Lawless had during a chequered career spent many an eventful night round
a camp fire, but no more strange experience had he passed through than
on that night, guarding Van Bleit on the open veld.
The night was cold, with a fresh wind blowing. The Kaffir, who remained
greatly against his will, but dared not openly refuse to stay for fear
of the baas of the scarred face and compelling eye, gathered wood and
made a fire, before which Lawless sat with his revolver at his hand, and
Van Bleit stretched himself on the cushions that had been taken from the
cart and flung down on the veld. He feigned slumber, but did not
actually close his eyes throughout the night. He watched his captor
incessantly, hoping that sleep would overtake him; but Lawless sat
wakeful and alert, with his eyes upon the flames, only moving at long
intervals when he rose to throw fresh wood upon the fire.
There was nothing to eat, and only a small quantity of spirit in Van
Bleit's flask. The Kaffir had a pocketful of mealies which he chewed
before the fire. Close by their uitspan was a watercourse from whence
he fetched water in small quantities in the empty flask.
Van Bleit complained of hunger. He also complained of cold, and of the
tightness of the rope that bound his wrists. In common humanity,
Lawless loosened the knots. He had no fancy to torture the man. But if
Van Bleit had hoped by this means to slip his bonds he was doomed to
disappointment. They were more comfortable, but none the less secure.
He lay still afterwards for a long while feigning sleep; and Lawless,
watching intently, observed by the uncertain flickering light, that now
leapt upward in a tongue of brilliant flame, and again died down to a
dull red glow that left all beyond the immediate circle round the fire
in absolute darkness, that with every interval of obscurity Van Bleit
drew himself stealthily nearer the fire. When he lay quite close to the
hot embers with his bound hands among them, Lawless rose, flung on fresh
wood to make a blaze, and leisurely approaching the recumbent figure,
stirred it with his boot.
"Get back," he said. "I don't mind you blistering your hands, that's
your look out; but I object to you trying to burn that rope."
Van Bleit rolled back on his cushions without replying, and lay still
again; and Lawless sat as before, smoking his pipe to solace his empty
stomach, with his revolver beside him, and his eyes on the leaping
flames. Only the Kaffir slept, and his rest was tranquil and unbroken,
in strange contrast with the silent conflict that was going on close by
him on the opposite side of the fire.
The stars sloped to the westward, and the night grew darker, with the
heavy blackness that precedes the dawn. The wind died away. Cold and
still and strangely pure was the feel of the air. Lawless kicked the
fire into a blaze and looked down at Van Bleit.
"Want a smoke?" he asked.
"Yes."
Van Bleit's tone was sulky. Lawless took his pipe from his pocket and
filled it for him. He put the stem in his mouth and held a match to the
bowl. Van Bleit was not gracious. He wanted to smoke badly or he would
have refused the offer.
"Makes a man feel a precious fool," he said.
"Makes him look one," Lawless answered.
He returned to his place and sat silent and still, watching for the
dawn. It came with a faint breath of wind in the trees, just a
whispering stir among the leaves. Then silence again, and the light
broke like a white line drawn horizontally upon the blackboard of the
sky. Lawless watched it broaden, grow brighter, till it dispersed the
surrounding blackness, and objects and landmarks familiar in the
daylight began to take definite shape and form. He stretched himself
wearily and looked about him. His glance fell on Van Bleit, pallid,
red-eyed, obviously suffering, observing him with the baleful look of
some savage captive beast.
He got up and took a few short rapid turns to circulate his blood. It
was cold in the dawn, and the fire was dying. There was no more wood to
throw on. He had spent nights like this in the Boer lines during the
war, but he had never been told off single-handed to guard a prisoner.
He kept a watchful eye on the east for the first flushing of the clouds.
Never had he welcomed the sun more gratefully than when it lifted
itself indolently from the rose clouds that veiled its rising and soared
above them into the blue of the morning sky. Van Bleit stirred,
stretched himself to the warmth as an animal does, and sat up.
"Blast you!" he snarled. "When are you going to make a move out of
this? I want some breakfast. I'm famished... And I've got a chill.
My clothes are wet through with the dew."
Lawless looked at his watch.
"There's lots of time yet," he answered cheerfully. "You won't hurt for
a little fasting. When a man habitually overfeeds it's good for his
stomach to give it a rest."
"How long are you for keeping me here?" Van Bleit asked, his voice
quivering with repressed rage.
"I'm giving Tom his chance to get to the Bank," Lawless answered.
"After that, I've no further interest in your movements."
Van Bleit eyed him calculatingly. His courage had returned to a certain
degree since he had suffered no personal violence. He felt reassured on
that point. But his respect for his captor was no greater on that
account. Had their relative positions been reversed he would have acted
very differently.
