VI

One afternoon when the Kid was quite as tall as the broom she swept the

stoep with she had gone to the drift for water. It was a still, bright,

hot day. Little puffs of rosy cloud hung motionless under the burning blue

sky-arch; small, gaily-plumaged birds twittered in the bushes; the tiny

black ants scurried to and fro in the pinkish sand of the river beach. She

waded into the now clear, sherry-pale water to cool her hot bare limbs,

and, bending over, stared down into the reflected eyes that looked back

out of the pool.

Such a dirty little, large-eyed, wistful face, crowned by a curling tousle

of matted, reddish-brown-gold hair. Such a neglected, sordid little

figure, with thin drab shoulders sticking out of a ragged calico frock.

She was quite startled. She had never seen herself in any glass before,

though a cheap, square, wooden-framed mirror hung on the wall of the

bar-room, with a dirty clothes-brush on a hook underneath, and there were

swing toilet-glasses in the tawdry bedrooms at the inn. Something stirred

in her, whispering in the grimy little ear, "_It is good to be clean_,"

and with the awakening of the maidenly instinct the womanly purpose

framed.

She put off her horrible rags, and washed herself from head to foot in the

warm clear water. She took fine sand, and scrubbed her head. She dipped

and wrung and rinsed her foul tatters of garments, standing naked in the

shallows, the hot sunshine drying her red-gold curls, and warming her

slight girlish body through and through as she spread her washed rags to

dry on the big hot stones.

There was a man's step on the bank above her, there was a rustling sound

among the green bushes. She had never heard of modesty, but she cowered

down among the boulders, and the heavy footstep passed by. She hid among

the fern while her clothes were drying, put them on tidily, and went back

with her filled water-bucket to the hotel. How could she know what injury

the kind peremptory voice, bidding her be foul no longer, had done her!

But thenceforwards a new cruelty, a fresh peril, attended her steps.

Bough and the white woman of the inn had quarrels often. She was no wife

of his. He had not brought her from Cape Colony. When the hotel was built

he had gone up to Johannesburg on business and on pleasure, and brought

her back with him from an establishment he knew. He was generally not

brutal to her except when she was ailing, when he gave her medicine that

made her worse, much worse--so very ill that she would lie groaning upon a

foul neglected bed for weeks, while Bough caroused with the coloured women

and the customers in the bar. Then, still groaning, she would drag herself

up and be about her work again. She did not want to go back to the house

at Johannesburg. She loved the man Bough in her fashion, poor bought

wretch.

She had quarrelled with him many times for many things, and been silenced

with blows, or curses, or even caresses, were he in the mood. But she had

never quarrelled with him about the Kid before. Now when he bought some

coloured print and a Boer sunbonnet, and some shifts and stockings of a

traveller in drapery and hosiery, and ordered her thenceforwards to see

that the girl went properly clothed, a new terror, a fresh torture, was

added to the young life. The woman had ignored, neglected, sometimes

ill-used her, but she had never hated her until now.

And Bough, the big, burly, dark-skinned man with the strange light eyes,

and the bold, cruel, red mouth, and the bushy brown whiskers, why did he

follow her about with those strange eyes, and smile secretly to himself?

She was no longer fed on scraps; she must sit and eat at table with the

man and his mistress, and learn to use knife and fork.

She outgrew the dress Bough had bought her, and another, and another, and

this did not make Bough angry; he only smiled. A man having some secret

luxury or treasure locked away in a private cupboard will smile so. He

knows it is there, and he means to go to the hiding-place one day, but in

the meantime he waits, licking his lips.

The girl had always feared Bough, and shrunk from his anger with

unutterable terror. But the blow of his heavy hand was more bearable than

his smile and his jesting amiability. Now, when she went down to the

kraals on an errand, or to the orchard or garden for fruit or vegetables,

or to the river for water as of old, she heard his light, cautious,

padding footsteps coming after her, and would turn and pass him with

downcast eyes, and go back to the inn, and take a beating for not having

done her errand. Beating she comprehended, but this mysterious change in

the man Bough filled her with sick, secret loathing and dread. She did not

know why she bolted the door of the outhouse now when she crept to her

miserable bed.

Once Bough dropped into her lap a silver dollar, saying with a smile that

she was getting to be quite a little woman of late. She leaped to her feet

as though a scorpion had stung her, and stood white to the very lips, and

speechless, while the big silver coin rolled merrily away into a distant

corner, and lay there. The frowzy woman with the bleached hair happened to

come in at that moment; or had she been spying through a crack of the

door? Bough pretended he had accidentally dropped the coin, picked it up,

and went away.

That night he and the woman quarrelled fiercely. She could hear them

raging at each other as she lay trembling. Then came shrieks, and the dull

sound of the sjambok cutting soft human flesh. In the morning the woman

had a black eye; there were livid weals on her tear-blurred face. She

packed her boxes, snivelling. She was going back along up to Johannesburg

by the next thither-bound transport-waggon-train that should halt at the

hotel--thrown off like an old shoe after all these years. And she was not

young enough for the old life, what with hard work and hard usage and

worry, and she knew to whom she owed her dismissal....

