaparte soon came to a conclusion as to the nature of the book
and its contents, by the application of a simple rule now largely
acted upon, but which, becoming universal, would save much thought and
valuable time. It is of marvellous simplicity, of infinite utility, of
universal applicability. It may easily be committed to memory and runs
thus:
Whenever you come into contact with any book, person, or opinion of
which you absolutely comprehend nothing, declare that book, person or
opinion to be immoral. Bespatter it, vituperate against it, strongly
insist that any man or woman harbouring it is a fool or a knave, or
both. Carefully abstain from studying it. Do all that in you lies to
annihilate that book, person, or opinion.
Acting on this rule, so wide in its comprehensiveness, so beautifully
simple in its working, Bonaparte approached Tant Sannie with the book in
his hand. Waldo came a step nearer, eyeing it like a dog whose young has
fallen into evil hands.
“This book,” said Bonaparte, “is not a fit and proper study for a young
and immature mind.”
Tant Sannie did not understand a word, and said:
“What?”
“This book,” said Bonaparte, bringing down his finger with energy on the
cover, “this book is sleg, sleg, Davel, Davel!”
Tant Sannie perceived from the gravity of his countenance that it was no
laughing matter. From the words “sleg” and “Davel” she understood that
the book was evil, and had some connection with the prince who pulls the
wires of evil over the whole earth.
“Where did you get this book?” she asked, turning her twinkling little
eyes on Waldo. “I wish that my legs may be as thin as an Englishman’s if
it isn’t one of your father’s. He had more sins than all the Kaffers in
Kafferland, for all that he pretended to be so good all those years, and
to live without a wife because he was thinking of the one that was dead!
As though ten dead wives could make up for one fat one with arms and
legs!” cried Tant Sannie, snorting.
“It was not my father’s book,” said the boy savagely. “I got it from
your loft.”
“My loft! my book! How dare you?” cried Tant Sannie.
“It was Em’s father’s. She gave it me,” he muttered more sullenly.
“Give it here. What is the name of it? What is it about?” she asked,
putting her finger upon the title.
Bonaparte understood.
“Political Economy,” he said slowly.
“Dear Lord!” said Tant Sannie, “cannot one hear from the very sound
what an ungodly book it is! One can hardly say the name. Haven’t we got
curses enough on this farm?” cried Tant Sannie, eloquently; “my best
imported Merino ram dying of nobody knows what, and the short-horn cow
casting her two calves, and the sheep eaten up with the scab and the
drought? And is this a time to bring ungodly things about the place, to
call down the vengeance of Almighty God to punish us more? Didn’t the
minister tell me when I was confirmed not to read any book except my
Bible and hymn-book, that the devil was in all the rest? And I never
have read any other book,” said Tant Sannie with virtuous energy, “and I
never will!”
Waldo saw that the fate of his book was sealed, and turned sullenly on
his heel.
“So you will not stay to hear what I say!” cried Tant Sannie. “There,
take your Polity-gollity-gominy, your devil’s book!” she cried, flinging
the book at his head with much energy.
It merely touched his forehead on one side and fell to the ground.
“Go on,” she cried; “I know you are going to talk to yourself. People
who talk to themselves always talk to the devil. Go and tell him all
about it. Go, go! run!” cried Tant Sannie.
But the boy neither quickened nor slackened his pace, and passed
sullenly round the back of the wagon-house.
Books have been thrown at other heads before and since that summer
afternoon, by hands more white and delicate than those of the
Boer-woman; but whether the result of the process has been in any case
wholly satisfactory, may be questioned. We love that with a peculiar
tenderness, we treasure it with a peculiar care, it has for us quite
a fictitious value, for which we have suffered. If we may not carry it
anywhere else we will carry it in our hearts, and always to the end.
Bonaparte Blenkins went to pick up the volume, now loosened from its
cover, while Tant Sannie pushed the stumps of wood further into the
oven. Bonaparte came close to her, tapped the book knowingly, nodded,
and looked at the fire. Tant Sannie comprehended, and, taking the volume
from his hand, threw it into the back of the oven. It lay upon the heap
of coals, smoked, flared, and blazed, and the “Political Economy” was no
more--gone out of existence, like many another poor heretic of flesh and
blood.
Bonaparte grinned, and to watch the process brought his face so near
the oven door that the white hair on his eyebrows got singed. He then
inquired if there were any more in the loft.
Learning that there were, he made signs indicative of taking up armfuls
and flinging them into the fire. But Tant Sannie was dubious. The
deceased Englishman had left all his personal effects specially to his
child. It was all very well for Bonaparte to talk of burning the books.
He had had his hair spiritually pulled, and she had no wish to repeat
his experience.
She shook her head. Bonaparte was displeased. But then a happy thought
occurred to him. He suggested that the key of the loft should henceforth
be put into his own safe care and keeping--no one gaining possession of
it without his permission. To this Tant Sannie readily assented, and the
two walked lovingly to the house to look for it.