"My arms are numb," he grumbled. "Can't you put me on parole and undo
this cord? It's the very devil I'm suffering in my wrists."
But Lawless was wholly unmoved.
"When we part company," he said, "I'll free them--which is more than you
did for me. As for your parole! ... I wouldn't place greater trust in
your word than I would in that of a Kaffir."
Van Bleit controlled himself with an effort.
"You're armed, and I'm not," he sneered.
"Yes, I'm armed. But I'm not going to put myself to the trouble of
sitting with my finger on the trigger."
Van Bleit got up and walked about. He was stiff and hungry, and his
head ached. He believed he had a touch of fever. He was subject to
intermittent attacks, and lying out all night with no protection from
the heavy dews was sufficient to bring on an attack. He cursed volubly
as he tramped about, and swore swift and dire vengeance on his enemy,
who, exercising also with his hands in his coat pockets, was keeping a
steady watch on his movements.
The Kaffir awoke after a while, and, rolling over, stared about him as
if wondering how he came to be amid his present surroundings. Then his
eye encountered the terrible eye of the strange baas with the scar upon
his face, and he scrambled to his feet and grinned nervously.
"In an hour's time I shall want the horses inspanned, John."
"Ja, baas."
The Kaffir made off. There was in the woolly head instructed at the
Mission-station a suspicion that the tall, stern-faced baas with the eye
that pierced through one, and the ugly scar along his jaw, was, if not
the Devil himself, a very near relation. Had he suddenly disappeared in
smoke with his captive, though it would have terrified the black man, it
would not greatly have astonished him.
As he moved rapidly away to where the horses were hitched to the pole of
the cart he came upon one of his former gods, a strange-looking insect
that, after the manner of the chameleon, took on the shade of the grass
upon which it fed. It closely resembled in form a forked blade of
coarse grass. With a surreptitious look about him to make certain he
was not observed, the Kaffir bowed before his one-time god and uttered a
weird invocation in his native tongue for protection against the white
man's Devil. Then in order to square the white man's God he looked up
at the blue sky in the hope that the great mysterious Being, who was
somewhere behind the clouds, was not conversant with the Kaffir
language, and so had failed to understand his lapse into idolatry, and
cried aloud, parrot-fashion, a prayer he had been taught in English when
he became a convert at the Mission, because his brother Klaus had joined
the Mission, and had a blanket given him, and plenty good things when he
was zwak. But the chance encounter with the little grass-god, which,
being tangible, was easier of comprehension, did more to reassure him
than the prayer sent into the blue distance which, having such a long
way to travel, might never reach.
The Kaffir's idea of time was vague. He went by the sun. One hour the
sun him so much higher. He rubbed down the horses as best he could,
having nothing to groom them with save handfuls of grass, and led them
away to the watercourse to drink. He did not hasten to return, but kept
an observant eye on the sun, fearful of incurring the baas' anger by
overstaying the limit. When he judged the hour up he returned to the
uitspan and proceeded to harness the horses. The baas still stood with
his hands in his pockets; but he no longer watched the other baas, who
was reclining again on the cushions of the cart, a huddled inert mass of
misery. The game was up, and he had lost finally. He felt like a man
who has toiled honestly and laboriously and been scandalously defrauded
of the rewards of his industry.
The Kaffir finished harnessing the horses, and then came up for the
cushions. Lawless spoke to Van Bleit, and he got up sullenly, kicking
the native savagely as he stooped and reached out a dusky hand. The
Kaffir shot a venomous glance at him, but uttered no verbal protest. He
gathered up the cushions and carried them away and arranged them in the
cart. Then he mounted to his seat and sat with the reins in his hands,
waiting.
Lawless again addressed himself to Van Bleit.
"Turn round," he said curtly, "and I'll unfasten your wrists."
Van Bleit's arms were so cramped when eventually they were released that
for some time he could only work them gently, moving his wrists and
fingers and relaxing his stiffened muscles. The inconvenience and the
pain in them did not improve his temper. And when it became clear to
him there was no room in the cart for him, that he must walk many miles
before he could get a conveyance or break his fast, his rage was beyond
control.
"You devil!" he shouted. "You dirty low cad of a Kaffir! Look out for
your skin, that's all. I keep my word regardless of consequences, and I
say that for this you shall pay--and pay dearly, you hired spy who does
another man's dirty work."
"Drive on," said Lawless indifferently; and the Kaffir promptly whipped
up his horses and drove off at a furious rate.
The little schoolmaster was seated at breakfast when the Cape cart
clattered noisily up the sunny street, and Lawless, descending from it,
entered the hotel. He went to his room, stripped, bathed, and changed
his clothes; then he repaired in all haste to the dining-room, and
nodding to Mr Burton, sat down at the end of the table.