Ay, and if she could have throttled or poisoned the little sly devil she

would have done it! Only--there would have been Bough to reckon with

afterwards. For of God she made a jest, and the devil was an old friend of

hers, but she was horribly afraid of the man with the brown bushy whiskers

and the light, steely eyes. Yet she threw herself upon him to kiss him,

blubbering freely, when at the week's end the Johannesburg

transport-rider's waggons returning from the district town not yet linked

up to the north by the railway came in sight.

Bough poured her out a big glass of liquor, his universal panacea, and

another for the transport-rider, with many a jovial word. He would be

running up to Johannesburg before she had well shaken down after the

journey. Then they would have a rare old time, going round the bars and

doing the shows. Though, perhaps if she had got fixed up with a new

friend, some flash young fellow with pots of money, she would not be

wanting old faces around?

Then he turned aside to pay the transport-rider, and the exile dabbed her

swollen face with a rouge-stained, lace-edged handkerchief, and went out

to get into the waggon.

The girl stood by the stoep, staring, puzzled, overwhelmed, afraid. A

piece of her world was breaking off. As long as she could remember

anything she had known this woman. She had never received any kindness

from her; of late she had been malignant in her hate, but--she wished she

was not going. Instinctively she had felt that her presence was some

slight protection. Keeping close in the shadow of this creature's frowzy

skirts, she had not so feared and dreaded those light eyes of Bough's, and

the padding, following footsteps had kept aloof. As the woman passed her

now, a rage of unspeakable, agonising fear rose in her bosom. She cried

out to her, and clutched at her shabby gay mantle.

The woman snatched the garment from her hold. Her distorted mouth and

blazing eyes were close to the white young face. She could have spat upon

it. But she snarled at her three words ... no more, and passed her, and

got into the waggon.

"Halloa, there!" said Bough, coming forward threateningly, "what you

rowing about, eh?" But no one answered. The girl had fled to the

boulder-cairn, and the woman sat silent in the waggon, until the weary,

goaded teams moved on, and the transport-train of heavy, broad-beamed

vehicles lumbered away.

But the little figure on the cairn of boulders covering the dust of the

bosom from whence it had first drunk life sat there immovable until the

sun went down, pondering.

"_Missis now, eh!_"

What did those three words mean?

Then Bough called her, and she had to run. She served as waitress of the

bar that day, and the men who drove or rode by and stopped for drinks,

chatting in the dirty saloon, or sitting in the bare front room, with the

Dutch stove, and the wooden forms and tables in it, that they called the

coffee-room, to discuss matters relative to the sale of cattle, or sheep,

or merchandise, stared at her, and several made her coarse compliments.

She refused to touch the loathly-smelling liquor they offered her. Her

heart beat like a little terrified bird's. And she was horribly conscious

of those light eyes of Bough's following, following her, with that

inscrutable look.

When the crowd had thinned he came to her. He caught her arm, and pulled

her near him, and said between his teeth:

"You will sleep in the mistress's room to-night."

Then he went away chuckling to himself, thinking of that frightened look

in her eyes. Later, he went out on horseback, and did not return.

The slatternly bedchamber, with its red turkey twill window-curtains and

cheap gaudy wallpaper, which had belonged to the ruddled woman with the

bleached hair, was a palace to the little one. But she could not breathe

there. Late that night she rose from the big feather bed, and unfastened

the inner window shutters, and drew the cotton blind and opened the

window, though the paint had stuck, and looked out upon the veld. The

great stars throbbed in the purple velvet darkness overhead. The falling

dew wetted the hand she stretched out into the cool night air. She drew

back the hand and touched her cheek with it, and started, for the fresh,

cool, fragrant touch seemed like that of some other hand whose touch she

once had known. She thought for the first time that if the woman who had

been her mother, and who slept out there in the dark under the

boulder-cairn, had lived, she might have touched her child so. Then she

closed the window quickly, for she heard, afar off, the gallop of a

hard-ridden horse drawing nearer--nearer. And she knew that Bough was

coming back.

He came.

She heard him dismount before the door, give the horse to the sleepy

Barala ostler, and let himself into the bar. She heard him clink among the

glasses and bottles. She heard his foot upon the three-step stair, and on

the landing. It did not pass by. It stopped at the locked door of the room

where she was.

Then his voice bade her rise and open the door. She could not speak or

move.

She was dumb and paralysed with deadly terror. She heard his coaxing voice

turn angry; she listened in helpless terrified silence to his oaths and

threats; then she heard him laugh softly, and the laugh was followed by

the jingle of a bunch of skeleton keys. He always carried them; they saved

trouble, he used to say.

They saved him trouble now. When the bent wire rattled in the lock, and

the key fell out upon the floor, she screamed, and his coarse chuckle

answered. She was cowering against the wall in a corner of the room when

he came in and picked up the key and locked the door. But when his

stretched-out, grasping hand came down upon her slight shoulder, she

turned and bit it like some savage, desperate little animal, drawing the

blood. Bough swore at the sudden sting of the sharp white teeth. So the

little beast showed fight, eh? Well, he would teach her that the master

will have his way.

There was no one else in the house, and if there had been it would have

served her not at all. God sat in timeless Eternity beyond these mists of

earth, and saw, and made no sign. It was not until the man Bough slept the

heavy sleep of liquor and satiety that the thought of flight was born in

her with desperate courage to escape him. The shutters had been left

unbolted, and the window was yet a little way open. She sprang up and

threw it wide, leaped out upon the stoep, and from thence to the ground,

and fled blindly, breathlessly over the veld into the night.