"I'm famished," he said. "But if you'll give me a little time in which
to take the brunt off an appetite that seems as though it would never be
satisfied, I'll be ready to accompany you as we arranged."
The mild eyes behind the glasses blinked their surprise and their
pleasure in equal degrees.
"Oh! plenty of time! plenty of time?" he asserted, and quietly pushed
the butter and rolls and fruit nearer the new-comer's hand. "It's
early... I am glad to see you. I was afraid you might not be
returning."
Lawless fell to on his breakfast when it made its appearance with a zest
that astonished his companion.
"What a good thing it is to have a healthy appetite," he observed.
"Early rising and a drive before breakfast suit you, my friend."
Lawless laughed grimly.
"For the first time I experience a sneaking sympathy with the
cannibal... I could almost eat you."
Even a much neglected appetite reaches its limit in time. The quantity
of food that Lawless managed to dispose of was a revelation to the
schoolmaster; he had never in all his life been equal to making such a
meal.
"You have a good digestion," he remarked. "It is a fine thing."
"No doubt," Lawless answered. "But it becomes assertive when a man
neglects to give it work. And now, Mr Burton, I won't keep you waiting
any longer. Your patience has stood a test this morning that mine would
not bear so well."
"Indeed, I have been well entertained," the other assured him.
"In watching the exhibition of a man's eating prowess! You are more
easily amused than I am."
"I imagine that to be so. I belong to a generation that enjoyed simpler
pleasures than you men of the present day. But I fancy we who took
pleasure in simple things got more joy out of life... I may be wrong."
"Joy! There's precious little joy in life that I can see," Lawless
replied, and rose, scraping his chair noisily upon the carpetless floor.
The little man looked at him earnestly.
"I am not a philosopher," he said, "nor have I over much learning--just
enough for the exercise of my profession, and no more. But I can tell
you the reason you find no joy in life; it is because you don't know
where to look for it. Joy lies in ourselves."
Lawless laughed shortly.
"I'm not a likely sort of subject to harbour joy," he returned.
"Why not?" the other said quite simply... "You shut the door in her
face, my friend, or she would find her way in fast enough. Give her a
chance."
He took up his hat, and lighted his old meerschaum pipe before going
out.
"On a day like this," he said, "it makes a man joyful merely to feel he
is alive."
It was a great pleasure to the schoolmaster to walk along beside his
tall companion and point out to him the many beauties of the place,
beauties which alone Lawless would assuredly have overlooked. A lizard,
peeping with bright eyes between the stones of a piece of broken wall,
caught the little man's attention. As they approached it darted into a
crack and disappeared. The schoolmaster pointed to it like an eager boy
who discovers something rare. Despite his boredom at such trifles,
Lawless was faintly amused. A wild flower, a humming-bird, a large
green butterfly, each in turn excited interest, and called forth
admiration and comment.
The man was a botanist, and spoke learnedly of the flora of the
neighbourhood. The wild flowers of the Cape have yet to be properly
classified; many of them are unnamed; they are simply "bloemetjes." The
schoolmaster had named many of them to please himself. He picked a
beautiful pure white bloom from the veld, and gave it to Lawless to
admire.
"It is so flawless, so pure," he said. "I call that my Flower of
Innocence. The veld is full of them. But they are scentless. One day
someone will take it, perhaps, and cultivate it and give it a scent.
But I like it best as nature has made it. To me it is perfect."
Lawless placed it in his buttonhole, not that he cared for wearing
flowers, but because--why he did not know--it pleased him to give
pleasure to this simple-minded man.
The schoolmaster introduced his friend to his pupils, a proceeding that
was fraught with embarrassment to both sides. Never in his life before
had Lawless felt so great a fool. He was glad to make his escape.
Mr Burton parted from him reluctantly. He went a little way with him
on his backward journey, and stood for quite ten minutes looking after
the tall figure as it strode away over the veld. Afterwards he was
heard to assert that Providence had without doubt moved him to act as he
acted that morning. No man was ever more conscientious in the
performance of his duties than this man, yet here was he lingering in
the sunshine, gazing after a departing acquaintance while his pupils
idled their time away waiting for him in vain.
Mr Burton held no class that morning.
As he was about to turn back to his work he saw a strange sight. The
figure he was watching suddenly threw up its arms and fell and lay upon
the veld quite motionless, so that had he not seen the falling of it he
would not have known that it was there. And galloping away from the
spot where the man had fallen was another man seated on a raw-boned
white horse.
The schoolmaster was no athlete, but he put foot to ground and ran for
all he was worth.